NPR Music - Our no. 1 songs: 2015

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Guitar rock comes roaring back, a monumental tear-jerker wrecks legions of fans, hip-hop hits Broadway and more.Note: This is a recurring series in celebration of All Songs Considered’s 25th anniversary. A shorter version of this episode ran earlier in the year.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

All right, it's all songs considered. I'm Robin Hilton. Here is Stephen Thompson. Hey, Stephen. Hello, Robin. So we have clawed our way to the year 2015 in this march through the best songs, the songs that take us back to those years. And if you haven't been following along, just a reminder that these are not the Billboard Hot 100 songs from those years. Or necessarily even the biggest songs of the year that, you know, maybe we'll take people back.

These are songs that define the show. Yeah. Yeah. There's absolutely no way to be definitive in summing up any year. Where's the folk music, Robin? Where's the... I see no mention of band A, but lots of mention of band B. But what's the first thing that you think of when you think of 2015? And a reminder also that we're not telling each other what the songs are. We're kind of playing name that tune.

We're playing a little bit of name that tune. You're going to hit it, and then I'm going to try to guess what it is. All right, Robin. the first song that jumped to mind when I think of 2015, first of all, pretty good year for music. Second of all, this opening rift is the first thing that goes immediately to mind. Courtney Barnett. So the album is like sometimes I sit and think and sometimes I just sit. Sit, but I'm blanking on the name.

Pedestrian at best. Oh, my God, what a great song. Such a great song. Most inaccurately named song. Yeah. Certainly the most inaccurately named song of 2015. Yeah. Oh, she just burst out with this album, and it just rips.

Yeah, and part of what's great about it is talk about zgging when people think you're going to zag. Courtney Barnett came up, you know, she comes out of Australia, and her stuff is very conversational. Her songs are these ambles, you know, where she's kind of telling you about how she went out into the garden and got stung by a bee, whatever, these kind of story songs. and then comes out with this album, and the immediate thought is like, this is her smells like teen spirit. Yeah, that's a great example. Yeah, and where it's just so lyrically dense,

it has this build, it slams into the choruses with such grandeur and majesty. I love this record, but this particular song was just like, oh, well, I know exactly what I'm kicking off my year-end mix with. I know what is basically my favorite song of the year. It's so fun every once in a while when you hear a song and you're like, oh, it's my song of the year. There it is. You don't have to even live with it for more than three minutes to know.

I remember thinking when she dropped this album that, man, guitar rock is back. And, you know, Car Seat Headrest was starting to drop stuff around then, too, that was really popping. Like, I remember I think, well, it might have been the next year, maybe 2016 when he did the Vincent's, drunk drivers, Killer Whales. Those songs all came out. But this, yeah, this was very high on my list of favorite albums. And this song, too, Pedestrian at Best. Great pick. As soon as you hit play on this, I thought, oh, I could have easily picked this one, too.

Yeah, but I'm going to go with this song from an album full of songs that I, like any one of them, I could have picked and played in love. But I'll go with this one. Okay, Sufian Stevens. Karen Lowell is the album. Yeah. First day of the week. It's at the bar of fritheness and wine.

Beloved of John, I get it all wrong. I read you for some kind of bone. All right, if you don't have it now, you're not going to dig. It's Beloved My John. Beloved My John. Oh, okay. This record knocked me flat when it came out. It's one of my favorite albums of the year.

It's one of my favorite albums he's ever done. just the intimacy of this record, how deep he's willing to go in this album. And I know he interviewed, you know, you did an interview with him where he kind of rejected this album. Yeah, in a way, yeah. In a way, like really,

it's clear that he hasn't been able to fully untangle what he was trying to untangle with this record, the death of his mother, you know, from whom he had been, you know, estranged. And the way that he spoke about it was really articulate and really thoughtful. And I really understood how you could come to feel that way where, like, realizing, like, these songs can't speak for her.

She's not there to speak for herself. And I think that interview is a really useful way to look at this record as, like, these thoughts are incomplete because they have to be. And what it doesn't do is it just doesn't detract from how beautiful they are and how thoughtful they are and how much love and unmet needs. are kind of swirling together in these songs. I think this is a breathtaking record. You know, I think it's important to note in that conversation I had with Sufion.

A lot of sites picked up, at one point in it, he says, I'm kind of embarrassed by this album, and that became a headline for a lot of other sites that picked it up. But it's so much more complicated than that. It's not that he thinks this is a terrible album or that he did a bad job. You know, the songs are embarrassed. It's because he was trying to get at something that he just couldn't get at,

And then he felt bad for trying to even speak for his mom. And it's just way more complicated than that. But this song, a whole album, really, from 2015 was super huge for me. Okay, we do need to take a quick break here. But when we come back, we'll talk about some of the other stuff that stands out to us from 2015. We're celebrating the 25th anniversary of all songs considered by looking back at our favorite songs from across the years. We're up to 2015. Stephen, what are some of the other things that you remember about?

