Photo: Artwork
It's become something of a meaningless ritual to wax lyrical on how great the year in music has been. But there's no getting around the fact that 2015 has been an exceedingly good year for music. The hyperbole is justified. It's been so good, in fact, that narrowing down our favourite songs to just 100 proved to be nearly more than we could handle.
See Gigwise's 100 best songs of 2015 below...
We managed it though. We even managed to pick out and rank our top 10 of these 100, and you can nod your head in agreement / shake it in disbelief below.
A 10 minute mini-Odyssey that takes you on a cinematic journey through krautrock, post-rock and everything in between - as Bowie laments the tale of a fallen prophet. While most acts of his stature are leaning far too heavily on their legacy, this is the sound of an icon ever charging towards the future.
Another side-project that has blown everyone else out of the water in 2015. On 'Love Is Free', Robyn performs an earnest, off-kilter rap over a delightfully retro disco/house instrumental - there's even a few "boom chicka booms" on top of squelchy synths and drum machines. It's massive.
Witness this track live, and your every molecule will be forever shifted. With its irrepressibly catchy refrain, its playfully antagonistic lyrics - "We don't listen to no politician / Everybody on the same mission / We don't care about your -ism and -cisms" and - its growning glory - a spoken riff mimicking the outraged reaction to Kanye West's BRITs performance, 'Shutdown' is the highlight of what has been a game-changing year for grime.
Recruiting xx bandmate Romy Madley Croft for his solo venture was a risky move for Jamie xx, given how easily it could have been interchangeable with the band's own output - but it was a risk that more than paid off. Romy's vulnerable, open vocals add an emotional weight to the song, which slowly builds, and then explodes into technicolour.
We thought 'The Answer', the first song from Savages' forthcoming second album, Adore Life, was a career highlight - then they followed it up with 'T.I.W.Y.G'. Riddled with pace changes and punching riffs, Jehnny Beth chants, "This is what you get when you mess with love" with an ever-increasing fervency, and the result is one of the most thrilling three minutes of music this year.
The side project of The National's Matt Berninger, which he started this year alongside Ramona Falls' Brent Knopf, combines upbeat, funk-laced instrumentation with Berninger's instantly recognisable, mellow vocals and baffling lyrics: "Bought a saltwater fish from a colorblind witch / Cause she said she loved it / Couldn't tell her the part that would break her heart / But it loved me."
"I can't feel my face when I'm with you, but I love it." Surely one of the most joyous, nonsensical lyrics of the year, and packaged within a smooth, falsetto and synth-filled anthem. It's offbeat and strange, and yet completely and utterly accessible pop.
Released as a 16-minute video alongside three other tracks from the M3LL155X EP (it's pronounced Melissa, in case you were wondering), 'In Time' stands out as the best song on an incredible EP. Over a cacophany of beats, Twigs' autotuned voice spits out the biting, English-accented refrain: "You've got a god damn nerve". It's like a club banger that's been mangled up with experimental R&B and trip hop, and it's possibly her best song yet.
There's no need to preface this by setting aside, or even apologising for, Aurora's ubiquitous Oasis cover. Her John Lewis advert contribution breathed new life into an old classic with sensitivity and heart... but it's 'Runaway' that really packs a punch. It's clean, concise and yet somehow sprawling, and its lyrics possess that particular poeticism that only seems to come from someone for whom English isn't a first language: "And all this time I have been lying / Oh, lying in secret to myself / I've been putting sorrow on the farest place on my shelf."
The anthemic, infectiously high-pitched chorus is, of course, classic Chvrches - but it's the lower, more restrained verse, with its quietly defiant lyrics - "You talk far too much / For someone so unkind / I will wipe the salt off of my skin / And I'll admit that I got it wrong" - that makes it the most euphoric, yet achingly moving, song of the year.
