With Amnesty wrapped, we’ve reached the end of our coverage for this year. Now presenting the Singles Jukebox Champion of 2017, Kesha:

 

We’ll be on break until the new year. Until then, feel free to peruse our archives on the sidebar. Or check out our Top 50 songs of the year on YouTube and Spotify. You can also find our entire year of coverage, including our George Michael tribute and Taylor Swift retrospective, chronicled on this Spotify playlist. (Songs not available on Spotify are here.)

Before we log off of the year, we’d like to thank you, the readers, for always checking out our stuff. We love having you around, reading your comments, and hearing about the music you love. Have a wonderful holiday season and new year. Take care of each other. Take care of yourself. See you soon.

And we wrap up 2017 with the woman that we always have such high hopes for…

[Video][Website]
[7.44]

Isabel Cole: Swift’s famously concrete scene-setting details have only in recent years begun sounding less like lines culled from a predictive text generator trained on CW scripts and more like human moments caught by someone with a thoughtful ear. Here, they function not as specificity for its own sake but to sketch out both a series of spaces and a state of mind: the exhaustion of girls with heels in hand, the backseat flirtation that whispers possibility, the shock of finding that after an end comes a beginning, maybe, after all. In fact this song has all of her repeating motifs, as well as she’s ever done them–her preoccupation with narrativizing her own life (don’t read the last page), her fucked up relationship to time as something that takes and takes and yet slips by too fast, her tangled conception of memories as both something precious to be cherished and an unrelenting force from which there is no escape: hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you, she sings, echoing a phrase that bookended her most idiosyncratic album. But New Year’s Day is not a retreat into familiar territory tacked onto the end of a record of unsuccessful experimentation. Muted instrumentation complements an uncharacteristically hushed vocal performance that captures, even more than the gentle loveliness of Begin Again, the tentative tenderness of new love for someone who has felt love die not in fire but in ice; please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize everywhere tells a story that creates a person who understands now that love in fact is not a victory march, and heartbreak is no aria. For all her infamy as the girl who will write songs about the boys who dump her, Swift has also woven into her work a version of herself as someone who leaves things that shouldn’t be left; what makes her wish for gathering party detritus more believable than her previous playacting at domesticity is what she tells us about why it lasts: but I stay. I stay when I’m scared, I stay when it’s hard; I stay, which is something I have learned to do. Locating the power of a love not in someone else’s repeated decision to choose you but in your own capacity for remaining present in the face of uncertainty, revering not the luck it takes to be loved but the strength you find in yourself to keep loving, is–well. It’s very grown-up. Making this feel like the first song Taylor Swift has truly written as an adult, and more than that: like the song she has spent her entire career learning to write.
[10]

Stephen Eisermann: My birthday is on New Year’s Eve, so the New Year holiday has always been a very bittersweet one for me. Most people party their night away with the idea that they will wake up as more improved versions of themselves, based only on the resolutions they made a week prior and will forget a week after. It’s ritual, but it’s a devastating one, really, to want to change so badly that you are willing to drop and forget everything from one year to the next just because you feel like you need to be better. In a quest to better ourselves, we too easily toss aside the experiences, good and bad, that molded us and would rather crumple the paper with our notes for a fresh piece, than bring the key points on to the next paper because maybe we got those key points from something painful… I’m rambling, but there’s a point. This past year saw me struggle a lot — with work, with life, with our country’s moral compass — but I can undoubtedly say that I have never been happier. This, in large part, is due to my boyfriend, who has taught me that you can’t let go of unhappiness or darkness, just learn to work with and around it. That piece of advice, however general sounding it seems, has carried me through difficulties this year and I think, with this song, Taylor is saying the same thing. She had a rough couple of years in the media between her album cycles, but some people stuck around for the aftermath — the cleanup — and she’s eternally grateful and willing to do the rest for her lover and her friends. It’s a beautiful feeling, and the lines “hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you” as well as “please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere” are particularly devastating, simply because too many people abandon others they deem unfit solely because they have demons they can’t take ownership of, so they’d rather pass the blame to those they love; and that’s heartbreaking, especially when accompanied by a sparse, melancholy piano production.
[10]

Alfred Soto: Now the party’s over, and she’s so tired — even the piano sounds hungover. Taylor Swift, whose contract doesn’t allow for hangovers, sounds alert, as if she’s been keeping an eye on the condition of the floors all evening. After an album of sometimes compulsive ebullience, “New Year’s Day” is supposed to remind listeners of the early Taylor Swift.
[6]

Will Adams: A limp olive branch to those who might have been alienated by the EDM production on the preceding Reputation tracklist, “New Year’s Day” strips Taylor back to a piano, some guitar, and pretty organ flourishes. Never mind that Regina Spektor wrote this song ten times better a year ago, why leave a ballad at its barest when there’s no reason to?
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Taylor Swift makes an album of shamelessly, undeniably pop songs: often missteps, but also big and seething and vital and alive in the way her past glurge never was. Everyone hates it, except on the one song where she regresses back to beige acoustic sap. Rockism lives! “New Year’s Day” has the slight edge over the past 20 outings because Swift sounds on occasion like Lisa Loeb. But it’s the only thing here that could be called “edge” at all.
[3]

Nortey Dowuona: Soft, pulsing piano, barely visible guitar, wailing synths in the corner, dece backing vocals. Tay simply hums without straining.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Liked Swift out of the box, more with each (country) album, as her songwriting got stronger. Hated her initial pop makeover (wub wub wub). Surprisingly loved 1989. Am indifferent-to-cold on Reputation. And even though “New Year’s Day” isn’t, necessarily, explicitly country, it’s a reminder that she can return to the format whenever she wants. (And her CMA Song of the Year, Little Big Town’s “Better Man,” is a sterling reminder that her pen has lost none of its punch, even if I find her current popcraft largely lacking.) I think we all know that in an album or two she’s likely to make a full-throated return to the format which made her, and we’ll be better for it. “New Year’s Day” helps smooth that transition, and is nicely underproduced to boot. 
[6]

