We’ve reached the finale of this year’s #1 hits ranking series, and we’re ending on one of the strongest Top 5s of the whole event. It helps that I lived through all of these songs dominating radio play, but not hearing many of them for almost ten years has given me some much-needed clarity. Every song on this list probably annoyed me by the end of 2015. But looking at this crop of nine songs, they’ve all returned with vivid memories. High school was one hell of a drug, but a solid chart showing helps it all go down smoother. As an epilogue to the Obama era, 2015 feels like another lifetime entirely. I’m approximately 72 years older now than I was then. It was fun paying memory lane a much-needed visit.
Thanks for taking this ride with me again this year. I’ll be back next December to trace the hits of 1976, 1986, 1996, 2006, and 2016. Hell, maybe I’ll even do 1966! Until then, here are the nine songs that ruled the radio, YouTube, and streaming services ten years ago. 2015! The age of Vine, selfie sticks, Yanny and Laurel, BuzzFeed when it was still fun, hitting the Quan, and a country not yet under the thumb of diet fascism. We got some great albums this year too, including To Pimp a Butterfly, Carrie & Lowell, I Love You, Honeybear, Black Messiah, No Cities to Love, and Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. But none of that music hit the pop charts! So what did? Here is every #1 hit song from 2015, ranked worst to best.
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9. Wiz Khalifa ft. Charlie Puth: “See You Again”
“See You Again” was inescapable in 2015 and I’ve hated it for ten years. In those pre-teen days, I worshipped Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yellow.” His turn with Snoop Dogg in Mac & Devin Go to High School spawned “Young, Wild & Free,” a certified Matt Classic. But “See You Again” revealed something sinister: my G.O.A.T. was washed. Wiz had been commissioned to perform “See You Again” as a tribute to the Fast & Furious franchise’s star, the late Paul Walker, who died in a car crash in 2013. After spending 12 non-consecutive weeks at #1, the track tied for the longest-running rap #1 single in U.S. history, a record later broken by Lil Nas X. And the accolades kept coming: Grammy nominations, a BBC Song of the Year nod, Golden Globe Award consideration, 20 million in sales and a Diamond certification from the RIAA to go with it, and various YouTube and Spotify milestones. But success can’t cure the single of its melodramatic rubbish, even though it’s been streamed billions of times. The song sounds devoid of the emotion it’s marketing, turning into little more than promotion for a multi-billion-dollar action-movie franchise. But I’ve never cared about the Fast & Furious movies and Paul Walker was a creep who dated underage girls. Why did we ever care about this song? “See You Again” isn’t simply “bad music.” It’s an emotional trapdoor disguised as tribute. Not just the Walmart of ballads, but the worst offender of the “singer teams up with rapper” subset of #1 hits. And, somehow, it could have been much worse: before it was Wiz and Charlie, a proposed tandem was Eminem and Chris Brown. Forget about it, cuh.
8. Omi: “Cheerleader”
My strongest memory of Omi’s “Cheerleader” is only loosely about Omi’s “Cheerleader.” Instead, it’s a Vine video of somebody replacing the “oh, I think that I found myself a cheerleader” chorus with “oh, I think that I found myself a cherry pie.” That’s it. That’s the joke, and it’s not a very good one. But I laughed ten years ago and, in 2025, the tropical vibes of “Cheerleader” don’t sound half bad. I mean, lyrically the song is fucking atrocious—just totally nonsensical verbiage (“She walks like a model / She grants my wishes like a genie in a bottle / ‘Cause I’m the wizard of love / And I got the magic wand / All these other girls are tempting / But I’m empty when you’re gone”) I need a chemical bath to get rid of. But, Felix Jaehn’s “Cheerleader” remix brought deep house back to the pop charts, so I commend him for choreographing a #1 hit in 22 countries. “Cheerleader” spent six non-consecutive weeks at the top in America, and Billboard named it the “song of the summer.” The pop radio connoisseurs were clearly on a reggae fusion kick, considering that that god-awful Magic song “Rude” was a #1 hit a year prior, but I’ll take “Cheerleader” ten times out of ten.
