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MUSIC
Adele

The 50 best songs of 2015

Maeve McDermott, and Patrick Ryan
USA TODAY
Adele's 'Send My Love (To Your New Lover)' is one of USA TODAY's favorite songs of the year.

USA TODAY's Maeve McDermott and Patrick Ryan share their picks for the best songs of the year. From tiny bands to Adele's record-shattering 25, here's what captivated us in 2015:

Listen along via Spotify:

Down On My Luck, Vic Mensa

Deep house and hip-hop are perfectly wedded on the Chicago rapper's nimble dance track, co-produced with Stefan Ponce. — Ryan

Send My Love (To Your New Lover), Adele

Send My Love features acrobatic Adele vocals of a different kind: a trilling yodel that recalls the Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Frasier instead of the usual diva powerhouses Adele’s normally compared to. There’s a reason this song is among the most interesting of her career. — McDermott

Lovesick, Mura Masa

The U.K. producer blends electronic, jazz and reggae flavors to create a uniquely irresistible sound. — Ryan

Beautiful Blue Sky, Ought

The frighteningly talented Montreal band channel the ghosts of Television and the Talking Heads in a seven-plus minute mission statement of existential dread. — McDermott

Adore, Cashmere Cat (feat. Ariana Grande)

Grande’s towering vocals have never sounded better than on this offbeat R&B track. — Ryan

The Only Thing, Sufjan Stevens

Stevens’ spare meditation on family and death is staggering from start to finish, and The Only Thing is almost cruel in its hushed, pristine sadness. — McDermott

Lionsong, Björk

The Icelandic icon bares her soul over a hypnotic, militaristic beat on this sprawling breakup anthem. — Ryan

Know Yourself, Drake

With one jubilantly yelped chorus — “I was running through the six with my woes” — Toronto got a theme song and Drake leveled-up to iconic status. — McDermott

Magnets, Disclosure (feat. Lorde)

Although the dance duo's follow-up, Caracal, didn't meet sky-high expectations, Magnets' tribal drums and charismatic vocals by Lorde are spellbinding. — Ryan

Sorry, Justin Bieber

After all the roasts and award shows and late-night skits that Bieber’s 2015 apology tour entailed, all it took were a few masterful singles to get us back on board. This is the best of them all: a euphoric pop earworm that does everything right. — McDermott

Loud Places, Jamie xx (feat. Romy)

Sampling Idris Muhammad's Could Heaven Ever Be Like This and featuring his xx bandmate Romy Madley Croft, this is a thrilling highlight off the British producer's downbeat dance debut In Colour— Ryan

Just Might Be, Young Thug

Piece together the highlights of the Atlanta rapper’s smattering of recent releases and you’ll get one of 2015’s best albums, and here, he’s on his peak gonzo alien wunderkind flow. — McDermott

Lean On, Major Lazer (feat. MØ and DJ Snake) 

There's a reason this EDM hit was Spotify's most-streamed song in the world of 2015 — its warm, wonky beat and feel-good refrain encapsulate the year in music. — Ryan

Snakeskin, Deerhunter

The influential indie rockers' new album Fading Frontier was a mid-tempo, genial affair, but its stroke of brilliance is Snakeskin, with frontman Bradford Cox employing a brassy Marc Bolan impression to amazing effect. — McDermott

Youth, Troye Sivan

Sprightly and effervescent, this YouTube star's rapturous new single is one of many pleasures to be found on his debut Blue Neighbourhood— Ryan

My Baby Don’t Understand Me, Natalie Prass

Prass’ Disney princess-esque voice is utilized best on this tale of defeated love that has all the drama of a Broadway showstopper with the light touch of a classic ‘70s singer-songwriter anthem. — McDermott

R.I.P. 2 My Youth, The Neighbourhood

A stomping lament for one's innocence that is equal parts cocksure and catchy. — Ryan

Planes, Jeremih

Jeremih’s surprise Late Nights release was one of those Q4, fell-from-the-sky gifts that delivered some of the year’s best R&B, but we’ve been lucky enough to have Planes, his icy appreciation of the mile-high club, since January. Just skip the J. Cole verse. — McDermott

Bad Blood, Nao

A sultry, synth-driven substitute for Taylor Swift’s vengeful kiss-off of the same name. — Ryan

All That, Carly Rae Jepsen

As Jepsen learned the hard way this year, not even a near-flawless new album can erase the indelible “one-hit wonder” mark that Call Me Maybe left on her career. Let’s hope that fantastic singles like this one will eventually be foremost in her legacy. — McDermott

WTF (Where They From), Missy Elliott (feat. Pharrell Williams) 

After jumpstarting her comeback with a surprisingly effective Katy Perry Super Bowl Performance, Missy has returned in full force with the rhythmic WTF, in which she asserts her dominance with all the sharp-tongued lyrical gusto we've come to love from the hip-hop legend. — Ryan

PPP, Beach House

Releasing two full-length albums in 2015 gave Beach House plenty of space to color their arpeggiated dream-pop with shoegaze and sedated doo-wop, but PPP’s swooning Lynchian dramatics suit them best. — McDermott

Figure 8, FKA Twigs

The avant-garde Brit continued to break sonic boundaries with her searing M3LL155X EP, which kicks off with this darkly sparse introduction. — Ryan

Divers, Joanna Newsom

Divers, Newsom’s first album since her 2010 triple LP Have One On Me contains as much sweeping emotional density in 11 songs as its predecessor’s two-plus hours, and the achingly sad title track is its centerpiece. — McDermott

Sound & Color, Alabama Shakes

The delicate plinks of a xylophone launch a wistful, symphonic journey that may be one of the best-crafted and sung rock numbers of the year. — Ryan

