Back to 2015 (Re-Ranking the Best of Lists)

Melody Bot · Aug 12, 2020

This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply.

2015 was the final full year of AbsolutePunk. Looking back at the staff list from this year, I’m filled with many conflicting feelings. On the one hand, there’s a whole lot of outstanding music from this year that I hold fondly in my memory. That Sufjan Stevens album, Kendrick Lamar, Foxing, Noah Gundersen, Carly Rae Jepsen, Fall Out Boy, and many others continue to get regular spin in my rotation. But at the same time, 2015 was the year I knew, beyond any doubt, that I needed to change something in my life.

Beyond the abject chaos of working for a large corporation spending money in the weirdest ways and having shakeups in management seemingly every week, this was a year where the music scene itself, and AbsolutePunk in particular, became a nightmare I dreaded being a part of. This is the year where the tour manager for The Wonder Years lies to me to cover up sexual assault from some dude in some crappy band on Pure Noise Records. This is the year where Front Porch Step is allowed to play Warped Tour after allegations of misconduct. The year where I’m getting in public and private spats with bands that are doing gross shit. I’m getting messages from record labels that don’t want me to write about any of this and want to cover for it as “boys will be boys.” And there was even that whole thing with Kevin Lyman himself wanting me to come out to some Warped Tour date, and when I suggested multiple women he should be talking to instead, he just said “no.”1

It was a year where I felt stress in virtually every aspect of my working life. It wasn’t fun. I didn’t want to write about music. I was disgusted by the music scene. Disappointed in bands, labels, and people I looked up to, and for the first time in my life, I started throwing out feelers about what other jobs might be out there. If I wanted to leave all of this behind, what could I do? It was not a fun or happy place to be. Each morning, coming into the office filled me with this overlaying dread of what disaster I was about to have to deal with online that day. And this is all pre-2016, Trump, the entire world throwing itself upside down, leading to whatever-the-fuck you want to call 2020. I guess we can call 2015 an anxiety-appetizer. A tiny taste of what the main course can look like.

But, hey, at least I’m excited about writing again.

And, hey, at least the music from 2015 was really good.

This was a year where the music listened to and promoted most by staff ended up running from the indie flavorings of Sufjan Stevens or Noah Gundersen to the hip-hop world of Kendrick Lamar to the pure pop-perfection of Carly Rae Jepsen. These artists are not the stereotypical “AbsolutePunk” group of bands. Sure, there were still your Wonder Years and Death Cabs and Fall Out Boys, but it seemed like newer releases from The World is a Beautiful Place…, Foxing, and other similar artists, were much more exciting to talk about. I was infatuated with the new album from Julien Baker, and these one-off songs The Japanese House was releasing, and starting to explore other genres of music with more gusto. This was also the year where I tried to pull back on the volume of music I was listening to. Instead of feeling like I needed to digest 10-20 albums at a time, I wanted to return to what it felt like when I was younger, and I only had a handful of CDs, and I could really get into an album. I started listening to two or three albums on repeat each week instead of churning through everything I wanted to hear. I wanted to live in that brilliant Kendrick Lamar album. I wanted to feel every placed note in EMOTION. And that simple change has been one of the better choices I’ve made in my musical listening habits in a while. I sometimes feel like I’m missing out by not listening to as much new music these days, but I know that the albums I am listening to I get to experience fully. And I feel more connected to them as a result.

Looking at my list now, I see a lot of stuff I’m still listening to.2 I’m not sure how much is going to change on the re-ranking, so, let’s find out. Same arbitrary rules as the past ten weeks, I think you know the drill by now.

