Best Songs in 2015

I think it will come as a surprise to nobody that I like writing things down and making statistics at the ends of periods - ends of relationships, closing points, arbitrary markers.
End of year is always good for such statistics;
gives  perspective and data to mine,
allows for answering questions that wouldn't even be asked without it.

This year I chose not to participate in Gorilina Godišnja Glazbena Gozba (Gorilla's Annual Music Feast) even though I signed for it. It just did not feel right after making my list and reading it twice.
So I've cut it down to 10 of my favorite and most listened to songs (listed alphabetically and links will take you to youtube/soundcloud sources so you can hear them too):

Disclosure- Magnets

This song excites my inner hunter. As an experience connosieur I love when lyrics make my eyes glaze over with recollection.

EL VY - Need A Friend

EL VY - I expected no less from Knopf but Berninger senior has raked some more pluses in my book with this project after Mistaken For Strangers (see why in my review here). Even though there is no second-rate song on the album Need a Friend took lead as my favorite.

Kuku$ - Pusti Me Na Miru

This is - by far! - the song that taught me the most this year. There are things I had to google to learn in each sentence. Also, even though I'm more of oxytocin than lean junkie this is the song that spoke to my mood most.

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Downtown 

Intelligent, hymnic, awesomely produced and also one of the songs that can teach you how great a service Genius lyrics are.

San Fermin - Emily

 I already wrote about Emily this year. And after I wrote about it I listened to it gazzilion times more. Ellis Ludwig-Leone is a god and Allen Tate his just voice.

 Seers - Quit Me

One more song I wrote about this year, in my "On Relationships" series. There's no way of knowing how many times I listened to it (171 times only on my last.fm and it could be 10 times as much unscrobbled) but just like hearing it for the first time it still produces complete meltdown in my mind with its first chords. Even now, listening to it while writing this, I can feel my heart skipping a beat, making room for that desperate sigh.

the weeknd - Can't Feel My Face

Intoxicating earworm. That is how you drown in addiction - voluntarily and joyed up out of your mind.

Vlasta Popić - Ako Nisam Dobra 

 Sheer energy that went into this is stupefying. Drum and bass line out of this world.

Years And Years - Shine

Seems positive and uplifting by tune but follows the same pattern as the rest of the songs on this list. Grey areas are not grey while happening, only in retrospect. While happening it truly is black and light collage.

Zeke Duhon - Gravity (Time to Run)

Great velvety voice, sense of humor, lurking mischeif.

Seers - Quit Me

When in relationship I'm not much of a:
"What are we going to do today, dear?"
or
"But I've got nothing to wear!!" person.
In that regard, I'm more like my cat:

If I like you
I'll let you share my space
I'll let you do your stuff
and will go about doing mine
and then, once in a while (and sometimes in lots and lots of quite short whiles), I'll come to see how you are doing and show how am I
thus creating an opportunity for us to play.

Playing is good. I like to play.

All things considered this could qualify as quite unobtrusive relationship style
but, considering small quantity of mind readers among us,
it can also be interpreted as uninvolved
and so it often is.

Seers promo picture from Soundcloud.

About a month ago
I stumbled upon a wonderful song - Quit Me by Seers - while browsing my favorite music portal Stereofox "wares"
and I fell paralyzed by its beauty.
I played it a hundred times, immediately, on the spot,
and then I went and searched the interwebs for more detail;
I found Seers soundcloud page
but lyrics were nowhere to be found (!).
So I used Seers Facebook page reference to contact the band and ask them kindly for lyrics
since I'm a stickler for checking out if I hear them correctly
and they were so kind to provide me with them.

I intended to write about the song here but the song is so awesome
and so intimately visual
I just could not choose the words to describe this vast emotion storm it causes inside me.

Until now.

Let me usher you in.

The lights are low,
the static air, the sudden silence
tones that say it all,
a tendency to slow your breathing
before you take it in
and no-one knows 'cos no-one's noticed
but i notice it all

I love how this song is smartly designed. I love gentle, reverberating strings before it begins, exposing the setting. I love the sound of inhaling with "before you take it in" and the slight sadness in the vocal while saying "I notice it all" - like a butterfly taking off from a flower and then flying over a wonderful, terrifying yet beautiful, chasm that opens with this sudden revelation.

and when you're sleeping
i see this honesty
it says you'll quit me
says you'll go one day
and yet this feeling:
the sweet uncertainty
it's got this beauty

I love how this realization - "You'll quit me" - is spread out before us; the gradual recognition of the signs of relationship end and also recognition of uncertainty of that situation; one that does not always consist only of temporal uncertainty but frequently is also ingrained with knowledge that by changing the circumstance we change the outcomes. And that also comes with a price.

the music ends
and with it went a stolen moment
scent that lingers on,
intoxicates so unfamiliar
suddenly sparks it off
and they all know 'cos they're all watching
us dance into the smoke

I love how this part melds together the personal (private, let's say) and inescapable environmental
(public, social) and mimics the muddled picture we get while lurking into somebody's private life. It is so easy to pass judgement on somebody else's life since to all not directly involved relationship dissolutions are just scenes, like from a movie, with fake smoke and invisible = unexisting parts.

yeah when you're sleeping,
your body's honesty
it says you'll quit me
says you'll go one day
and yet this feeling
the sweet uncertainty
it's got this beauty

I love how in this last part they sing first the first chorus, the one with "i see this honesty" and then the second one: "your body's honesty" so it will not be unsaid, unacknowledged (!), where this realization comes from. And although sleeping body might seem an unreliable witness it is easy to see that this picture is just a beautiful, poetic synecdoche of a totality of quitting partner's behavior.



Sometimes we realize following a relationship that the other party has just slept right through it.