The Fifty Best Songs of 2017

How do you write an album with a happy ending when pop culture tells you there’s no fairytale to be told for you and the person you love?

That’s the position Mike Hadreas found himself in before writing No Shape, his best and most accomplished record as Perfume Genius. Yet Hadreas, together with his partner Alan Wyffels and producer Blake Mills, wrote an album of such overwhelming contentment and gentle defiance that's up there with the best records about living in a long-term relationship. “Slip Away”, the first single to be taken from No Shape, is both magnificently grandiose and subtly barely-there. On his previous album Too Bright Perfume Genius finally exploded in technicolour, yet still on a track like “Queen” the stories and lyrics appeared reactive; Hadreas was responding to how people interacted (or not) with him as a gay man, and expressing himself with sharp, pointed vignettes like “No family is safe / when I sashay...”.

On “Slip Away”, Hadreas is in full control, happy and deliciously in love. The outside doesn’t get a look-in. Hadreas has described the track as a “protest song” and while he could have spent around two minutes dealing with the pitfalls, perils, and brickbats faced while defending “a love that other people tell you is devious or not natural being very pure and true,” the singer instead basks in the insulated glory of it all.

Starting with oddly clanging industrial percussion and a noise that’s not far off a didgeridoo, “Slip Away” quickly develops into chamber pop draped in glistening jewels. Hadreas’ voice is double-and-triple tracked to a heavenly choir, synths drop symphonic bombs and there’s a chorus of almighty power at the heart of it all: “Oh, oh love / they'll never break the shape we take / oh, oh / baby let all them voices slip away.”

Referencing Wyffels as a conduit for God in the opening lines, there is an element of defiance - inescapable in Trump’s America - yet this is a song about being in love and living for that, and that alone. A selfish love, in a way.

On the album’s final track, “Alan”, Hadreas sings the lines “We’re here / how weird,” in a sort of dazed state, surprised at his own levels of contentment when so many films, TV shows, and just the nature of the world deprive gay or queer relationships of a happy ending. Yet there stands Perfume Genius, having negotiated his way there on No Shape.

And the key is “Slip Away”; no other track in 2017 gave me that feeling of being carried, almost literally, by someone else’s love for you, by being able to love someone so fully and purely. Ecstasy in the form of a song. AH

Sigrid Raabe has never felt like your conventional pop star.

Over 12 months and a major label bidding war down the line from her two shows at Vill Vill Vest in Bergen (which led me to write, during her second show, “Sigrid is gonna be huge, whether you like it or not”) there’s still an air of happy innocence around everything the Norwegian does. Whether it’s the normcore clothing choices, the boundless energy and 'I-can’t-quite-believe-I’m-here' wide-eyed live performances or the videos filmed in her childhood bedroom, Sigrid shows no signs of being beaten down, chewed up, and spat out by the industry. There’s joy coursing through her, and it’s as welcome as it is unconventionally unsettling.

Yet maybe we should have expected this, because it’s all there on “Don’t Kill My Vibe”.

“It’s about a writing session. Well, it’s been inspired by a writing session - that would be more accurate,” explained Sigrid to me back in February of this year. “It was a difficult day, and I just wanted to write about it. Everything I write is personal.” What stands out from that is that a young woman, a teenager, immediately standing up for herself and her music against a more experienced musician/writer because she believed in what she was doing. At the time we agreed it was something of a “fuck you” attitude in both her personality and her songs (take “Fake Friends” as another example) but on revisiting the track for this piece it’s clear the “fuck you” is not a bitter one. Sigrid transforms that frustration into something incredibly positive, inspiring, and compelling - making “Don’t Kill My Vibe” one of the best debut singles (loosely speaking it’s Sigrid’s proper debut and real introduction to the world) in recent memory.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what makes “Don’t Kill My Vibe” so great; maybe it’s the purity of Sigrid’s voice in the verses, a heavenly high falsetto which goes from sharp warning to heartbreaking in a flash. Or maybe it’s the gravelly crack in that super-caffeinated shout of “DON’T KILL MY VIBE” in the song’s chorus. It could be the handclapped outro filled with euphoria. It’s probably all this and more, because for all her unconventionality Sigrid is exactly the sort of pop star we need right now.

