Cataloguing your mind is unhealthy. Music is no different—ranking songs and albums is a reductive practice. While there are critics of art whose review is an art itself (Hilton Als comes to mind), most criticism doesn’t add anything to the music. Good reviews provide an extra layer of polish to help you more fully appreciate the art, but most reviews simply forcefully insert misplaced symbols of authority where the language of subtly and nuance belong.
But sometimes ranking music is a necessary evil to help us assign some sort of subjective value. Year-end lists are stupid, but maybe they’re good for communicating what albums have been most immediate to our growth, and how much time we’ve spent with them. This may be true. Who really knows.
Either way, we're looking at this playlist as the songs that we’ve been spending the most time with in 2017. It’s really just songs we like.
TDE is represented heavily here, as it should be (we thought about making this post just a link to DAMN.; but we're also excited about new releases from SZA and SiR). Frank Ocean made it hard to choose just one post-Blonde song. There's a great track from Sinkane. Unreleased Prince, live Sufjan, and highly anticipated Harry Styles. New stuff from Alex G, who has a new name and a new Pinegrove-y sound, but not on the track we've chosen here. And lastly, there's some favorite songs from small-to-middle tier labels like Blood & Ink and Tilde.
New isn't normally our thing, but there's a lot of good stuff to be passed around so far this year.
Tracks:
- U’Huh - Sinkane
- Witch - Alex G
- Serotonin - Inconsistent
- Rules - Hoops
- A Fan’s Mail (Tron Song Suite II) - Thundercat
- Electric Intercourse - Prince
- Chanel - Frank Ocean
- Trying 2 Fool U - Remo Drive
- YAH. - Kendrick
- Philadelphia Cop - Sun Kil Moon
- Green - Lacquer
- On the Level - Mac
- Everybody Works - Jay Som
- I'm so Groovy - Future
- Ravens - Mount Eerie
- Ooh Nah Nah- SiR
- Sugar for the Pill - Slowdive
- Acopcalypse - Cigarettes After Sex
- Andromeda (ft. D.R.A.M.) [Bonobos Remix] - Gorillaz
- Sacrifices - Drake
- Vaulted Ceiling, Painted Sky - Geotic
- Distant Truth, Pt. 1 - Household
- Kill Jill - Big Boi, Killer Mike, Jeezy
- SippinTeaInYoHood - Xxxtentacion (not on Spotify)
- Utopia - Austra
- Charm Assault - Ride
- Silver - Waxxahatchee
- Sign of the Times - Harry Styles
- Love Galore (ft. Travis Scott) - SZA
- Redford (For Yia-Yia and Pappou) - Live - Sufjan Stevens