The Random iTunes Fairy seems eerily prescient lately.
Last week she served up a song from the Grease soundtrack the very day Fox aired its live performance of Grease. And this week, in the middle of my Pazz & Jop rundown, the Saturday selection is the opening track of Liz Phair’s 1993 album Exile in Guyville, which topped that year’s poll.
Carly Rae Jepsen shows up at #11 in the Pazz & Jop poll with ‘Run Away With Me,’ the song I had at #10 on my own year-end list.
In the twelfth spot is a track by Grimes, the Canadian indie artist. This is the sort of choice that was typical of a list like this one a decade or so back, when alternative and indie artists were the critics darlings and hip-hop didn’t get much respect.
The next three spots on Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll of 2015’s best singles are all tracks I’ve featured on the blog.
Fetty Wap comes in at #7 with ‘Trap Queen,’ another song and artist that I simply don’t get. At #8 is ‘Uptown Funk,’ which is officially a 2014 song but received enough votes for its early year run that it still made the list. And tied for #9 is Adele with her smash hit ‘Hello,’ one of the only songs in the top ten that doesn’t have a target audience of high schoolers.
Though Kendrick Lamar dominated this year’s Pazz & Jop poll, the runner-up didn’t fare too badly. Courtney Barnett’s Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit came in second on the list of top albums and garnered enough votes to take first place in most non-Kendrick Lamar years.
The Aussie’s first single, ‘Pedestrian at Best,’ takes the fifth spot in the singles poll. I featured it last April as part of my track-by-track review of the album.
The Weeknd’s ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ takes the #3 spot in Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll. No argument there. I had it at #4 on my own list.
At #4 is another track from Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. This one is ‘Alright,’ a song that became an unofficial anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement, as it touches on the issue of police shooting black men.
The song has a Do the Right Thing vibe, both because of its subject matter and the use of horns juxtaposed with hip-hop beats.
