Year In Review 2017

One hundred and sixty-four tracks of 2017, compiled in early 2018 once the year had finished and the songs that had earned their rotation had separated from the ones that hadn’t. The longest of the year-end review tapes — 2017 was a year with more peaks than most years and the catalog version has to honor the actual diversity rather than narrowing the list down to a critic’s top-twenty.

Calvin Harris carries the dance-pop-radio crossover spine across the year. The “Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 1” record had Harris pivoting from EDM-festival production into Disclosure-adjacent house-funk territory and the singles dropped continuously across the summer. “Slide” with Frank Ocean and Migos was the May single. “Feels” with Pharrell, Katy Perry, and Big Sean was the June single. “Rollin’” with Future and Khalid was August. The whole record was a slow-rollout single-by-single across summer 2017 and the year-end rotation has to honor that.

RAIZA BIZA “Wassup” from the COLORS show series is the cross-Atlantic underground-rap pull. The Berlin-based New Zealand rapper’s COLORS performance was the song one of the friends in the group chat sent around in March and that we kept returning to through the year. Foo Fighters “Run” opens the rotation because Grohl writing for arenas is one of the few things in rock-radio that still works the way the genre demands.

NoMBe “Freak Like Me” sits in the front quarter. German producer Noah McBeth’s catalog had been on the alt-radio rotation for a year by then and “Freak Like Me” specifically was the streaming-era cut that found its way into broader rotation without the album-cycle support that pop-radio singles usually depend on. Erick Morillo with Eddie Thoneick and Angel Taylor “Lost In You” carries the late-night dance-pop bridge. Morillo’s catalog had been in a quiet renaissance for a few years before he died in 2020 and “Lost In You” was the cut where his late-period work crossed over.

Denitia and Sene “casanova.” anchors the alt-R&B side of the year. The duo’s catalog had been on heavy rotation in the group chat since early in the year and “casanova.” specifically was the cut that converted the holdouts. The Killers “The Man” was the rock-radio-revival peak — half self-parody, half actual-banger, the band navigating that contradiction the way they’ve been doing for fifteen years.

DJ Khaled with Rihanna and Bryson Tiller “Wild Thoughts” was the song of the summer. The Santana sample is the structural moment of the track and the song was inescapable from June through October. The placement is honoring the cut’s actual rotation duty rather than pretending we were too cool for it.

Anti Lilly & Phoniks “Blue In Green” carries the underground-rap-with-jazz-samples side of the rotation. Phoniks’s productions occupy the specific space between Pete Rock’s catalog and the post-J-Dilla beat-tape tradition and Anti Lilly’s vocal style fits the production aesthetic the way the genre demands. The placement deep in the rotation is the deliberate-deep-cut move that elevates the tape past pop-radio orthodoxy.

A Tribe Called Quest’s comeback album from late 2016 kept rotating through 2017 — “We the People” was the lead single from the album and the song that the friend group played back-to-back over speakerphone the November the record dropped. The placement in the back third honors that continuing rotation without committing the front half of the tape to the catalog reach-back.

Mid-rotation pulls include Sir Sly’s full catalog, Lana Del Rey’s “Lust for Life” tracks, Kendrick’s “DAMN.” cuts that broke through to the broader audience, and a healthy block of Sampha’s solo work from the album that landed in February. Sampha specifically deserves more credit than the year-end critics gave him — “Process” is the album that should have won every prize that year and didn’t.

One hundred and sixty-four tracks lands at about ten hours. The right length for a year-end retrospective playback that runs across an entire Saturday — coffee in the morning, lunch in the kitchen, dinner with the family, late-evening winding down. Built for the friend group who’d lived through the twelve months of Friday editions with me. The annual ritual that closes the year. Still gets played the last Saturday of every December, even now.

The annual ritual that closes the year. Still gets played the last Saturday of every December, even now. The year-in-review tape is the long-form version of the personal-rotation summary — same songs in mostly the same order, but expanded with the cuts that the disciplined personal-rotation edition couldn’t quite accommodate. Useful as a comparison artifact against the surrounding years’ summaries.