Final set! As always, after my last set of song reviews, I'll list my overall thoughts of the year, as well as my top 10 and bottom 10 songs.
#5: "Sugar" by Maroon 5
Well, say what you will about Maroon 5's shift to the pop side of pop-rock. It's definitely worked for them in terms of getting hits.
The song opens with a piano/guitar line that is meant to sound like an church setting, although it has a pretty solid bass line that you would not hear in most churches. Overall, that bass line is really what drives the song, and makes it somewhat enjoyable on a musical basis. Adam Levine's vocals are not as solid, unfortunately. He sounds decent on a lower register, but his chorus is almost entirely in falsetto, and let's just say that after 20 years of falsetto singing in songs, it's clear that his voice isn't really as strong as it was circa "She Will Be Loved".
This is a gentle song about sex. Not love, but sex. Basically, Adam Levine is looking for a friends with benefits deal, judging from lines like "I don't want to be needing your love/I just want to be deep in your love".
I should dislike this song a lot more than I do. The music doesn't have a lot going for it, Adam Levine's trademark falsetto is starting to weaken, and the lyrics don't fit the style of the song at all. For some reason though, I find this song a fair bit better than, say "One More Night" or "Daylight". I can't quite say why that is, other than maybe the fact that he's not actively playing up the "ladykiller" role, whereas in "One More Night" he was basically saying "Man, one-night stands are harder than you think!" By the way, check out the music video of this song. It is hilarious, but probably not in the way Adam Levine intended. Ego trip, anyone?
#4: "Trap Queen" by Fetty Wap
Third appearance by Fetty Wap.
What the hell kind of music line is that? It sounds like someone hitting the same notes over and over on a Casio keyboard. OK, that's not totally fair. The keyboard does shift up and down in pitch. The chorus sounds a bit better, being more standard club synth stuff, but still isn't anything special. As for Fetty Wap, he sounds a bit better than he did in his other songs, but he is still slurring too much. I know there some rappers who have that as a style, but with Fetty Wap, it makes it hard to understand him, and you just want to yell "Enunciate!"
This is a bragging rap song, shocker. Basically, Fetty Wap is bragging about his money, and about how he can walk into a club, see a girl he likes, and pick her up just like that. Of course, considering he blatantly calls her a stripper, something tells me he isn't the ladykiller he thinks he is.
I did not like this song. The music ranged from bland to obnoxious, Fetty Wap's delivery was still rocky at best, and the lyrics were bog-standard rapper stuff, but with the added success of making the lead rapper look like an idiot by bragging about how he takes his stripper girlfriend everywhere. I mean, I've heard songs bragging about trophy girlfriends, but this is the first one where the rapper seems oblivious to the fact that he is her money machine.
#3: "See You Again" by Wiz Khalifa feat. Charlie Puth
This is the second song this year by Charlie Puth. As for Wiz Khalifa, he is a rapper who has had a fair bit of success, but I never really cared for him outside of "Young, Wild, & Free". This song, by the way, is a soundtrack song, written for the movie "Furious 7". Unlike most soundtrack songs, however, this song does have a meaning outside of the movie itself.
The song opens with a nice sounding piano line, with the chorus being a simple "piano with vocals" combo. It does fit with the song quite well. The verses are standard hip-hop stuff, with the quick-paced drums and synth. It works for Wiz Khalifa's style, and when he is actually rapping, the music does tend to tone down in order to match the tone of the song quite nicely, but there is definitely a bit of whiplash musically. As for the vocals themselves, Charlie Puth definitely doesn't have a lot of range, and to be honest, his voice is a bit weak, but the emotions put into the song make up for it. Wiz Khalifa, on the other hand, delivers one of his strongest performances, although he doesn't quite hit the same emotional levels as Puth.
As I said, this song is a soundtrack song, but it was written as a tribute to Paul Walker, who tragically died in a car crash during the making of the movie. The lyrics are written from an in-story point of view, with Wiz Khalifa's character basically reminiscing about what the characters have been through and looking forward to seeing Paul Walker's character in a better place, but the chorus definitely is focused more on the real-life aspect of the tragedy.
This song hits me somewhat hard. I'm not all that big of a fan of the series, having only seen 2 of them, (first one and "Tokyo Drift"), but Wiz Khalifa's performance of looking back on the good times worked quite well, and Charlie Puth's performance was far better than in "Marvin Gaye". Add in a music line that worked quite well with both artists without clashing too badly, and you have a rather touching tribute to both an actor and a character.
#2: "Thinking Out Loud" by Ed Sheeran
This is Ed Sheeran's third appearance on the list, but his second with a new song.
