10 of the best songs coming out of 2017
As 2017 comes to a close, here's a look at the best songs of 2017:
1. Cardi B, “Bodak Yellow”
It's amazing that Cardi's beautiful bundle of trash talk made it all the way to No. 1 without a traditional hook - until you realize that every phrase she blurts has its own ticklish melody, its own whiplash rhythm. She doesn't need a hook. She's pure musicality.
2. Kendrick Lamar, “DNA.”
Mini-hot take: Like 2Pac before him, Kendrick is more of a singles artist than an album artist - a virtuoso who shines brightest in tight spaces. Here, he decodes the American rap genome in roughly three minutes.
3. Lee Ann Womack, “The Lonely, the Lonesome and the Gone”
Why do we keep turning to old country songs for solace when the 21st century keeps inventing new ways to kill us? Womack, sounding better than ever, tiptoes through this riddle with care: “I don't know why no one sings about drowning in pitchers and half-price wings, and trying to wish back everything they've lost.”
4. GoldLink, featuring Brent Faiyaz and Shy Glizzy, “Crew”
The currents of rap music still flow fast and hot - which made this song's slow-motion bloom from local anthem to platinum-selling hit feel every bit as cool as its refrain.
5. Selena Gomez, “Bad Liar”
It starts off as a minimalist nod to Prince, and then blasts off with the sexiest metaphysical pickup line on the radio: “Ooh, baby, let's make reality!”
6. Sam Hunt, “Body Like a Backroad”
It's a car song, or a truck song, and definitely a sex song, but, ultimately, a song about steering the human imagination through three-dimensional space, and probably the greatest country singalong since “Friends in Low Places.”
7. Playboi Carti, “Magnolia”
Producer Pi'erre Bourne knows how to make a beat sizzle, bounce and ooze. Carti knows how to make his rhymes sputter, dally and stall. Together, they're an itch that can't be scratched.
8. Dreamcast, “Liquid Deep”
A waterbed-ripple from a Washington funk newbie so deep, he already sounds like he's two-stepping on the ocean floor.
9. Lorde, “Green Light”
It's been a rough year for the pashas of Popland (Taylor, Katy, Miley, Sam, Ed), all of whom surely wish they sounded one-tenth as alive as Lorde does during this four-minute head rush.
10. Chelsea Wolfe, “The Culling”
This California songwriter is pushing a gorgeous boulder up a treacherously steep hill - playing melodramatic heavy metal with a certain decorum - but listen to how it rolls.