Best of 2015 (Re-Ranking)

Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly
Carly Rae Jepsen – Emotion
Foxing – Dealer
Noah Gundersen – Carry The Ghost
Butch Walker – Afraid of Ghosts
Julien Baker – Sprained Ankle
Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell
The Japanese House – Pools to Bathe In
Anti-Flag – American Spring
Fall Out Boy – American Beauty / American Psycho
The Neighbourhood – Wiped Out!
The World Is … – Harmlessness
Tame Impala – Currents
Death Cab for Cutie – Kintsugi
Father John Misty – I Love You, Honeybear
Deafheaven – New Bermuda
Kacey Musgraves – Pageant Material
Marianas Trench – Astoria
All Time Low – Future Hearts
Doomtree – All Hands
mewithoutYou – Pale Horses
CHVRCHES – Every Open Eye
Adele – 25
Fidlar – Too
Josh Ritter – Sermon on the Rocks
Ryn Weaver – The Fool
Penguin Prison – Lost in New York
Mew – +/-
Frank Turner – Positive Songs for Negative People
Leon Bridges – Coming Home

The new list has Kendrick Lamar in the top spot. It’s an album I’ve come back to frequently and one of such brilliance that it sits rightfully high on our best albums of the entire decade list. Carly Rae Jepsen gets the slight nod over Noah Gundersen simply because it’s the most played album in my whole collection over the past five years. Sorting by “plays” in Apple Music and it’s number one. By a not-insignificant margin. It makes sense; I consider it one of the best pop albums ever recorded. Noah falls slightly to number three, but with the two albums above, that’s not disparaging. Both Anti-Flag and Fall Out Boy see climbs on this list. Both albums getting a lot of love over the past few years. Anti-Flag has been on an absolute tear of a streak that starts with this album. And while no Thriller or Pet Sounds, I’ll continue to argue that Fall Out Boy’s American Beauty/American Psycho holds up quite well in their catalog. It’s not as refined and tight as Save Rock and Roll, but it has some fantastic songs that push at the borders of what the band is known for. Foxing, Sufjan Stevens, Butch Walker, and Julien Baker all help round out this top ten, and damn, it’s an exceptionally emotionally heavy top ten. Those are some weighty albums. Ones that you feel in your chest when they stop playing.

The rest of the list plays out more or less similarly. Marianas Trench gets bumped from the honorable mentions into the top thirty. (Great theatrical pop-punk release that holds up well five years later.) And All Time Low were nowhere to be found on my original list, and yet Future Hearts has stayed in regular rotation over the years.

I think what this project and these past weeks re-compiling these lists has taught me, is that I should be more cognizant each year of what are the albums that I think I’ll be replaying the most in the future. In the moment, I tended to overvalue records that had high, say, artistic value, albums that I knew were great but maybe a little more challenging to put on randomly on a Thursday at 2pm. The records I’ve ended up ranking higher on these re-rankings have tended to be the ones I find joy in throwing on almost any time and have therefore had more plays in the subsequent years. I pretty consistently undervalued fun, enjoyable, pop/pop-punk albums that I probably felt a tad self-conscious ranking higher during their respective years. In time, that part of my taste won out because those were things I wanted to listen to, again and again. That’s something I’ll have to keep in mind when I’m putting together best-of lists in the future.

I also think this project benefited from using the Bias Sorter tool. It let me throw all the albums into the program and make the hard/easy choices one at a time. I almost always would end up tweaking a few things at the very end, but it was a great way to get a simple glance at the structure of the list, and it’ll be something I use while making these same kinds of listings in the future.3

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed walking from 2005 to 2015 with everyone over the past ten weeks. Some years were more pleasant to explore than others, but looking back at the music scene and the history of AbsolutePunk and its transition into Chorus has been a whole lot of fun. My plan going forward is to now move back even further into my past and walk the years from when I discovered I loved music and how my musical taste began up to 2005. That way, there will be an entire collection detailing my life’s musical soundtrack as well as the history of my time writing online.4

