![]() I was surprised by amazing new music from bands I’d never heard of before, and amazing new music from bands I’d never expected to hear from again. J Balvin & Willie William – “Mi Gente”īack in August, I wrote a review of the War On Drugs’ A Deeper Understanding, and buried somewhere among a few thousand other sentences was this one: “Right now, it’s my favorite album of 2017, and I’ll be pretty surprised if I’m not saying the same thing come December or a decade after that.” Well, it’s now December, and I’m saying the same thing, with one caveat: My year was actually full of surprises. Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee – “Despacito Remix” (Feat. Carly Rae Jepsen – “Cut To The Feeling”Ġ5. And in this Year Of The Asshole, I needed all of them.Ġ4. It has hypnotic songs (Future’s transcendently self-destructive “Mask Off,” Goldlink’s quietly swaggering “Crew). It has sad songs (Julien Baker’s howling “Turn Out The Lights,” Jason Isbell’s keening “If We Were Vampires”). My list has fun songs (Brockhampton’s giddy “Gummy,” Carly Rae Jepsen’s endorphin-shooting “Cut To The Feeling”). So did Kendrick Lamar, making a song that straight-up bangs in uncomplicated ways. So did Cardi B, snarling with fearsome panache and ensuring that she’d never have do dance again. (He would promptly forget all that Spanish and then make fun of it on video, but he is, after all, an asshole.) “Despacito” - as well as J Balvin and Willie William’s “Mi Gente,” its little cousin - provided a lovely little moment for pop music. But what was surprising was that the song in question was a deliriously horny Spanish reggaeton ballad and that Bieber would sing in lovely, fluid Spanish. Here in the Year of the Asshole, maybe it’s not surprising that a song with Justin Bieber on it would top the charts all summer, dominating to historic degrees. Pop music still hasn’t lost its capacity to surprise. ![]() Katy Perry – “Chained To The Rhythm” (Feat. Topping the playlist is that Paramore song that sounds like Tango In The Night because old habits die hard.Ġ4. Both of those are included here, along with some jazz, metalcore, trip-hop, indie rock, etc. (“Chained To The Rhythm” might’ve been #1 on this list if I hadn’t heard it so many times.) Toward the end of the year I spent an entire commute looping a haunting ballad by Susanne Sundfør then another looping Quicksand’s fiery first track in 22 years. Fortunately, I do my best listening on the subway and constant delays due to train traffic ahead meant I had ample time for Katy Perry mixing chillwave and dancehall and sounding like a woke Matthew Wilder. It was almost as if streaming technology was conspiring to keep me from my music this year. Then at the office I’d be checking out an inexorable Late Late Show YouTube before two hours go by without me remembering to turn iTunes back on. It’s become the default device for listening to music in my home, even though at least once a day my daughter calls out “Alexa, STOP” when I’m merely trying to expose her to some classic Fleetwood Mac or something, man. ![]() This year I caved and bought an Amazon Echo. We hope you like them, but even if you don’t, we still do. We’re just sharing some songs that we loved. ![]() We’re not arguing about whether these songs are the best. So every year, we, your Stereogum staff, pick a few favorites, making sure not to pick any of the same songs. But when it comes to our favorite songs, we keep those personal. Every year, we get together to vote on our favorite albums, and some sort of rough-consensus picture comes out of that. Which is to say: We’re music fans, and we do what music fans do. We argue constantly, in public and in private, and we get behind things that our colleagues consider absolute bullshit. ![]() If you’ve been reading Stereogum for long enough, you may have noticed something about your Stereogum staffers: We don’t agree on shit. ![]()
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