The music line is simply Ed Sheeran playing his acoustic guitar, for the verses at least. The bridge and chorus adds drums and piano, and to be honest, I preferred it with just Ed Sheeran's guitar, because he is quite talented as a guitarist, and adding the other instruments just sounded like he was doing it for the sake of trying to make this not a "white guy with guitar" song. That said, the guitar solo was a surprise, in a good way. Vocally, Ed Sheeran's performance sounds pretty good. He doesn't really show off as much of a range as he normally does, but it sounds like he is narrating his thoughts and putting them into words, so I'm fine with him holding back a bit.
This is a standard love song about being in love, and he's thinking about how great love is. Love love love love.
This song isn't bad, and definitely stands above most "white guy with guitar" songs. The lyrics are fairly bland, and Ed Sheeran's performance tends to bear that out, but the instrumentation at least does something above and beyond what most WGWG songs manage to do. Not my favorite Ed Sheeran songs, but I wouldn't call it bad by any means.
#1: "Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars
Hey, if you are going to have one song reach the year-end charts, this is the spot to reach, I'd say. Bruno Mars is an R&B singer who's had a fair bit of success over the last 6 or 7 years, while Mark Ronson is an English DJ/singer-songwriter/producer.
The song opens with clapping and vocals, but as soon as the instruments kick in, two things are made immediately clear. The first is that this song is a throwback to the late 60's to 70's style of what I like to call "soul funk", such as James Brown. The second thing that is made clear is that the music is awesome. The bass, brass, drums, everything makes it feel like a modern funk song, with the production of modern eras and catchiness of the funk eras. As for Bruno Mars himself, he nails what he is intending to do, sounding quite similar to what you'd imagine a younger James Brown to sound like. James Brown is far from the easiest vocalist to emulate, but Bruno Mars does just that quite well.
This song is basically about how awesome the singer is. If you think he is exaggerating, then his invitation is "don't believe me, just watch!"
I love this song. I love the music line that makes you want to get up and dance, I love the vocals that recall the funk greats of the era, and I even love the lyrics that manage to brag about the lead artist in a way that makes me grin rather than roll my eyes. Just watch the video. Listen to the song. It is awesome.
Well, that was 2015. What a great year for pop music. There was some crap that managed to get up on the list, but overall, it was fantastic. Most years, I somewhat struggle to think of my top 10 best songs because there just weren't many songs that I thought were great. This year, my problem is just the opposite, the fact that there aren't many songs that I thought were terrible, making me struggle with my bottom 10.
To reiterate from last year, my personal rules for top 10 and bottom 10 songs are 1. No repeats from previous top 10/bottom 10 lists, and 2. no repeating artists on the same list.
#5: "Sugar" by Maroon 5
Well, say what you will about Maroon 5's shift to the pop side of pop-rock. It's definitely worked for them in terms of getting hits.
The song opens with a piano/guitar line that is meant to sound like an church setting, although it has a pretty solid bass line that you would not hear in most churches. Overall, that bass line is really what drives the song, and makes it somewhat enjoyable on a musical basis. Adam Levine's vocals are not as solid, unfortunately. He sounds decent on a lower register, but his chorus is almost entirely in falsetto, and let's just say that after 20 years of falsetto singing in songs, it's clear that his voice isn't really as strong as it was circa "She Will Be Loved".
This is a gentle song about sex. Not love, but sex. Basically, Adam Levine is looking for a friends with benefits deal, judging from lines like "I don't want to be needing your love/I just want to be deep in your love".
I should dislike this song a lot more than I do. The music doesn't have a lot going for it, Adam Levine's trademark falsetto is starting to weaken, and the lyrics don't fit the style of the song at all. For some reason though, I find this song a fair bit better than, say "One More Night" or "Daylight". I can't quite say why that is, other than maybe the fact that he's not actively playing up the "ladykiller" role, whereas in "One More Night" he was basically saying "Man, one-night stands are harder than you think!" By the way, check out the music video of this song. It is hilarious, but probably not in the way Adam Levine intended. Ego trip, anyone?
#4: "Trap Queen" by Fetty Wap
Third appearance by Fetty Wap.
What the hell kind of music line is that? It sounds like someone hitting the same notes over and over on a Casio keyboard. OK, that's not totally fair. The keyboard does shift up and down in pitch. The chorus sounds a bit better, being more standard club synth stuff, but still isn't anything special. As for Fetty Wap, he sounds a bit better than he did in his other songs, but he is still slurring too much. I know there some rappers who have that as a style, but with Fetty Wap, it makes it hard to understand him, and you just want to yell "Enunciate!"
