Journal staff members share their faves of 2015
From Grimes to Sufjan Stevens: Our musical favourites of 2015
Girls, gritty R&B/hip-hop artists, and goofy Internet memes lit up the world of music in 2015.
Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj and Madonna raked in millions with their world tours. Adele’s latest album, 25, moved 3.38 million copies in its first week in the U.S. — setting a new sales record in the process — while Canada’s Grimes released an electro-pop masterpiece, Art Angels.
The Weeknd and Drake led Canada’s charge, backed by apologetic pop star Justin Bieber and newcomers Alessia Cara and Shawn Mendes. (At one point, these five artists held seven of the top 10 spots on Billboard’s U.S. singles chart.)
Drake’s video for Hotline Bling also produced one of the best memes — with everyone from NDP Leader Tom Mulcair to Saturday Night Live spoofing the rapper/ singer’s silly dance moves.
Here are some of this year’s musical highlights, as painstakingly selected by our Journal writers:
SANDRA SPEROUNES
TOP 10 ALBUMS
Grimes, Art Angels Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp A Butterfly Miguel, Wildheart Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell Jamie xx, In Colour Jean Leloup, A Paradis City Fire Next Time, Cold Hands Empress Of, Me Bjork, Vulnicara
TOP 5 SONGS
Grimes, Kill V. Maim Counterfeit Jeans, Violence The Weeknd, Shameless Ibeyi, Oya Purity Ring, Flood on the Floor
Favourite concert: Foo Fighters at Rexall Place. Dave Grohl didn’t let a broken foot stop him from pouring his heart and soul into a two-and-a-half hour set — and more than 13,000 fans reciprocated. Second place: Purity Ring’s homecoming show filled Churchill Square with chilly synth-pop and dazzling lights. Favourite festival performance: Father John Misty at Interstellar Rodeo. The folk-rock crooner either had fans eating out of his hands or poo-pooing his sarcasm. He made cracks about the crowd, the name of the festival, and his own lack of musical imagination. Priceless. Favourite online moment: Not surprisingly, Father John Misty is also a superb Internet troll. While everyone was crushing on Ryan Adams’ song-for-song cover of Taylor Swift’s album, 1989, our Father decided to make his own statement. Mr. Misty released two renditions of her tunes — Welcome to New York and Blank Space — in the style of Velvet Underground.
FISH GRIWKOWSKY
TOP 10 ALBUMS
Concealer, Fêted: Fetid Faith Healer, Cosmic Troubles Wand, 1000 Days True Detective, Music from the HBO Series La Luz, Weird Shrine Buffy Sainte-Marie, Power in the Blood Father John Misty, I Love You, Honeybear The Madcaps, The Madcaps Willie Thrasher, Spirit Child (reissue) Nine Inch Nails, Halo I-V Record Store Day box set
TOP 5 SONGS
Rihanna, Bitch Better Have My Money The Wet Secrets, I Can Swing a Hammer Concealer, Your Master’s Wishes Peaches, Rub Blue Rodeo, Stealin’ All My Dreams
Favourite concert: Kraftwerk 3-D Concert Tour at Jubilee Auditorium. By a factor of at least several, this show was better than anything in 2015.
While the music went from soothing to dizzying to hypnotic to completely insane, leave it to the Germans to get the stereoscopic projections so technically perfect, truly jaw-dropping at times. But best of all, the band confronted its ultimate theme: Do we need humans when machines can do the job just as well? Nope!
Favourite festival performance: That would pretty easily go to Tanya Tagaq at Interstellar Rodeo, though St. Vincent and Father John Misty were also mind-blowing at the same event. But Tagaq, first throat-singing with impossible intimacy with Jenna Broomfield, next folding herself right onto the floor like a demon crab, was something a whole bunch of us will never forget.
Favourite online moment: OK, if we can’t count the John Williams musical cues in the new Star wars trailer, H. Jon Benjamin’s fourminute video explaining how he set out to make his first piano jazz album — even though he’d played the piano before — is excruciating and hilarious. The session musicians he hired to back up his flipper slapping and spastic, “improvised” tinkling can barely hold back their utter disdain.
