Year in Review

The 17 Best Pop Songs of 2017

Cardi B, Kendrick Lamar, and even Taylor Swift produced antidotes to the worst year ever.
Image may contain Clothing Apparel Taylor Swift Sunglasses Accessories Accessory Human Person and Kendrick Lamar
Future, Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift, Cardi B and Selena Gomez all produced antidotes to the worst year ever.Photo Illustration by Lauren Margit Jones; Photos, clockwise from left, by Paras Griffin, by Paul Marotta, by Larry Busacca, by Angela Weiss/AFP, by Neilson Barnard, by Fin Costello/Redferns (background), all from Getty Images.

Joy was elusive in 2017, in everything from politics to Hollywood to the isolated cultural bubbles where most Americans now look for shelter. The one exception? Pop music.

In 2017, pop established a true counter-narrative: cross-pollinating, democratic, and often as buoyantly unbothered as it has ever has been. Genres melded and sometimes combusted completely. An almost entirely Spanish language reggaeton track by two relative unknowns was the year’s biggest hit. And with Spotify and YouTube further entrenched at the center of music consumption, the year’s best and biggest songs underscored a new kind of egalitarianism, allowing the public to directly drive the conversation and charts, and giving the artists room to take risks.

This year in pop can ultimately be boiled down to one emblematic moment, when a stripper-turned-Instagram-star-turned-reality-star-turned-hip-hop princess dethroned the biggest major label superstar of her generation at No.1, with nothing but a freestyle rap and a whole bunch of streaming clicks.

So with that spirit of radical inclusivity in mind, here’s a sampling of some of the best songs of 2017. Like great pop should, these songs united, delighted, made us feel, think, and sometimes provided hope, even if just for four minutes while rapping “Bodak Yellow” with 100 strangers at 3 A.M. Let’s dive in.

Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)”

While “Bodak Yellow” was the most surprising hit of 2017, its ascension now seems inevitable for how effortlessly it distilled Cardi B’s iconic, irreverent, and irrepressibly charming Instagram persona into a bombastic trap jewel.

As with her famous social-media riffs, nearly every line of “Bodak” is quotable. Just to recap: our heroine gets paid to party, her nether regions are gold-plated, and bank tellers are completely exhausted by her frequent deposits. But even if your rhymes haven’t made you wealthy or made your privates shimmer, you’re powerless against Cardi’s exceptional knack for conveying authenticity. “Bodak” ’s rapturous celebration of self-actualization—and the fact that it knocked Taylor Swift’s most self-indulgent single to date off the top of the charts—made it the most universal song of the year.

Demi Lovato’s “Daddy Issues”

Demi Lovato always seemed like a workhorse pop star, diligent but never quite expanding past middle management. That changed this year on her sixth album, the excellent Tell Me You Love Me, and its crowning achievement, “Daddy Issues.” “Issues” obliterates the very concept of lyrical subtly as Demi explores the cross-section of her challenging relationship with her father and her destructive romantic choices. “Lucky for you” blares the chorus, “I’ve got all these daddy issues!” That the track does psychodrama atop triumphant synthetic horns, shimmering major-key melodies and palpable delight at one’s shortcomings makes what could have been a maudlin overshare feel ebullient instead.

Sampha’s “No One Knows Me (Like the Piano)”

Sampha’s spare ode to the powers of family and music as salvation suggests that the simplest experience—returning to your childhood home and picking up the instrument through which you first expressed your feelings—can pack a gut-wrenching punch. His celestial voice doesn’t hurt either.

Charlie Puth’s “How Long”

In what may have been 2017’s most unsuspecting about-face, Charlie Puth charged from guy-whose-name-no-one-can-pronounce-and-sung-the-hook-on-that-Paul-Walker-in-memoriam-song-and-also-some-other-stuff right to the head of the overcrowded male pop starlets pack. This was evident on his very good hit single “Attention,” but it’s the self-produced “How Long”—a devilishly slinky slice of blue-eyed funk—that solidifies Puth as a true contender and is, simply put, the best Maroon 5 song of the decade.

Paramore’s “Forgiveness”

Paramore excels at big, brash, emotional calls to arms. “Forgiveness,” with it’s dreamy guitar loop and delicate rebuke of a partner who’s finally messed up for good, takes the opposite tack. Stripped back, tender, and ultimately tragic, the push and pull between singer Hayley Williams’s desire to absolve and the knowledge that she can’t is as beguiling as it is heartbreaking.