Ashley John: The tender intimacy of stability hides the questions beneath the surface, and in “New Year’s Day” Taylor is begging to leave it be. Like Lorde recalling buying groceries in “Hard Feelings/Loveless,” Taylor clings to the boring moments shared only between two. The classic Swift specificity is what made Red so good, and we watch her here smartly paying a bit into that savings account each month waiting to cash out on the inevitable full blown country return. But that doesn’t matter, now. “New Year’s Day” is a treasure I want to keep warm against my chest and share with no one else for fear of them tarnishing it. It is Swift making a moment glimmer with potential and hope by bending time and memory. “Don’t read the last page,” she asks, and I don’t want to. I would rather live in this disillusion before the world wakes up, pretending that we’re the only people who’ve ever been in love like this. 
[8]

Alex Clifton: There’s so much in “New Year’s Day” that made me cry the first time I heard it. The lyric about Polaroids, a clear reference to the 1989 era; the lyrical parallels between “please don’t be in love with someone else” from “Enchanted” to “please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I would recognize anywhere”; the lightly waltzing piano in the background, simple but somehow devastating when compared with the overproduced mess that crowds most of Reputation. There’s nothing inherently romantic about New Year’s Day itself as a holiday; so much stock is put into the night before, all the parties and festivities and anticipation for a new beginning that the day of usually feels like a bleak, empty page. Yet as she always does in her best form, Taylor turns something unromantic like a hangover day into something to pine for. “I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you” is so intimate that it almost hurts, like overhearing a snitch of a conversation you weren’t meant to hear. It’s a far cry from the earnest romanticism shown on former tracks like “Stay Stay Stay,” where domestic life was twinkly, cute and fun, backed by toy pianos instead of the real thing. This is the Taylor I’ve longed for, away from the feuds and self-pity and bad rapping: reveling in the small quiet moments she has always been so good at observing.
[9]

Sonia Yang: So many songs about holidays focus on the joy of the moment, that explosive rush of living in the moment; it’s what sells. New Year’s Day, however, is the subdued reality in the aftermath of such escapist fantasies – “I want your midnights / But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day” – it’s unglamorous, hesitant, and more vulnerable than it lets on. Not everybody greets the new year with bombast and resolutions they plan to keep; it’s more likely to quietly clean up the mess and go on with life as usual, with all of the same hopes and fears as you carried before the clock struck midnight. The most painful line is “Please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere”, that aching dissonance between familiarity and isolation that Swift does oh so well. A relationship immortalized in glitter-covered Polaroids can end sooner than one realizes, as if to show that no matter how brightly something shines, nothing gold can stay. It’s fragility at its most cutting; the most powerful words are whispered rather than shouted.
[10]

Danilo Bortoli: In a way, Taylor Swift has encapsuled 2017. Reputation has been met with some divisive, if not lukewarm, reception, proving to be the album we didn’t want, yet managed to admit and love its flaws anyway. In a year devoted to uncovering the world’s true colors, her narrative, just like her castle, came crashing down. And also in a year where simply coping seems enough, her happiness has even been seen by some as a luxury – or perhaps a felony. “New Year’s Day” might suffer from this same fate, as some may listen to it as a forced reconciliation with her inner self “a la Miley“, a retreat back from the reckless journey that fits most of Reputation. Yet, it comes off as the truest moment of this era for Taylor: here’s to Old Taylor and the embarrassingly long yet remarkable mantras (“Please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere”). As it often happens with her best songs, this one paints a vivid picture, constructing an entire narrative, this time measuring words with a stripped down piano, all suggesting, finally, some closure. It’s candid. It’s simple. It’s heartbreaking. It’s all about character, as she has learnt too late. 
[10]

Edward Okulicz: The old Taylor is dead, said the new Taylor, but whoever sequenced the album sure was nice to put this throwback to thoughtful, generous, storytelling Taylor as the last thing you hear. The domestic scene she paints is lived-in, cosy, relatable once more. Her optimism comes through, mercifully, without any smugness and it’s easily the best set of lyrics she put out this year. Thanks, Taylor(s).
[8]

Micha Cavaseno: On a certain level, “New Year’s Day” is brilliant because it’s a sham of a record; nothing here is organic; it’s a sea of strums, piano pawings, and musings to sound intimate and sentimental in the way of a singer-songwriter record, and what deep down we somehow understand Swift to be and keep forcing analogies to. It actually is sequenced really badly because, as always, Antonoff is often too clever for his own good and is deliberately making something unnerving and ambitious rather than functional (yet again the bland ambition of Nate Ruess was truly the foil he deserved, a man who could smother his tics to death in brazen tapioca). Swift, who’s clearly not giving a shit on this record vocally or in trying to reign him in, is utterly adrift and her talk of glitter and memory just rings as hollow as the other assemblikit elements of the song. This record could easily be more than it is, but its sense of orphaning is pained and senseless. 
[3]

Anthony Easton: Listening to the Harry Styles record this year, I was wondering (and hoping) that Taylor had reached the end of her experiment with taste, and would make something resembling a Laurel Canyon record. Hearing most of Reputation, this was obviously not the case. It was interesting, because it seemed like both Lorde and St. Vincent made albums which took the sonic experimentation of 1989 in new and difficult directions, trusting Jack Antonoff to take care of their aesthetics, pushing and deconstructing this kind of electronic thicket that marks populist taste right now. (See Craig Jenkins essay in Vulture.) I think that I overrated this single because it provided something new, not quite a rapprochement to old Taylor (if Old Taylor was dead, then who is singing this lovely, old fashioned ballad–a ghost, a zombie, something more technologically advanced?) but also not something quite new. I always worry about misogyny when I say these things, that liking the pretty song is not liking the angry song (false dichotomy, I know) or liking the ballad and not liking the more abrasive songs, but the ballad is so beautiful, lush, self-aware and exquisitely sung, even more exquisitely produced. This might be the most conservative thing she has produced, the most republican thing–in the moneyed, tightly private idea of pleasure, but also in the idea that those kind of pleasures are well guarded—thinking of the sexual harassment lawsuit, thinking of the failure of her kind of me-first feminism, that this is a kind of weaponized good taste, explicitly against the vulgarity of current pop, or current discourse, after an hour of trying to be as vulgar as more interesting pop stars, keeps prodding that Laurel Canyon vibe. It’s slippery and fascinating, and probably less good than I want it to be. 
[7]

