NPR Music - Our no. 1 songs: 2017

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

A Pulitzer Prize-winning hip-hop album, a crushing elegy to a lost love, a reevaluation of Kesha, "melodrama" from Lorde and more.Note: This is a recurring series in celebration of All Songs Considered’s 25th anniversary. A shorter version of this episode ran earlier in the year.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

A quick note before the show, this episode contains explicit language. It's all songs considered. I'm Robin Hilton. Here is Stephen Thompson talking about our number one songs of the past 25 years. We're doing a different year each week. Hey, Stephen. Hello, Robin. So we're up to 2017, and we've been trying to sort of play a little bit of stump the chump,

playing something for each other. Like, here's my pick. Do you even, do you dig through the cobwebs of your mind? They're going to get less cobwebby as we get closer and closer to the president. At least I hope so. Do you remember this one, this deep cut? I think for 2017, we're 100% in agreement. Certainly on the album, if not the song, we would pick.

And we'll just go with this one. I got loyalty, I got royalty inside my DNA. Cocaine, quarter piece, got war and peace inside my DNA. I got power, poison, pain, and joy inside my DNA. I got hustle, though, ambition, flow inside my DNA. I was born like this This is born like this Emaculate Conception

I transformed like this Performed like this What yosch you a new weapon I don't contemplate I meditate They're off your fucking head This that put the kids to bed This that I got I got

I got I got I got I got DNA from Kendrick Lamar Obviously from the album Damn I remember when this record First came out I listened to it

And then I just started it all over again Right then in the same In the same sitting listen to it all over again, second time. And I literally put a do not disturb sign up. And I listened to this four times all the way through without. Before you even took a break from it, walked away. And it just blew my mind apart.

Yeah, I mean, DNA is a, DNA is a perfect jam. You could play that one. You could play loyalty. You could play so many songs. For me, one of the ones that I have just kept going back to over and over again is love. I said this about Lemonade for 2016. and I remember thinking it again when Dan came out

Once in a Generation album I'm like, boom, boom. I mean, the fact of the matter is many years have once in a generation albums. I don't know, man. Stuff that stands up to Damn and Lemonade. I mean, yeah, that's a really good pair of years

from music for sure. But I mean, it was also like such an undeniable record that it was like, it won a Pulitzer Prize. Yeah, I was going to say. Like, I'm a Pulitzer Prize. And everybody was like, oh, yeah, that checks out. Yeah, no, that was good.

Yeah, this year was a pretty good album. Well, since I know that you were going to pick Kendrick Lamar as well, what was sort of your backup for what would be your number two pick. Well, 2017 was a great year for music. Kendrick Lamar definitely looms, you know, kind of largest over that year. There are a number of directions I could go. I mean, I certainly could go with that Siza record. Control came out that year.

And it's so funny because Kendrick and Siza, now they're touring together. They've been so, so, you know, they had Luther, which is, you know, the biggest song of this year so far, you know, they've become sort of inextricably tied to each other. And so I want to go in a different direction completely. I'm going to pick a song from 2017 that I have listened to hundreds of times. I think very, very, very few people, even people who listen to this show are going to know this song. The one or two people will be going to know this band. I've certainly talked about them on this show before.

But a song that I cannot believe more people are not as obsessed with as I am. I beat my heart and say, you'll make it all right if you fall along and enough throw it away. Oh. Keeping it all, we said that we won't show it off to some dismay. Battle wounds in the heat of the night, feeling soft I hate to say. Shake it off and it'll be all right. Come, baby, won't you stay? You know, the only thing I can come up with is Sylvanesso, because it sounds a little like,

get up, yeah, but it's not, I'm drawing a blank. So the song is called Afterthought by the band Close Talker. Oh, no, I don't know Close Talker. And they're terrific, and they've got a bunch of great songs. That song, to me, kind of towers over everything because it is to me perfect. It gives me goosebumps. I'm sitting here with goosebumps. There is something so.