Lorde’s “Homemade Dynamite”

The wide-eyed debauchery of “Homemade Dynamite” serves not only as a thematic centerpiece of Lorde’s superb second album, Melodrama. This clattering cacophony also captures both the adventure and impending regret of night out with a new lover as only Lorde, pop’s ultimate millennial savant, can. “Our rules, our dreams, we’re blind,” she pants, “Our friends, our drinks, we get inspired.” For the 21-year-old, parties and flings are electrifying and novel but also menaced by an imminent emptiness usually registered by revelers well beyond her years.

DJ Khaled’s “Wild Thoughts,” Future’s “Selfish,” Kendrick Lamar’s “Loyalty,” and N.E.R.D.’s “Lemon,” all featuring Rihanna

Rihanna didn’t release any new music of her own this year, but like most years, she didn’t let that stop her from owning radio anyway. Her scene-stealing features culminated with “Lemon,” where she raps with the best of them about blunts, Bugatti Veyrons, and, inexplicably, the Fonz. It’s a verse that gleams with the ice-cold passivity that only Rihanna can make pass for elation.

Selena Gomez’s “Bad Liar”

An unexpectedly quirky single, “Bad Liar” marries the bassline of the Talking Head’s “Psycho Killer,” conversational vocals that recall Britney’s most adventurous work, and lyrics that equate the sometimes unsettling rumblings of lust and the Battle of Troy. It’s Gomez’s deft use of her relatively thin voice that’s the revelation here—an alluring murmur that hints at a slightly more left-of-center pop career than one might expect from a former Disney star.

Future’s “Mask Off”

“Mask Off” is the perfect Future song: drowsy, textural storytelling over slyly menacing production, this time featuring, of all things, a baroque flute sample. This hypnotic combination gives the song—a tale of reckless robbery on opiates—it’s sheer, bleak elegance.

Taylor Swift’s “Delicate”

Even at her most publicly beset, Taylor Swift possesses a secret weapon that separates her from the competition: truly unimpeachable songcraft. On “Delicate,” a spacious trop-pop confection, Taylor meets a Nike-adorned new lover in a dive bar and wonders aloud about the micro-anxieties we all might have in that situation: “Is it cool that I said all that? Is it chill that you’re in my head? Is it too soon to do this yet?” Her “reputation's never been worse,” but Swift's uncanny gift for taking the commonplace and rendering it thoroughly mythical—here, the moment where a crush might become something more—remains pristine.

SZA’s “Drew Barrymore”

SZA’s CTRL is the best album of the year, messy yet nourishing, familiar, refreshing, cool, and brazen, all in equal measure. On “Drew Barrymore,” SZA uses the movie icon as a metaphor for her own struggle with self-worth in the twilight of a relationship. The track—where sunny strings barely mask the narrator’s angst— showcases the genre-melting singer-songwriter’s singular ability to turn the sloppiness of the human condition into profound pop magic.

Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble”

It’s as lean as they come: a looping four-note piano line, a basic drum pattern, and a hook that repeats the same, prescient line in seeming perpetuity: “Be humble. Sit Down.” “Humble” exemplifies Kendrick Lamar’s ability to take a sticky idea—the conflict between self-belief and humility—and boil it down into something simple, anthemic, and in this case, his catchiest and most accessible single to date.

Kesha’s “Praying”

In a year of gut-wrenching revelations of sexual assault in the entertainment industry, Kesha’s “Praying” felt completely necessary. Tracing her own experiences with her once collaborator and alleged abuser, the super-producer Dr. Luke, “Praying” is not only Kesha’s most stirring vocal performance to date. It’s also downright devotional. Here, Kesha revels in painstaking honesty, then offers proof—with the whistle note that launches its final chorus—that rebirth and redemption are the cathartic byproduct of that candor.

Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Cut to the Feeling”

No song title more plainly represents what Carly Rae Jepsen does: She cuts straight through the crap and injects you with that raw, uncut feeling. No artifice. No posturing. “Cut to the Feeling”—which, like most of Jepsen’s work, trades in the rush of first falling in love—is so ecstatic in its celebration of boldly “canceling your reservations” and diving in headfirst with a new guy (or girl) that you can almost see the song itself smiling. It was the smile we all needed in 2017.