This is a bragging rap song, shocker. Basically, Fetty Wap is bragging about his money, and about how he can walk into a club, see a girl he likes, and pick her up just like that. Of course, considering he blatantly calls her a stripper, something tells me he isn't the ladykiller he thinks he is.
I did not like this song. The music ranged from bland to obnoxious, Fetty Wap's delivery was still rocky at best, and the lyrics were bog-standard rapper stuff, but with the added success of making the lead rapper look like an idiot by bragging about how he takes his stripper girlfriend everywhere. I mean, I've heard songs bragging about trophy girlfriends, but this is the first one where the rapper seems oblivious to the fact that he is her money machine.
#3: "See You Again" by Wiz Khalifa feat. Charlie Puth
This is the second song this year by Charlie Puth. As for Wiz Khalifa, he is a rapper who has had a fair bit of success, but I never really cared for him outside of "Young, Wild, & Free". This song, by the way, is a soundtrack song, written for the movie "Furious 7". Unlike most soundtrack songs, however, this song does have a meaning outside of the movie itself.
The song opens with a nice sounding piano line, with the chorus being a simple "piano with vocals" combo. It does fit with the song quite well. The verses are standard hip-hop stuff, with the quick-paced drums and synth. It works for Wiz Khalifa's style, and when he is actually rapping, the music does tend to tone down in order to match the tone of the song quite nicely, but there is definitely a bit of whiplash musically. As for the vocals themselves, Charlie Puth definitely doesn't have a lot of range, and to be honest, his voice is a bit weak, but the emotions put into the song make up for it. Wiz Khalifa, on the other hand, delivers one of his strongest performances, although he doesn't quite hit the same emotional levels as Puth.
As I said, this song is a soundtrack song, but it was written as a tribute to Paul Walker, who tragically died in a car crash during the making of the movie. The lyrics are written from an in-story point of view, with Wiz Khalifa's character basically reminiscing about what the characters have been through and looking forward to seeing Paul Walker's character in a better place, but the chorus definitely is focused more on the real-life aspect of the tragedy.
This song hits me somewhat hard. I'm not all that big of a fan of the series, having only seen 2 of them, (first one and "Tokyo Drift"), but Wiz Khalifa's performance of looking back on the good times worked quite well, and Charlie Puth's performance was far better than in "Marvin Gaye". Add in a music line that worked quite well with both artists without clashing too badly, and you have a rather touching tribute to both an actor and a character.
#2: "Thinking Out Loud" by Ed Sheeran
This is Ed Sheeran's third appearance on the list, but his second with a new song.
The music line is simply Ed Sheeran playing his acoustic guitar, for the verses at least. The bridge and chorus adds drums and piano, and to be honest, I preferred it with just Ed Sheeran's guitar, because he is quite talented as a guitarist, and adding the other instruments just sounded like he was doing it for the sake of trying to make this not a "white guy with guitar" song. That said, the guitar solo was a surprise, in a good way. Vocally, Ed Sheeran's performance sounds pretty good. He doesn't really show off as much of a range as he normally does, but it sounds like he is narrating his thoughts and putting them into words, so I'm fine with him holding back a bit.
This is a standard love song about being in love, and he's thinking about how great love is. Love love love love.
This song isn't bad, and definitely stands above most "white guy with guitar" songs. The lyrics are fairly bland, and Ed Sheeran's performance tends to bear that out, but the instrumentation at least does something above and beyond what most WGWG songs manage to do. Not my favorite Ed Sheeran songs, but I wouldn't call it bad by any means.
#1: "Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars
Hey, if you are going to have one song reach the year-end charts, this is the spot to reach, I'd say. Bruno Mars is an R&B singer who's had a fair bit of success over the last 6 or 7 years, while Mark Ronson is an English DJ/singer-songwriter/producer.
The song opens with clapping and vocals, but as soon as the instruments kick in, two things are made immediately clear. The first is that this song is a throwback to the late 60's to 70's style of what I like to call "soul funk", such as James Brown. The second thing that is made clear is that the music is awesome. The bass, brass, drums, everything makes it feel like a modern funk song, with the production of modern eras and catchiness of the funk eras. As for Bruno Mars himself, he nails what he is intending to do, sounding quite similar to what you'd imagine a younger James Brown to sound like. James Brown is far from the easiest vocalist to emulate, but Bruno Mars does just that quite well.
This song is basically about how awesome the singer is. If you think he is exaggerating, then his invitation is "don't believe me, just watch!"
I love this song. I love the music line that makes you want to get up and dance, I love the vocals that recall the funk greats of the era, and I even love the lyrics that manage to brag about the lead artist in a way that makes me grin rather than roll my eyes. Just watch the video. Listen to the song. It is awesome.