Well, Kendrick Lamar put out to Pepper Butterfly in 2015. We go be all right. We go. And when I wake up, I recognize you looking at me for the pay cut. Bahamas I be looking at you from the face down. One make a love and even room with the face down. Scheming. And let me tell you about my life.

Pain killers only put me in a twilight. We're pretty bitching. It's the highlight. Now tell my mama I love her what this is what I like. Lord knows. 20 of them in my Chevy. Tell him all that come and get me reaping everything I stole. So my karma come in heaven, no preliminary hearing.

So my record, I'm a-m-k-k-k ain't stand silence for the record. Tell the world I know it's too late. Boys and girls, I think I've gone crazy. Trying to side my face is all day. Would you please believe when I say, wouldn't you know, we've been urban down before? We're trying not to overload Kendrick Lamar because he's got a record coming up that we absolutely have to talk about.

But that was an extremely eye-opening record. It was not his first great album. but it's one that really demonstrated the expansiveness of his vision. We could have played Kinkunta, which was the pick from your kind of 2016 anniversary show, right? Yeah, yeah. But I think the song All Right has become a bigger one and a more important song and a more impactful song from the album. Another one I'd pick for 2015 is the Taurus album.

Oh, my gosh. Talk about guitar rock. Yeah, Strange Aloes came out then. And this song, and the album is from Sprinter. rock so hard. I mean, I really thought, I mean, I think we all thought that Taurus was going to be like the next big guitar rock god, you know, but they ended up taking their music in so many different and totally surprising directions. But what else? Also, this was the year that Joan Shelley put out her album over and even. We cite the morning softly, take to them easy, the scent of the world.

When I do my year-endest-listment- I just pick my favorites. I'm not necessarily trying to, like, what is the grandest artistic statement? What is the most sonically expansive? What was my favorite? What was the album that I went back to over and over again to receive some boost in an emotion I'm trying to clarify? And Joan Shelley's over and even is my anxiety medicine.

Yeah. Gorgeous. And, you know, I come back to that record again and again. Whenever we do these, like, songs to settle the nerves, songs to calm your frazzled mind or whatever, I talk about that record, which is my go-to feel better. One of my go-to feel-better records. So, 2015, we also got a new Adele album that year. We already talked about her on an earlier episode, but she dropped 25 in, but she dropped 25 with the song, Hello. Hello, it's me.

I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet to go over everything. They say the time's supposed to heal you, but I ain't done much healing. Hello, can you hear me? I'm in California dreaming about who we used to be when we were younger and free. I've forgotten how it felt before the world fell at our feet. There's such a difference between us and a million miles. I mean, I think this is an undeniably great song, and that's what we're talking about, songs that take us back to different years.

But the reviews overall for this album from Adele, they were kind of mixed. Yeah, I agree completely. And I think I really, really like the song, Hello, but I found the record as a whole, very monochromatic and glum, and not glum in the way that I love so much glum music. I found it, you know, it's like, it's like she, it's like, it's like seven, Several takes on her ballot, her huge hit ballad, someone like you, but nothing of like rolling in the deep. But you know what else came out in 2015 is the Hamilton soundtrack. How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten spotting the Caribbean by Providence impoverished and squalor.

Grow up to be a hero and a scholar. Founding father without a father got a lot farther by working a lot harder by being a lot smarter by being a self-starter by 14th They placed him in charge of a trading charter We just played this back in August on our episode about the perfect song for road trips But 2015 was the year and Such a weird mix of things that were happening with this musical and all these different worlds coming together You know like new fans coming to hip-hop new fans coming to hip-hop new fans even to like history.

New fans to just musicals in general. Our pal, Gene Demby, who works on the Code Switch blog here at NPR, was live tweeting his discovery of this cast recording on our site. And his whole thing was like, do I love musicals? Like, have I loved musicals all along? Alexander Hamilton. My name is Alexander Hamilton. And there's a million things I haven't done.

Just you wait. Just you wait. So much more we could play. 2015 was a big year for returns. Missy Elliott, who hasn't put an album out in 20 years now. In 2015, she dropped the single WTF, where they're from. You know, at that point, it had been like six or seven years since she'd put out anything at all. So it was really huge having her back.

Slater Kenny returned after a 10-year break with the album No. cities to love. There was a Joanna Newsom record, her first new one in like five years, an album called Divers. Great year. But we'll go out on this from Hamilton. And until next time, Stephen, when we talk about 2016, thanks so much. Thank you, Robin. And for NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered.