I heart music. Some of it anyway. I also heart top ten lists. It started when I was a kid listening to Casey Kasem and his top 40 radio show. I made up my own lists even back then. More recently, I had a music blog for a while, but maintaining two blogs wasn’t for me. Here at year’s end, I’ve a craving for doing a list of favorites and so I’m posting it here. I think maybe by now anyone who frequents my blog knows I’m all over the board with my posts, so this shouldn’t be such a big surprise for them.
The tracks I play on my computer are tallied on Last.fm. I listen to music played on other devices as well, the counts of which are not tallied. The year-end results listed on my Last.fm account might not be completely accurate, but they are representative. So I’ll use them to scientifically present my most played musical artists, albums, and tracks for 2015.
Those familiar with my music tastes know that for contemporary music, I’ve come to prefer female vocalists. That’s not the case when I listen to oldies, and I definitely listen to the oldies on occasion. The music I played in 2015 was contemporary for the most part, so you can expect the top artists listed below to be female.
I’m embedding some videos below. They aren’t necessarily of my favorite tracks by the artists, but they are official videos released by the artists or their labels. They also aren’t all from 2015, which to me is okay because during 2015 I didn’t only listen to music released in 2015.
Okay, here goes….
Top Artists
#5: The Ting Tings
Surely you know of the duo who performed That’s Not My Name. I still play that song from time to time. But I’ve been playing their most recent albums on a fairly regular basis over the past year. The Ting Tings album I played the most in 2015 was their most recent album, Super Critical, and my most played Ting Tings track was Green Poison. This duo features both male and female vocalists.
#4: Meg Myers
I can’t think of anyone more intense with her music than Meg Myers. In her videos, especially her more recent ones, she looks like someone I just wouldn’t want to mess with. But I love her voice and the songs she uses it for. She’d released a couple of EPs some time back, and I’d been listening to her Make a Shadow EP quite a lot in the first half of 2015. Then in September of 2015 she released her first full studio album, Sorry. I’ve been playing that album like crazy since then. Some of the tracks from Make a Shadow are included on the full studio album, but my favorite track, Go, wasn’t included. So in 2015, I ended up playing the EP more than the full studio album, partly because the full album didn’t come out until September, and partly because when I did play the full album, I also played the tracks from the EP that weren’t on the full album.
If you like the Meg Myers videos I’m embedding here, I suggest going to YouTube and searching for her other videos. There are some other pretty wild ones.
#3: The Pretty Reckless
Yeah, I know, The Pretty Reckless didn’t release a new album in 2015. That doesn’t stop me from listening to the albums they released in prior years. I listen to both their full studio albums a lot and will no doubt continue to do so for some years to come. What can I say? I like Taylor Momsen and the guys.
My most-listened-to tracks by The Pretty Reckless in 2015 included some from their first album and some from their second: Make Me Wanna Die, Miss Nothing, My Medicine, Follow Me Down, Going to Hell, Sweet Things. Other tracks from the album Going to Hell weren’t far behind, because usually when I listen to any track from that album, I’m listening to the whole album.
#2: Marina & the Diamonds
If I had to come up with one word to describe Marina & the Diamonds, it would have to be “variety.” I could almost have chosen “eccentric,” but not all of her songs are that eccentric. But she does provide a wide variety of song styles across her three full studio albums.
Her most recent album, Froot, is a 2015 release that was available for pre-order back in 2014. Marina released some of the tracks from the album in a one-track-per-month promotion leading up to the release of the full album. I thought this was a pretty cool approach to take, but Amazon messed it up for me. When each monthly track was released and I went to download it from Amazon, they wanted to charge me for the new track, though I’d already done the pre-order, for which they weren’t charging me until the full album was released. So they ended up trying to charge me for the full album and the individual tracks, both. I never did get it straightened out to my satisfaction, and I will never pre-order another MP3 album from Amazon again.
But the distasteful experience with Amazon didn’t put me off of Marina’s music. No way. This girl has class when she wants it, spunk when she wants it, and soul all the time.
In 2015, I listened to her most recent album, Froot, more than her other two albums, but tracks from all her albums play a prominent role in my playlists on a regular basis. The Marina tracks I listened to the most in 2015 were Immortal, Froot, and Happy, but that’s partly because those tracks were released earlier than the other tracks on the album. Other tracks I listen to a lot now include Better Than That and Savages.
#1: Lana Del Rey
Miss Lana Del Rey has been going strong ever since she erupted on the music scene with the album Born To Die just four years ago. I’ve got all her albums and some of her music that’s not from her albums, but from movie soundtracks. In 2015, I played her Ultraviolence album a good deal in the first half of the year, and then both it and Honeymoon once the latter was released in September 2015. It took a while for some of the songs on Honeymoon to grow on me, and I found myself still listening to Ultraviolence a lot even after I purchased Honeymoon. My most played Lana Del Rey track in 2015 was West Coast, a track from Ultraviolence.
There are a few gems on Honeymoon, of which Freak is the most notable for me. But I like her other albums better, enough so that I played them more in 2015 than I did Honeymoon.
Top Albums
#5: Sucker – Charlie XCX
Yeah, I know I’m not in the target audience for this young lady. I’m not in the target audience for most of the artists I listen to these days. But I listen to whatever I want to listen to.
My most-played track from Sucker was Body of My Own. There’s not an official video for it, that I could find.
#4: Going to Hell – The Pretty Reckless
#3: Make a Shadow EP – Meg Myers
#2: Ultraviolence – Lana Del Rey
#1: Froot – Marina & the Diamonds
Top Tracks
My top 5 most played tracks in 2015 were the five tracks from the Make a Shadow EP by Meg Myers.
And that’s it! If you’d like to share some of your favorite music you listened to in 2015, regardless of when it was released, I’d be pleased for you to.
Thanks for stopping by!