The best songs of 2017

With no pretense of being exhaustive, nor of representing the whole of the editorial staff's rankings, we thought we'd let you hear the playlists that best represent each of our "musical years." The songs that stood out within a particular genre, the signature songs of breakthrough artists or of the year's great returns – or, more simply, the songs that meant something to us as we listened to them.

Gabriele Benzing

Will an algorithm kill music? Never as in 2017 has the prospect of the playlist supplanting the album seemed so real. Songs automatically selected according to past tastes, moods, moments in our lives: for Liz Pelly ("The Problem with Muzak") this is the way we're giving up the curiosity of discovery, the richness of narrative, the capacity for criticism. The very meaning of writing about music.

So why a playlist, then? Because there's no point turning our backs on change: we just need to try to give it back its humanity. The humanity of whoever is behind the playlist: the desire to keep exploring, telling stories, passing judgment. And to share every spark capable of making the heart beat faster. From the familiar territory of a band that has now achieved full consecration (The War On Drugs) to the uncharted ones of a young man who set off in a camper van stuffed with songs to find himself again (Raj And The 100's), ten tracks to keep searching for the secret that makes us human. Or, in the words of Sufjan Stevens, "the greatest gift of all, and the law above all laws".

Giuliano Delli Paoli

Claudio Fabretti

Stefano Fiori

From the lovesick anguish of Perfume Genius and the macabre wedding vows of Charlotte Gainsbourg to the "Downtown Lights" evoked by Jessie Ware and Paul Buchanan, and the awakening of the senses of Bjork and Arca, my songs of 2017 have been marked by a subdued electronic sound or by understated tones softened just slightly by the odd carioca influence (from Drake to the more unlikely Morrissey). Women have taken center stage, with an ever more bewitching Lana Del Rey, an increasingly elegiac Hannah Reid of London Grammar, and Lorde, who for once wins me over with a track that sounds like Kate Bush drunkenly tackling a karaoke rendition of "Up Where We Belong".

Fabio Guastalla

Vassilios Karagiannis

Claudio Lancia

First of all, my infatuation with the current psych scene, the most interesting and populous since the original one of the late Sixties. King Gizzard (with their monumental five-album saga), Flowers Must Die and Oh Sees have taken the podium spots in my year-end chart, and are represented in the playlist alongside Black Angels and Pontiak. This wonderful brood doesn't overshadow my love for "alternative" rock, which sees me "rewarding" Cloud Nothings, Brand New, Metz and Idles. An excerpt from the excellent new National album closes the list of the ten tracks I enjoyed most in 2017. Just missing the cut are Arcade Fire, Froth, Jesus & Mary Chain, War On Drugs, Ulver and the fine duo of Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile: they're the bonus tracks.

Alessandro Mattedi

Michele Palozzo

"Karuna" is a transfiguring track, and certainly the one that defined my musical year more than any other. A remarkably fragile poetic statement from the frontman of the Antlers, one that ultimately radiates an unexpected strength and will to rise again, invoking the sense of compassion inspired by Buddhism.

Among my ten picks, it's impossible not to mention the "hidden" love anthem by Nordic pop nymph Susanne Sundfør, who returned to an emphatic, chamber-like intimacy after the sensational hits and grandiloquent orchestrations of "Ten Love Songs".

Lorenzo Righetto

In 2017 there were plenty of songs that stuck with me, but above all "Lunar Days" by the Clientele; maybe because it sounds like one of those multi-part, vaguely disjointed melodies that lingers on the tip of your tongue after a really vivid dream. Elsewhere there are songs I simply played on repeat out of sheer visceral need, maybe even a slightly adolescent one ("Albert Ross", "Young & Dumb" and "New York" are the ones with the most recognizable imagery, a kind of TV series pilot set to music).

All in all it's probably a somewhat inconclusive, suspended playlist, with no dominant thread running through it, much like this year has been, at least for me.

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08/11/2025