Andy Hutchins: The story of “New Year’s Day,” in part, is that it was Taylor finding a use for the line “Please … don’t / Ever become a stranger / Whose laugh … I / Could recognize anywhere” — a strong bit of writing from someone whose fantastic songwriting chops have been wasted on too many attempts to veer away from being the evolutionary Carole King she could be with nearly no exertion. But even though I know too many strangers whose laughs I could recognize anywhere to not tear up at that line, the one that makes my breath catch is “I want your midnights / But I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day.” Swift is at her absolute best when she nails the ordinary details it does not beggar belief to think she actually desires — and when she sings that she wants someone for after the afterparty, it sounds honest and yearning in the way truth and optimism can be. Would that she could focus on that, because I give more damns about it than her reputation.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: Taylor Swift alone somewhere at a piano, playing soft clumsy chords, only half-attentive, barely a melody. “New Year’s Day” concludes and recasts Reputation in retrospect; as the unguarded obverse, it accounts for that album’s garishness and noxiousness. “New Year’s Day” is a song of little details and emotional import, which is another way of saying it is what we have come to recognize as a Taylor Swift song. In this one, she finds in the miniatures of her morning-after tableau — glitter, candle wax, “girls carrying their shoes down in the lobby” — a gentle grandeur, and then in that, earnest sentiment. “Don’t read the last page,” she tells her companion, casting them into a storybook before resolving back into the prosaic: housework and hardships. There are not many songs that do this on Reputation, and, as with “Better Man,” casually gifted to Little Big Town, “New Year’s Day” is a demonstration that Swift can still do this, that her current work is not a failure to create vividly detailed pop but a conscious rejection of it. Reputation is an album about privacy and turning away from the public; it asserts again and again that there are things in Swift’s life that she can refuse to make known. The music and sentiment matches this: it is at times ugly, at others glib, often repellent or anti-social, dangling details before obscuring them in ellipsis or melodrama. “New Year’s Day” demonstrates that none of that happened by accident. The old Taylor is dead, but she can be summoned at any time: this song casts ordinary life as legend like on “Long Live,” voices hopes and fears in the form of mantra as on “Enchanted,” and concludes a tumultuous record with a new start like on “Begin Again.” It’s tender and familiar. It’s one of the best songs Taylor Swift has ever recorded.
[10]

Next up, a frenzied, fizzy mystery…

[Video][Website]
[8.12]

Mo Kim: As it nears the end of its eighteen-month rollout, the LOONA project has grown from a series of self-contained solo releases into a universe-bending mythos which grows more complex by the second, left for fans to piece together via close analysis of meticulously-arranged videos (often with cameos), promotional graphics, press releases, and cryptic URLs referencing Mobius strips. It’s to the credit of the group, however, that the music has remained its foundation: whether revealing Choerry’s ability to jump between dimensions via a well-placed drop in “Love Cherry Motion” or making a 180 from the sweeter concepts of the first few members with KimLip’s sultry “Eclipse,” Blockberry Creative has been just as ambitious with their songs as they have with every other dimension of their unfolding multimedia narrative. Even if you didn’t know anything about LOONA or Odd Eye Circle (its second subunit), “Girl Front” would still knock you off your feet like a late-summer breeze. Its Max Martin-esque melange of synthlines and sticky beats (with a generous sampling of contemporary sonic trends, especially the ominous trap-tinged coda following each chorus) distills driving down the 101 in Los Angeles with your windows down into as perfect a road trip song as I’ve heard. Yet there’s something about the surrounding context that takes the drama of a budding romance and blows it up to inter-dimensional proportions. As the girls trade lines on the chorus about a budding romance that “makes things hotter” and “makes them draw closer,” a massive mix of beat-em-up synths and hard-hitting beats wallops you with the force of an asteroid: one feels as if they could be singing about their own impact. The verses filter in bits of plucky guitar and sunny piano chords that the production leaves sounding just a touch haunted, like the cassette player which opens and closes the video. Even the one moment the song lets up, in a bridge that registers with the clarity of a daybreak, turns its wistful gaze back on us in what may be my favorite musical moment of 2017: the three members of Odd Eye Circle, finally united after four months of twists and teasers, stare lovingly into a tri-colored moon in the sky, tinged with each of their representative colors (red, blue, and purple). Composers Ollipop and Hayley Aitken cruelly let the swelling synth melody that’s been looping in the background for the entire song step to the forefront for just three measures before killing it with a well-placed record scratch. On screen, the girls turn in unison and break the fourth wall, staring right into your souls: if you think this is the end, think again. Instead of easy resolution, they leave us in their final chorus with a promise: “I’ll say I love you first.” I’m always left wondering, at the end, what is really there. I question the irony of becoming infatuated with a song about infatuation, about how the “love” in “love song” can work like gravity, pulling you towards becoming the person you’ve fallen for. Maybe I spent most of 2017 buried in LOONA because, in the simplest terms, it tells a story of possibility: a girl can become any concept she puts on; can find her place in the music and the mythology; can stitch together the worlds she occupies. Return to the title of “Girl Front”; “Front” because, as the theory goes, Mobius strips enchant you in loops you circle with purpose but without end; “Front” because an empowered girl makes it happen herself. The cassette player, a signpost for our nostalgia, refuses to give us an answer, rewinding instead, and in an year that constantly challenged me to think through my place in the world, the message feels clear: you’re getting closer. Keep listening.   
[10]