It’s hard to put a bow on 2015 and AbsolutePunk in a way that feels appropriate. As I wrote about when I started Chorus, AbsolutePunk was a massive part of my life. It was the website that I started as a teenager on a whim, and it gave me everything I’ve so far known. It’s where I grew up. Where I failed miserably in front of millions. Where I made lifetime friends with people I still talk to on a regular basis.5 And as I’ve been resurrecting various AbsolutePunk artifacts over the past couple of weeks, I think I’ve come more to terms with letting those years still mean a lot to me while also realizing putting all of that to bed was the only thing that allowed me to once again find joy in writing about music. Holding those two thoughts in my head at the same time is often difficult because I have a lot of pent up resentment about those last few years on the website. Things behind the scenes, all of the stuff within the music industry itself, and the fallout from it, and it’s been hard to get far enough removed from all of that to feel, or have space for, anything else. Honestly, I’m still not quite there. However, what I do know is that I’m actively excited to walk into the office each morning knowing I get to work on something that brings me joy. I like writing again. From regular news posts about bands I find interesting, to the weekly articles and the weekly newsletter; I enjoy what I do each day in a way I didn’t expect to find again back in 2015.

I think that’s a win, and I do thank everyone who helps make that possible.

Thank you for following along over the past weeks as I explored our music scene’s past and found a way to discover acceptance of what AbsolutePunk meant to me, devoid of just the frustrations of the final years. I appreciate that.

Please consider becoming a member so we can keep bringing you articles like this one.

And, for the record, as all the stories that have come out since detail: we were absolutely right in describing the toxic environment of that tour.↩
I’m also drawn to the movie section and remembering seeing Mad Max: Fury Road for the first time. That may have aged the best out of everything here. Now I want to go watch that again.↩
I just wish I could upload a text file of the list instead of having to put them all in one by one.↩
After that I have some other one-off featured article ideas I’ll be exploring each Wednesday.↩
Hi Drew and Jared.↩

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Christian Romero · Aug 12, 2020

Emotion by Carly Rae is the album that got me to finally get over my "I can only like punk" phase and start loving pop music.

trevorshmevor · Aug 12, 2020

Melody Bot said:

In the moment, I tended to overvalue records that had high, say, artistic value, albums that I knew were great but maybe a little more challenging to put on randomly on a Thursday at 2pm. The records I’ve ended up ranking higher on these re-rankings have tended to be the ones I find joy in throwing on almost any time and have therefore had more plays in the subsequent years.

This is a great observation and something I’ve also come to terms with in recent years. I tend to place a lot of albums higher on my list that I don’t think would be considered as “objectively good” as others simply because I listened to them more and formed more of a relationship/memories with them

trevorshmevor · Aug 12, 2020

2015 was mostly forgettable for me. Not a great year, not a bad year. Probably the most on “autopilot” I felt in my 20s. Solid year in music, though. But man, what an ugly time all that Pure Noise stuff was. Even crazier to think that we were all openly dealing with and trying to sort through these issues on AP.net two years before #metoo even came about. Buncha indie label pop punk bands didn’t even cover the top of the iceberg and yet it still felt like this immeasurable reckoning.

Anyway here’s my list from that year without modifications. All things considered, I’d say it’s still relatively accurate. I’d cut a problematic artist here or there, move Carly and Vince up some, move Come Wind and Valise down some. Nothing too crazy.

1. Author - Of Brighter Days
2. Foxing - Dealer
3. Turnover - Peripheral Vision
4. Valise - Young Bloomer
5. Better Off - Milk
6. The Internet - Ego Death
7. Oh Wonder - Oh Wonder
8. The Maine - American Candy
9. Earl Sweatshirt - I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside
10. Valley Maker - When I Was A Child
11. Carly Rae Jepsen - Emotion
12. Vince Staples - Summertime ‘06
13. Come Wind - Move In Place
14. Good Old War - Broken Into Better Shape
15. Citizen - Everybody Is Going To Heaven
16. Kehlani - You Should Be Here
17. On An On - And The Wave Has Two Sides
18. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell
19. Foals - What Went Down
20. Stev - Beyond Stolen Notes
21. Noah Gundersen - Carry The Ghost
22. Chon - Grow
23. Bobby Caldwell - Cool Uncle
24. Hop Along - Painted Shut
25. Donnie Trumpet and The Social Experiment - Surf
26. Tame Impala - Currents
27. Deerhunter - Fading Frontier
28. Eastghost - Omniscient, They
29. The Story So Far - The Story So Far
30. Petal - Shame

some notes:

- Nearer My God is great, but Dealer is still very easily my favorite Foxing release. Subtly catchy, consistent in mood, and over time has proven to be less and less exhausting to listen to front to back

- I remember thinking Good Old War was literally about to explode. I still think had they put that record out just like two or so years earlier, closer to the breakout success of bands like Mumford and Of Monsters And Men, they would’ve made a splash.

- I still adore that Author record and insist that it and their sophomore one are wildly underappreciated

- I know I’m not alone here in that this was the year The Maine really came back for me

- That Vince record remains one of my most prized vinyl possessions.

- This was the year a lot of the Will Yip related bands started to go outside their boxes a bit. Tried to be optimistic about that Citizen record back then, but 5 years later I accept that it’s kind of just a slog to get through.

- I hate that I can’t think of that Better Off record without the direct association of Luke’s shitty behavior. Still one of the most mind boggling scene-related cancellations. The fact that it would’ve been so easy to just boot the touring member and move on as opposed to self-dissolving his own whole ass career just to side with an abuser is a whole other level of cringe.

Craig Manning · Aug 12, 2020

2015 was probably my favorite music year of the 2010s, and one of my favorite music years ever. On the whole, I remember this year very fondly. My wife and I bought our first house, I started running again after years away from doing really anything to stay in shape, and I fell in love with country music. It was kind of like the "second musical awakening" year for me (2004 was the first), just in terms of how many artists I didn't know about at all that I discovered. Chris Stapleton, Logan Brill, John Moreland, Mandolin Orange, Turnpike Troubadours, A Thousand Horses, Kelsea Ballerini...all artists that just weren't really on my radar until I delved deeper into country (a genre I'd always liked but only really skimmed the surface of).

The result is my favorite year-end list I've ever made, and one that hasn't changed too dramatically on the re-rank. Some slight order shifts in the top five, but all those albums hold up super well for me. I think everything in the top 6 ultimately made my top 25 at the end of the decade, and I believe 27 or 28 of these made my overall top 200.

That Butch Walker album meant so, so much to me at the time. It's about him coming to terms with the loss of his father, and I related it deeply to the lingering grief I was feeling over my grandpa's passing the fall before. It is not an easy album for me to listen to now, just because of what it dredges up, and I probably only play it 1-2 times a year at this point (always give it a spin on the anniversary of my grandpa's death), but it never fails to wallop me. Particularly "Father's Day," which is maybe the only song that can ALWAYS make me cry. I wish I didn't have to reconcile how much that album means to me with the fact that Ryan Adams had a huge, huge hand in it.

Beyond that, this was the year where Noah Gundersen, Jason Isbell, Dawes, and Kacey Musgraves all ascended to "favorite artists" status for me. I would have bought a lot of stock in all of them back then, and I think I would have come out of that investment pretty well! Four careers that have been spectacularly fun to watch unfold in the years since.

The most unforgettable moment of this year, musically, might have been Chris Stapleton becoming a superstar right before my eyes on the CMAs. I'd reviewed Traveller that spring when it came out, but he was pretty much an unknown at that point and the album itself was a sleeper. Every country blog ranked it as the best album of the year at mid-year, but the sales and mainstream performance of it weren't awesome. Then he set the stage on fire with Justin Timberlake, got a 6,000 percent sales boost, re-entered the Billboard 200 at number one, and basically became an arena act overnight. Watching that entire cycle play out, all the way to a Grammy Album of the Year nod, was one of the most surreal things I've ever experienced as a music fan. It still makes me really happy.