7. Adele: “Hello”
For the final seven weeks of 2015, American radio stations gathered around Adele’s “Hello.” In my lifetime, few ballads have been bigger, because Adele brought to us this forsaken, star-building epic that confirmed her as one of music’s most popular belters. Loss and what-could-have-beens rattle in the power of her voice, which travels across two, maybe three octaves while “Hello” grows bigger and bolder, thanks to co-writer Greg Kurstin’s arrangement (one of the most soulful accompaniments an Adele song has ever received). Adele’s great tone masks her shortcomings as a vocalist (her range is far more comparable to your typical pop singer than, say, Aretha or even Celine), but the formula worked and “Hello” launched her into the stratosphere that 21 began to build. The single won Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Pop Solo Performance at the Grammys and broke the iTunes record for topping a chart in the most countries (102). Its music video also tallied a billion views quicker than any other in history (87 days). And, perhaps most importantly, it had thousands of mothers picking up 25 CDs on Black Friday 2015 (my own included).
6. Taylor Swift ft. Kendrick Lamar: “Bad Blood”
As far as chart numbers are concerned, this was going to be a slam dunk commercially. Two of the biggest musicians on the planet collaborating on the same song? On paper, you couldn’t get more starpower than that in 2015. When the 1989 version of “Bad Blood” came out a year earlier, critics called Max Martin and Shellback’s production bland and Taylor Swift’s lyricism boring and repetitive (a fair criticism, if only because that “Band-Aids don’t fix bullet holes” line is really rough) , despite the song’s uber-catchiness. A remix featuring Kendrick Lamar arrived in May 2015 and had much better reception. I mean, we’re talking about Kendrick Lamar here. But I’ve always felt the opposite. I love “Bad Blood” (the “it’s so sad to think about the bad times” pre-chorus is a hall of fame earworm) and I love KDot, but it’s hard to shake the sense that he was brought in to give a poorly-received single a facelift. Culturally, the “Bad Blood” remix has done some seriously heavy lifting—this version is so ubiquitous that I sometimes forget it’s not the album version.
5. Justin Bieber: “What Do You Mean?”
I’ve grown to enjoy Purpose in the ten years since it came out. Its lead single, “What Do You Mean?,” felt like Justin Bieber’s first truly mature leap as an artist, because he was passionately singing about the mysteries of the women in his life instead of milking the cutesy shit that made him a YouTube sensation. I wouldn’t call it a benchmark in vulnerability, but JB was a megastar by 2015 who’d yet to let his mask fully slip. “What Do You Mean?” was his coming out party—a catchy, sedated dance track that’s sincere but seductive. It might have been the first truly generation-defining love song for younger millennials. Singing over a Steve Aoki-type beat meshes with tropical house vibes, JB was no longer a boy-wonder heartthrob but a legitimately impressive R&B singer with a nose for pop hooks. Ten years ago it felt like “What Do You Mean?” was inescapable. Shockingly, it only held the #1 spot for one week.
4. Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars: “Uptown Funk”
“Uptown Funk” carries a complicated legacy. It spent 14 consecutive weeks at #1 before getting dethroned by the worst song of the year. And then it got hit with plagiarism disputes and copyright lawsuits (the most recent complaint was filed in 2023). First it sounded like the Gap Band’s “Oops Up Side Your Head,” then it sounded like Collage’s “Young Girls.” Then a rap group called the Sequence sued for infringement, citing similarities to their song “Funk You Up.” Lastrada Entertainment claimed “Uptown Funk” ripped off Zapp’s “More Bounce to the Ounce,” and someone eventually noted the horn similarities between Mark Ronson’s instrumental and that of the Really Wild Show theme song. But similarities aside, “Uptown Funk” was anywhere and everywhere ten years ago, breaking its own streaming record in the UK three times alone. The song became a global phenomenon—catchy like Pharrell’s “Happy” but far, far less annoying. It might be the last great musical relic of the Obama years, its joy unleashed through contagious dance breakouts and an infectious, uber-recognizable, omnipresent beat. Every wedding I’ve gone to has had “Uptown Funk” on its dance playlist, which is maybe the greatest endorsement of cultural relevance a hit song could ever get. I drank the Kool-Aid and I danced to Bruno Mars singing “don’t believe me, just watch” over and over. Normally there’d be a shred of regret in that, but “Uptown Funk” is too good a song to just banish to the doldrums of my embarrassing youth.
