Another one bites the dust!
2015 was picked at random with no particular expectations - how did it do?
We started the year with Adele, Coldplay and Justin Bieber - not exactly a low-key start to the year and it's fair to say we met quite a few more big names along the way with One Direction, Rod Stewart, 5 Seconds Of Summer, Ed Sheeran, Iron Maiden, Bon Jovi, Simply Red, Blur, Madonna and Bob Dylan all putting in appearances throughout the year. However, there were some lesser known artists that snuck in there as well to keep things interesting.
We'd pretty much given up buying albums by this point - we had copies of Adele and One Direction to play in the car and Olly Murs for our youngest but that was it, although I was quite surprised we didn't have a copy of Ed's offering because it seems like everyone else did.
Looking at the best selling albums of the year, there are some big numbers here! Unsurprisingly, Adele took the top spot, selling a somewhat unbelievable 2.5 million copies in a mere six weeks - which makes Ed's mere million at #2 look puny. The top five are made up by Sam Smith, a somewhat unexpected Elvis Presley and Justin Bieber, which is the highest placed album not to make #1, but still sold 670,000 copies.
Other albums that jump out of the year-end top 40 are Taylor Swift (#6 - still doing OK, I guess), Olly Murs (#12), who somehow managed to pip One Direction (#13), Jeff Lynne's ELO (#18 - huh?), Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (#21 - why do people like this?), Alexander Armstrong (#32) and Michael Buble (#40). And Ed is the only artist with multiple albums on the list at #2 and #38,
So what about the albums I was forced to listen to? I think it's fair to say they were a mixed bunch - there were very few I hated, but there were also very few I loved.
Since we started the year with Adele, let's first consider the female solo artists. Somewhat surprisingly, I think Enya just about shades the year for me because it was so much better than I was expecting, whereas Adele was distinctly more average than I remembered. In a similar vein, Jess Glynne, Ellie Goulding and Madonna were bearable but also slightly disappointing, whereas Paloma Faith actually exceeded expectations with her offering. But Meghan Trainor was just too much and was definitely one of the albums from the year I'd go out of my way to avoid in future.
The male solo artists gave us a whole load of singer-songwriters who produced decent enough albums with some very fine tracks on them to drag the audiences in - Sam Smith, Jamie Lawson, Ed Sheeran, James Bay, George Ezra and Olly Murs all fall into this category. Additionally, Will Young, Dr Dre (surprisingly), Brandon Flowers, Mark Knopfler and Mark Ronson (is he a solo artist?) produced decent enough albums without standout tracks - and David Gilmour, Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Seasick Steve and Hozier produced albums that at least their fans would love (with Seasick Steve also producing an album I never want to hear again). Also, it was a great year for men with traditional first names, wasn't it?
It was a strong year for female lead groups with Little Mix, Florence + The Machine, Wolf Alice, and Alabama Shakes all producing interesting and well put together albums which I'd be perfectly happy to listen to again (although the Alabama Shakes one is a bit odd). I know it's my sort of thing, but this was easily the strongest category of the year for me.
And finally, the male lead groups were their usual mixed bag with a load of groups producing not their finest hour - Coldplay, One Direction, Maccabees, Bon Jovi, Muse, Blur, Iron Maiden, Mumford & Sons and (particularly) Simply Red all fall into this category. Those who met with expectations were 5 Seconds Of Summer, The Wombats, All Time Low, Rudimental, Disclosure, Fall Out Boy and Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds (expectations were very low here, so they met them) and we have Stereophonics, Leftfield, Chemical Brothers, Years & Years, The Prodigy, Imagine Dragons and Kodaline who all pleasingly exceeded expectations. All of which leaves us with Krept & Konan which was all by itself in a category of no expectations (even after listening to it!).
Looking at the #1 albums for the year, we saw 38 different albums and 34 debuts at the top, which is more than 2010 and less than 2020 so fits in with the general trend of these things. The king and queen of the year were most definitely Sam Smith (4 weeks at the top) and Adele (5 weeks), with the only other people managing more than one week being Elvis, George Ezra, Years & Years, Muse and Mumford & Sons, all of whom managed two weeks.
The generally accepted (by the internet or me) best albums from the years that we didn't come across were Marina's Froot (#10), Elle King's Love Stuff (#18), Kacey Musgraves's Pageant Material (#11), Little Boots's Working Girl (#67), Grimes's Art Angel (#31), Björk's Vulnicura (#11), Tame Impala's Currents (#3 - they were unlucky), Courtney Barnett's Sometimes I Just Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit (#16), Father John Misty's I Love You Honeybear (#14), Beach House's Depression Cherry (#17), CHVRCHES' Every Open Eye (#4 - also unlucky), Janet Jackson's Unbreakable (#11), Carly Rae Jepson's Emotion (#21), Sleater-Kinney's No City To Love (#27), D'Angelo & The Vanguard's Black Messiah (#47), Sufjan Stevens's Carrie & Lowell (#6), Kamasi Washington's The Epic (didn't chart), Julia Holter's Have You In My Wilderness (#29 - this is interestingly quirky) and the Hamilton soundtrack (#58 in '17, but it's been in the compilation chart continuously since '20).
And the most and least read posts of the year? The clear winner was, quite obviously, Five Seconds Of Summer - I can't even begin to imagine why! And we have a tie for the least popular between Kodaline and Imagine Dragons, which were consecutive posts so I guess everyone has something better to do during that week.
Overall, I felt 2015 was a bit of a disappointment - there were some decent albums but there was an awful lot of filler and a lot of people who I might expect more from completely under-delivered. My favourites were probably the slightly strange combination of Florence + The Machine, Jamie Lawson, Leftfield and Little Mix with Meghan Trainor and Seasick Steve being plain awful rather than merely disappointing.
So where to next? I'm feeling quite brave so I think I might head back to the 50s for undoubtedly multiple visits with Frank and Elvis - and if past performance is anything to go by I'll speed through both years I have left and then the 50s will be done!
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