Early 2017 Faves

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.

Art by Erika Strohecker, a Columbus designer. She's currently underway in #the100dayproject, and we're happy to be bringing you these pieces. Tune into #airikacreates to see the whole series. Thank you, Erika.

Art by Erika Strohecker, a Columbus designer. She's currently underway in #the100dayproject, and we're happy to be bringing you these pieces. Tune into #airikacreates to see the whole series. Thank you, Erika.

Tracks:

  1. U’Huh - Sinkane
  2. Witch - Alex G
  3. Serotonin - Inconsistent
  4. Rules - Hoops
  5. A Fan’s Mail (Tron Song Suite II) - Thundercat
  6. Electric Intercourse - Prince
  7. Chanel - Frank Ocean
  8. Trying 2 Fool U - Remo Drive
  9. YAH. - Kendrick
  10. Philadelphia Cop - Sun Kil Moon
  11. Green - Lacquer
  12. On the Level - Mac 
  13. Everybody Works - Jay Som
  14. I'm so Groovy - Future
  15. Ravens - Mount Eerie
  16. Ooh Nah Nah- SiR
  17. Sugar for the Pill - Slowdive
  18. Acopcalypse - Cigarettes After Sex
  19. Andromeda (ft. D.R.A.M.) [Bonobos Remix] - Gorillaz
  20. Sacrifices - Drake
  21. Vaulted Ceiling, Painted Sky - Geotic
  22. Distant Truth, Pt. 1 - Household
  23. Kill Jill - Big Boi, Killer Mike, Jeezy
  24. SippinTeaInYoHood - Xxxtentacion (not on Spotify)
  25. Utopia - Austra
  26. Charm Assault - Ride
  27. Silver - Waxxahatchee
  28. Sign of the Times - Harry Styles
  29. Love Galore (ft. Travis Scott) - SZA
  30. Redford (For Yia-Yia and Pappou) - Live - Sufjan Stevens

Apple Music playlist.