Musical Musings: 2015 Songs Top 20

Jarrett McCall has been on Musical Musings six times now, with 1970s America, Stereolab, the best of 2026 and the first half of the 2020s. For his seventh visit he’s brought a whole year, and it takes two hours. Over on X, Jarrett played along with the #2015SongsTop20 challenge, and this Wednesday we’re counting down all twenty of his picks. Unlike his last list, this one has real hits on it. Kiiara’s Gold went three times Platinum here. Adele turns up twice from 25, and neither song is Hello. Mark Ronson also turns up twice, and neither song is Uptown Funk. Instead we get Summer Breaking, the Kevin Parker song Ronson calls his personal favourite on the album, and later Crack in the Pearl, the first lyric Pulitzer-winning novelist Michael Chabon wrote for it. There’s a home-grown thread as well. Christchurch’s Yumi Zouma appear twice with songs written by email while the band was scattered between New York, Paris and New Zealand, and the NZ-born Tamaryn turns up with the title track of Cranekiss. Then there’s the stage: Renée Elise Goldsberry’s Tony-winning Satisfied from Hamilton, a song Lin-Manuel Miranda admitted he couldn’t rap himself. It came out on the same September day as two other records on the list.

The second hour is where the list gets strange. There’s Laura Groves with a song named after the novella that became Eyes Wide Shut. George Clanton started his own record label just to release his album. Part Time’s It’s Too Late (not that one) is the last track on a double album of home recordings. Giorgio Moroder, aged 75, made his first album in 23 years, and Jarrett has picked the song with Foxes on it. Men I Trust appear twice, with two songs that sit side by side on the same self-released album and are sung by two different guest singers, neither of whom was in the band at the time. Thundercat’s Them Changes is a breakup song built on an Isley Brothers drum break. And at number one is a band who were also on Jarrett’s last list, with a song that has never been on any of their albums. Arenas and bedrooms, Broadway and SoundCloud: 2015 put them all on the same playlist.

Broadcast 7 October 2026