In my personal opinion, 2015 was an incredibly strong year for music, despite featuring more music from the Pope than from Frank Ocean. From Drake’s mixtape cover becoming the design of every sorority’s Spring formal shirt to Coldplay dancing around as CGI apes to Adele’s return as an SNL joke, the year was one of the more memorable of the new decade. But some albums were, of course, better than others. Here were my picks for the best of the year.

6. Beach House: "Depression Cherry"

Beach House exists as a living contradiction to the concept central to many music fans’ conceptions that artists have to be constantly changing their sound in order to be interesting. Since their debut as organ-heavy, dreamy indie pop stars with starry guitar arpeggios, they haven’t deviated much from being organ-heavy, dreamy indie pop stars anchored by starry arpeggios, and "Depression Cherry" is a testament to how well a simple formula can work. But that’s not to say that each song is a copy-and-paste rendition of their previous albums; on "Depression Cherry," they’ve never sounded so ephemeral. Victoria Legrand’s often heavy female voice drifts with the organ into an androgynous hover on “Levitation.” “Space Song” sounds like the soundtrack to staring outside a spacecraft window looking back at the Earth. The obvious highlight of the album is “Sparks,” a mixture of indecipherable, airy background vocals and a fantastic graceful lead from Legrand with a cacophony of heavily distorted lead guitars and a hefty, dissonant organ to create a work that is as heavenly as it is terrestrial. It’s a beauty like walking out of a stuffy house into your backyard on a cool fall night, when more stars are out than normal. It seems like Beach House by now should have gotten boring, just like Donald Trump should have crashed in the polls; on paper, it makes sense for it to happen, but they somehow continually exceed our expectations every time. Luckily for us, Beach House finds a way to be increasingly beautiful and thought-provoking instead of, you know, Trump.

Best track: “Sparks”

5. Jamie xx: "In Colour"

Electronic music in an age where technology is at the root of nearly everything has overtaken much of music and seemingly split it into two main interpretations. One uses synths and soaring vocals to turn generic, unspecified feelings of positivity and jumping up and down into a tight three-minute nugget of feel-good top 40 candy (see: Zedd) and the other treats electronic music as an obsessive, meticulous art. Jamie xx’s "In Colour" ranks among the best of the latter. It is a testimony to the idea that true musicianship and electronics can and do work hand-in-hand. A song like “Girl” isn’t just aural pleasure; it’s a carefully constructed piece of samples, volumes, effects, and sounds that work in excellent concordance to create something both beautiful and haunting. And listen as he takes a sample from the Persuasions’ 1972 single, “Good Times,” and has it back in brilliantly between the vulgar, excited verses of Yung Thug and the soothing time kept by his steel drums. And not to mention the three cameos featuring members of his former band, the xx, would rank among the top five songs of that band. "In Colour" isn’t just a great electronic album, it’s an introduction of a modern music (dare I say it?) genius that I will be patiently waiting to hear more from.

Best track: “Loud Places”

4. Grimes: "Art Angels"

Grimes has always created accessible and easy-to-love (but never shallow or pointless) music, but her craft is honed and perfected to a new degree on "Art Angels" in a way that could and should propel her into the big leagues of this generation’s pop stars. Grimes’ music is entirely the work of Claire Boucher, written, performed, and produced, which makes the marvel of a song like “Flesh Without Blood” all the more remarkable. It’s a pop masterpiece, the kind that most stars hire a dozen writers and seven producers to try and emulate. Whether she got a hold of some new toys or simply strengthened her craft is irrelevant, because either way, "Art Angels" is a production masterwork. But the success of the album is in how her production compliments strong songwriting. “Flesh Without Blood,” “California,” and “Art Angels” are catchier and more enjoyable than anything Katy Perry or Selena Gomez have ever released. “Kill v. Maim,” “Scream,” and “Venus Fly” (with an excellent cameo from Janelle Monáe) seethe with a vicious intensity that rip to shreds any notion that Grimes’ music is in any way “cute.” What also separates her from most pop contemporaries is how she doesn’t give two shits about anything related to relationships. These songs are feminist “fuck yous" in many ways, from calling an old friend out on their bullshit to wanting to dance on the floor without creepy guys bothering you. It’s the work of a postmodern maestro at her best, and is as artistically satisfying as it is endlessly enjoyable from start to finish.

