Almost Mainstream: The 2015 Mixtape

Every December/January, I like to make a little mix of my favourite things in music from the past year. Sometimes it’s top songs, sometimes it’s top albums, sometimes it’s twelve tracks, sometimes it’s twenty. It really depends on what feels most relevant to my listening habits of the past year.

This year, it feels like the most honest thing to do is make a mixtape that’s roughly representative of my listening habits of the past year, which was largely listening to various mixes and individual tracks. I limited it to forty tracks because I find anything too long is just not worthwhile as a curated mix of the best of the best. If you desperately want more, I suggest my 2015 jams playlist on Spotify which sounds awesome on shuffle and includes basically every song I loved from the past 360-ish days.

As it is, these are the forty songs I’ve selected as the best representation of the past year. I followed the Said the Gramophone rules for year-end lists, which is: every artist only gets one song, and the songs are ones that I heard for the first time in 2015- a few came out at the tail end of 2014, but I didn’t catch them then.

By the way, my favourite albums of the year were: Carly Rae Jepsen‘s Emotion plus all its related singles, Grimes‘ Art Angels plus all her related singles/releases of the year, and Bleachers‘ Terrible Thrills Vol. 2. My other favourite artists were Drake (who released a good album, a good joint album, and good singles) and Justin Bieber (who released a strong slate of singles, but whose album still has too much filler).

My favourite live artist was Black Spruce Bog, who had a great year from the Canada Winter Games through to The First Waltz and who also released the very excellent Confluence. My favourite song, period, was “Can’t Feel My Face” by the Weeknd. My favourite soundtrack was the season one playlist for Aziz Ansari’s Master of None, which is great all the way through and introduced me to “Cool It Now” by New Edition, which I’d somehow never heard before.

If you are interested, here are my previous year-end lists:
2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010

And here’s this year’s mix:

Stream:
Mixcloud | Download | Spotify (not all tracks are available on Spotify)

Tracklisting:

Cree Dance Clearwater Revival – Mob Bounce

The Peoples’ Champ – A Tribe Called Red feat. Hellnback

Uptown Funk – Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars

WTF (Where They From) – Missy Elliott feat. Pharrell Williams

Adventure of A Lifetime – Coldplay

Electric Love (Oliver Remix) – BØRNS

Tete Jaune Road – Black Spruce Bog

Cheer Up London – Slaves

HOTFOOT – Doldrums

Pedestrian At Best – Courtney Barnett

FourFiveSeconds – Rihanna feat. Kanye West & Paul McCartney

Bassically – Tei Shi

Gold – Kiiara

I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times) – Jaime xx feat. Young Thug and Popcaan

Lean On – Major Lazer feat. MØ and DJ Snake

Want To Want Me – Jason Derulo

Unlock The Swag – Rae Sremmurd feat. Jace of Two-9

Like Whoa – Logic

Everyday – A$AP Rocky feat. Rod Stewart, Miguel, and Mark Ronson

Old Love/New Love – Twin Shadow feat. D’angelo Lacey

Run Away With Me – Carly Rae Jepsen

I Wanna Get Better – Bleachers feat. Tinashe

How I Want Ya – Hudson Thames feat. Hailee Steinfeld

Bad Blood – Nao

Can’t Feel My Face – The Weeknd

Burial – Yogi feat. Pusha T, Moody Good, and TrollPhace

Shutdown – Skepta

Energy – Drake

This Aint’ Toronto – Wasiu

Where Are Ü Now – Jack Ü feat. Justin Bieber

All My Friends – Snakehips feat. Tinashe and Chance the Rapper

Middle – DJ Snake feat. Bipolar Sunshine

King Kunta – Kendrick Lamar

Don’t Wanna Fight – Alabama Shakes

Moaning Lisa Smile – Wolf Alice

Firefly – Hollerado

Pretty Good Joke – Dan Mangan + Blacksmith

‘Cause I’m A Man – Tame Impala

The Feeling – Justin Bieber feat. Halsey

Realiti – Grimes