In the thick of this stuffy, sweaty summer, I am called back to a better time. The year the roof of my mouth went numb from eating too many of the Love Hearts in my GirlTalk magazine subscription, and I wiled away my days playing MovieStarPlanet and plugging my Beats into a 24-hour nightcore loop of ‘The Hanging Tree’. I hope you’ll join me at my altar of Babylips and Smiggle and those sequinned emoji t-shirts you could flick back and forth, while I regale you with the glory of 2015, and the music that made it so great.

Nostalgia-bait aside, it was a great year to be a tween. Being 10, I had better things to spend my money on than Spotify (see: EOS balms), so all music came to me in prettily-packaged CD form. If I didn’t hear it on Fun Kids radio, then it was as part of a whole album, where track and single merged together in beautiful, homogenous sound. The year’s defining release for me was Melanie Martinez’ Crybaby, a concept album that, in retrospect, was a little on the nose – ‘“Mom, please wake up / Dad’s with a slut / And your son is ­smoking cannabis”’ is about as contrarian as a John Green novel. Still, Martinez makes up for her lack of subtletly with aesthetic vision, sugar-sweet vocals, and catchy beats. It’s certainly not the most well-rounded of albums, and Martinez’ persona Crybaby sours a little in her perpetual victimhood. That said, individual songs like ‘Sippy Cup’, ‘Training Wheels’, and ‘Pacify Her’ are undeniably addictive – ‘Play Date’ even had a moment recently on TikTok. To listen to Crybaby is to return to the early, angsty days of tweenhood, when being ‘edgy’ meant playing Life is Strange and doomscrolling on Tumblr.

“That kind of bubbly HBO Girls authenticity that’s become so rare in recent pop”

Getting serious, if there’s one voice that can catapult anyone back to 2015, it’s Megan Trainor, and, for me, Title encapsulates the year’s sound. It’s undeniable that ‘All About That Bass’, ‘Lips are Moving’, and ‘Dear Future Husband’ were cornerstones of 2010s pop, and putting aside the ‘not like other girls’ persona I once so diligently curated … I have to admit they’re bangers. Actually, not just them, the whole album. Title is full of songs that really should’ve been hits, and that, in my opinion, still hold up today – my home friends can vouch for how feral I get when ‘Bang Dem Sticks’ comes on at pres. It’s an album full of heart, of that kind of bubbly HBO Girls authenticity that’s become so rare in recent pop. “A little bit of rum in my tummy, yum yum / I shook it up, and danced like a dummy, dumb dumb” is a stroke of lyrical genius – it may not be Shakespeare, but you’ve got to admit it’s fun! Megan Trainor had such a grip on me that, in year 5 PE, I decided my stage name would be ‘Daisy Plimsoll.’ Get it? Trainor? Let’s not discuss.

Lest we forget the radio singles! In all sincerity, if Bart Baker didn’t parody it, was it really a hit? 2015 was the year of Adele’s 25, and ‘Hello’ dominated both the charts and my Musical.ly feed. I’m not sure why ‘Hello’ was so meme-able – probably something to do with its inherent conversationality – regardless, it wormed its way into my pre-adolescent brain. One major perk of writing this article was my re-discovery of Ellie Goulding. If you can get past the fact she sings in cursive, and, you know, occasionally glitches onstage, you’ll be well-rewarded. Maybe my rose-tinted glasses are obscuring things (as they’re prone to do), but listening to ‘Love Me Like You Do’ after so many years felt euphoric. Sure, the lyrics are pretty bland, but those explosive synths are hard to beat.

“It’s wrong to dismiss an entire era of music just because we grew out of it”

For the sake of transparency, this article was intended as a bit. It’s easy to dismiss 2010s pop, and the genre as a whole, as being sanitised and out-dated, a dusty relic that ought to be left alone, preferably among a heap of peter pan collars. What began as a jokey deep-dive only served to remind me how much these songs and albums once meant to me, and I think it’s wrong to dismiss an entire era of music just because we grew out of it. Sure, it’s cheesy, but 2015 pop was meant for the Buzzfeed generation, not the cynical listeners we’ve become. During my research, I discovered that many of the songs I considered 2015 staples weren’t actually released until a year or so later. I’m led to conclude that what I miss is less a singular year than a state of being, a reminder of those pre-SATs glory days. Daya, ‘Sit Still, Look Pretty’, I’d put you here if I could.

I’m overlooking a lot in this whistle-stop tour, and Selena Gomez’s Revival and Little Mix’s Get Weird (alongside Fleur East’s hit ‘Sax’, a staple in 2010s dance classes nationwide) are probably the most glaring omissions. I just hope I’ve encouraged you to look back on the naff pop of your youth with a little more respect. Streaming Megan Trainor in 2025 is only embarrassing if you make it – and how better to celebrate 2015 a decade on than with a cheeky lush bath bomb, a re-read of Girl Online, and a jam to your favourite tween hits? I, for one, will be doing just that … though replace Zoella with Sophocles, a girl’s still got her degree.