Well, that was 2015. What a great year for pop music. There was some crap that managed to get up on the list, but overall, it was fantastic. Most years, I somewhat struggle to think of my top 10 best songs because there just weren't many songs that I thought were great. This year, my problem is just the opposite, the fact that there aren't many songs that I thought were terrible, making me struggle with my bottom 10.
To reiterate from last year, my personal rules for top 10 and bottom 10 songs are 1. No repeats from previous top 10/bottom 10 lists, and 2. no repeating artists on the same list.
The only reason this isn't on the list proper is the fact that he had a worse song.
Megan Trainor sounded all right vocally, and the bouncy music was actually fun, but those lyrics were just terrible, and sounded like Shania Twain without any irony.
Taylor Swift sounded pretty bad vocally, and the music was uninspired, but Kendrick's performance was legitimately good, so that pushed it down the list.
Not necessarily a bad song, but to me, a motivational song needs to actually motivate, and Rachel Platten's voice was too soft to do that, and the instruments lacked the punch to make up for it.
The music was obnoxious, and Kid Ink just didn't care, but Fifth Harmony has some potential talent if they can get behind a good song.
The saving grace of this song was Monty, who managed to pull off a decent performance despite the lackluster showing of Fetty Wap and the generic as all get out lyrics.
His lack of experience clearly showed, as did his self-production, but I give him a bit of a pass for making an honest effort with limited tools. The 4 artists above him? No such luck.
Beyonce proved here that she should not write party songs, because this one was just a mess all around, and not even her vocals were good.
I thought for a while this would actually top my list, but a couple of things stopped me. While I gave this guy less of a pass than T-Wayne, simply because T-Wayne actually put more than 15 bucks into his song, iLoveMemphis is still basically an amateur, and he didn't screw up nearly as bad as the last amateur on this list.
4 artists on this song, and the only one who delivered even a remotely decent performance was Chris Brown. In addition, the entire song was Nicki Minaj saying "I could have slept with Drake. I didn't, but I totally could if I wanted to", and the males making Nicki Minaj a sex object, with her encouraging it. Left me with a bad taste in my mouth, but the next song upset me.
This song had 1 job. All it had to do was what hundreds of dance songs have done in years past and introduce new moves to the dance world. It couldn't even do that. All Silento was capable of was listing off dance steps in his "when the hell will I go through puberty" voice, set to a weak beat. I could find nothing good about this song at all, and that's only happened to me once before on these lists.
Only reason this isn't on the list is because she had a better song this year.
This song had great vocals by Ella and pretty interesting lyrics, but it didn't hold up quite as well to multiple listens, and the somewhat gospel-like sound didn't quite work either.
On the one hand, the song was a fair bit of fun, and that Munsters riff was a great sample to base a song around. On the other...the song really only worked because of that sample.
I still stand by review, and think that "Someone Like You" is a superior song on the same subject. But that doesn't mean "Hello" lacks strong vocals with fairly heavy emotion, and that doesn't mean "Hello" is a bad song.
This song was just a lot of fun. Overplayed, yes, and there wasn't much to it other than simply being a lot of fun, but that was enough for me.
It has been so long since I've heard a sexually-charged song that actually sounded sexy, and this song having intense music that didn't overpower Demi Lovato was just a bonus on top of that.
This song was a revelation to me. I knew that Rihanna had a strong voice, but I had no idea Kanye West was capable of anything close to the emotions that he pushed through with this song, and Rihanna had a lot of chemistry with Kanye West, making this work quite well as a duet. Guitar by Paul McCartney was just icing on the cake.
So many songs just use gospel/church like music simply for mood. Hozier not only used it as a stylistic choice, but made it tie in with the lyrical content of the song, which was delivered in an over-the-top way that only worked because of the gospel sound. This is one of those songs that only worked at all because everything worked well.
There was no way this was not going high on my list. You can pretty much just look at everything "Dear Future Husband" did wrong and assume this song did it right. Elle King comes off as a ***** in the song, and she knows it. Add in a killer rock sound to it, and you have my top rock song of the year.
This song did everything right for Taylor. Her vocals were spot-on, the music was complex without being confusing, and the lyrics showed a relationship that wasn't perfect, but made you understand that the two do love each other. It's not at the top, because, well, because it just wasn't as fun.
For the first time ever, I completely agreed with America about this being the top song of the year. Everything worked with this song, just like with "Style", but the production by Mark Ronson also made the song a blast to listen to. Bruno Mars has always been at his best when doing "style" songs like "Locked Out of Heaven" or "Treasure", but this song kicked it up to a whole new level. I could not think of any faults with this song, and that only happened to me once before.