Big year for me on AbsolutePunk, too. I interview Butch, Isbell, Gundersen, and Matt Nathanson, wrote a ton of reviews, and took the lead compiling and editing the year-end list. I wish we could recover that list in full, because I recall some of the blurbs being pretty great.

Anyway, my re-rank:

Butch Walker – Afraid of Ghosts

Noah Gundersen – Carry the Ghost

Jason Isbell – Something More Than Free

Chris Stapleton – Traveller

Dawes – All Your Favorite Bands

Logan Brill – Shuteye

John Moreland – High on Tulsa Heat

Mandolin Orange – Such Jubilee

Kacey Musgraves – Pageant Material

Ashley Monroe – The Blade

Brandon Flowers – The Desired Effect

Turnpike Troubadours – The Turnpike Troubadours

A Thousand Horses – Southernality

Matt Nathanson – Show Me Your Fangs

Maddie & Tae – Start Here

Kelsea Ballerini – The First Time

Josh Ritter – Sermon on the Rocks

Will Hoge – Small Town Dreams

Carly Rae Jepsen – Emotion

Eric Church – Mr. Misunderstood

Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell

Frank Turner – Positive Songs for Negative People

Josh Abbott Band – Front Row Seat

The Damnwells – The Damnwells

David Ramirez – Fables

William Clark Green – Ringling Road

Death Cab for Cutie – Kintsugi

Striking Matches – Nothing But The Silence

Old Dominion – Meat and Candy

The Maine – American Candy

Craig Manning · Aug 12, 2020

I also remember really checking out of just about everything related to the "scene" this year, in part because of the shitstorm that was going on with so many of those bands, in part because a ton of albums got super hyped that ended up doing nothing for me (Foxing, The World Is, Turnover, Sorority Noise, Better Off, Pentimento, etc.)

stvvvn · Aug 12, 2020

Sprained Ankle being 5 years old is just insane to me

soggytime · Aug 12, 2020

2015 is still so fresh in my mind because I don't think my musical taste has changed that drastically in the last 5 years, and yet it feels so far away. Obviously, at the time all I could think about was Kendrick Lamar. I remember the album was supposed to release on a friday, but for whatever reason got pushed up earlier in the week as a surprise release. I was so completely blown away on that first listen - I could not stop listening to it the entire way home from work that day. It's an album that has even grown in stature since it's initial release, so it was pretty cool to be there and be on board with it right at the start.

2015 (re-ranked with 2020 eyes):

1. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
2. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell
3. Tame Impala - Currents
4. The Wonder Years - No Closer to Heaven
5. Young Thug - Barter 6
6. Jamie XX - In Colour
7. Travis Scott - Rodeo
8. Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit
9. Turnover - Peripheral Vision
10. Future - DS2
11. Julien Baker - Sprained Ankle
12. Deafheaven - New Bermuda
13. Drake - if you're reading this, it's too late
14. Motion City Soundtrack - Panic Stations
15. The Front Bottoms - Back on Top

Crisp X · Aug 12, 2020

2015, to put it simply, is one of my favorite years in music ever. It feels weird to say considering the amount of shit that happened and that was mentioned in the article.

Getting into country pop, deep house, with tropical pop being on the verge of being the new trend for the following years... It was a year of exploration in some way.

It's also the year I started going to shows on my own and I can't even recall the amount I've caught in my student city alone. Ken MODE playing a free show at a bar next to my former college was wild. An eerie point was seeing Aqme and Chelsea Wolfe shows inbetween the Paris terrorist attacks. There was a tense atmosphere in the air for a long while...

In a bittersweet way my favorite moment of the year, and an all time one, happened a few weeks later, and it's seeing The Force Awakens in cinema for the first time. I can recall the moments before the opening crawl loudly showed up like it was yesterday. Regardless of where my feelings ended up about this trilogy, I'll always cherish this memory. It was such a blast getting out of it and having fun discussing and theorizing with my brother and our friends on the way back home.

I'm lucky I could recall all these albums as Last.fm had that huge revamp which led me to abandon it for a few years.