Micha Cavaseno: As the LOONAverse proceeds far off into its cosmic spiral, their seemingly esoteric design evolves against tunes that feel more and more plunging away from the preceding singles and their reaches for star power into something more star-struck. “Girl Front” is a galloping rush of enthusiasm and excitement as Choerry, Kim Lip and JinSoul eagerly manage to pitch infatuation like fastballs offset by those real clunker ‘drops’ aiming for I guess some sort of ‘hipness’ that ever since “Eclipse” the poor girls have been burdened with having to appeal to (which is ever overwhelmingly pointed on fellow LOONAffiliate Yves’ “new” but that’s another tale), and tend to detract from the record. But the winding melody on the chorus’ “woo” or the sudden shift into the dubstep-stomp along for Kim Lip on the second verse are the moments when “Girl Front” can not only sound urgent but utterly world-departing.
[8]

Ryo Miyauchi: For a single not-so-slickly tucking in self-reference, it makes sense the production also picks the the best bits from each of the summer LOONAs’ solo singles: the devilish sweetness of “Love Cherry Motion,” the zigzagging of “Singing in the Rain,” the breathtaking grace of “Eclipse.” The trio get upstaged by the production despite their best efforts to introduce their individual personalities, but really, what a dazzling beat to get lost in.
[6]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: K-Pop that sounds like it takes serious cues from the #weirdsoundcloud scene. The post-chorus breaks could feel at home on a de-constructed club mix, and the synth risers, in the transition from the bridge to the final hook, could make Myles Dunhill green with envy. LOONA was the most interesting Korean project of 2017, and their brilliance lies not only in their versatility but in the quality of the execution. They’ve given each of their members their own sonic and visual little universe, and each release has been scarily consistent. I have big expectations for them in 2018. 
[8]

Edward Okulicz: How this song turns on a dime so frequently from amazing K-pop banger, to different kind of amazing K-pop banger, to a part that convinces you the whole thing is going to turn into a god damned trap song suggests a complete mastery and love of pop as an artform. I don’t think listening to it could possibly be as fun as it was making it, but it’s probably pretty close.
[9]

Nortey Dowuona: Glittering, shiny synths and light, puffy eyed bass spread out with blank droning synths and flat drums that become rigid and stuffy around the side. Plus the singing by Loona and the Odd Eye Circle seems both too light and yet too heavy.
[6]

Alex Clifton: The best bubblegum pop feels innocuous at first, but comes out of nowhere to hit you square in the brain. “Girl Front” is sparkling and light overall, but that chorus is a knockout and is definitely going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. It’s the kind of song I know I would have played to death when I was fifteen and unable to talk to most people I liked, but I also like it at twenty-five because it gives me the sugary rush that I need from pop music. I’ve not been following LOONA’s formation entirely, but if this is how good their subunits are, I’m ready to be wowed by the whole band in 2018.
[8]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Shortly after the release of Odd Eye Circle’s “Sweet Crazy Love,” Digipedi director Seong Wonmo noted that he had intentionally included Korean-language signs in its music video. K-pop always looked to the pop culture of the West, he said, studying and imitating it in numerous ways. As a director, there was a sense that he shouldn’t let Hangul appear in any frame–it would, after all, only make the content seem more “foreign.” But it’s 2017, and with K-pop’s ever-expanding global presence, Seong finally felt comfortable with doing just that (note that this was ten years into the career of an already-legendary figure of the industry). When I read his comments, I thought about where I was ten years ago, and how much I related to what he was saying. As one of five Asians in an otherwise all-White high school, I had made subconscious efforts to be “just one of the (White) guys.” But as I started learning about K-pop, I also started to take some pride in being Korean. I wouldn’t dare tell my White friends about Wonder Girls or Big Bang, but I would tell them about some Korean music that seemed less embarrassing to mention. I will never forget, for example, how excited I was to show off my copy of Seo Taiji’s 7th Issue to a friend–as we sat in class, I watched as he examined the album’s unique packaging, and I eagerly awaited his opinions on the album’s pop punk/emo songs. Years later, I’m constantly gushing about Korean music to non-Koreans, and K-pop has played an enormous role in helping me come to terms with–and eventually love–my Korean-American identity. That Seong specifically decided to show Hangul in a LOONA video is appropriate. More than any other group this year, they represented the best of what the K-pop industry had to offer in terms of engaging pop songs and their promotion. Subunit Odd Eye Circle’s music was especially noteworthy; their mini album featured the incredible Art Angels-indebted “Loonatic” and an R&B song that most boy bands would kill for. The best of the bunch was “Girl Front,” the lead single that took everything good about the members’ solo tracks and morphed it into something more ambitious. At its core, it’s a chipper pop song about being infatuated with someone, but what sets it apart is the degree to which every bit of instrumentation captures the manic frenzy of wanting to tell someone you love them. Producer Ollipop was wise to bury the arpeggiating synths low in the mix, allowing them to mimic the fluttering hearts that characterize such situations. What ties everything together, though, is the chorus. The girls initially state that they’re “cool,” emphasizing it with a wavering vocal melody that hops along briskly. It’s immediately followed by a sultry coo that’s meant to resemble the sound of their heart–an admittance of how they’re actually feeling. It’s considerably smoother than what preceded it, and shamelessly long. They’re not denying how they feel anymore, and they’ll happily let their crush consume their thoughts. What makes “Girl Front” so heartening is that it isn’t content with things ending there; this is a song that’s about mustering up the strength to confess to someone that you love them. And as the song progresses, there’s an “opening up” of sounds to reflect this. The first verse has flickering synths that are halted by a bass guitar, as well as a vocal melody akin to those in the chorus that abruptly ends. But in the second verse, relatively “natural”-sounding keys stand in place of their punchy counterparts. There’s also a sleek mid-verse shift that registers as sensual, and it all leads into the girls shouting “woo!” before entering the chorus again. By the time “Girl Front” ends, they declare their intent to express their feelings to this person directly. We don’t know if they actually will, but things look hopeful. Sometimes, the best thing you can do to keep moving forward–to get yourself to do things that seem impossible–is to constantly remind yourself of the things that make you happy. In “Girl Front,” it’s an overflow of desire for this person that helps them reach a point where they can say “I Love You.” It turns out that listening to K-pop was a way for me to eventually say the same thing to myself.
[10]

It’s our last blurbin’ day of the year, and today it’s all women! First up, women who are fed up with men…

[Video][Website]
[6.18]