Best track: “Kill v. Maim”

3. Tame Impala: "Currents"

With their last two albums, Tame Impala fulfilled the fantasy of any classic rock fan born after Kurt Cobain died who legitimately would cite not being alive at the same time as John Lennon as a source of significant sadness in their life and constantly dreams of what it would be like to be naked at Woodstock. Tame Impala crushed those fans’ dreams hard with "Currents." For his third album as Tame Impala (yeah, in the studio, it’s all him), Kevin Parker seemingly threw away his Magical Mystery Tour and Electric Ladyland albums and replaced them with Prince. The result is phenomenal. Parker steps out from the psychedelic hero spotlight and instead decides to compete with Jamie xx and Grimes for the role of greatest alternative producer. And he not only keeps up, he thrives. It takes the work of a genius who knows what he’s doing to come up with something like “Nangs” and have it be one of the weaker tracks on the album. And “Let it Happen” is the best-produced song of the year, and possibly of the last few years. It reveals itself as a technical tour-de-force through obvious moments such as the “broken” loop in the middle of the song that transitions the bridge from a darkly funky breakdown into an oddly futuristic string section, and through the less obvious elements, like the perfection of the filtering of the drums. "Currents" comes across like Parker pulled endless all-nighters working on getting the background vocals on “Past Life” to swirl around like ghosts in your mind. But it also works on another level. It’s a deeply confessional, heartfelt breakup album, and it uses music as both a reflection of that and a way of healing. The songs do have a 70s soft rock feel to them, and in most cases, that would be a red flag. But Parker is using a genre we generally don’t consider to be a legitimate vehicle for complex emotions to display complex emotions in an innovative way. He updates the sound with elements of electronic and psychedelic music, which fits the album’s theme. It’s an album of progress. He talks about movement, of flow, and the production and propensity of the music reflect that. He’s heartbroken, but he understands life moves on through music. "Currents" is the best work from an artist who had already released what would have been nearly any other band’s best work (Lonerism), and even (especially) by taking a 180 with his sound, he solidifies Tame Impala’s place as one of the best artists of our generation.

Best track: "Let it Happen"

2. Sufjan Stevens: "Carrie & Lowell"

The singer-songwriter seems to be a dying trope. The old idea of an individual musician used to be one of James Taylor or Neil Young alone on an empty stage with a guitar and a microphone; now, it is of Jamie xx behind a board with switches and buttons and Kanye with enough ego to leave Freud smiling in his grave. So the idea of one of the best albums of Twitter-infested, Apple-infused, laptop-centered 2015 coming from nothing more than a falsetto voice, a lightly picked acoustic guitar, and an infrequent piano still comes as a surprise to me. But there’s a moment (about .0000005 seconds in) on "Carrie & Lowell" when the force of the album hits you and you realize this could potentially be one of the most important albums of the last few years. It is without a doubt the most beautiful work of the last year and potentially, I dare say, the last decade. Throughout the album, Stevens deals with the loss of his mother, with whom he had an incredibly complex relationship. Although none of us have ever met her, and only a small fraction have met Sufjan, by the end of the album, it’s likely that even someone with the hardest of an outer shell could be brought to tears. His lyrics are painfully bare and moving, especially so on “The Only Thing,” where he stands on the very verge of suicide but is saved by the beauty of nature and life itself. Moments such as the outro of “Fourth of July,” where he repeats “We’re all gonna die” over and over against a chilling piano until it abruptly cuts out and his voice is left lingering over a cavern is enough to make you pause the album for a little bit and compose yourself. It’s a confessional album that’s better than other confessional albums; it’s more honest, more touching, and more personal than most would ever dare to release to the mass public. In that sense, it’s incredibly brave as well. And its greatness is buoyed by some of the prettiest damn music you’ll ever hear. It’s an album that’s objectively great in the snob’s checklist in terms of lyrics, production, etc, but goes an extra step in that it is one of those albums you listen to and finish with such a chill that it reminds you of the ultimate power of music in itself.

