The 30 Songs I Digged Most In 2017

Well here it is, The 30 Songs I Digged Most In 2017, a quasi-annual celebration of the best songs to catch my ear and appear in this blog.

I found 2017 to be a wildly unsettling year in music. You get a sense that the landscape is shifting and that this "era" is coming to an end.  What comes next is anybody's guess.

Compiling these songs, I found that major genres - like jazz, blues, folk, reggae, rap, hip-hop, soul, and dub - are, on the surface of things, largely absent.  However, you find them captured - in a morphed kind of way - in music that is labeled "alternative."

I'm not sure that I know what alternative means anymore.  It has become so expansive, not just in terms of its underpinning influences and vibe, but in its diversity of performers and instrumentation.  Sometimes I wonder what it is an "alternative" to.

Maybe its an alternative to white guys with guitars?  In honesty, although I am a white guy with a guitar, I found this music a bit less relevant in 2017.

I'm not sure where it is all heading, but I am sure that things are changing in a major way.  Although it is subtle, I think it is captured in this list.

In compiling the list, my process involved listening to music endlessly over the past month.  In all, there were about 75 contending songs.  I probably listened to each of them four dozen times.

The cornerstones of my evaluation are rooted in the songwriting, the vocal performances, and the underpinning vibe of each song.  Relevance and sentimentality were at constant odds and the "dig" factor presided in a manner similar to that of The Holy Spirit.

I hope this list expands your musical horizons and helps introduce you to some great songs you may have previously missed.  Ultimately, that is the reason I put the list together.

Adios 2017 !!!  I enjoyed the ride.


Here are the 30 songs I digged most in 2017:

1.  Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex

2.  Ballad Of A Dying Man by Father John Misty

3.  Lies I Chose To Believe by John Moreland

4.  No Good At All by Lucy Rose

5.  Freedom Highway by Rhiannon Giddens

6.  Where I'll Find You by Joan Shelley

7.  Thinking Of a Place by The War On Drugs

8.  Till The End by Curtis Harding

9.  Evening Prayer by Jens Lekman & Lou Lou Lamotte

10.  Believe by Benjamin Booker

11.  Shark Smile by Big Thief

12.  Cannonball by ZZ Ward

13.  Till St. Dymphna Kicks Us Out by Conor Oberst

14.  B.H.S. by Sleaford Mods

15.  Sugar For Th Pill by Slowdive

16.  New York by St. Vincent

17.  Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back To Leeds by The Mountain Goats

18.  Miami by Baxter Dury

19.  Dum Surfer by King Krule

20.  Big Boys by Chuck Berry

21.  Bad Liar by Selena Gomez

22.  Blackness Of The Night by Yusef / Cat Stevens

23.  Whoa! There's No Limit by Lord Echo

24.  What A Girls Got To Do by Lindi Ortega

25.  Silver by Waxahatchee

26.  Count Your Blessings by The Como Mamas

27.  Astral Plane by Valerie June

28.  Let It Melt by Danxia

29.  Ladies Don't Play Guitar by Tennis

30.  They Put A Body On The Bayou by The Orwells


Click Here to check out The 30 Songs I Digged Most In 2016.

Click Here to check out The 25 Songs I Digged Most In 2013.

Click Here to check out The 10 Songs I Digged Most In 2012.