As a native of Gary, Indiana, rookie-of-the-year Jlin has turned her distance from Chicago's footworking epicentre to her advantage, carving out a sound that's truly her own across a pair of records on Planet Mu in 2015. The standout from the more recent Freefall EP is this maelstrom of rage punctuated by a teeth-baring Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I: "I am the queen!"; "You are not my equal, sir, and you never will be!” A rare irruption of female anger or a parody of masculine hubris? Both sentiments are welcome in the overbearingly male world in which Jlin operates.

Tehran-born, Rotterdam-raised Sevdaliza "operates from another world" in the haunting 'That Other Girl', pondering strength and vulnerability over a production that bounds from synth-swept to Yeezus season at the drop of a dime.

Hodge’s best moment this year was simply another reminder of what he has always done so well. Layering a cooing choral hook alongside synth lines soothing enough to stand up against the increasingly belligerent thump, ‘Forms Of Life’ is such a perfectly balanced track you almost don’t realize how heavy it gets until the climax has passed. The result is a song that benefits from multiple listens and happily earned them.

We enjoyed In Colour about as much as Boomkat did, so it's no surprise that the only song off the album that makes the cut here is the one where Jamie xx is the least prominent feature: The Persuasions, Popcaan and - as always - Young Thug steal the spotlight on this song of the summer.

Erik Wiegand returned to his Errorsmith guise for a glacial collaboration with avant-minimalist Mark Fell this year, with the floor-ready highlight being this anti-gravity space-samba monument laminated with ghostly voices sliding down microtonal slopes. Bonkers and beautiful.

Influential Atlanta rap trio Travis Porter returned with a vengeance in 2015, and their most surprising moment was 'Money Right': a stripper empowerment ballad with three-voice counterpoint.

We’ve been waiting for a full release from Barcelona’s Zora Jones for a while, and the seven of her 100 Ladies (she calls them ladies, not tracks) that she chose to deploy on her debut didn’t disappoint. It’s an EP best taken as a whole, but the lady whose presence lingered longest was ‘First Light’: half aquatic and half in full flight mode, it glistened like little else this year.

While we waited for Late Nights, Jeremih busied himself with a load of guest appearances, and this is the best one: the logical endpoint of DJ Mustard-esque dance-pop-nostalgia, with nods to Whitney and (for some reason) LMFAO - and it works.

For all the hundreds upon thousands of songs written about drugs, including countless supposedly E-fuelled club hits, hardly any of them sound like they’re actually on any drugs. DJ Koze’s 2015 contribution to the genre is a worthy exception, a brainbath of foamy pads and heartbeat kicks complicated by the arrival of a gnomic voice positing ontological conundrums in your ear like a tranq-addled Thatcher. Because drugs are weird and profound.

Originally released on a mixtape last year, 'Cha Cha' really needed the sunny days of spring and summer to reveal itself as a sing-along anthem. D.R.A.M. recalls Sam Cooke and Super Mario and sounds like nobody in rap and R&B. He was also the first one on that Timmy Thomas interpolation - don't forget that 'Hotline Bling' was initially billed as a 'Cha Cha' remix.

Denis Sulta is so fucking Glasgow. He works at Rubadub, his first two releases were on Dixon Avenue Basement Jams and he looks like he could be either 21 or 40 depending on what state you catch him in. And like a lot of Glaswegians, he knows what makes a techno track tick: there's nothing fancy about 'It's Only Real', but that lead melody is packed with all the wide-eyed fantasy of classic Detroit, those kicks catch you right in the chest, and the whole thing is soaked in 5am emotion. Dress to sweat.

Murlo’s Odyssey is his peak as an artist to date, and ‘High Rise’ is its highest point - when those harps come in, you’d swear you’re so high you’ve hit heaven.

There’s way too much studio chat that’s hard to swallow - we get it, you’re telling a story, it’s cool, bro. Shitro consuming “six drugs at the same time” however? We don’t doubt it for a second. This is a guy who was able to throw down a freestyle outside of a hotel bathroom at SXSW. He’s a rare breed, and bordering on unstoppable.

Considering Boogie’s exemplary The Reach mixtape is mostly made up of low-key soul and jazz-sampling West Coast slow burners, when ‘Oh My’ erupts suddenly it’s like a brick in the face. Jahlil Beats’ ridiculously heavy beat has to be given credit, but it’s Boogie’s intense personality and his ability to illustrate the complexity of California’s troubled streets that sets it apart from the rest of 2015’s rap anthems.

The "false flag" for Rizzla's politically charged EP of the same name, 'Iron Cages' brings together singer Odile Myrtil, Ultra Naté’s 'Free' and a damaged dembow groove for a totally entrancing post-club pop song.

Coming just ahead of the polyamorous tangle of 'Horses in the Stable’, Ty's claim on Free TC standout ’Straight Up’ that he “ain’t with the drama” seems a dash optimistic. But that treacly, just-enough-rough baritone (beefing up the claim that he’s our modern-day Nate Dogg) added to a sprinkling of Patrice Rushen’s luscious 70s soul and a confetti-bed of Jagged Edge’s smooth 90s R&B proves pretty much irresistible. “Meet me at the bar in your white dress,” he implores you softly, like a complete bastard.

Alexandria’s post-Aaliyah coos are the perfect accompaniment to Ethereal’s lean, innovative productions, and while we arrived late to her 2014 self-titled debut, we couldn’t get through another list season without giving her a nod. ‘Bad’ is like an epilogue, distilling the best moments of the album and making us desperate for whatever comes next. Let’s hope Drake doesn’t catch a whiff and fuck everything up.

Young Thug had a very good 2015, and that makes it pretty difficult to pick out one specific track. There was nothing quite at ‘Stoner’’s level of anthem in 2015, but Young Thug dominated as a personality and production line - not only did he finally drop his debut album proper, Barter 6, but we enjoyed a slew of leaks and mixtapes too. ‘Best Friend’ was the track that will stay with us longest: you only need to hear the canned MIDI string plucks to know what’s coming, and the result was piped through tinny iPhone speakers and busted club systems across the world. Thug is no longer the protege or the collaborator - he’s kicked his Wayne fetish, waved off Quan and Birdman, and Gucci’s still behind bars. Throw in the ad lib of the year (“bestie!”) and it’s clear that he’s riding in his own lane like never before.

Some might say twigs’ 2015 was smaller in comparison to last year, but that’s only because she had such an enormous breakthrough. Look at her M3LL155X EP and the short film that accompanied it and it’s clear Tahliah Barnett navigated the treacherous sophomore period with the same grace she brings to her dancing and her music. ‘In Time’ is the center of the project, and in its alternating moments of weight and weightlessness it shows her sinking into her music deeper than ever. If this was a quiet year, imagine what will happen when LP2 arrives.

On the surface, ‘Sorry’ is just another song about trying to patch things up with your ex, but on a meta level it’s difficult not to see it as Justin Bieber’s official apology for his recent behaviour. Bieber’s bad boy antics have never been anything more than dumb, though, and his way of apologising is exactly the goofy, day-glo statement you’d expect from a former child star who threw eggs at a neighbour’s house and urinated in a mop bucket: wilfully unrepentant, and done with a knowing wink. As far as apologies go, ‘Sorry’ is about as heartfelt as a bunch of petrol station flowers, but as a pop song, it’s near perfect.

His name is Big Mike, and he does what he wants. Not content with emerging from nowhere and ascending to the top of grime’s pile within two years, Stormzy turned a DIY freestyle filmed in a park and recorded on a video camera into a chart hit - and it might get even bigger after an off-the-cuff Christmas number one campaign. Tyson Fury is the world heavyweight boxing champion and Jamie Vardy is top of the league - if Stormzy gets a ‘Functions on the Low’ freestyle to number one then it’s truly the winter of the rowdy UK upstart.

What's so charming about the closer to Erykah Badu’s ‘Hotline Bling’-inspired mixtape isn’t just how razor-sharp it is for a project so apparently off-the-cuff and hastily dreamt up, it’s the too-rarely-heard sentiment running through Erykah and Andre’s symbiotic exchange: former lovers (perhaps rekindled?) who’ve grown past old bitterness and found a way to speak honestly to each other, as fellow humans first and foremost: “It’s important to me that you know you are free / ‘Cos I never want to make you change for me.” These two over-thinkers and over-embellishers really benefit from a stripping down.