Janet Jackson - Unbreakable
f(x) - 4 Walls
BoA - Kiss My Lips
No Devotion - Permanence
Young Guns - Ones And Zeros
Enter Shikari - The Mindsweep
Dance Gavin Dance - Instant Gratification
Carly Rae Jepsen - EMOTION
Rae Morris - Unguarded
The KOXX - New Normal
Little Boots - Working Girl
Rolo Tomassi - Grievances
Lianne La Havas - Blood
Hidden Hospitals - Surface Tension
Soilwork - The Ride Majestic
Florence + The Machine - How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
Passepied - Shaba Lover
Marina And The Diamonds - FROOT
Wonder Girls - Reboot
Kate Havnevik - &i
Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss
Kacey Musgraves - Pageant Material
Grimes - Art Angels
Sara Bareilles - What's Inside: Songs From Waitress
Ty Dolla $ign - Free TC
Lucy Rose - Work It Out
Fightstar - Behind The Devil's Back
The Wombats - Glitterbug
Ella Eyre - Feline
Turboweekend - Share My Thunder
Sevendust - Kill The Flaw
Sikth - Opacities
Bomba Estéreo - Amanecer
Mutiny On The Bounty - Digital Tropics
Don Broco - Automatic
Emery - You Were Never Alone
Intronaut - The Direction Of Last Things
Lapko - Freedom
Rosetta - Quintessential Ephemera
Mew - + -
CHVRCHES - Every Open Eye
Years & Years - Communion

FTank · Aug 12, 2020

Fucking phenomenal year for music. 2015 was the first year that I started keeping track of my album listening, and consequently the first year that I decided I needed to at least check out way more music. I think I might have gone a little overboard that year on my need to get to everything at least once, and I've since dialed that back a bit, but that change was really instrumental for me in finding a ton of music I wouldn't have discovered otherwise. In the relatively short period of time I've put a lot of energy into seeking out new music, this is by far my favorite year.

Turnover – Peripheral Vision

All Time Low – Future Hearts

Deafheaven – New Bermuda

Sufjan Stevens – Carrie & Lowell

Foxing – Dealer

Vince Staples – Summertime ‘06

Noah Gundersen – Carry the Ghost

Beach House – Depression Cherry

Future – DS2

mewithoutYou – Pale Horses

Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly

Kacey Musgraves – Pageant Material

Mew – +-

The Early November – Imbue

The World Is… – Harmlessness

Tame Impala – Currents

State Champs – Around the World and Back

Brandon Flowers – The Desired Effect

Nate Ruess – Grand Romantic

Carly Rae Jepsen – EMOTION

Modest Mouse – Strangers to Ourselves

Silverstein – I Am Alive In Everything I Touch

Marianas Trench – Astoria

CHVRCHES – Every Open Eye

Sleeping With Sirens – Madness

Julien Baker – Sprained Ankle

Passion Pit – Kindred

Coheed and Cambria – The Color Before the Sun

Good Old War – Broken Into Better Shape

Title Fight – Hyperview

phaynes12 · Aug 12, 2020

Honorable Mentions - Dawes - All Your Favorite Bands; Pianos Become the Teeth - Keep You; Ryley Walker - Primrose Green; Torche - Restarter
25. Hop Along - Painted Shut
24. Kurt Vile - B’lieve I’m Going Down
23. All Dogs - Kicking Every Day
22. The Arcs - Yours, Dreamily
21. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds - Chasing Yesterday
20. Churches - Every Open Eye
19. mewithoutYou - Pale Horses
18. The Sidekicks - Runners in the Nerved World
17. Carly Rae Jepsen - Emotion
16. Cult Leader - Lighless Walk
15. My Morning Jacket - The Waterfall
14. Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color
13. Baroness - Purple
12. Desaparecidos - Payola
11. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell
10. Future - DS2
9. Kowloon Walled City - Grievances
8. Vince Staples - Summertime 06
7. Wilco - Star Wars
6. Cloakroom - Further Out
5. Tame Impala - Currents
4. Jason Isbell - Something More Than Free
3. Deafheaven - New Bermuda
2. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
1. Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear

Tim · Aug 12, 2020

1. Carly Rae Jepsen - Emotion
2. mewithoutYou - Pale Horses
3. Julien Baker - Sprained Ankle
4. Dustin Kensrue - Carry the Fire
5. CHVRCHES - Every Open Eye

E•MO•TION was such a big album for me. I never got around to making my end of the decade lists, but if I had, it probably would've been one of the albums contending for the top?

That Dustin Kensrue solo album is easily my favorite thing he's done outside of Beggars. Have people largely forgotten about it? I still put over half those songs on my work playlists regularly.

Honorable mentions:
The Japanese House - Clean EP & Pools to Bath In EP
Kacey Musgraves - "Somebody to Love"

Patterns in Traffic · Aug 12, 2020

trevorshmevor said:

2015 was mostly forgettable for me. Not a great year, not a bad year. Probably the most on “autopilot” I felt in my 20s. Solid year in music, though. But man, what an ugly time all that Pure Noise stuff was. Even crazier to think that we were all openly dealing with and trying to sort through these issues on AP.net two years before #metoo even came about. Buncha indie label pop punk bands didn’t even cover the top of the iceberg and yet it still felt like this immeasurable reckoning.

Anyway here’s my list from that year without modifications. All things considered, if day its still relatively accurate. I’d cut a problematic artist here or there, move Carly and Vince up some, move Come Wind and Valise down some. Nothing too crazy.

1. Author - Of Brighter Days
2. Foxing - Dealer
3. Turnover - Peripheral Vision
4. Valise - Young Bloomer
5. Better Off - Milk
6. The Internet - Ego Death
7. Oh Wonder - Oh Wonder
8. The Maine - American Candy
9. Earl Sweatshirt - I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside
10. Valley Maker - When I Was A Child
11. Carly Rae Jepsen - Emotion
12. Vince Staples - Summertime ‘06
13. Come Wind - Move In Place
14. Good Old War - Broken Into Better Shape
15. Citizen - Everybody Is Going To Heaven
16. Kehlani - You Should Be Here
17. On An On - And The Wave Has Two Sides
18. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell
19. Foals - What Went Down
20. Stev - Beyond Stolen Notes
21. Noah Gundersen - Carry The Ghost
22. Chon - Grow
23. Bobby Caldwell - Cool Uncle
24. Hop Along - Painted Shut
25. Donnie Trumpet and The Social Experiment - Surf
26. Tame Impala - Currents
27. Deerhunter - Fading Frontier
28. Eastghost - Omniscient, They
29. The Story So Far - The Story So Far
30. Petal - Shame

some notes:

Loved that On An On record a bunch. Thanks for reminding me about it! Seems like that band just disappeared after that album.

disambigujason · Aug 12, 2020

Biggest for me here are mewithoutYou, early November, Emery, no devotion, ryn weaver, dance Gavin dance, foxing, turnover, death cab.

biggest disappointment was Silverstein. One of my favorite bands, and plenty of solid songs, but something about it gives it a bad taste in my mouth.

Anthony Brooks · Aug 12, 2020

This might be my favorite year of music ever. So many albums that changed how i listened to music (young thug, Julien baker, Carly Rae, grimes, foxing). Also the year i moved out of my parents house for good. I’ll post my original list and rerank tomorrow when I’m not as buzzed as i am now (woo staycation)

koryoreo · Aug 12, 2020

1. The Wonder Years- No Closer to Heaven
2. Knucklepuck- Copacetic
3. Seaway- Color Blind
4. Story So Far- Self Titled
5. As It Is- Never Happy, Ever After
6. Mayday Parade- Black Lines
7. Neck Deep- Life's Not Out to Get You
8. Four Year Strong- Self Titled
9. Silverstein- I Am Alive In Everything I Touch
10. Stick To Your Guns- Disobedient

Drew Beringer · Aug 12, 2020

2015 was a really good year for music. I spun Dealer the other day and I still think that record is criminally underrated.

