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Welcome to the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week, we do a deep dive into a year in Pop music and culture and count down the top 10 hits according to our exclusive recap of the weekly charts published at the time in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag. This week on Chartcrush, we’re counting down 2015, the year the music biz got out in front of the organic, viral social media chaos that’d been wreaking havoc with their release and promotion schedules for years.

“There are few real surprises in music anymore,” said Billboard‘s Editor-in-Chief Tony Gervino introducing the 2015 Year in Music issue. Which had fans who were used to a steady stream of leftfield hits making the top 10 purely from clicks, views and shares scratching their collective heads.

But Billboard‘s readers, industry insiders, knew what he meant. The odds of another Macklemore or Lorde or “Harlem Shake” topping the charts without passing through their gates or at least being on their radar? Remote at best.

Of course, there were viral hits after 2015, lots of ’em, but nearly all orchestrated and/or magnified by net-savvy labels now with state-of-the-art monitoring and analytics tools, strategic influencer marketing programs and partnerships with streaming platforms: a far cry from 2007, when Universal Music CEO Doug Morris compared the music biz trying to solve online piracy to a dog owner trying to do surgery on his pup.

At the center of everything in 2015: the playlist. “In the brave new world of streaming, finding music to listen to is rarely a problem,” wrote Billboard‘s Robert Levine, “but sifting through it certainly is.” So the streaming playlist revolutionized music discovery for really the first time since Top40 radio.

Celebrity you admire? Magazine or blog you read? Dad who’s into music? President Obama? They all got playlists. None of the above? Well, try one made by an algorithm on Spotify, Pandora, Amazon and 2015 newcomers Apple Music and Jay-Z’s Tidal. All the streaming platforms scrambling to strike the right balance between humans and tech for on-point playlists.

And let’s not forget YouTube, with more video plays than any streaming platform had listens. Parent company Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, a big advocate for those purely algorithm-created playlists. More democratic and empowering for fans than the teams of tastemakers and genre experts in charge on all the audio platforms, he argued. Which was probably easier to believe before middle schoolers started turning in science projects proving the bias in Google’s search results.

But whatever, besides generating buzz on social media, labels in 2015: throwing big money at playlists in hopes of putting the internet genie back in the bottle and stopping all the fan-driven mayhem on the charts. In August, a piece on the blog site Medium wondered “Are There Any Rules When It Comes to Playlists?” and Billboard was even more blunt, calling out playlist curators and streaming platforms for “playola,” a riff on “payola,” labels and promoters paying DJs for airplay. Congress had to step in in the early ’60s to stop that, but the feds’ jurisdiction over FCC-licensed terrestrial radio didn’t apply on the internet, so nothing Uncle Sam could do.

Billboard actually was okay with that: “Playlists shaped by data, influenced by promoters and ultimately determined by tastemakers,” Billboard opined, “sounds a lot like good old radio.” But looking back in hindsight, the brief window in the early ’10s when fans’ clicks, taps, listens and shares alone were picking the hits: that was closing. With streaming about to eclipse ownable media and reverse the industry’s 16-year revenue nosedive from music piracy though, no one seemed to notice, or care!

#10 Shawn Mendes – Stitches

At #10 as we kick things off here on our 2015 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, a great example of a label, in this case Island Records, leveraging an act’s traction on a social platform, in this case the pre-TikTok user-generated video app Vine, to get him positioned on curated playlists and catapult him from #24 (his first hit, “Life of the Party” in 2014) to #4 with this, his breakthrough in 2015. It’s Shawn Mendes’ “Stitches.”

Shawn Mendes taught himself guitar at 13 watching YouTube tutorials at home in his Toronto suburb and within a year had millions of followers on Vine for his six-second video clips singing current Pop hits.

His first single and EP on Island Records charted, and in the Spring of ’15 he had enough built-up buzz for his first full-length album Handwritten to debut at #1. “Stitches” was a limited time “pre-order exclusive” on iTunes. Pre-order the album; download the single early! And in the Summer in the middle of its long 29-week climb to #4, he was on tour opening for Taylor Swift!

“Stitches” stayed on the chart 52 weeks, all the way to June of ’16. Longer chart runs, a feature of the emergent streaming era where songs get chart juice every time they’re played, not just at purchase. But because its run was split between chart years, it’s not in the top 10 on any Billboard year-end Hot100. They’ve got it at #36 for 2015 and #23 for 2016. But at Chartcrush we count every song’s full chart run, and then we rank it in whichever calendar year it earned the most ranking points, which makes it our #10 song of 2015.