“Say I'm young, I don't care, I won't quit, no, no, no, no...”

There’s nothing knowing about Sigrid, nothing cynical, nothing tied to snakes or thrones or buffets or whatever. It’s the passion, that “vibe” which she sings of. For all that us writers have seen it all before, Sigrid pierces the armour of the seasoned cynic and cuts to the core. In the end, I believe in Sigrid, and that’s why this is one of the great songs. AH

Why are sad songs the most addictive? Is it the comfort of knowing we’re not alone that we crave? Do we simply get trapped in that bittersweet cycle? Or is it the freedom found in acknowledging that maybe we’re not actually happy?

It feels right to say this last point carries particular weight for the current generation, as the stigmas around mental health issues are steadily eroded and the culture of talking about your problems becomes more open.

This is certainly something Phoebe Bridgers has spoken about before and sings openly about on her debut Stranger In The Alps - one of those records that seemed to come out of nowhere at precisely the right time.

“Motion Sickness” itself addresses falling on hard times and seeing a therapist. It also effortlessly traps us in that bittersweet cycle in a matter of seconds - those crunchy guitars carrying forlorn vocals that deliver such a perfect acknowledgment of the dichotomy of human emotions: “I hate you for what you did / and I miss you like a little kid.”

We have all been there. Part of what gives “Motion Sickness” its strength is that it allows you to read between the lines, bring what you need to those spaces to not feel so alone in the world. Bridgers' lyrics get more specific of course, but the song continues to be unique to the listener despite the story being very much Bridgers’ own.

“This song is about being in love with someone who is super mean to you,” Bridgers said just before a particularly intimate NPR Tiny Desk Concert. “I don’t know if that’s relatable. Like conflicting feelings?!” In a rare candid moment on KCRW Live she even went as far as to say: “That was a song I wrote about Ryan Adams”.

It feels like no coincidence that “Motion Sickness” is the most upbeat song on the record, Bridgers pushing through the anguish to arrive at her most confident moment yet. So push down on those pressure points, open the window and let Bridgers be the breath of fresh air we sorely need. LJD

Midway through “The Gate”, Björk purrs, “Split into many parts… splattered light beams into prisms.” Conveniently enough, that couplet encapsulates the experience of listening to this astounding piece of music rather perfectly. A preternatural song, a work of diffuse, amorphous beauty, the track with which Björk introduced us to Utopia resists structure, the singer’s yearning vocal pirouetting around and frequently refracting through the rippling pads and breathless woodwind flourishes which seep in and out of its harmonic frame.

Arca’s shadow looms large over “The Gate”, yet, as it is throughout Utopia, it is worn lightly. The combination of two such singular artists rarely sounds this coherent, this effortless, managing to avoid any obfuscation of one’s approach by the other. In part, this is due to their shared ability to locate the exact point at which the otherworldly meets the profoundly human, and although this is nothing new for Björk, that transaction of the earthly and the spiritual in her music has rarely sounded so complete, nor so alluring. The darkness that lies at the heart of Arca’s most recent, self-titled record is largely absent here, but his influence over the production is clear, kneading and stretching Björk's songwriting in several directions at once without sacrificing its immediacy.

What truly drives “The Gate” home, however, is its naked, keening central motif. As Björk repeats a strikingly straightforward, plaintive refrain - “I care for you, care for you… if you care for me, care for me,” - the track transforms from beguiling mood piece to transcendental, 21st-century hymn. The evocations of yearning, insecurity, and co-dependency conveyed by Björk's performance of those simple words are almost uncanny in their resonance. At that moment, the “splattered light beams” of this song coalesce, star-like, illuminating Utopia’s emotional core. This may have been her “Tinder album”, but so much of Bjork’s writing here, particularly on “The Gate”, expresses complexities of love, desire, and introspection that significantly predate the all-too-contemporary anxieties induced by the age of online dating and read receipts. Yet her allusion to Tinder, and by extension the technologically-augmented nature of our time, is pertinent nonetheless; to paraphrase an earlier point, Utopia represents a phenomenal feat of fusing the profoundly human with the unmistakably inorganic, whether that latter inhumanity is derived of the technological, the supernatural, or otherwise. “The Gate” is the record’s finest articulation of that fusion, a gorgeous piece which is as timeless in its elegance as it is bracingly evocative of intimate feelings of personal tumult in a hyper-connected society. LC