This project was a very fun and nostalgic look back for me as well and definitely brought back all the memories I had being a part of AP.net. I've posted this feeling many times here but I'm truly thankful for it all.

ComedownMachine · Aug 13, 2020

Another important year for me. Got my first job. Started dating my girlfriend. And a ton of my favorites from the decade were from this year.

1. Father John Misty- I Love You, Honeybear
2. Kendrick Lamar- To Pimp a Butterfly
3. Grimes- Art Angels
4. Carly Rae Jepsen- Emotion
5. Jamie XX- In Colour
6. Tame Impala- Currents
7. Vince Staples- Summertime 06
8. Halsey- Badlands
9. Lana Del Rey- Honeymoon
10. Drake- IYRTITL
11. Chvrches- Every Open Eye
12. Sufjan Stevens- Carrie & Lowell
13. The Weeknd- Beauty Behind The Madness
14. Brandon Flowers- The Desired Effect
15. ASAP Rocky- A.L.L.A.
16. Marina & The Diamonds- Froot
17. FKA Twigs- M3LL155X
18. Beach House- Depression Cherry
19. Death Cab For Cutie- Kintsugi
20. Fall Out Boy- American Beauty/American Psycho

Anthony Brooks · Aug 13, 2020

Rerank:

1. Carly Rae Jepsen - EMOTION
2. Julien Baker - Sprained Ankle
3. Foxing - Dealer
4. Baroness - Purple
5. Grimes - Art Angels
6. Young Thug - Barter 6
7. Mew - +/-
8. mewithoutYou - Pale Horses
9. Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear
10. Future- 56 Nights
11. Mandolin Orange - Such Jubilee
12. The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die - Harmlessness
13. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
14. Kacey Musgraves - Pageant Material
15. SIlversun Pickups - Better Nature
16. Dustin Kensrue - Carry the Fire
17. Vince Staples - Summertime ‘06
18. Chvrches- Every Open Eye
19. Pusha T - King Push
20. Future - DS2
21. Title Fight - Hyperview
22. Kowloon Walled City - Grievances
23. Deafheaven - New Bermuda
24. Earl Sweatshirt - I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside
25. The Wonder Years - No Closer to Heaven

phaynes12 · Aug 13, 2020

this was actually pretty easily my least favorite year of these re-ranks

Craig Manning · Aug 13, 2020

And while no Thriller or Pet Sounds...

Bartek T. · Aug 13, 2020

"Dealer" was definitetly my AOTY in 2015, but I was also able to dig up my TOP 5 in order and then some others from the top of the list

Foxing - Dealer
The Early November - Imbue
mewithoutYou - Pale Horses
TWIABP - Harmlessness
Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell

The rest was City and Colour, The Dear Hunter, Come Wind, Author, Caspian and many more. What's funny is yet again I only found some crazily important albums thanks to the list on ap.net - meaning "Sprained Ankle" by Julien Baker and "I Love You, Honeybear" by Father John Misty.

That would definitely be stated as my favorites, not only for a fact I heard them around January 2016. Late to the party.

Pepetito · Aug 13, 2020

Turnpike Troubadours – The Turnpike Troubadours

All time low - future hearts

The maine - American candy

Josh abbott band - front row seat

Will hoge - small town dreams

Turnover - peripheral vision

Knucklepuck - copacetic

State champs - Around the world and back

Matt Nathanson – Show Me Your Fangs

Great year for music. I listen to all of these regularly still. I listen to the top 5 weekly. Turnpike is also my favorite country band so that album couldn't come soon enough and didn't disappoint when i finally got my hands on it.

grimis16 · Aug 13, 2020

Original list is WAY better.

Jason Tate · Aug 13, 2020

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