Hannah Jocelyn: I haven’t caught up, but I adore this goddamn show. “Let’s conflate all the guys/let’s generalize about men” is beautifully indicative of the style of the lyric writing – their use of repetition might be grating to some, but it’s also the writing team’s secret weapon (as the AV Club’s Allison Shoemaker pointed out just a couple of weeks before I did). There are a few layers to this song, aside from the obvious one (generalizing and stereotyping are sometimes inevitable) – while yes, fine, #notallmen do the things Rebecca Bunch and co list, masculinity/the patriarchy/etc all facilitate the behaviors of the song to exist. The “gay men are all really great, every single one” joke about positive stereotypes is also beautifully done, and strangely subtle for a show that’s dedicated a lengthy rap song to the burden of possessing a large chest. What isn’t subtle is the last line, but it’s a perfect ending. Not everything rings true – the “unlike women” line seems like they were trying to lessen the chance that some dude at Standards and Practices would accuse them of misandry. Though even that has an internal logic, where even within the satire, women still have to blame themselves for wanting to generalize about men.  
[8]

Katie Gill: Man, it is SO HARD to write about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for a music site because CEG is a television show. Half of the fun of the song comes from the video itself. Songs like “(Tell Me I’m Okay) Patrick” lose so much of the humor when you listen to them on their own instead of watching a youtube video so you have the accompanying visuals. And its’ a bit of a shame for this review that the best joke of this song involves visuals as much as music (the last ten seconds of the song and the way Donna Lynne Champlin plays the scene). Still, as a song, “Let’s Generalize About Men” stands strong on it’s own. All of the ladies pour their hearts into this pseudo-Pointer Sisters, exceedingly 1980s ballad. You can tell they’re having so much fun which makes the song even more fun to begin with. The parody’s on point, the lyrics are cutting and sharp, the wordplay is downright witty and hilarious, and the musical style is so beautifully dated in all the right ways. The song takes the premise and runs with it, skillfully preempting any questions one might have about the song’s premise. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend always succeeds in its music, but “Let’s Generalize About Men” is going to go down as one of the show’s highlights.
[8]

Stephen Eisermann: In a year full of Cosby, Weinstein, Trump, etc., a song like this one is so welcome. There is something so empowering about being crass, mean, harsh, and negative about men when there is an onslaught of stories about their abuse constantly coming out; and when people have to maneuver their way through these stories and the #notallmen defenses, a song like this needs to exist. Sure, there are exaggerations and generalizations, but that’s QUITE LITERALLY the point of the song, and the hilarious lyrics are only emboldened by the committed and hilarious delivery of the Crazy Ex cast. Funny lyrics, catchy, 80s production, AND solid vocal stylings? This is what a [10] sounds like. Now, PLEASE WATCH THIS SHOW!
[10]

Julian Baldsing: The existence of this song as an easily accessible, ’80s styled, low-effort response to all the #NotAllMen evangelists hiding in every corner of the internet is further proof that Rachel Bloom is a modern-day Mother Teresa, except not actually terrible.
[8]

Alex Clifton: “Let’s Generalize About Men” maybe isn’t my favourite Crazy Ex-Girlfriend song–that’s either “Settle for Me” or “Getting Bi“–but it does what the show does best, have a catchy tune with pretty good satirical lyrics. Something about this song gets to the joy of complaining, venting, and generalizing when you’re frustrated, and it’s a cathartic kind of tune that could only come out in 2017.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: The Golden Age of Television, where musical episodes rise to the level of a regional production of a somewhat regrettable cut from The Full Monty.
[3]

Ryo Miyauchi: The breakdown itself reads somewhat predictable as much as the generalizations it sings about to the point I’m unsure who exactly I’m supposed to laugh about here: the pathetic men inspiring these conversations or the women who keep bringing the same argument enough to inspire a meta piece like this. The answer is probably both. The series of generalizations are rooted in truth or else it wouldn’t actually be funny. The other laugh comes from the women starting to see the slips in their logic. They’re faulty, too, and they’ll admit it, though it’s an infinitely more admirable gesture than men who try to use the “wait, I have kids” card like it’s a solid excuse that, no, they actually aren’t flawed as women say they are.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Bland, printed out drums barely hold aloft, barely inked in baselines and swooping, slightly swift synths that push up the swinging, goofy quartet. Plus YOUR SONS ARE GONNA BE RAPISTS.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: There’s 15 different specific songs this reminds me of. No need to say, because working it out is the best fun I had listening to it, and I don’t want to spoil it for you. Bad punchlines don’t become good punchlines by singing them, and what would be a funny 45 second cut-away joke drags on and on. Don’t worry, I’m not being mean, I’m just sassy.
[4]

Alfred Soto: “Hi-fiving each other” over Flashdance synths and echoes of “It’s Raining Men” is the limit of this track’s well-intentioned wit.
[4]

Will Adams: The concept of recreating 80s dancepop as faithfully as possible has been around for a while, but this year in particular has seen it become a novelty. It’s fun to see the pop stars of today remixed into an era they weren’t even alive for, so much so that a bootleg mix can become an official one within weeks. That alone makes “Let’s Generalize About Men” not feel fresh; nor does the sound, which shoots for one of the most obvious references. But most of all, it’s the topical, winking tone, which makes it come across as an SNL music video that would run towards the end of the episode when you’re half asleep on the couch.
[4]

And now we all know Heaven too.

