Every end-of-year (or, in our case, beginning-of-year) list has to include a ranking of the best records. As cool as those may be, making them can be a pretty demanding task. How many should one include? How can we decide which album is better?
So we put together a list of criteria, and a weight for each one:
33% How it sounds
33% Originality
15% Variety of songs/styles
7% How likely it is to stick around/become influential and how many albums has the artist made before this one (bonus points if debut album)
7% Themes and context (bonus points if concept album)
3% how well can it be performed live? (If ambient music, how well can it be used in a movie/other appropriate setting)
2% Album artwork
Obviously, a minor part of subjectivity is inevitable, but we tried our best to rank 2015’s greatest releases in all fairness. Here are the 100 albums that shaped the year:
