Our Top 25 Songs of 2017

These are the top 25 songs of 2017, as determined by me (Erick) and Jennifer! How we compiled it was coming up with our own lists of favorite 25 songs from 2017. It was a ranked vote, with the first choice getting awarded 25 points and the second vote getting 24 and so on. After we came up with our list of top 25 songs, we went into a second round of voting with all of the songs, including those tied, being the pool of songs to select from. Since the ties weren’t going to eventually get settled, we settled on only two rounds of voting, with the tiebreaker being the highest vote received. There were a couple of songs that received the same highest vote, and therefore, with no further tiebreaker method being decided upon, we decided to just leave them at a tie.

So without further ado, here’s our favorite 25 songs of 2017:

RANK | “SONG” | ALBUM | ARTIST | POINTS | HIGHEST VOTE

25 | “Melting Grid” | Not Even Happiness | Julie Byrne | 11 | 15

24 | “Slip Away” | No Shape | Perfume Genius | 12 | 14

24 | “Shark Smile” | Capacity | Big Thief | 12 | 14

23 | “The Bus Song” | Everybody Works | Jay Som | 13 | 19

22 | “Hug of Thunder” | Hug of Thunder | Broken Social Scene | 13 | 13

22 | “Percolator” | Guppy | Charly Bliss | 13 | 13

21 | “Love Galore” | Ctrl | SZA | 14 | 12

20 | “Hot Thoughts” | Hot Thoughts | Spoon | 15 | 12

19 | “Seaweed” | A Crow Looked at Me | Mount Eerie | 15 | 11

18 | “Special” | Phases | Angel Olsen | 16 | 10

18 | “Tummy Ache” | Swear I’m Not Good at This | Diet Cig | 16 | 10

17 | “Third of May/Ōdaigahara” | Crack-Up | Fleet Foxes | 17 | 9

16 | “New Rules” | Dua Lipa | Dua Lipa | 18 | 8

15 | “PRIDE.” | DAMN. | Kendrick Lamar | 19 | 9

14 | “In Undertow” | Antisocialites | Alvvays | 19 | 7

13 | “Lift” | OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997-2017 | Radiohead | 20 | 6

12 | “Pain” | A Deeper Understanding | War on Drugs | 21 | 5

11 | “Slomo” | Slowdive | Slowdive | 22 | 4

10 | “Passionfruit” | More Life | Drake | 23 | 7

9 | “Ravens” | A Crow Looked at Me | Mount Eerie | 23 | 5

8 | “Dreams Tonite” | Antisocialites | Alvvays | 23 | 3

7 | “Mearcstapa” | Crack-Up | Fleet Foxes | 24 | 2

6 | “Deadly Valentine” | Rest | Charlotte Gainsbourg | 26 | 3

5 | “Dum Surfer” | The Ooz | King Krule | 31 | 6

4 | “Get Not High, Get Not Low” | Pleasure | Feist | 33 | 8

3 | “Supermodel” | Ctrl | SZA | 33 | 2

2 | “DNA.” | DAMN. | Kendrick Lamar | 35 | 1

1 | “Chanel” | Chanel | Frank Ocean | 47 | 1

 

 

Our Top 25 Songs of 2016

25. Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam Batmanglij | I Had a Dream That You Were Mine |  “The Morning Stars”

24. Lucy Dacus | No Burden | “I Don’t Wanna be Funny Anymore”

23. Drake feat. Kyla & Wizkid | Views | One Dance

22. Beyoncé | Lemonade | “All Night”

21. Car Seat Headrest | Teens of Denial | “Fill in the Blank”

20. Solange feat. Sampha | A Seat at the Table | “Don’t Touch My Hair”

19. Frank Ocean | Blonde | “Nikes”

18. Frank Ocean | Blonde | “Ivy”

17. Big Thief | Masterpiece | “Masterpiece”

16. ScHoolboy Q feat. Kanye West | Blank Face | “THat Part”

15. Leonard Cohen | You Want It Darker | “Treaty”

14. YG featuring Nipsey Hussle | Still Brazy | “FDT”

13. Bon Iver | 22, A Million |”33 ‘GOD'”

12. Angel Olsen | MY WOMAN | “Woman”

11. Solange | A Seat at the Table | “Cranes in the Sky”

10. A Tribe Called Quest | We Got It from Here…Thank You 4 Your Service | “We the People…”

9. Frank Ocean | Blonde | “Nights”

8. Whitney | Light Upon the Lake | “No Woman”

7. Mitski | Puberty 2 | “Your Best American Girl”

6. Angel Olsen | MY WOMAN | “Shut Up Kiss Me”

5. Kanye West feat. Kid Cudi | The Life of Pablo | “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1”

4. Beyoncé | Lemonade | “Formation”

3. Radiohead | A Moon Shaped Pool | “Daydreaming”

2. David Bowie | Blackstar | “Lazarus”

 1. Kanye West feat. Chance the Rapper, The-Dream, Kelly Price, and Kirk Franklin | The Life of Pablo | “Ultralight Beams”

33s, 45s and MP3s Top 25 Albums of 2016

Despite 2016 being a questionable year in more ways than one, it’s undeniable that it was a glorious year in music. We saw great debut introductions from bands such as Whitney and Big Thief, and we received long awaited releases from our longtime favorites such as Radiohead, Frank Ocean and Leonard Cohen.

For this article, we combined forces and put together a list of our favorite records of 2016.

It’s the FINAL COUNTDOWN: The Best 10 Radiohead Songs of All Time

This is the final part of my continuing rollout of the best 50 Radiohead songs. For Part 1, click here. Part 2, here. Part 3, here. Part 4, here.

This is it. The moment you’ve all been waiting for. The best 10 Radiohead songs.

Leggo!

Top 50 Radiohead Songs: Songs 20-11

This is Part 4 of my continuing rollout of the top 50 Radiohead songs. For Part 1, click here. Part 2, here. Part 3, here.

Rolling straight through to the top 10. Chugging along. Let’s do it.

Top 50 Radiohead Songs: Songs 30-21

This is part of my continued rollout of the Top 50 Radiohead songs. For Part 1 (Songs 50-41), click here. Part 2 (Songs 40-31), click here.

Let’s get straight to the hits. No filler.

Top 50 Radiohead Songs: Songs 40-31

Welcome back to the second part of my continuing rollout of the 50 best Radiohead songs. If you’d like to catch up on Part 1, you can click right here.

No introductions. Straight to the content.

Top 50 Radiohead Songs: Songs 50-41

This is part of my continued rollout of the Top 50 Radiohead songs. For Parts 2, click here.

As promised yesterday, on this here blog, today I will begin presenting the 50 best Radiohead songs.

If you want to know what the methodology was to determine what these best 50 songs are, don’t click on the previous link because you won’t find it there. Instead rely on the fact that all of these rankings were determined by me in the highly precise “Do I like this song better than this song?” method.

Comprising the first batch of my rollout are songs 50-41. These songs consist mainly of songs from the OK Computer era all the way up to the 2016 release of A Moon Shaped Pool. You’ll find the odd song or two before OK Computer but a good batch of these are b-sides to the 1997 highly acclaimed, and until 4 weeks ago supremely despised by me, OK Computer.

That is the sort of methodology that has gotten me to blog about music on a blog read by 5 people, baby!

Without further delay, let us begin.

Erick Presents: The Top 50 Radiohead Songs

That’s right folks. It is time to present the best 50 Radiohead determined by your one and only trusty source for all things music and life, me. It’s been a long minute since I have last written anything. As a matter of fact, it’s been so long a minute that my last post on this here blog is actually a review of A Moon Shaped Pool, the Radiohead album that was released in early June of this year of 2016. That is why I figured there’d be no better way to get back into the swing of things than by writing another Radiohead related article because, at this point, ideas are incredibly difficult to come by at my place.