[Video][Website]
[5.78]

Nortey Dowuona: Blooming piano chords and warning synth horns waft away from Gordi’s plush, soft voice then coalesce around a barely-there bass synth rumbling. Then it all drops as wailing, exotic vocals thicken and disperse, then rise and rumble with the shuddering pain that comes with putting out trust.
[10]

Alfred Soto: A fascinating use of a lyrical loop against which Gordi’s thick vocodered timbre works inappositely for a couple minutes. The horns and drums wandered in from another session. 
[5]

Iain Mew: The repeated spoken counting sample in the background is one of the strongest choices in “Heaven I Know,” taking a song that could be staid and giving it an anxious energy and a grounding that gives weight to its slow-building beauty. Meanwhile the over-the-top vocal effects of the ending have pretty much the opposite effect.
[5]

Josh Langhoff: Piano ballads are serious affairs, but this Australian one’s goosed by a generous dose of vocal manipulation and some brass. With a whispered mantra — “ONEtwothreeONEtwothreeONEtwothreeONEtwothree one two” — counting more for emotional support than rhythmic, Gordi accurately conveys the sense of buckling down to accomplish some unpleasant task. Suitable for meditation and remembrance.
[5]

Claire Biddles: Lyrical and musical defeatism dovetails at the final breakdown of crackled autotune, the last gasps of a difficult listen that feels almost completely devoid of hope.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: Throttling one’s brain for fake depth and coming up with the barest dribblings of significance, Gordi’s mournful tone is a hollow echo of trying to convey wisdom with nothing of value to say, and a lot of unnecessary window dressing in the production department to try and convince you a good ballad is at the core of this record (there isn’t). By the time the slathers of autotune distortion come in, you actually become annoyed with just how much effort is being done to disguise the failure of the song to stand on its own, and instead pass by on a sea of gimmicks for emotional reaction; might as well have employed a penny whistle and a sad slide trombone.
[1]

Katherine St Asaph: The minimal, vaguely unsettling spoken-word intro turning into FIVE MINUTES of lugubrious piano is like opening a present on Christmas morning and getting the fart box from Mother 3. There’s actually quite a bit interesting happening in the background and in the vocal processing, but they’re drowned in ballad.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Certainly has some intriguing choices to add interest — the counting not on the beat but as the beat, the autotune — but where the verses aim for a twitchy Imogen Heap sort of mood, the chorus is a glurgey Kate Miller Heidke thing that drags the whole thing down and sounds doubly bad when the autotune is applied to it. Ick. But also, aww, lovely, for the rest of it.
[7]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: A song that is a mega-construction that is also a harrowing treatise on loss. I’m not sure how Gordi manages to create something so triumphant out of such heavy-hearted subject, but the way this song builds up — from the “one-two-three/one-two-three/one-two” whispered mantra to that multi-layered sound mammoth of brass, percussions and voices — is a statement so powerful, it engulfs the emotional baggage of an entire year. 12 months of longing, regret, anxiety, and pleading, summed up in these 5 and a half minutes. That’s what the best songs do. 
[9]

This certainly touched our yes.

[Video][Website]
[7.10]

Ryo Miyauchi: This relentless firestorm of a rock song musically compacts her entire kitixxxgaia album into a 5-minute pop single, so Seiko Oomori understandably had to cut a good portion of it for a late-night TV performance. Out went the year’s best opening gag: “Moshi moshi, it’s me, God. Wait, you don’t know who I am? Proof? Hm…” But curiously, she also had to censor out “fuck you.” A petty edit, not just because this aired on Japanese TV, but also every other lyric is far more radical for a frankly conservative public to hear. “Dogma Magma” follows Oomori, a deity who wakes up in the mortal form of a Japanese woman and discovers this society won’t take her seriously without following certain rules. She shreds apart those rules in regards to gender, marriage, labor, beauty standards and any other societal pressures unabashedly as she blitzes through her sprawling rock music. Hearing a musician who vaguely looks like me (at least from a foreigner’s eye) scream things like “I can’t even go outside in this body without putting on make up,” “I don’t really want to get married, I’m content, so don’t mind me,” or “ugly or just a piece of shit, I want to change the world” in my first language shattered my world. Now, watching her do the same but for a live audience? It’s a miracle any part of “Dogma Magma” was even allowed for broadcast in the first place.
[10]

Katherine St Asaph: Like elevator music for the malfunctioning Tower of Terror that was 2017. It’s better as song.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: “Dogma Magma” has ambition oozing out of every corner of it, but at five minutes long it kind of feels like ten. The opening verse sounds suspiciously like “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and Oomori squeaks large portions of the song, struggling to be heard above musical theatre armageddon. Ambition not fully realised for mine, but an impressive racket anyway.
[5]

Juana Giaimo: Probably not the right song to listen to after a yoga class. The desperation of Seiko Oomori is out of control and by the end, the sweet beginning is completely overshadow by the hellish end. “Dogma Magma” is a song that I can find musically interesting but hard to relate to.
[5]

Will Adams: Given how much Seiko Oomori’s voice sells the bombastic arrangement, the additional flourishes via phone chatter, whole tone dream runs, accordion waltz and blockbuster explosion feel unnecessary. Still, “Dogma Magma” is a rush to listen to no matter how up for the pyrotechnics you are.
[6]

Josh Langhoff: This volcanic spew of ideas couldn’t have been made by ’70s Tubes or ’80s John Zorn, but it seems like something they’d dig. The song opens with a gong. Other items of note include abrupt tempo shifts and mixed meters, catchy hooks, a drummer who’s exceptionally proud of her cymbals, a double-time DDR hardcore bit for a bridge, two seconds of French cafe waltz, and the English command “touch my yes,” which pretty much sums up the aesthetic here.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Tour de forces impress and exhaust — that’s the point of them. This mishmash of the show tunes ethos, the wilder bits of Coltrane, and J-pop shouldn’t be consumed at a single sitting. Play one section, pause, grab a glass of water, return, pause.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: Sometimes, life feels like a giant parody of a parody no matter how hard you try to point out its absurdities. Nothing’s too special in pointing out the mundanity of life, and inevitably in trying to point out how the world’s a fool, you look like a fool. So sometimes, the best way to go about is to mock yourself and the world all at once, so nobody’s safe! JOKE’S ON YOU BUDDY, Seiko Oomori’s in on the joke! She is the joke! You’re the joke! It’s all jokes! And the best way Seiko lands all of her punchlines is the scrape of sincerity with a will to disprove both, undermining herself thematically and sonically to make those bursts of seeming earnestness so dizzy; they could easily be real or yet another joke in themselves. When you spend enough time proving that everything bad is good and what’s good is bad, you’re never quite sure.
[8]

Iain Mew: It’s a big musical number, and there’s one woman at a piano playing a brisk showtune, but the curtains are moving and there are all kinds of horrors and wonders hiding in the shadows, waiting on hidden cues to each pounce out for their moment. By the end the piano is probably on fire too. But the real trick is that, even amidst the ludicrous spectacle, it’s impossible to turn attention away from her voice.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: A propulsive, energetic, brilliant pop song that skews between pillowy piano, simple, humming bass, scalpel sharp guitar and thick, gushy and solid drums and raspy, sparkling guitar, grim, unflinching bass and rapid, viscous drums.The singing is…/I gotta./Do it for the culture./////////#Blessed.
[10]

Today, we aspire to be the #1 hit for “Paul Ryan’s penis” on Google. Or at least your editor did when he wrote this tagline.