Beatrice Dillon’s ‘Face A’ is so overwhelming that it sounds like three completely different tracks competing for your attention. There’s a saxophone line that sounds like it’s been sampled from a Blurt B-side, and a pulsating synth punctuated by chords that are half dub techno, half demented computer rave. When these distinct parts start to coalesce under Dillon’s rigid beat, though, it turns into one of the loosest, most irresistible grooves of the year. ‘Face A’ is a rare thing for 2015: an experimental club track that could be described as “deconstructed” but doesn’t forget to make you dance.

Houston’s Rabit wasn’t the only producer determined to shake off the grime tag in 2015, upscaling his ambitions to dizzying heights on the defiantly abstract Baptizm EP. ‘Straps’ is the bloody-mouthed warrior leading the charge against dancefloor conformity: shots are fired, glass is smashed, but this is violence rendered alluring; the gruesome beauty of a samurai sword slicing through air.

If you managed to get through 2015 without hearing Fetty Wap, you were probably in cryo-stasis or living off-grid somewhere and drinking filtered urine. New Jersey’s favorite son dominated the radio waves with ‘679’, ‘My Way’ and ‘Again’ and - shock horror - managed to follow up his near-flawless run of singles with an actually-pretty-good-album, all while 2014’s ‘Trap Queen’ got bigger by the week. ‘My Way’ is the highlight of his 2015 run, showcasing Fetty’s skilful post- Pluto street-pop and injecting just the right amount of melancholy to keep your finger hovering over repeat. Murlo’s version isn’t half bad either.

Kodak Black's introduction says it all: "This that summer jam, man...Y'all slide this shit 'til school start back." It's a reminder of the happiness a song of summer can bring, especially at an age when going back to school is anticipated with equal parts excitement and dread. We often forget that rap is a young man's game, and this 18-year-old South Floridian is here to remind us: In a year with several talkboxed G-funk homages (including YG’s excellent ‘Twist My Fingaz’), none were as joyful as ‘Ran Up A Check’.

AJ Tracey burst onto the grime scene like a fully-formed behemoth this year, blessed with that Kano knack of seeming like he could either beat you up ('Trapsuit') or steal your girl ('Wifey') depending on what mood he's in (ironically, Kano used this same beat on 'Garage Skank', but it's nowhere near as good.) 'Naila' is the crowning moment in a series of great songs released by AJ this year, and it's him in a nutshell: ominous, catchy, full of class one-liners ("Jump straight over connects like Frogger") and ultimately, all about the positivity: who else from West London would extend an arm to South with a Morley's shout-out?

Dawn Richard wastes no time on this year’s unbeatable Blackheart – its best moment hits early and hard. ‘Calypso’ rides a volcanic rush of drums and vocal processing, with the singer twisting her voice from pitched-up shouts to deep alien sighs. The difficult road to releasing the album is well documented, but ‘Calypso’ shows Dawn pulling her psyche together, exerting a focus and intensity that never lets up. When it finally hits a climax, producer Noisecastle III’s drums burst like a flooding dam, channeling an energy that’s been pent up for years. As Dawn sings when her voice takes human form again: ‘I’ve been waiting so long, been waiting for this feeling.” That’s the exact moment it becomes clear: we have too.

Like all Oneohtrix Point Never albums, there is much subtlety in Garden of Delete, Daniel Lopatin's fever dream tribute to the anxieties of puberty. ‘Sticky Drama’ is not one of those moments. From the blunt title to its orgasmic chorus, OPN approaches the chaotic mess of emotions that come with sexual discovery by layering death metal growls, a fluttering, PC Music-inflected vocal hook and his most mutated rhythms yet. It’s the most pleasurably grotesque and grotesquely pleasurable listening experience of the year. Yet for all its body horror vibes, ‘Sticky Drama’ likely earned him more new fans than any previous single. G.o.D. may be obsessed with coming-of-age, but Lopatin has never sounded more mature as an artist – ‘Sticky Drama’ is the album’s raw, beating heart.

