10. Charli XCX – ‘Boys’ (Atlantic)

This pop gem about daydreaming of Boys™ sounds precisely that. A lucid dream of different kinds of male fantasies, bad guys, good guys, that dude from work, who cares. Unapologetically and unabashedly getting lost in her fantasies and ignoring her girlfriends blowing her phone up, Charli XCX delivers her vision with a catchy bubble gum tune, bleeps and bloops and all, accompanied by one of the most satisfying (and sadly subversive) music videos of the year.

9. SZA ft. Travis Scott – ‘Love Galore’ (Top Dawg / RCA)

From the critically acclaimed Ctrl, Love Galore sets a low-lights mood with its laidback, tropical bass. Against a whirring trap beat, SZA explores the urge to reunite with a hurtful past lover while showing off her creamy, alluring vocals and succeeding in pumping out one of the most sensual yet dripping with attitude tracks of the year.

8. Tyler, The Creator – ‘911 / Mr. Lonely’ (Columbia)

Peeling back the layers of his extravagant, edgy persona, and revealing the underlying loneliness turned out to be just about the biggest power move for Tyler, The Creator this year. Earning himself critical acclaim with Flower Boy this year, he proves to be almost uncomfortably blunt about his misguided ways of handling loneliness in ‘911 / Mr. Lonely’, giving his audience one of the most personal and unsettled rap tracks of the year.

7. King Krule – ‘Dum Surfer’ (True Panther)

Solidifying the dirty, sly jazz undertone as a significant part of King Krule’s musical identity, ‘Dum Surfer’ invites the listener to ride the gnarly bass line and boogie to a now iconic, smirk inducing guitar riff. While Archy Marshall bellows and broods about his brain turning into mash and crashing a European taxi, one cannot help but feel as if they’re stomping away at an underground zombie gig.

6. Dirty Projectors – ‘Keep Your Name’ (Domino)

Definitely the most satisfyingly bitter break-up song of the year, it marks David Longstreth’s shift from experimental folksy indie, to an experimental approach to some amalgamation of art rock, R&B, and electronica. The lyrics are dark, referential, and land on lines and samples that work on about three different levels. It’s weird, and unexpected, and great, and deeply personally significant. It’s the ‘Love Lockdown’ of 2017.

5. Kendrick Lamar – ‘HUMBLE.’ (Interscope)

Undoubtedly the biggest rap hit of 2017, ‘HUMBLE.’ once again re-establishes Kendrick as the current reigning king of narrative-driven rap. Having proven himself to be a master of old-school style rap, he makes his way into the current mainstream, only to slay nearly everyone there as well. Telling lesser mortals to sit down and stay humble, Kendrick actually makes it difficult not to get behind his statement and his assumption of a nearly messianic role.

4. Perfume Genius – ‘Slip Away’ (Matador)

And the award for most gorgeously produced song of the year goes to. Layering drum tracks, glimmering synthesizers, and vocals on top of each other, Mike Hadreas creates an intense tapestry of sounds that invokes overwhelming feelings of hopefulness and urgency, culminating in a coda like little else. Telling his lover to get carried away from judgmental eyes by the love and the sound, it’s impossible for us not to get swept away as well.

3. Lorde – ‘Green Light’ (Universal)

While performance artistry is increasingly key to mainstream pop in 2017, Lorde proved that actual song-writing is still the critical and sufficient asset. A piece of euphoric yet subtle and multi-faceted pop that sounded more outgoing than the introspection of Pure Heroine, ‘Green Light’ had all the elegance and poise that one now expects from Ella Yelich-O’Connor.

2. Sampha – ‘(No One Knows Me) Like The Piano’ (Young Turks)

Mercury prize winner Sampha gives us a simple, yet gorgeous and profoundly personal ballad. Amongst the rest of the electronica, R&B, and soul inspired album, ‘Piano’ is a gorgeous and mellow meditation on self-discovery and sentiments, and Sampha’s calming voice and excellent playing ability go a long way in bringing the listener in to his headspace.

1. Mount Eerie – ‘Real Death’ (P.W. Elverum & Sun)

“It’s not for singing about / It’s not for making into art” Phil Elverum tremulously whispers of the heart-breaking loss of his wife and the mother of his daughter, and God cries. The overwhelming grief of loss has been readily exploited by artists as easy-access drama, but the total calamity of actual death is insurmountable. Elverum acknowledges this, and yet comes closest to encompassing the tragedy and absurdity of it all. The song is, admittedly, difficult to get through because of its brutal honesty about the events following the death of a loved one, and yet it is, in the end, a non-exploitative achievement on a completely absurdist topic about which, in truthfulness, “words fail”.