The roll down will be presented every day with a batch of 10 songs over the course of the next 5 days. Rollouts are just better when they’re suspenseful.

The rules are fairly simple. All songs must have been released on an official Radiohead release and it has to have the Radiohead moniker attached with it. So that means no “Big Boots,” “Follow Me Around” or really tinny and monotonous Thom Yorke solo projects. This will include everything released up to, and including, A Moon Shaped Pool, which basically leaves us with every release by Radiohead ever.

Stay tuned for more coming soon!

Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool

Rating: A-

“I could get lost in these pianos,” read my post. “Daydreaming” had just come out a few days ago, and a new album was slated for release a couple of days afterwards. There was no name or track listing provided. All we knew was that Radiohead was done with their new album and that it would be ready for digital distribution on Sunday at 11:00 PST.

It’s been a week since A Moon Shaped Pool was released. A week where I’ve spent struggling  to do justice to an album that has stirred some energetic fanboyism inside of me. Gone are the dark times from The King of Limbs, in is the bright optimism of  A Moon Shaped Pool.

So, where do I start with this review? I start with explaining what exactly it is about this album that has me gushing over it. At this point in my music listening life I’m fairly simple. I don’t like prog rock. I don’t really like electronica. I like very simple pop songs. Nothing that dares deviate too much from the verse-chorus-verse song structure. I know what I like and I know what I don’t like I don’t profess to be someone with a complex taste. What I seek in music is feeling and emotion. This is what separates my favorite albums from a great album. It’s what makes a You & Me or a Kill for Love amongst my favorite albums of all time. Albums that miss this mark are superficial. They hint and tease at deeper meaning(s) but often miss the mark. Instead, they’re cold, emotionless and empty.

This important distinction is what distinguishes albums like A Moon Shaped Pool from The King of Limbs. For all of its polyrhythmic beats and video game guitar sounds, The King of Limbs never manages to be anything other than an album limping to its forgettable status. It never managed to go any deeper than an interesting Thom Yorke solo project. For all of its curious explorations in multiple rhythm sections, the album leaves no discernible impression. Nothing that struck me more than some rather throwaway music. A Moon Shaped Pool is Radiohead taking away the characteristic “bleeps and bloops” of 16 years and stripping them down to bare acoustic bones. There’s beautiful string sections harmonizing with one another; choirs that make their triumphant return to the Radiohead catalogue; grand pianos somberly reminiscing over lost and broken love. Even the acoustic drum set makes a return in jazz-like sleepy beats.

There’s a beauty in revealing ourselves to others. It exposes us. It leaves us wide open and vulnerable. “Ripe for the taking.” It is the revelatory moment that exposes us for all of our fragility and weakness. For all of its pretty instrumentation and lush production most of this album wouldn’t be half as great if it weren’t for how deeply personal Yorke’s lyrics are. Gone is the dystopian commentary about “bunkers” or technology or whatever other Radiohead trope there is. Instead, we have hurt songs about “daydreamers never learning” or love songs about “lollipops and crisps” with pained notes asking someone to not leave.

A Moon Shaped Pool is an album about human frailty. It explores the self and makes the self deal with the consequences of our actions. It’s reminiscent on our failures. All of this introspection is supported by dreamy, lush musical arrangements. They lend themselves to deeply to a pensive state, one slowed down and focused. It guides our eyes to what is in front of our lives. What do I want? Who do I want? What exactly is it that I want to get out of this life? The album pleads the listener for introspection. It embarks the self on a journey of self-discovery, a journey where to learn from lessons learned. It’s demands the listener to listen to our surroundings and consider all that we have. It’s an album that doesn’t tiptoe around its “humanity.”

Five weird, small and odd-looking Englishmen have dropped their ninth album in the span of 24 years. It is a beautiful ninth album adding some of their best work to an already storied catalogue. Here’s to more albums.