Ultimately, "Drew Barrymore" acted as an artistic self-exposure for SZA as imperfect and endlessly complex - in a way, a pre-emptive strike to get to the root of her own faults and ‘fess up first before anyone beat her to it: “If you don’t define yourself, people do it for you,” she told Complex. In the act of owning that self-knowledge and presenting it so unabashedly, she claimed her power back and took control of her circumstances from an initial position of weakness. And with that, it’s clear that when she asks the question “Is it warm enough inside me?”, the answer is not a simple yes or no. In fact, it serves perfectly as a cue for the person in question to leave.

"Drew Barrymore" doesn’t even sound like SZA meant to write a song. Instead, what we’re gifted is something more akin to a diary entry or a theatrical monologue, as fans wave goodbye to the standard R&B song structure and the slowly building crescendos we used to know. SZA’s voice acts as much as an instrument as the strings or percussion on the track - her dynamic cadence and layering lead you through the relatively sparse instrumentation and her perfectly chaotic multi-voice narratives give you the 360-degree-view of her psyche.

As if already mid-conversation, before the four-count has even finished its introductory duties, Rowe asks with unadulterated candour: “Why’s it so hard to accept the party is over?” Her voice cuts through the chords with a clarity unlike anything we’ve heard from her yet and before you can mutter the words ‘sorry, in what context?’, the question disappears, the identity of the subject flips and the scenario shifts into focus.

It’s here that we get our first taste of the St. Louis-born songwriter’s fast-paced ever-unfolding lyrics - mimicking all too closely that word vomit you get when all rationality flies out the window, or that dark and damning stream of consciousness that clutters your mind and takes your blood pressure from zero to one hundred in record time. “Somebody get tacos, somebody spark a blunt and start the Narcos off at episode one," she exclaims, in just the way you would if you were trying to distract yourself from a suffocating heartbreak. And just like that, SZA became visible, contemporary and, most importantly, human.

By the second verse, she reaches a point of full disclosure as she admits “I get so lonely I forget what I’m worth… I’m so ashamed of myself, think I need therapy,” but the importance of these words cannot be overstated. There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about a breakup song, or even a song hinting at the self-medication of emotional pain via drugs, food, or Netflix. But the plain-speaking self-awareness and vulnerability of the lyrics of SZA’s first single, out of relative obscurity, hold so much power in this instance.

Her words signal someone unafraid to say what others will not even let themselves think, at a time where generations of the young or the lost or both are in desperate need of encouragement to vocalise their inner turmoil. In one fell swoop, she dismantles the myth of the Black Superwoman - an infallible figure with infinite emotional resources to distribute and support any and everyone in need of it with zero room for error. The track essentially expounds the frustration that comes with someone taking advantage of you, even though you let them and just how problematic that power imbalance can be. She travels through a kaleidoscope of emotions from resentment all the way to adoration and lands somewhat abruptly in a place of subservience, presumably not for the first time, as she asks “Is it warm enough for you?”

The title of the song raised inevitable questions but SZA clarified her connection to the actress Drew Barrymore’s previous film characters: she remembered them as consistently outcast and yet thriving against all odds - being worthy of love even when they’re self-destructive: “She was lashing out because she was lonely and pissed that her life was like this. I felt that.” From that angle, it makes perfect sense: both the song and the actress have the potential to help us find the beauty in our dysfunction. NK

Read Natty Kasambala's full essay on SZA's "Drew Barrymore", the best song of 2017 and listen to the entire Best Fit Tracks of the Year playlist over on Spotify.

Writers: Larry Day, Pip Williams, Charlotte Krol, Natty Kasambala, Luke Cartledge, Rich Thane, Lauren J Down, Andy Hannah, Thomas Hannan, Ed Nash, Matthew Kent, Aaron Powell, and Paul Bridgewater.