JULIA LECONTE
TOP 10 ALBUMS
D’Angelo and the Vanguard, Black Messiah Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp A Butterfly Drake, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late Leon Bridges, Coming Home Ibeyi, Ibeyi Braids, Deep in the Iris Rae Sremmurd, Sremmlife Future, Dirty Sprite 2 Father John Misty, I Love You, Honeybear Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell
TOP 5 SONGS
Kendrick Lamar, King Kunta Drake, Know Yourself Rihanna and Kanye, FourFiveSeconds Future, F--- Up Some Commas Justin Bieber, Love Yourself
Favourite concert: Nicki Minaj, Rexall Place. If you’re going to go to an arena show, you might as well know all the words and shamelessly sing your heart out. That’s the fun of it. Nicki has never shied away from radio hits and mainstream success, and her August show was a satisfying showcase of singles from her current record, The Pinkprint, peppered with singalong favourites from her two previous studio albums and choice feminist banter. (“It’s not OK to depend on your man for your livelihood, ever.”) Plus, she had the best lineup of relevant hip-hop and R&B openers I’ve seen: Tinashe, Dej Loaf and Rae Sremmurd … basically my summer 2015 playlist. Favourite festival performance: St. Vincent, Interstellar Rodeo. On the guitar, St. Vincent, a.k.a. Annie Clark, is a technician, a wizard, an alt-rock superhero. She has an icy, robotic persona onstage that’s nevertheless totally captivating. The songs from her 2014 eponymous album (her fifth) are as fresh and intoxicating as ever. Favourite online moment: Drake and Meek’s beef. It all started back in July, when Philadelphia native Meek Mill was so salty about Drake not tweeting his album that, over Twitter, he accused his much-more-famous Canadian peer of not writing his own raps.
Drake countered with a dis track, Charged Up, and when Meek took too long to respond, Drake released yet another track, Back 2 Back — a cool play on the Blue Jays’ early ’90s World Series Championships, and one of the most memorable songs of the summer (and a Grammy nominee for Best Rap Performance). Meek finally dropped his dis track, Wanna Know, in response, and it was largely mocked on the Internet. Go Canada.
ROGER LEVESQUE
TOP 10 ALBUMS
Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters, Father’s Day Beppe Gambetta & Tony McManus, Round Trip John Wort Hannam, Love Lives On Vijay Iyer Trio, Break Stuff Angelique Kidjo, Sings Charles Lloyd, Wild Man Dance The Necks, Vertigo Jayme Stone’s Lomax Project Two Blue, Only Two Kamasi Washington, The Epic
TOP 3 SONGS
Elvin Bishop, Old School Bjork, Black Lake
Tanya Tagaq, Fight
Favourite concert: Joe Louis Walker at Big Al’s House Of Blues. One of the greatest contemporary bluesmen and his crack band made it happen.
Favourite festival performance: The Bad Plus Joshua Redman, Jazz Festival at Winspear Centre. The musicians and the audience were both stoked, and opening act Kneebody set a nice energy level. Then The Bad Plus trio and Redman, who had both performed here separately, showed how they could bring something new out of each other that we hadn’t seen before.
Favourite online moment: David Bowie, Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime). Bowie finally takes my advice and goes jazzy.
TOM MURRAY
TOP 10 ALBUMS (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)
Willie Thrasher, Spirit Child (reissue) AM & Shawn Lee, Outlines Tuxedo, Tuxedo Kacy & Clayton, Strange Country Curtis Harding, Soul Power Faith Healer, Cosmic Troubles Leon Bridges, Coming Home The Hearts, Equal Love Rita Hosking, Frankie and the No-Go Road Black Mastiff, Music Machine
TOP 5 SONGS
The Provincial Archive, Bad Connection Diamond Mind, This Street Goes On Forever Robert Burkowsky, Illicit Dreams Sleater-Kinney, Price Tag Keith Richards, Trouble
Favourite concert: Neil Diamond at Rexall Place. Forever associated with a historic NDP win that very evening, with nearby older, welloff concertgoers lamenting the fall of the PCs while Diamond pumped out hit after sentimental hit.
Favourite festival performance: Charles Bradley at Interstellar Rodeo. It took Bradley until he was into his 60s before he had any kind of success, so he seems incapable of not giving his all any time he hits the stage.
Favourite online moment: Headline from the Hard Times online satire website: Henry Rollins Driving App Tells You How Hard It Would Have Been to Get There in the ’80s.