#9 Silentó – Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)

Next up, another Teen whose long chart run (51 weeks) was split between ’15 and ’16, but here, enough of it was before Billboard‘s November 28 cut-off for the chart year to make it their #8 song of 2015. We’ve got it at #9.

But unlike Shawn Mendes, he made the charts before getting signed purely from posting the song on SoundCloud and Instagram, signing up on the web with the DIY distribution network TuneCore, who tapped a dance-oriented YouTube channel that made the song available for user vids, many of which broke the million view mark, and that alone put him on the charts.

But once Capitol Records snapped him up in March, the song was unstoppable, cracking the top 10 in July and staying 18 weeks. By the end of the year, the official video Capitol paid for had nearly a half a billion views and he was on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in Times Square. At #9, some say it was the biggest dance craze since “The Macarena,” it’s Silentó’s “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae).”

Silentó, “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae),” #9 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 2015, with 18 weeks in the top 10 peaking at #3 in July, the biggest in a wave of hits by unknown Indie Rappers who started viral dance trends in ’15: T. Wayne’s “Nasty Freestyle,” first to crack the top 10, #9 in May; then Silentó; then iLoveMemphis’s “Hit the Quan,” #15 in October.

Other unknown Rappers went viral too in ’14 and ’15 and got Trap on the charts, the sound that dominated Hip-Hop for the rest of the ’10s. We’ll be hearing the biggest of those a little later. Silentó was a true one-hit wonder. “Watch Me,” his only hit, and in 2021 he was arrested and jailed in Georgia for shooting and killing his cousin.

#8 Weeknd – Can’t Feel My Face

So the death of Michael Jackson in 2009 finally reverberated in a big way on the charts in 2015. Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars, of course, influenced by the late King of Pop, but our song at #8: a deliberate nod to Jackson’s sound, by an act shrouded in mystery whose stuff up ’til then had been a compellingly dark and hazy but so far uncommercial patchwork of styles that critics dubbed “PBR&B:” moody R&B for Pabst Blue Ribbon drinking Hipsters.

His debut single “Wicked Games” had only gotten to #53 in 2012, and neither of his next two charting singles had done any better. But in 2014 he teamed up with Swedish Producer Max Martin and made his move. Martin, 17 #1’s on his resume and fresh from co-producing and co-writing most of Taylor Swift’s album, 1989, which added three more before all was said and done.

A duet with Ariana Grande was first, “Love Me Harder” in November of ’14, both acts’ first top 10. Then his song “Earned It” from the film Fifty Shades of Grey (not produced by Martin) got to #3: his first top 10 as lead artist. And then this was #6 its third week on its way to #1, totally different from anything he’d ever done before. At #8, the big breakthrough that transformed The Weeknd from online cult figure to a bona fide Pop star, “Can’t Feel My Face.”

“Can’t Feel My Face” at #8 here on our Chartcrush Countdown of 2015’s top 10 hits, The Weeknd, spelled W-E-E-K-N-D, missing that third “E” because there was already an act called The Weekend, but folks first seeing it in print didn’t know if it was “Weekend” or “Weakend.”

Abel Tesfaye first used the name for his short-lived Duo with Toronto Producer Jeremy Rose in 2010 and kept using it after they parted ways. After he got traction with his first mixtape House of Balloons in 2011, the Rapper Drake, also from Toronto, championed The Weeknd on his socials and tried to sign him to his OVO Sound label, but Tesfaye held out. Instead he released all three of his highly acclaimed mixtapes on his own indie label, XO, and in 2012 signed a distribution and repackaging deal with Universal Music Group’s Republic Records, keeping total creative control over his output.

Those first three albums, House of Balloons, Thursday, and Echoes of Silence: free downloads off The Weeknd’s website when they were independently released in 2011. No sample clearance or other hassles since no money was changing hands, hence “mixtapes,” not proper albums. But different story when Republic released its remixed remastered version as Trilogy in 2012.

#7 Taylor Swift – Blank Space

So The Weeknd, Ariana Grande and Shawn Mendes, three acts whose big chart breakthroughs and enduring success going forward made 2015 a pivot year for Pop. Post Malone, another, whose first #1 was still a ways off, but his Hot100 debut “White Iverson” was in ’15. Halsey and Alessia Cara, two others who first appeared on the radar in 2015. And of course, Trap. More on that coming up.

But at #7, a breakthrough that’s right up there with The Weeknd’s, even bigger if you’re just looking at units and dollars. And both have two songs in our countdown. Kinda hard to call 2015 her breakthrough year since she’d already notched a head-turning 69 chart hits going all the way back to 2006, including 14 top 10s.