[Video][Website]
[5.43]

Josh Langhoff: Paul Ryan has a point, and not just at the end of that whirring contraption he calls his penis. Listen to the little Janesville fucker, in the span of two breaths: “We need to restore this beautiful thing we affectionately call the American Idea.” And then, “People always ask: What’s in it for me? How will I benefit from this?” The American Idea is awash in narcissism. Americans do not think collectively. We are a profoundly conservative people, and these truths we hold self-evident: Growth is good. Dying is bad. Individual actions have consequences. Charity is a private affair: “We don’t reach for handouts, we reach for those who’re down,” we learn from Cato Institute senior fellow Garth Brooks. Paul Ryan has chased his dragon, a racist serial molester beholden to foreign creditors, and that dragon won’t do shit for him on his deathbed. Paul Ryan will be fine regardless. But the other tens of millions of people who chased the same dragon? Whose friends and kids are hooked on opiods? Whose health insurance bills will now skyrocket because the American Idea is so fucking restored?
[10]

Nortey Dowuona: Bulky, flat drums fill up the mix, pushing out the off-color, puffed-up guitars and draggy, empty bass while Russel Allen sounds out — um, singing, I guess? Also the guitar solo is bork.
[4]

Hannah Jocelyn: It’s well-intentioned and timely, and the facts in the video alone make for something much better than Theory of a Deadman’s similar attempt at a drug crisis song, but it’s mixed like a Power Rangers theme. It leads to fatally cringeworthy moments where a blistering guitar solo plays underneath pleas to reach out in moments of crisis. As with Logic’s “1-800-273-8255,” if it reaches its intended audience, then who cares what I think, but it’s also a thoroughly unpleasant listen on its own.
[4]

Alfred Soto: The greater the effort, the greasier the sincerity.
[5]

Iain Mew: It initially seemed like a smart move for them to keep building up to some big blow out but instead just increase the intensity of chug and double drums. If they’d managed to carry on ratcheting it up like that it could have been fun and fresh, but it it just plateaus and doesn’t get to fly. No matter how much angst they get into “they left you here to diiiieee” it has diminishing returns.
[5]

Will Adams: A song whose idea of dynamics is turning the knob from 10 to 11, “Chasing Dragons” takes a well-intentioned message about the opioid crisis and pulverizes it under the weight of drums and yelling. Like Logic, Adrenaline Mob broaden their scope to reach a wider audience, and I’m left wondering how many people are being helped.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Oh, the pain, the pain, as my head is being repeatedly pummelled by a brick with “MESSAGE!!” written on it, which is a bit, you know, square. Or is that the relentless drums causing it? But it’s an exciting riff and you can ignore the broader meaning of the lyrics and just take them as a grab-bag of cliches and it comes out the better for it.
[6]

And finally, a bit of friendly grime…

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Eleanor Graham: In his review of “Did You See”, Stephen wrote about the phenomenon of “an artist’s happiness translat[ing] well onto a recording”. I can’t think of a more enjoyable example of this than “Samantha”. From the assuredness of the piano-backed hook to the Dave and Samantha joke, it unfolds like a slow, easy grin. 19-year-old Dave is known for his earnest lyricism, J Hus for his impenetrable bravado. Here the two honour each other’s styles in a festival of endearing post-Drake triumphalism: “she told me she loved me but really I don’t even know if she meant it/and if feds pull this whip, that’s numerous offences” is a sample gear-change. It would be facile to read something political into it just because the artists are black and working-class – perhaps it would be facetious to read anything political into a song that contains the lyrics “my girl don’t wanna stop for a chat/then I’m on to her friends like Joey and Ross” – but it’s worth noting the joy of listening to the victory lap of two people you were actually rooting for.
[9]

Will Rivitz: You know how Stormzy’s album sucked? How the fervor the MC normally cultivates so well was left out to rot in favor of an uninspiring off-Chance collection of hymnals which were somehow even less exciting than the blocky, simple-minded paeans of Coloring Book? “Samantha” is like Gang Signs & Prayer musically, except crossed with the instrumental sensibilities of the opening track off the Hamilton soundtrack and featuring verses worse than even the most dismal wordsmithing off either of those two sources. By the time the track finds its footing midway through the second verse, it’s too late.
[3]

Nortey Dowuona: Stunned, frozen piano chords drop in and out as the bouncy bass and ballooning drums rise under J Hus’s light, raspy voice and simmer slowly under Dave’s cool, bitter murmur, which hides away, tucked in the corners of the song.
[8]

Iain Mew: The numerous shifts and threads dropped and only occasionally picked up mean that “Samantha” treads a line between freewheeling and aimless. There’s something charming about them just shooting the breeze, though, especially the couple of times when a laugh almost slips through mid-word.
[6]

Ryo Miyauchi: One of my favorite things about J Hus is how he calls himself “ugly” with a sense of pride. That put-down-turned-nickname extends beyond his looks here: “I was never the cool kid, more like strange and awkward”; “but I’m not your type, more like your life.” He still can’t help it to build himself up, though his showboating never comes close in power to his wholesomeness.
[7]

Ashley John: “Samantha” is a smirking grin between friends at a party that is way lamer than promised as you both knock back the rest of your beers and head for the dance floor to embarrass everyone else there. 
[6]

Next up, a flip of a song you likely know well…

[Video][Website]
[6.67]

