The Top 10 Albums Of 2015 (And 15 Runners Up, Because This Was A Crazy-Good Year For Music)

What a time to be alive.

You know it’s been a good year for music when legendary alt-heroes Wilco can release an album—for free—and it can’t even squeak into your Top 25. Goodwill got you nowhere in 2015. Meritocracy, refreshingly, ruled.

Throughout the year, as we struggled to select a daily soundtrack from the endless choices, it became survival of the fittest, conducted in our own personal thunderdomes. More good albums were tossed aside in 2015 than were likely even listened to. You felt it too, right?

After an underwhelming 2014, this year was… just incredible. Most everything was awesome, and not only that, seemingly torn from our dream journals. No matter your tastes, you were catered for.

Love Taylor Swift, but wish she’d stayed country? Have a Ryan Adams cover album! Miss your beloved mononymous divas Adele, Björk and Rihanna, or one-named weirdos Peaches, Grimes and Beck? They’re all back! Can’t choose a fave between Drake and Future? Don’t! What a time to be alive, indeed.

Runners Up (in alphabetical order): 1989 by Ryan Adams, Girls in Peacetime Want To Dance by Belle & Sebastian, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit by Courtney Barnett, If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late by Drake, The Scene Between by The Go Team, Art Angels by Grimes, Drink More Water 5 by iLoveMakonnen, E-MO-TION by Carly Rae Jepsen, Goon by Tobias Jesso Jr., Another One by Mac DeMarco, Beat the Champ by The Mountain Goats, The Waterfall by My Morning Jacket, Divers by Joanna Newsom, Dark Bird Is Home by The Tallest Man on Earth, Ivy Tripp by Waxahatchee.

10. Surf – Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment

Chicago’s Chance the Rapper is certainly more chipper than his contemporaries, like Kendrick Lamar (who you’ll hear from further down this list). However, he’s just as socially conscious and musically gifted. Also: generous. In May, Chance’s band Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment (named after its trumpeter, duh) dropped new album Surf entirely for free on iTunes. A bohemian buffet that takes inspiration from Motown, reggae and doo-wop alike, it’s infectious, melodious, stacked with cheery guests and utterly irrepressible. Did you even watch the video for “Sunday Candy”? See? It cannot be repressed.

9. Currents – Tame Impala

Australia’s Tame Impala traded in rock ‘n roll for dreamy grooves and space ballads on third LP Currents. Never mind that it won the ARIA for Best Rock Album. By the time Kevin Parker picked up the outfit’s fifth prize at last month’s awards ceremony, it became clear that the ARIAs would have invented more categories if it meant further opportunity to award Perth’s beloved psychedelics. Few would have complained.

8. Ego Death – The Internet

The above clip contains coarse language. We highly recommend parental guidance for anyone under the age of 15. The rabble-rousing rap collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA, for brevity’s sake, barely) may be a thing of the past, but its alumni – like Tyler, the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt - are still as productive as ever. Yet, it was Syd tha Kid and her soulful cohorts in The Internet who released the year’s best Odd Future album. The slinky Ego Death bettered 2013’s Feel Good (with help from guests Janelle Monáe and Vic Mensa), earning the band a Grammy nomination. Even if Frank Ocean – Odd Future’s biggest success story - had unveiled his newie sometime in the past twelve months, I’m not sure he would’ve have managed to snatch the OFWGTKA crown from The Internet. Watch the throne, Frank.

7. At. Long. Last. A$AP – A$AP Rocky

The above clip contains coarse language. We highly recommend parental guidance for anyone under the age of 15. Well, no one expected this after A$AP Rocky’s merely decent, monochromatic debut: total Technicolor. From the fuzzed-out guitar-pluckery of “L$D” to the Rod Stewart-fronted church organs of “Everyday”, At. Long. Last. A$AP was full of surprises; all of them good.

6. Christine and the Queens - Christine and the Queens

Héloïse Letissier’s groovy pop project Christine and the Queens actually released this album in France last year, under the title Humaine. Given that some of the lyrics have been re-recorded in English for the international release, let’s count this as a 2015 baby. And what better year to assign an album about gender identity and fluidity?