In a year where the menacingly sweet ‘Lemonade’ seduced the masses via McDonald’s ads, SOPHIE and PC Music were riding a popularity rollercoaster that could easily have destroyed them. But put the sugar water aside for a second and remember that this music was never really about irony or satire; SOPHIE’s talent has always been his ability to bounce between humanity and plasticity with the same fluidity as his slippery sound design. There’s humor, but don’t think he’s not serious. Yet he closed this year’s PRODUCT, and essentially the first chapter of his career, with the featherlight perfection of ‘Like We Never Said Goodbye’, his most sincere and heartfelt moment yet.

SOPHIE has always been prone to being described in sugary metaphors - love songs that sting like sweet tarts and bend like taffy – but this is different. In its head-over-heels romantic freefall, all weightlessness and fragile vulnerability, this isn’t candy - it’s as elegant and special as l'oeufs a la neige. Over that trance sparkle, we hear the singer grow from shy and stumbling to courageous, climaxing in a raining cascade: “It makes me feel, makes me feel, makes me feel”. Listening to ‘Like We Never Said Goodbye’, it’s like SOPHIE’s only just saying hello.

Tate Kobang was eight years old when Tim Trees' 'Bank Roll' was a Baltimore rap hit. 15 years later, Kobang repurposed the beat - by Baltimore club legend Rod Lee - for a new generation of the city's rap fans. Originally released as a freestyle on the day that Freddie Gray succumbed to injuries inflicted in the back of a police van, 'Bank Rolls' became an anthem during protests, riots and recovery. It's difficult to listen to 'Bank Rolls' and not think about Baltimore's tumultuous 2015, but the song is timeless. It's about a place where playing in alleys means duckin' dirty needles, where youthful innocence is an early casualty. It's about all our Baltimores: cities whose spirits are irrepressible, no matter what they have to endure.

Everything's ticking over reliably for the first two minutes of ‘On Repeat’, a Bristol bruiser with a dodgy lean on it, which heaves in fits and starts like the best of the city’s fragmented percussion machines. Kowton’s got other ideas, though: the lift-off comes as he applies swelling banks of angelic chords to the action, starting a gentle ascension to a moment of quivering torque – a rush worthy of 2015’s trance revival, even if its heart is more likely in the techno-utopian dreams of 90s Detroit.

Originally released at the end of 2014 but given a full single release (and excellent video) this year, ‘Choices’ is the Bay Area legend’s best single since the genre-defining ‘Tell Me When To Go’. It’s simple, too: just E-40 rattling off a load of questions and answering yes or no - but aren’t the best tracks so often a simple concept done perfectly well? ‘Choices (Yup)’ succeeds because Earl Stevens has been there, done that and never dips into parody. Like his range of fine Californian wines, ‘Choices’ is only going to improve with age.

“It’s beautiful when you can hear someone stepped up and spilled their guts all over a piece of music,” Aaron ‘Fit’ Siegel said earlier this year, and ‘Carmine’ is as emotionally exposed as techno gets. Few tracks convey this level of universal emotion, with a weightless 303 line, dusky chords and heartfelt keys that are enough to make you feel like the dancefloor’s being bathed in moonlight. Siegel might be better known in Detroit as a label owner and distribution manager, but expect that to change: ‘Carmine’ is one to file under “eternal 5am classics” like Pépé Bradock’s ‘Deep Burnt’ and Andrés’ ‘New 4 U’.

The year is 2014, and the Samsung whistle alert is the worst sound in the modern world. More irritating than power drills, more grating than nails on a blackboard, more terrifying than sirens. Once a day, you witness someone - on the bus, or the train perhaps - use it for their text alert, and you wonder: why? What happened in this person's life to make them so shit-eating smug that they think this, the Samsung whistle alert, is an appropriate sound to project into the world multiple times daily? Even worse, what if they're unaware of how irritating it is, their senses dulled to the point where they're simply immune to its evils? How did it come to this? And when will it stop?

