
When it comes to popular music (and movies), I always enjoy reading peoples year-end, best-of lists.
This is for two reasons: (1) Its a road map to finding the artists whose work I missed during the Gregorian calendar; and (2) it occasionally gives affirmation of my own personal favorites in the same time period.
Discovering new sounds has been an active pursuit for me over the past five decades. Its a constant pop-culture treasure hunt that used to be a lot more work before the advent of the internet. So, thanks, Al Gore.
Conversely, theres sooooooooo much new music out there anymore, its really hard to sift through it all. I miss a lot of really good stuff the first time around.
This is where the aforementioned best-of lists come in handy. If the reviewers tastes vibrate at a similar frequency to mine, then I seek out their suggestions, quite often with grand success. And if they happen to single out an album or song that I liked myself, well then, the sonic convergence makes it all the groovier.
So in this season of sharing, I offer up this list of my 20 favorite songs, in no particular order, from the orbital period that has been 2017:
Dont Be Denied, Norah Jones
Time Coast, Robyn Hitchcock
December, Benjamin Gibbard
Pharoah, Young Mopes
Pearly Gate Smoke Machine, Guided By Voices
Trick, Matthew Sweet
Odyssey, the Accidentals
Me and My Man, Deer Tick
See What Love Did to Me, Yusuf/Cat Stevens
Not Everything That Counts Can Be Counted, Bill Bragg
Dead in the Water (Live), Noel Gallaghers High Flying Birds
Wait for Me, Tift Merritt
Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins, Chuck Prophet
Ballad of the Dying Man, Father John Misty
Disappeared Planets, Richard Edwards
Maybe a Moment, Justin Townes Earle
Putin, Randy Newman
If Was Your Boyfriend, The Waterboys
Make It Clear, The Feelies
Broken Anyway, Ryan Adams
To listen to this on YouTube.com, click this link: https://youtu.be/X2LT_fablic
[divide margin_top="4" margin_bottom="4" color="#000000"]Beesley is a production editor for 360, He can be reached at (208) 848-8209 or beez@lmtribune.com.