slide that just like slides under your skin listening to this record. I just cannot get enough of this song. And I feel like doesn't everybody love this song? I don't think anybody else knows this song the way that you know this song. I mean, it's new to me. I like this a lot. Do you hear what I'm saying though, the similarities to Sylvanessa, certainly in the voice? Oh yeah. The voice in some of the chord progressions, it definitely feels of a piece. And maybe that was just a vibe that really worked for me in 2017. Yeah. But I got to say, in the years since, I've gone back and revisited that song again and again and

again, and I have never gotten tired of it. All right, let's just take a quick break and then talk about some of the other songs that take us back to 2017. Well, I wrote down quite a few things for 2017. A Crow looked at me. By Mount Erie. Yeah, Mount Erie. Oh, my.

My God. Just a devastating album, full of devastating songs, but I'd go with the opener called Real Death. Death is real. The one's there and then they're not. And it's not for singing about. It's not for making into art. When real death enters the house, all poetry is dumb. When I walk in.

You know, we talked about with the Sufion Stevens record, Carrie and Lowell, I think you said that flattened me. I thought that's a great way to put it. Boy, did a crow look at me, flatten me. It still does. This record and its sequel now only from just like a year or so later. The songs, not just songs about death, but songs about A-death. Phil Alvram from Mount Erie lost his wife, Jean-Viev, Kest. stray to cancer and then wrote these albums reflecting on just these deeply vivid details of her of her life, her death, and her absence in some of the most vivid and haunting and beautiful ways. And it like, it took, I waited months and months to really sit down with this record because I was like, oh, God, that is like emotional homework that I am not ready to handle.

and yet I ended up just falling in love with those records and actually come back to them as just beautiful works of art. Yeah, one of the greatest works of art about grief, I think, of all time. But on the complete opposite end of the emotional spectrum, I also wrote down the song Pleasure from Feist. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's some mysterious there. So when I get mysterious there.

We've talked about FISA good bit already as we've gone through the years, but by the time she dropped this album, this is the title cut, pleasure. It had been about six years since she'd released anything, so it was a big one for 2017. Yeah. But what else takes you back? Oh, man. I mean, 2017 was the year of the Keshe comeback.

Oh, yeah, yeah. All of a sudden, Kesha had that song praying. I can thank you for how strong I have become. Because you brought the flames and you put me through hell I had to learn how to fight for myself And we both know all the truths I could tell I'll just say this is I wish you farewell I hope you're somewhere praying

I hope your soul is changing Changing Everybody had to stop and kind of redefine Keisha in their minds as, you know, because everybody kind of knew her from TikTok and these kind of delightful, silly, stupid songs, which she still does brilliantly, but also was able to make a grand statement that felt really big and important in 2017. That was a great song and a great record. What else you got? for 2017, though. What a great year.

Phoebe Bridgers dropped her first record in 2017. Stranger in the Alps. We were just talking about that one on the Halloween episode because of the song, Killer. But if we're going to do it, we should do something else. Let's do motion sickness. I think this is the one. I mean, I think when we get

to her next record, we'll certainly be talking about that. But, you know, there's one monumental album from 2017, I think, that we haven't talked about with a monumental song on it that I would have picked, if not for Kendrick. And I think you're going to know exactly what this is the second I hit it.

Oh, Lord. Oh, the song is so good. We order different drinks at the same bars. I know about what you did and I want to scream the truth. She thinks you love the beach. You're such a damn liar. Those great whites, they have big teeth. Hope they bite you

That you said that you will always be in love But you're not in love No more Did it frighten you How we kissed when we danced On the light of floor On the light of floor But I hear sounds in my

And my A mind Stevie, you just want to hang out Listen to music With a friend is fun Music's so good It really is Oh, this song Greenlight Lord from the album Melodrama.

Oh, my God. I just found it so life-giving. The piano, I'm just, I'm always a sucker for a great piano line like that. But, you know, she at least on this album, I think, showed a real gift for turning anxiety and turmoil and loss into a complete celebration. And I was so there for it. I still am. Love this. Yeah.

But this is a perfect one to go out on. And until next week, when we look back at 20. Thanks as always, Stephen. Thank you, Robin. And for NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered.