IDOLTHREAT International Top 20 of 2017
Y’know, this ‘music’ thing might catch on
Each year for the past five years, I’ve come up with two Top 20 lists: one for Australian music, and one for songs from outside Australia. In the past, they’ve been given the very punny title of “Top Twen-Ti” (because I’m Ti! Geddit? Geddit?), but as of this year, it’s now going to be part of idolthreat.
You can read the idolthreat Australian Top 20 of 2017 here.
One important note: the cutoff for releases for this year’s list was December 12. That means anything off Charli XCX’s Pop2 album, and everything off Eminem’s Revival album, will count towards the 2018 list.
There’s been a lot of incredible music out this year, but not all of it could make our Top 20, so before we start…
PRAYING • Kesha (pictured)
LEARN TO LET GO • Kesha
WOMAN • Kesha and the Dap-Kings Horns
KIWI • Harry Styles
STRIP THAT DOWN • Liam Payne, if you can get a version with Quavo edited out
SLOW HANDS • Niall Horan
DUSK TIL DAWN • Zayn and Sia
ILYSB • LANY
WHY • Sabrina Carpenter
SHELTER • SACHI and NÏKA
PLOT TWIST • Sigrid
DON’T KILL MY VIBE • Sigrid
FEEL IT STILL • Portugal. The Man
HOMEMADE DYNAMITE • Lorde, Khalid, Post Malone and SZA
DISCONNECT • Clean Bandit and Marina and the Diamonds
I MISS YOU • Clean Bandit and Julia Michaels
SELFISH • Rihanna and Future
BELIEVER • Imagine Dragons
THUNDER • Imagine Dragons
Everything off Charli XCX’s Number 1 Angel mixtape
BREATHE • Astrid S
I LIKE ME BETTER • Lauv
DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME • Robinson
I DON’T WANT IT AT ALL • Kim Petras
Everything off Lorde’s Melodrama album
STATEMENTS • Loreen
BEST BEHAVIOUR • Louisa Johnson
SAINT • VÉRITÉ
YOU DON’T KNOW ME • Jax Jones and RAYE
DECLINE • RAYE
UH-HUH • Julia Michaels
SCARED OF THE DARK • Steps
FUTURE • Banvox
You can hear all of these songs and more in our Best of 2017 playlist on Spotify.
So, on to the Top 20…
MAN’S NOT HOT • Big Shaq
Since Big Shaq appeared on BBC Radio 1Xtra and did a twenty-two minute attempt at Fire In The Booth with Charlie Sloth, he went superviral all over the world. Man’s Not Hot, a tune about nothing in particular but definitely about not needing to take off your jacket, was such a perfect parody of the genre that many people didn’t realise it was satire.
If you’re baffled by this, here he is on Genius explaining what the song is about:
And the joke just kept getting bigger and bigger — his appearance at 1Xtra Live saw an entire stadium of people doing some quickmaffs:
The song topped viral Spotify charts around the world, where a large number of people weren’t aware that it’s a comedy piece, and it even got radio airplay in Australia.
We didn’t deserve Man’s Not Hot, but we got damn lucky.
COMPUTER BOY • Poppy
Poppy’s album Poppy.Computer was delightfully ridiculous, but still managed to be full of really well-written pop songs. We could have put any song off the album here, but any time you have a song with the lyric “when you glow on my face you make me come alive / I want your floppy disk to be my hard drive” you tend to pick that one.
It was that or Interweb, for which the chorus is “ I caught you in my interweb / I caught you in my internet / maybe I’m a spider / or maybe I’m a fisherman”. Either way, some lyrical genius.
SHAPE OF YOU • Ed Sheeran
Ed had the top two singles in Australia for, from memory, eight consecutive weeks at the start of the year. He also now has the record for the longest running #1 in Australian history with this song, spending 15 weeks at #1, beating ABBA’s Fernando (14 weeks), The Beatles' Hey Jude (13 weeks), Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise (13 weeks), and even held off Despacito (13 weeks). An extraordinary achievement from a guy who has managed to avoid controversy and make everything about the music.
It’s weird; for the first half of the year, I loved Castle on the Hill. Shape of You was fine, but Castle On The Hill really stood out as this euphoric, reflective, nostalgic homecoming story. And then at some point, Shape of You just... came back. It’s got a rare longevity, and it’s still a song you want to turn up when you hear it. Still.
1800–273–8255 • Logic, Alessia Cara and Khalid
(cn: suicide)
It’s hard to understate just how significant this song is. The way the “I don’t want to be alive” turns into a begging, pleading “I want you to be alive”, and again into “I finally want to be alive”, is masterful. It also happens to be musically and vocally beautiful.
It’s also seen an increase in calls to the titular National Suicide Prevention Hotline, the American hotline named in the title. This song has actually affected positive change in the world, potentially saving lives.
That it manages to do this without feeling preachy or cheesy is an incredible feat.
In Australia, dial Lifeline on 13–11–14.
NIGHT BUS • Gabrielle Aplin
Most people in Australia’s awareness of Gabrielle Aplin would be her cover of The Power Of Love she did a few years back, which ended up on the promo for that show Resurrection on Channel 7. Anyway now she’s decided “hey, let’s do some fun songs” and has come up with an instantly catchy, endearing song about getting ready to break up with someone while travelling on a bus.
Honourable mention to Waking Up Slow, from her 2017 EP Avalon.
BEAUTIFUL MESS • Kristian Kostov
The true winner of Eurovision once you remove the bloke who won and then complained that there are too many people putting songs with no feelings into Eurovision and maybe if people just put feeling into their songs then they’d be good, forgetting that sometimes fun is a feeling you’re allowed to have.
Anyway. Kristian Kostov’s song is not a fun song, but it’s a very good one, his voice is great, and the staging happens to be great too.
Let’s pretend he didn’t have that series of weird possibly-homophobic tweets he then deleted back in September.
SUCH A BOY • Astrid S
Astrid S is on the verge of greatness. I swear she’s one single away from becoming a breakout star. She’s in the same position Dua Lipa was this time last year; Hotter Than Hell and Be The One were bubbling away, then her album dropped and suddenly she was everywhere. If that’s going to happen to anyone in 2018, it’s Astrid S.
SIGN OF THE TIMES • Harry Styles
Apparently nobody is allowed to compare or even describe One Direction members, so if Harry’s not your favourite, I meant to put your favourite here, who is so much better than Harry, please don’t @ me
ISSUES • Julia Michaels
Thank God someone in Julia Michaels’ team managed to convince her she’s more than a songwriter.
I must confess, it took me about a week to get this song. I didn’t love it at first, but I could appreciate the way others were feeling, and I could appreciate little bits and pieces, like the subtle production on the chorus and the quirky way she pronounces “bask” and the and-one-of-them-is-how-bad-I-need-ya bit. And then one day it all just hit me all at once, and it was love.
Her follow-up, Uh-Huh, was hugely underrated.
TOUCH • Little Mix
Some songs that become hits you just never want to hear again. Touch is one of those special songs that is the opposite; the second you hear “you and I and nobody else” you’re ready to do the “bwoo-woo-woo!” bit in the background and suddenly the song’s got your attention for the next three and a half minutes or so.
And the full three and a half minutes, too, because if you stop listening half way through, you know you’ll miss the drum-only dance chorus and then the way the last chorus bursts to life.
1 NIGHT • Mura Masa and Charli XCX
Charli XCX has had a belter of a year. She’s put out two mixtapes, she released the superviral Boys, toured everywhere, and also worked with Mura Masa on this anthem about spending one night with someone and longing to go back.
THE LINE • Raye
Any song about being pissed off at being stuck in the line outside a club should be huge, solely because of the huge number of people who can relate. Raye is still being touted as one of the Ones To Watch, and between this and Decline, she’s on track to be a star.
UP ALL NIGHT • Beck
Beck surprised everyone with his most accessible, pop-heavy album in years, Colors. Lead single Up All Night should have been about as big as Feel It Still by Portugal. The Man was.
An honourable mention to title track Colours, or Colors, depending on which country you’re from. It’s got more than a touch of Cut Copy to it. Plus it got a slime visualiser music video for YouTube, because slime videos were the cool thing.
DIRTY SEXY MONEY • David Guetta, Afrojack, Charli XCX, French Montana
A proper banger with plentiful Charli XCX and exactly the right amount of French Montana on it.
Special shout out to French Montana for rhyming “you” with “you” eight consecutive times.
LOST IN YOUR LIGHT • Dua Lipa and Miguel
Had Dua Lipa released this *after* New Rules, it would have been much better received. Maybe we’ll get a re-release in February or March 2018 or something.
EYES WIDE OPEN • Scavenger Hunt
Producer Dan Mufson and songwriter-vocalist Jill Lamoureux are from LA, and have been making 80's-90's-inspired electropop for a couple years now. They have a whole catalogue of music that you can go back to and love and wonder how the hell you missed it.
As we wrote in October:
Eyes Wide Open is anthemic. Jill’s vocal flicks on the pre-chorus are divine. The production is so crisp. The chorus is actually perfect in every way. Every single part of the song is a hook. It’s like Brooke Fraser has been listening to Carly Rae Jepsen.
Also, triple-bonus points for the concise ending to the song. You’ll know it when you hear it, obviously, because that will be the end of the song. A+++, that’s how you end a pop song.
How far do you wanna go?
GREEN LIGHT • Lorde
Anyone else remember feeling really nervous in the leadup to Lorde’s comeback? Like, Royals and Tennis Court and Team were all perfect, but what if it was just a fluke and this undid all her good work and we had to go back to playing Royals?
It wasn’t a fluke. Lorde is a superstar for the ages.
Seal, the singer, went on The Voice Australia and said it was “a not particularly good song” and said he’d never sing it because “Seal doesn’t sing bad songs” (yes, referring to himself in the third person) and he was so wrong they kicked him off the show and now he’s been replaced by Joe Jonas. Serves him right.
CUT TO THE FEELING • Carly Rae Jepsen
Carly had been sitting on this song for years. It was going to be on the E•MO•TION album, and then it was going to be on the follow-up mini-album of songs she dropped from E•MO•TION, but she didn’t use it, because she thought it’d be well suited to appearing on a soundtrack for a kids movie.
Imagine how different the world could have been if she’d bunged this on that album. Anyway.
This year, animated film Ballerina was released outside France, with Carly playing Odette in the English dub. She happened to be asked if she’d provide a song for the soundtrack, and — how convenient — here’s one she prepared earlier!
The video is probably the most underwhelming video of the year, so if this is your first time hearing the song, turn it up and then look away so your experience isn’t ruined.
AN ALL-TIME POP ANTHEM.
SUPERCUT • Lorde
Look, this hasn’t come out as a single yet. But among all the other incredible songs on Melodrama, this still stands out as a future smash. If any two songs deserve to end up as singles in 2018, it’s Liability and Supercut. Release them as a double-A-side situation like Shape Of You and Castle On The Hill or something.
Also let’s not forget that this year we learned Lorde was running a secret Instagram account called @onionringsworldwide in which she reviewed onion rings wherever she went.
NEW RULES • Dua Lipa
There’s been a trend in the last few years of songs becoming popular because of their proximity to memes — think the sudden resurgence of Bag Raiders’ Shooting Stars, or Desiigner’s Panda. There’s even been that really sad thing where one certain popstar keeps wedging memes into video clips in order to stay relevant and cool but ends up looking really past it and dated.
The opposite thing happened this year with Dua Lipa’s New Rules. Released as a single following the release of her album, Dua’s rules became A Thing to help people all over the world through breakups.
Remember: don’t pick up the phone, don’t let him in, don’t be his friend.
Count ‘em.
SYMPHONY • Clean Bandit and Zara Larsson
Symphony is, without question, one of the finest songs likely to be released this decade. The way this song comes to life feels like you’re listening to a flower bloom; it starts off so delicately, and by the end it flourishes into an all-encompassing, euphoric, joyous, life-affirming anthem. I still turn it up when I hear it. It’s the perfect song. 💖
You can hear all these songs in our Best of 2017 playlist on Spotify, and keep up with the best in new music with the idolthreat playlist on Spotify.