Broken Necks, Eskimeaux

Broken Necks is three minutes of twinkling, galloping pop from the DIY standouts, built around one of the year’s most earnest refrains: “While you were breaking your neck trying to keep your head up / I was breaking my neck just to stick it out for you.” — McDermott

Wonderful, Casey Veggies (feat. Ty Dolla $ign)

Ty Dolla's soulful hook and Hit-Boy's thumping production elevate this bombastically lewd rap joint. — Ryan

Dimed Out, Titus Andronicus

Nestled in the middle of The Most Lamentable Tragedy, the New Jersey punks’ massive rock opera about manic depression, Dimed Out is all whirling-dervish mania, quick and dirty and one of the band’s best-ever singles. — McDermott

2Shy, Shura

Synthesized hand-claps and airy vocals serve up '80s nostalgia on this London newcomer's marvelous spring single. — Ryan

Flesh Without Blood, Grimes

The highlight of singer/producer Claire Boucher’s 2015 album Art Angels hits with surgical precision, a test-tube baby of a pop song that swoops and clatters in all the perfect places. — McDermott

679, Fetty Wap (feat. Remy Boyz)

The Trap Queen rapper proved he is no one-hit wonder with this boisterous West Coast groove. — Ryan

Cel U Lar Device, Erykah Badu

Only time will tell how Hotline Bling will leave its mark on 2015's cultural legacy, but Erykah Badu’s re-imagining of Drake’s original is worthy of more than a footnote — and features one of the best uses of a voicemail message in recent memory. — McDermott

Antidote, Travis Scott 

Scott scales back the Auto Tune for this moody Top 20 hit, whose deceptively simple melody emerges from an entrancing, smoke-filled haze. — Ryan

Wind Up, Shopping

The fittingly-titled opening track off the U.K. band’s brilliant Why Choose is coiled tight as a spring, propelled by lockstep guitars and frontwoman Rachel Aggs' withering, deadpan delivery. — McDermott

Ocean Drive, Duke Dumont

The British producer goes full-bore into '80s synth-pop, delightfully persuading us to "dance with the devil" without hesitation. — Ryan

Spectrum, GoldLink

This was the year Missy Elliott re-emerged into the spotlight, and she does half the work on Spectrum, which spring-loads a sample from Missy’s She’s a (Expletive) and pairs it with the D.C. rapper’s nimble verses. — McDermott

$, D.R.A.M. (feat. Donnie Trumpet) 

D.R.A.M.'s Cha Cha is better known due to Drake's Hotline Bling hat-tip, but this swaggering anthem is the Virginia rapper's crowning achievement. — Ryan

Young, Frankie Cosmos

Twenty-one-year-old singer-songwriter Greta Kline is sick of people quantifying her music by her age, so she wrote a two-minute slice of DIY pop that plays with drum machines and rudimentary synths while winking at every journalist who’s called her music “cute.” — McDermott

Everyday, A$AP Rocky (feat. Rod Stewart, Miguel and Mark Ronson) 

Although this hazy hip-hop single never reigned on the charts as it should have, its clever verses and inventive sample of Python Lee Jackson's In a Broken Dream make it one of the year's most underrated gems. — Ryan

Waitress, Hop Along

Sorry Adele — this is the vocal of the year. Frances Quinlan’s voice swings between a pure, plainspoken tone and a blisteringly hoarse wail that crumbles on sight, on this gut-punch of a song that’s about seeing someone at a restaurant, and also volumes more. — McDermott

'Cause I'm a Man, Tame Impala

Don't call it mansplaining — Aussie musician Kevin Parker is winningly tongue-in-cheek about relationship blunders blunders on this spacey slice of psychedelic rock. — Ryan

Back Baby, Jessica Pratt

One of her generation’s finest folk artists, Pratt employs succinctly poetic lyrics and her idiosyncratic voice to cast away a lover on Back Baby. Over an upbeat, shuffling melody, her accent knots her words like yarn: “Things like that you can never take back again.” — McDermott

Can't Keep Checking My Phone, Unknown Mortal Orchestra

A lovelorn disco anthem that would fit right in at a '70s beach party. — Ryan

King Kunta, Kendrick Lamar

By design, To Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick’s 2015 magnum opus of a record, isn’t a fun listen. (It’s carrying far too much weight on its shoulders for that.) But King Kunta sure is, chest-puffing and subversive, a Compton love letter mounted on hydraulics. — McDermott

Automatic, Zhu (feat. AlunaGeorge) 

A cool, thumping house single bolstered by slinky saxophone and Aluna Francis' almost childlike vocals. — Ryan

That Kind of Girl, All Dogs

A posturing guitar riff, muffled drums that kick in like a boot in the face, the kiss-off opening lyric, ”And I know that I am always (expletive) up your world" — All Dogs know how to start a song, and That Kind of Girl just gets more defiant from there. — McDermott

Clearest Blue, Chvrches

Lauren Mayberry's piercing vocals carry this pulsing synth-pop anthem, whose bursting energy is instantly infectious. — Ryan

La Loose, Waxahatchee

2015 was an excellent year for Sheryl Crow nostalgia, with albums from Courtney Barnett and Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield channeling the breezy, hi-fi nostalgia of Crow’s best early work. La Loose is a prime example, as Crutchfield pairs lyrics about a doomed infatuation with a tambourine and a chorus of “oohs.” — McDermott

Terrence Loves You, Lana Del Rey

The elusive songstress evokes a lounge singer on this lush, aching jazz number — one of her most memorable on new album Honeymoon— Ryan

Boys Latin, Panda Bear

This is classic Panda Bear, featuring the Animal Collective’s member’s trademark subterranean looping vocals that sound like a choir boy on acid. — McDermott

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