The year is 2015, and everything's okay because Busy Signal just turned that sound into the funnest song.

How can we pick just one Future song in 2015? The year's most important and influential rapper (sit down, Drake) fed the streets all year long, but it's this 56 Nights standout that's head-and-shoulders above the rest: Future paints pictures with codeine, touching on everything from police brutality to drug-fueled affairs to living lavish over a beat that swirls like the DS2 cover. "Future Hendrix, Dirty Sprite, legendary" - we agree.

People fawned over that video of Four Tet's Eric Prydz remix at DC10, but the year's true Ibiza anthem came from West Wales - even if the White Isle hasn't quite caught on yet. 'Just a Lil' took a Chaka Khan sample, a simple drum loop and bassline and stretched it all out for five minutes – with a fade-in intro, because why not? In both sound and spirit, it's this decade's 'Together'.

To Pimp A Butterfly might not have any 'Swimming Pools'-sized singles, but it has it's fair share of memorable standalones, including a song that has been described - without hyperbole - as America's new black national anthem. It's also Pharrell's best contribution to music in some time (with none of the smarminess of 'Freedom'), and "We gon' be alright" is the message of hope that America - and the world - needed in 2015.

As good as Kelela’s debut mixtape Cut 4 Me was, it was missing something crucial. She had the songs and the production, but there was a nagging feeling that the spark needed to transform good to great was a flicker away. Thankfully, this year’s Hallucinogen EP burns so bright it should come with a safety warning.

‘All The Way Down’ wasn’t the EP’s lead single (that was the almost-as-good ‘Rewind’), but it is pretty much perfect - what would you possibly change about it? Kelela’s voice sounds better than ever: her lyrics tumble through the expertly sculpted pin-prick beats and lazer-sharp synths so flawlessly you wonder how they ever survived without each other. Cut 4 Me might have been the birth of a star, but ‘All The Way Down’ is the sound of that star eclipsing the competition.

First things first: 2015 wasn't the year that Justin Bieber went from naff child star to legit R&B vocalist. That already happened. If 2012's Believe, which featured the likes of Darkchild, Hit-Boy and Max Martin (as well as the first collaborations between Bieber and Diplo, one half of Jack Ü) didn't cement his status as a credible artist, then 2013's Journals certainly did. It's taken some people a while to catch up to it - or at least to admit it - but Bieber right now occupies a similar role to Justin Timberlake in 2004 (even if this year's Purpose album isn't a patch on Journals, let alone Justified). In other words, Biebs is legit. Get over it.

Now that's out the way, this is why 'Where Are Ü Now' was the best track of 2015: it united everybody. What was the last dance track to go Billboard Top 10 and become an anthem at a counterculture night like Evian Christ's Trance Party? To be played on Rinse FM by an artist as weird as Lorenzo Senni a month after winning an MTV EMA? To be as loved by Rolling Stone as, we dunno, Jacques Greene? 'Where Are Ü Now' is as big an anthem in 100-capacity East London clubs as it is in stadiums full of squealing Beliebers - and it's achieved this status in less than a year. For perspective, it took Toto three decades for 'Africa' to seem hip.

Of course, for a track that's so openly about Ü, it also marks Justin Bieber's personal redemption song. 2015 saw one of the most hated pop stars on the planet show his vulnerable side and become a good guy again, and although 'Sorry' was his official apology, 'Where Are Ü Now' was the song where he really meant it. Its most talked about moment might be the "dolphin" - that pitched-up and processed vocal sample which doubles as the song's hook - but it's also Bieber's most memorable, and human, vocal performance to date.

We're constantly told by over-earnest music writers that songs "matter", are "important", are "vital", are "necessary", and although it's true that music can be these things, individual songs aren't. It's what surrounds songs - the people, the scenes, the spaces, the memories - that makes music a life-saver: put frankly, there's not a single song that the world couldn't live without. 'Where Are Ü Now' wasn't 2015's most important song by any stretch of the imagination, but it was comfortably its best.

Photo credits:

Jlin - Wills Glasspiegel
Stormzy - Maxwell Schiano
Future - courtesy Freebandz