5. To Pimp a Butterfly – Kendrick Lamar

The above clip contains coarse language. We highly recommend parental guidance for anyone under the age of 15. In March, I called To Pimp A Butterfly “funny, moving, sensitive and violent.” One thing I couldn’t have known before waiting a further nine months? That it would also be lasting. A rageful State of the Union address from the reigning king of hip-hop, Kendrick’s second major-label album may not have been as easy a listen as good kid. m.A.A.d city, but I don’t know that an easy listen is what anyone was after in 2015. As the shooting of young black men continued and the #BlackLivesMatter movement remained just as pertinent, To Pimp A Butterfly – and especially centerpiece song “Alright” – became the soundtrack to a sustained American tragedy.

4. Compton: A Soundtrack by Dr. Dre – Dr. Dre

The above clip contains coarse language. We highly recommend parental guidance for anyone under the age of 15. In 2015, Dr. Dre finally apologised for his ugly, violent history towards women. It may have solely been a savvy PR move, to ensure his surprise hit of a movie, Straight Outta Compton – inspired by the formation of his iconic band N.W.A. – could continue making money at the box office, controversy-free. Or, perhaps it was the result of him recording the nostalgic, guilt-laden Compton, a companion album that saw a reflective Dre wax lyrical about the good - and often bad - old days. We’d waited 5744 days for his third solo studio album. It was worth the wait.

3. Carrie & Lowell – Sufjan Stevens

Sufjan Stevens once planned on penning an album for each of America’s 50 states. He got as far as two. After serenading Michigan and Chicago in beautiful, intricate detail, he went all apocalyptic on us, releasing the baroque, electronic end-of-days record The Age of Adz. Somehow, Sufjan’s pared-down return to his banjo-centric roots, Carrie and Lowell, is even more despairing. A painfully intimate reminiscence of life with his schizophrenic mother, and ultimately, her death, Stevens paints beautifully banal portraits of his childhood house of horrors. (So banal, you can even hear his air-conditioning unit in the background.) But, as always with Stevens, beauty is never far behind. Try not to tear up when “Should Have Known Better” changes key, with Sufjan accepting, “Nothing can be changed; the past is still the past.” Better things lie ahead: “My brother had a daughter; the beauty that she brings… “, he pauses, only able to offer the following reverential compliment: “illumination.”

2. I Love You, Honeybear – Father John Misty

The above clip contains coarse language. We highly recommend parental guidance for anyone under the age of 15. Father John Misty - aka Joshua Tillman – has fallen in love and wants to shout it from the rooftops. Except, in his typically sardonic style, he spends I Love You, Honeybear couching his loving declarations in caveats. Over the course of its 11 songs, we find out what happens when “the only son of the ladies’ man” is confronted with the prospect of settling down. A brilliantly funny concept album that often feels like the musical equivalent of TV show You’re the Worst (a rom-com about jerks, basically), I Love You, Honeybear also has some of the most stirring musical moments of 2015 (thanks to an assisting mariachi band and orchestra) as well as its most unlikely romantic gestures: “Maybe love is just an economy based on resource scarcity; but what I fail to see is what that's gotta do with you and me.”

1. Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz – Miley Cyrus

At the end of the day, no matter how much tabulation and science you put behind it, you just gotta give the #1 spot to the album you played – and loved – the most. At 92 minutes and 23 tracks, maybe Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz had an unfair edge over its competition. Actually, nope. Her Dead Petz earned its place atop the list fair and square. It’s audacious and sonically experimental, while still boasting an impossible number of radio-ready hooks. It’s entirely unvarnished and exhibitionist, yet personal and intimate. It’s shepherded by domineering talents like The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne and wunderkind producer Mike WiLL Made-It, and somehow the only pop record of 2015 that feels inextricably tied to the artist on the cover. Only Miley, with all her frustrating PR choices and occasionally interminable lyrics, could have made this thing; a gonzo tribute to some dead animals she once knew, and 2015’s best album.

Over to you? What was your #1 album of 2015?