Best track: "The Only Thing"

1. Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp a Butterfly

But was it even a question? This album, which surprised fans with an early release date, just sounds and acts like the album of the year. And much of that is of course due to its cultural significance. We are at a time in America of heightened racial tensions; black youths are being murdered by police, Black Lives Matter has become at the front and center of the nation’s attention, black protesters are being beaten and dragged at the GOP presidential frontrunner’s rallies (to his approval), and America is realizing that the “race issue” we thought was solved when we elected a black president is no less potent than it was 30 years ago. So an album with a line like “we hate the po-po/wanna shoot us dead in the street fo’ sho’” in its catchiest single, a line like “I’m as black as the heart of a f*ckin’ Aryan,” in a song entitled “The Blacker the Berry,” and an extended interview with 2pac about being black in America at the end of the album could not have come at a more important time. It’s an incredibly moving portrait, one that recognizes oppression, but offers a solution in encouraging positivity and self-worth. It’s not angry as much as it is motivated. But while endless discussions have been had about the album’s importance in the discussion of race in America, just as much could be said about how it is a portrait of Kendrick’s own personal demons and obstacles. He struggles with “Lucy” (a metaphor for the Devil), finds himself hitting the bottle alone and screaming at himself in the jarring “u,” condemning his selfishness on “How Much a Dollar Cost,” and reciting a poem at the end of most songs that exposes the depression he faces by not feeling that he has used his influence to help people from his hometown of Compton. It’s a powerful tour-de-force in how it brilliantly interweaves the cultural issue of being black in America with the very personal idea of self-love, and it comes together brilliantly in songs like “Complexion (A Zulu Love)” and “i.” The latter, the obvious counteraction to “u,” reflects an interesting choice on Kendrick’s part. It was released early as a single that sounded like nothing more than a fun little rap ditty about liking yourself, full of screaming electric guitars and fast verses. But on the album, it takes on a new form as a live performance which is interrupted by people fighting in the crowd. We hear him shut the music off and yell at the crowd that black communities of America need to unite. By infusing the cultural issue pervasive on the album with a song about self-love, he seems to be presenting a solution. But beyond the album’s lyrics, it is magnificent on a musical level. Kendrick proves that he’s one of if not certainly the best rapper today on verses such as the ones found in “Alright” and “Wesley’s Theory.” The album uses a variety of musical styles and genres that blend together seamlessly into its own thing. Jazz, hip-hop, soul, R&B, and African music stylings mend phenomenally into a work that sounds effortless, but was almost certainly not. It’s a left turn for Kendrick, and fans who were just on board for songs they heard at frat parties and thought “Swimming Pools (Drank)” was about the fun of alcohol instead of its dangers will turn back to Drake and J. Cole as their heroes. It’s often off-putting at first, and a song like “Hood Politics” probably won’t be on repeat in any Spotify playlists, but each listen reveals a new song to fall in love with. “These Walls” should have been one of the most popular songs of the year, and thank God Obama said “How Much a Dollar Cost” was his favorite song of the year, because before then, it was cruelly under the radar. Much like "Currents," "To Pimp a Butterfly" may isolate surface-level fans with its new style, but, also like "Currents," its greatness propels an artist who could have left a legacy by their last release alone. Except in Kendrick’s case, "To Pimp a Butterfly" is evidence that he could very well be the best artist of our time, period.

Best track: “Alright”