SO MUCH MUSIC

I mean, if you know me even a minimal amount, you know my passion for music.

2017 was an incredible year for music, and I love making lists. Combine these two things, and you have me spending 30 days going through all of my music from 2017 to pick my 200 favourite songs of the year. My one rule is that I can only have one song per artist, so there are 200 original artists featured on the list as well. I started out with the goal of having 100 songs, like I did last year. But about a week ago, after three weeks of working through all of my music multiple times, I was down to 350 songs. There was no way I was making it to 100. So, here’s my top 200 songs of the year. Some may say it’s lazy that I didn’t curate it further. So be it. The way I look at it, doing 200 songs means there’s more variety than if I cut it down to 100 songs. I’ll be honest, I listen to only a few genres, and so at 100 songs, this list would look (and sound) pretty similar throughout. But that’s not what I’m about. I want people to discover new music, and find something to enjoy between “those screaming songs” as my mother calls them. So enjoy, skip as many as you want, and maybe give some a chance that you might not normally.

Rather than list what I like about every song on this list, I’d like to just make some observations about my list.

• One thing that becomes abundantly clear is my abandonment of retaining any music credibility. I mean, I have Ed Sheeran and The Chainsmokers on my list, two of the most hated pop artists right now, and true music fans love to hate them because they’re so for the masses. Whatever, make your own list, I don’t care, it’s my list.
• Going hand-in-hand with the above observation is that I clearly have changed my tune towards certain genres. If you had asked me 5 years ago which genres of music I hated, Pop and Country would be the two that came out of my mouth. Ask me 10 years ago, and Rap would be right there as well. So my music interests have completely changed, and I can confidently say my wife and siblings had a lot to do with it, and I have no ragrats.
• Despite the above two observations, the two genres I loved in 2005 still rule my heart 12 years later: pop-punk and metalcore.
• This is the first year I feature song worship songs. This is something I personally struggle with. As a Christian, I grew up listening to only Christian music, but as I grew older, I realized very quickly there was lots of bad Christian music and a lot of good secular music. Around the same time, the “Chris Tomlin” movement happened in Church worship. Nothing against the man himself, but he made worship accessible, and in a way dumbed it down two the four chord structure with simple words and maybe an “ohhhhhhh” as the bridge. Many of you have had this conversation with me about this very thing, I’m sure. However, over the past year, I’ve made an effort to push past my preconceived notions and built up walls to engage in worship music again. It resulted in two songs out of my two hundred. Okay so I still have some growth to do, but it’s a start!
• This is the first year I started featuring local bands in my list, because why not? I’ve been called out about being all for music, but not supporting my local scene enough. So here are the local artists on my list:
  • Joshua Leventhal (great dude, great friend, worship artist)
  • Kitsune (post-hardcore band)
  • Stasis (melodic hardcore band)
  • Zoology, kind of. One half is from Kelowna, though they aren’t really local (indie electo jam-worthy music)
• The genre breakdown
  • 32% – 64 metal songs (broken into subgenres below, but if it’s all screamo music to you, don’t worry about it)
    • 13.5% – 27 metalcore songs
    • 9.5% – 19 post-hardcore songs
    • 5% – 10 hardcore songs
    • 4% – 8 melodic hardcore songs
  • 16% – 32 pop-punk songs
  • 10.5% – 21 Hip-Hop/Rap songs
  • 8% – 16 emo songs
  • 7.5% – 15 pop songs
  • 7% – 14 rock songs
  • 5% – 10 country songs
  • 5% 10 indie pop/indie rock songs
  • 4% – 8 singer/songwriter songs (lower this year than last year)
  • 4% – 8 r&b/funk songs
  • 1% – 2 worship songs
• Out of this list, the following is my top 5 most listened-to songs:
  • 1. Out of It – The Story So Far
  • 2. Wave – Bilmuri
  • 3. Dive – Social Club
  • 4. In Bloom – Neck Deep
  • 5. 40 Over – Seaway

This concludes my list. I’ll be posting my top albums of the year within the week.

As always, thanks for reading!