Katherine St Asaph: A SoundCloud R&B singer with some great starting material — namely, a crackly sample and interpolation of, respectively, the piano line and conceit of Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black.” Not sure it gets that far past the starting material, but in a world where J. R. Rotem is successful I’m more than OK with the less cynical counterpart.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Too woozy and too static to sustain interest at almost four minutes, but when she mumbles “from back to black” she reaches several years back and nods to Amy Winehouse.
[5]

Will Rivitz: One of the countless things that makes Burial so compelling is that, despite the fact that his tracks consist almost entirely of treble and bass with nothing in between, his music still feels full. Listen to a track like “Endorphin,” for example: the hollowness that might be expected in the vast chasm between overwhelming bass and glassy upper-register synths simply does not exist, our brains filling in that chasm as we might with a visual blind spot. We don’t notice anything missing, despite an absence of a couple thousand kilohertz in the low vocal range. “Black,” despite sharing Burial’s penchant for patchwork collagery, has the opposite problem: despite frequencies that just about span what we can comprehend, the song feels insubstantial. Maybe it’s the bass, filigree when rock-solid probably would have been more appropriate; maybe it’s the sampled piano riff, winding its way through seemingly arbitrary low-pass filters which cut off both actual and emotional resonance; maybe it’s the drums, shuffling stiffly through riffs that can’t unpin it from some sort of mechanical corset. Whatever it is, despite Akilah’s phenomenal vocal performance, it feels artificial, inhuman, and incomplete.
[4]

Iain Mew: I spend 80% of “Black” wishing she had a better production to work with, or at least one without the tinniest drums ticking away at the edges. Yet the moment when she gets to “it’s all a formality, you know it too” and everything falls apart completely, slicing and sliding away around her, almost makes it worth it
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Akilah comes in with heavy, sooty vocals breastroking through the jangling piano, nearly invisible bass and jutting, chaotic drums, then hops out of the water, rapping as she shakes off the chlorine and bullshit.
[10]

Ashley John: The work of healing is thorny and meandering. The swelling tide of time comes with the reminder that everything that happens to you, happens to you forever, inescapably. Akilah doesn’t know the answer to how to move forward or get better, but she doesn’t pretend to either. When the pain carves out holes in us there is no proper filler, just the promise of a new growth over which we have control. “I’m not going to reclaim what you took from me,” is a motto for 2018, to tend to the gardens we plant ourselves and leave the rest behind. 
[9]

We continue Amnesty Week with an Argentinian indie band, suggested by Juana…

[Video][Website]
[7.43]

Juana Giaimo: Me acuerdo cuando tu amigo dijo que no le interesaba que Él Mató pase a la posteridad porque no es una banda con un mensaje social. Claro, “Paso todo el día pensando en vos” es demasiado pop. Y en la escena musical argentina, el pop es siempre menospreciado — a vos no te gusta que te hable de Taylor Swift o J. Balvin, lo sé. Pero a todos nos gustó la nueva sensibilidad melosa de La síntesis de O’Konor. Incluso en estos días de furia de verano, me sorprendo volviendo una y otra vez a “El tesoro.” Gracias a la producción pulida, las guitarras se entrelazan en armonía y el bajo en los versos actúa como una base acolchonada. Pero somos demasiado conscientes para olvidarnos de las injusticias y a veces nos consume esta vida de ciudad frenética. “Cuidarte siempre a vos en la derrota, hasta el final,” porque pareciera que siempre nos toca la derrota. Podría haber empezado a escuchar a Él Mató hace tanto tiempo, pero sólo necesité que vos mostraras en junio este sencillo para que se incorporaran a mi cotidianidad. No me hubiera interesado hace un año cuando escribía sobre Martha — una banda que se declara anarquista, cuyo lado político me costó ver más que el de Él Mató. Hace un año, sólo eran una banda de indie rock; no hubiera podido percibir la calidez de los suspiros o de la voz de Santiago Motorizado alzándose y descendiendo en los graves. Pero hoy todo es tan distinto que apenas me reconozco. “Ah, paso todo el día pensando en vos,” porque no se necesita decir más que eso.
[10]

Iain Mew: This summer I saw indie band British Sea Power in a big cold concrete space in the entrance to an old theme park in Kent. The venue felt remarkably right for the best of their music, with its heavily hewn guitar sounds and the airy calm and space they conjure between them. “El Tesoro” made me think back to that night, because El Mató a un Policía Motorizado use similar methods and a singer with impressive gravitas to achieve the same enjoyable isolating effect, but much brighter. I would love to see them in the same space in the sunshine.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: Pedestrian drums, decorated by ornamental guitars and decorative synths that pulse above the head of Santiago Motorizado while a resounding but gimcrack bass runs underneath.
[6]

Alfred Soto: As the guitars get tangled like vines, Santiago Motorizado’s Argentinian-inflected Spanish summons Chris Martin for its vulnerability. It works. Better, though, is the way the track is allowed to breathe: marimba solo, synth solo, the guitars returning for more entanglement. 
[7]

Ryo Miyauchi: He sings about providing protection like a soldier unwilling to leave his post. Despite the earnestness, though, I can’t quite hear it as admirable persistence but rather stubbornness. But got to give it to this band for meaning what they say: the rock music has got its feet planted, moving only slightly to give the floor to a frontman who equally won’t budge.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: The guitars are bright and the singer could project across canyons, perhaps continents. All the better to share his sadness.
[8]

Tim de Reuse: Snappy and bright, anchored by a to-and-fro clockwork rhythm and given color through lead singer Barrionuevo’s marvelous, swooping delivery. It’s interesting that such an upbeat song about unrequited affection ends with such a dark statement as “Es la depresión sin épica;” a “flat, everyday” depression that’s “so normal it’s part of your life,” according to Barrionuevo, who delivers the final two lines in a defeated, rhythmless mutter. It contextualizes the previous mentions of defeat, sinking treasure, and wasted time as consuming, space-filling concepts, larger than just items in an unfortunate circumstance. The “the end” of the chorus’s “until the end” might as well refer to the heat death of the universe — that’s how this kind of thing tends to feel when you’re in the thick of it.
[9]