But her roots in Country music had taken her as far as they were going to, so in ’14 and ’15, she moved from Nashville to New York and rebooted her career, planting both feet in Pop with her 2014 album I mentioned earlier, mostly co-written and co-produced with Max Martin. The second of the three #1’s from the album titled after the year she was born, 1989, #1 for seven weeks ’14 into ’15, it’s Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space.”

Taylor Swift’s first pure Pop album 1989, #1 on the album chart for 11 weeks, one more than her 2008 Country-Pop set Fearless that first put her on the map, and Billboard‘s #1 album of 2015.

Taylor was also Billboard‘s Artist of the Year for singles and albums combined despite losing Hot100 Singles Artist to The Weeknd. And she had 2015’s top grossing tour: 71 dates, $217 million, notable for a current chart act in an era when Boomer legends were still the kings of the road. U2, The Stones, Fleetwood Mac and Billy Joel, also among 2015’s top ten tours.

And incredibly, Swift accomplished all those things without the biggest streaming platform. In late ’14, she yanked her entire catalog from Spotify for three years over low royalty rates. “Blank Space,” on top seven weeks, November ’14 to January ’15 and the second of the three #1’s from her album 1989. “Bad Blood,” the third in June and July, notches in at #25 on our ranking and the first, still to come here on our 2015 edition of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show.

#6 Ed Sheeran – Thinking Out Loud

So I mentioned earlier that Shawn Mendes was Taylor Swift’s opening act on her 1989 tour. Well, our act at #6 was the opener her previous tour for her album Red in 2013 and even co-wrote and sang on one of the hits from the album, “Everything Has Changed.”

He’d already conquered the charts in his native U.K. when his first of several albums titled with just a mathematical symbol, + debuted at #1 and produced four U.K. top 10s, only one of which, “The A Team,” had cracked the top 20 in the U.S. But a month after the tour with Taylor, he sold out New York’s Madison Square Garden for three nights as the headliner, and six months later in the Summer of ’14 when his second album × dropped, he was as big in the U.S. as back home.

At #6, its third single, #2 for eight straight weeks, January to March, and the longest chart run of any 2015 song, with 58 weeks. It’s Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud.”

So why, you ask, was “Thinking Out Loud” #2 for eight straight weeks? Did you catch that right before the song? Well, because our #1 song of 2015, coming up here in a bit, locked down the top spot for 14 straight weeks, so Sheeran had to wait another two years for his first American #1, “Shape of You” in 2017, off his next mathematically-titled album, ÷. But by the end of 2015, × was certified Double Platinum and had produced three top 10s. Not bad.

#5 Taylor Swift – Shake It Off

And speaking of songs that were #2 for eight weeks, we’ve got another one at #5 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 2015. It debuted at #1, stayed on top another week, but then got nudged to #2 by Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” only to reclaim the #1 spot for another two weeks in November, after eight weeks. By the way, the longest gap like that in chart history, nine weeks in 2013 when Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball” got nudged to #2 by Lorde’s “Royals,” then got back to #1 for a week. Poor Ed Sheeran had eight weeks at #2 and never got to #1.

We heard the second of the three #1’s from her album 1989 at #7, “Blank Space.” At #5, the first and biggest hit off the album. Again, Taylor Swift, with “Shake It Off.”

In 2014, the “Year of the Booty,” the video for “Shake It Off” had Taylor crawling bemusedly through a tunnel of other girls’ twerking butts, which Stereogum’s Tom Breihan said “led to plenty of hand-wringing thinkpieces about Whiteness and appropriation.” Taylor, though, untouched by all that somehow, unlike other 2014 stars (Iggy Azalea, ahem).

“Shake it Off” was immediately followed at #1 by “Blank Space,” the first time an act replaced itself at #1 since The Black Eyed Peas’ in 2009.

Like Shawn Mendes’ “Stitches” we heard back at #10, “Shake It Off’s” chart run began in 2014 and ended deep into ’15, so Billboard has it at #13 for 2014 and #18 for 2015; not in the top 10 either year. But when you add up its full run, as we do for every song in our Chartcrush rankings, it’s #5. And since it earned more of its ranking points for its 32 weeks slowly descending the chart in calendar 2015, it’s a 2015 song, even though all its ten weeks at numbers 1 or 2 were in the Fall of 2014.

#4 Fetty Wap – Trap Queen

So that’s ironic. Wanna hear something else that’s ironic? Despite all the aforementioned critical handwringing about cultural appropriation in 2014, the “Year of the Booty,” early 2015, President Obama’s seventh year as President, was the Whitest ten weeks in the top ten since 1982 right before Michael Jackson’s Thriller came out.

December 6, 2014 to February 14, 2015, not one Black artist in the top 10. Rihanna’s “FourFiveSeconds” broke that streak at the end of February, then The Weeknd’s “Earned It,” but at the end of March, an unknown Black New Jersey Rapper’s viral year-old Soundcloud track made the top 10, with some help from the Atlantic Records imprint that signed him in November of ’14, and led an epic comeback for straight-up Hip-Hop on the charts.

Once it made the top ten, it stayed ’til September, 25 weeks, and on the chart ’til January of 2016 as his next five singles came and went along with a whole bunch of other viral Rap hits. At #4, Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen.”

Fetty Wap’s girl cooks and deals drugs out of their trap house. She’s his “Trap Queen,” #4 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 2015. It doesn’t check all the boxes of the dark, ominous, moody Trap sound that dominated Hip-Hop in the late ’10s. Closer to the mark in 2015 would be things like: O.T. Genasis’ “Coco,” Future’s “Commas” and Travis Scott’s “Antidote.” But it has the word in the title, which counts for a lot when we’re talking about mainstream pop culture trends.

The wave of viral Hip-Hop Dance vids led by Silentó and other Trap or Trap-adjacent hits in the Spring and Summer culminated with the release of the blockbuster N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton in August. Hip-Hop was back, yo. And bigger than ever!

#3 Weeknd – The Hills

So recall that Taylor Swift replaced herself at #1 in late 2014? First act since The Black Eyed Peas? Well it didn’t last long. Less than a year later in October of ’15, another act did it. And the week before, he equaled another Black Eyed Peas feat from ’09 by locking down the #1 and 2 spots the same week. Taylor didn’t manage that!

At #3, the second of the two #1s, and it’s hard to imagine two songs from the same artist in the same year sounding more different. “Can’t Feel My Face” we heard at #8, a Max Martin-juiced homage to Michael Jackson; this, a return to the woozy sound from his mixtapes that made him an internet cult sensation.

Given that and the song’s abundant profanity, it’s the unlikeliest of smash Pop hits, but it was #1 for six weeks, even bigger than the song it replaced, “Can’t Feel My Face,” and that changed Pop for the rest of the decade and beyond. At #3, again The Weeknd: the heavily censored Radio Edit of “The Hills.”

The hit that heralded a darker, more ominous vibe in Pop in the late ’10s: The Weeknd’s “The Hills” at #3 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 2015’s top 10 hits. It was #1 twice as long as “Can’t Feel My Face” at the same time Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. The Weeknd’s fellow Torontan and mentor-collaborator Aubrey Graham, a.k.a. Drake, was eagerly anticipating his song “Hotline Bling,” becoming his first #1 as a lead artist with its meme-bait video and dance. But “The Hills” kept it at #2 its last three weeks at #1.

By the way, fun fact: fans have sleuthed out that the scream right before the bass drop in “The Hills” is Laura Palmer from the series finale of Director David Lynch’s surreal early ’90s TV phenomenon Twin Peaks. Tesfaye, a big Lynch fan, so he added it after a leaked phone recording of a work-in-progress version of “The Hills” he played at a party went viral on Soundcloud. A partygoer screamed at just the right moment, and he wanted that on the record!

#2 Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth – See You Again

So I’ve mentioned a few 2015 movies in the show so far. Straight Outta Compton was boxofficemojo’s 19th top grossing film of the year in the U.S. Fifty Shades of Grey, #17. But #5 was the seventh film in the Fast & Furious franchise, Furious 7. The sudden death of the lead actor, Paul Walker, had sent shock waves through the pop culture, and since his untimely demise, in a car crash of all things, came the middle of filming, the movie had to be completely revamped around the existing footage.

But revamped it was, with an emotional send-off for Walker and his character at the end. Our #2 song soundtracked that scene, but 12 weeks at #1 made it a new all-purpose grieving anthem. It’s Rapper Wiz Khalifa featuring chart newcomer Charlie Puth on the chorus, which he also wrote: “See You Again.”

Wiz Khalifa had scored an out-of-the-blue #1 in 2010 with his first charting single, the Pittsburgh anthem “Black and Yellow,” and a #6 in 2011 with his ode to all-night partying, “No Sleep,” but all his top 10’s since had been features on other acts’ records.

Still, his name ID far surpassed just-signed American Singer-Songwriter Charlie Puth, so he was lead artist even though Puth’s chorus had been the song’s genesis, submitted in answer to Universal’s call for a Ballad to soundtrack that final Furious 7 scene.

Chris Brown, Sam Smith and Jason Derulo all recorded versions, and reportedly Adele was even interested, but Puth’s original vocal stayed.

After Furious 7 hit theaters April 3, downloads and streams launched the song from #84 to #10 in a single week and radio took it from there, including a Charlie Puth-only version on Rap-averse Adult Contemporary stations. In all, enough to bump the #1 song in our 2015 Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown to #2 for three weeks after its 14-week run on top.

#1 Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk!

That one, also Billboard‘s #1 for the year. In fact, Billboard named it the biggest hit of the ’10s decade at the end of 2019: the first-ever year-end #1 that’s not sung by its lead artist. The Singer is the featured artist, and also co-wrote, co-produced and played the drums.

Unlike Charlie Puth, though, he was already huge, with five #1s back to 2010 under his belt and headlining the 2014 Super Bowl halftime show. And the lead artist was a 39-year-old British DJ/Producer virtually unknown in the U.S. outside the music biz. But he was the visionary and driving force behind the track, and it was on his album, so there ya go!

Slate‘s resident Chart Geek Chris Molanphy devoted a whole column to Billboard‘s July 25, 2015 chart, on which 29 of the 100 songs had featured artists. At #1, Mark Ronson featuring Superstar Bruno Mars: “Uptown Funk!”

“Uptown Funk!” #1 on our 2015 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars: a song pop culture site Vulture called “so scientifically joy-inducing” that not enjoying it should be considered a symptom of depression.

Ronson’s next chart entry wasn’t ’til 2019 and got to #2 in the U.K. but only #43 in the U.S., “Nothing Breaks like a Heart” featuring Miley Cyrus. But Bruno Mars, of course, continued to score big hits, and Ronson and “Uptown Funk” altered his trajectory. One reviewer called his 2016 studio album 24K Magic “a full-length sequel.” And then his next project in 2021, Silk Sonic with Rapper Anderson .Paak was a full-blown vintage Funk/Soul Nostalgia trip.

Bonus

OK, so that’s our top 10, but as I pointed out when we heard them earlier, three of our top 10 songs were not in the top 10 on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 because of how they split songs’ chart runs that go from one year into the next.

Shawn Mendes’ “Stitches,” The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face” and Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” all songs whose chart runs were split between different years in Billboard. Again, at Chartcrush with the benefit of hindsight, we factor every song’s full run, which means that three hits that were in Billboard‘s top 10 got bumped out of ours. So to be thorough, let’s take a look at those.

#19 Weeknd – Earned It (Fifty Shades of Grey)

At #9, Billboard had the Weeknd’s soundtrack cut from Fifty Shades of Grey that spent 18 weeks bouncing around the top 10 from March to July priming music fans for the one-two punch of “Can’t Feel My Face” and “The Hills” in the second half of the year, “Earned It.”

“Earned It,” Billboard‘s #9 song of 2015; #19 on our Chartcrush ranking; The Weeknd’s first top 10 as a lead artist. There was a second top 10 from Fifty Shades: Ellie Goulding’s “Love Me like You Do.” Both songs peaked at #3 just two weeks apart in the Spring.

#13 WALK THE MOON – Shut Up + Dance

Billboard‘s #6 song as we look at the songs from their 2015 year-end top 10 not in our Chartcrush Top Ten we counted down this hour: the year’s top Rock song: #1 for a whopping 27 weeks on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, and peaking at #4 for five weeks on the Hot100.

Recall that Shawn Mendes’ “Stitches” and Silentó’s “Watch Me” took 21 and 18 weeks, respectively, to reach their chart peaks. This took 27! Cincinnati, Ohio’s WALK THE MOON, with “Shut Up + Dance.”

With its 53 weeks on the Hot100 and 18 in the top 10, one-hit wonder WALK THE MOON’s “Shut Up + Dance” notches in at #13 on our Chartcrush 2015 ranking.

#12 Maroon 5 – Sugar

And finally, Billboard‘s #5 song of 2015 was the eleventh top ten hit for veterans Maroon 5, which succeeded Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” at #2 the last four weeks “Uptown Funk” was #1, “Sugar.”

Maroon 5 Front Man Adam Levine, in his eighth season as a Coach on NBC’s singing competition show The Voice while “Sugar” was on the charts: Billboard‘s #5 song of 2015; #12 on our Chartcrush ranking we counted down the top 10 from earlier.

And that’s a wrap for our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show for 2015. I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi. Hey, if you like what you heard, head over to our website, chartcrush.com for a full transcript of today’s show and a link to stream the podcast version, plus on fleek extras like our full top 100 chart and interactive line graph of the Billboard chart runs for the top ten hits. We do that for every year, 1940s to now, and it’s all on the website. Again, that’s chartcrush.com. Thanks for listening and tune in again next week, same station, same time, for another year and another edition of Chartcrush.

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