3. The Weeknd: “Can’t Feel My Face”
“Can’t Feel My Face” felt like the song of the summer ten years ago. Prepping for this list, I was shocked to learn it was the #1 song in America for only three non-consecutive weeks in August/September. I mean, I was 17 years old then and chuffed at the thought of Michael Jackson 2.0. Clearly other folks felt similarly: Rolling Stone named it the SOTY; the tune scored two Grammy noms; and it sold 10 million copies. “Can’t Feel My Face” is a perfect pop song that deserved “Uptown Funk” numbers. I’m sure by the end of 2015 I was sick of both songs, because they were just so damn overplayed. But, looking back now, how lucky we were to have gotten a chart duel like that—especially because the Weeknd was on his Wilt Chamberlain against the New York Knicks in 1962 shit then. My friends and I ate “Can’t Feel My Face” up, smirking at the Weeknd’s coke allegories while neurotically and embarrassingly telegraphing our own romanticisms on whatever homecoming dance floors our clumsy, growing bodies managed to fall onto. “Can’t Feel My Face” is bouncy and slippery, like “Dirty Diana” for the social media generation. A lot of hit songs from any era age horribly. “Can’t Feel My Face” isn’t one of them.
2. The Weeknd: “The Hills”
I don’t remember this song being a #1 hit for six weeks, but it was. And it’s one of the most fascinating chart-toppers to happen in my lifetime so far. Commercial explosions like this nowadays are rarely as dark, seductive, or sinister. The Weeknd pulls the hook from Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes and uses his verses to examine the underbelly of fame, where addiction (“drugs started feeling like it’s decaf”) and lust (“I just fucked two bitches ‘fore I saw you / And you gon’ have to do it at my tempo”) collide. There’s a serious ache of excess in a line like “I only love it when you touch me, not feel me,” as horror-movie yawps and turbulent electronics meet the Weeknd’s tortured vibrato. There’s grace in the storm washing over “The Hills.” Critics saw it as a retcon after “Earned It” abandoned the Weeknd’s druggy R&B for some retail-store pop generica. Ten years later and his albums keep getting better (Beauty Behind the Madness is awesome, though), but he’s never quite met the single-song perfection of “The Hills.” At the track’s end, a woman’s voice enters like a lullaby, singing “I love you, my beautiful one / I love love you, my love, love, love, love, love” in Amharic, the Weeknd’s native tongue. Everything that comes after is sedated, adrift.
1. Taylor Swift: “Blank Space”
The best #1 hit of 2014 and the best #1 hit of 2015, Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” is my favorite of her chart-toppers—and one of the strongest girl-next-door stories she’s written. Swift’s ability to nurture anecdotes of her personal life into digestible, accessible pop flavors has always been her greatest asset, and there are few better instances of that in her 20-year-career than “Blank Space”—a catchy distillation of her love life under a media-made microscope. For me, it’s the definitive 1989 track, one of the best collaborations to ever materialize from her work with Max Martin and Shellback, and just a truly enjoyable 4.5 minutes of electro-pop. The “‘cause we’re young and we’re reckless, we’ll take this way too far” chorus is one of Taylor’s finest, on a song that shines with a fascinating sense of maturity and craft. The cherry lips and crystal skies linger in the shadows of tables turning and a long list of ex-lovers; “Blank Space” marks the end of Taylor Swift’s country starlet beginnings and the beginning of her pop stardom in full. This is one of the best pop songs of the last 25 years.
