If Child Driver taught people something this yr, it is that discovering simply the suitable track at simply the suitable second is like kismet. You may’t predict it, however when it occurs you must let it wash over you. Usually these jolts of pleasure happen to people listening alone, however occasionally they occur to the general public at massive. Possibly it is a music cue in a film, possibly it is Girl Gaga premiering a brand new monitor at Coachella, possibly it is somebody enjoying Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” in a subway station and starting a dance party. Beneath are our favourite musical moments of 2017. A few of them are private, some are worldwide, all of them have a rhythm. Get into the groove.

Cardi B Tops the Billboard Sizzling 100

You gained’t discover a extra compelling underdog story in 2017 than that of Belcalis Almanzar—the previous stripper and actuality TV star turned rap phenom referred to as Cardi B. Incandescent and hypnotically insistent, it was her major-label debut single, “Bodak Yellow,” that propelled the New York artist to star standing over the summer time, three sweat-soaked months that noticed her track gloriously and furiously rattling each dance flooring and blaring from each automobile window within the Tri-State space. In late September, simply weeks earlier than she turned 25, Cardi turned the primary feminine rapper since Lauryn Hill (and solely the second in historical past) to high the Billboard Sizzling 100 and not using a visitor characteristic (she’d go on to carry the spot for 3 weeks). The track’s would possibly was greater than mere Bronx boast: stubbornly self-willed, Cardi had single-handedly authored her place in rap historical past, and in doing so, completely shifted the calculus of pop power within the music trade. A cash transfer, little question. —Jason Parham

Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. Movies

In March, Kendrick Lamar’s “HUMBLE.” arrived with the hearth and ferocity of a molotov cocktail—unexpectedly, openly, radiantly. It might function the primary in a group of staggering music movies to accompany his forthcoming DAMN. album. Directed by Dave Meyers and The Little Homies (the duo is comprised of Lamar and Dave Free, the president of High Dawg Leisure, the label he calls house) and laced by a thump-crazy Mike Will Made-It beat, the video furnishes searing iconography: amongst its most eye-catching, a picture of a steel-faced Lamar friends into the digicam as a crimson flame contorts atop his crown of cornrows—the sight is each lovely for its aesthetic delight and much more cogent for its signification. As I wrote in July, the picture lended itself to a portrait of black existence seen from the within, a manner of being that sits on the nexus of actuality, fantasy, and abstraction—which is to say, true to life, if generally unnervingly so. The movies that adopted have been equally highly effective and poetic: “DNA.” enlisted Don Cheadle as a monstrous police officer for its berserk synopsis of cat and mouse; the thematic backdrop of “ELEMENT.” borrowed from the fabled photowork of Gordon Parks; “LOYALTY.” customary Rihanna and Lamar right into a du jour Bonnie and Clyde, a storm of mayhem and mischief. Say what you’ll, however few artists produced such a constantly gorgeous and radically envisioned physique of labor in 2017 as Lamar. —Jason Parham

Sufjan Stevens’ Music in Name Me By Your Title

Positive, Armie Hammer dancing to the Psychedelic Furs’ “Love My Means” turned the viral music sensation launched by Name Me By Your Title, nevertheless it was the songs Sufjan Stevens contributed to the soundtrack that have been the heartbreakers. (Stevens had a giant yr in movie music, he additionally recorded a sadly unused Tonya Harding tribute for I, Tonya.) Along with a remix of the Age of Adz monitor “Futile Units,” the film featured two new Stevens’ tracks that function bookends to the film’s central romance. “Thriller of Love” is a paean to the falling’s firsts: first contact, first kiss. Then “Visions of Gideon,” which unfolds over CMBYN’s elegiac closing credit scene, packs the movie’s closing punch as Stevens all however whispers “I’ve liked you for the final time … I’ve kissed you for the final time. Is it a video?” It’s sufficient to make you need to rewind the entire thing and relive all of it once more. —Angela Watercutter

Black Thought Proves Roots Run Deep

Some musical moments are greatest skilled via your timeline. Some issues are so colossal and jaw-dropping that you simply run to Twitter to not rage or crack jokes, however to yell astonishedly, and to learn different individuals doing the identical factor. In 2013, it occurred with Kendrick Lamar’s venomous tirade on Huge Sean’s “Management.” And that verse’s ignition-turn—”inform Flex to drop a bomb on this shit”—felt much more apropos in early December, when NYC radio legend Funkmaster Flex invited Roots frontman Black Thought into Sizzling 97’s (sigh) Ciroc studio. What adopted was greater than 9 minutes (9 minutes!) of livid adrenaline-spiked wordplay (“how far more CB4 can we afford?/it is like a shariah regulation on my cherie amour,” he says midway via, bemoaning hip-hop’s destiny with extra panache than the style has seen in 4 many years) that left you no choice however to fireplace up Tweetdeck and take heed to it another time, this time correctly annotated with capslocked reverence and GIFs of individuals fainting. —Peter Rubin

The Coronary heart-Chopping Refrain in St. Vincent’s ‘Los Ageless’

St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) produced one among her most pop-y and accessible in 2017 with Masseduction and launched it with “Los Ageless,” and extremely catchy ode to the vanity and pop-will-eat-itself nature of the Metropolis of Angels. It additionally is perhaps a tribute to a misplaced love. Or an ode to Hollywood’s therapy of ladies. It’s a St. Vincent track, so it might be all three, actually, however by the point it hits its bombastic refrain it doesn’t matter. “How can anyone have you ever?” Clark sings. “How can anyone have you ever and lose you? How can anyone have you ever and lose you and never lose their minds, too?” If there was a wiser antanaclasis about need and obsession written this yr, I don’t know what it was. —Angela Watercutter

The Blatant Non-Subtleness of Demi Lovato’s Inform Me You Love Me

There’s painful honesty after which there’s Demi Lovato—a in a Demi Lovato jam the reality hurts, nevertheless it’s additionally delivered in such a blunt completely innuendo-less manner you need to give her a excessive 5. Her newest album Inform Me You Love Me is filled with these. Living proof: “Daddy Points,” which to nobody shock finds the singer utilizing her forceful soprano to wail “Overlook all of the remedy that I have been via/Fortunate for you, I obtained all these daddy points” to her non-committal, unavailable lover. Not candid sufficient for you? Skip forward to “Wreck the Friendship,” which is in fact about attempting to hook up with a pal. Within the fingers of anybody else, all of this would possibly sound ridiculous, however between Lovato’s voice and the album’s severely stable pop and R&B grooves, it’s the perfect of (non-)responsible pleasures. —Angela Watercutter

Jay-Z Appears Again on “Marcy Me”

Jay-Z’s had his share of comebacks already—the years earlier than 2003 and 2013 have been a steady pendulum-swing of retirement and return—however even the highlights of that era solely appear to be appetizers subsequent to 2017’s four:44. Regardless of its brevity, the album is 36 minutes of full-throated embrace: of his hyphen, of remorse, of guilt and constancy and household and legacy. And all that sentiment finds its apotheosis right here, during which Hov goes again to the start by way of the Brooklyn homes of his youth. From the opening Biggie quote to the ’90s nostalgia (“Outdated Brooklyn, not this new shit, shit really feel like a spoof/Fats laces in your shoe? I am talkin’ bustin’ off the roof”), that is Shawn Carter not as a hustler or a mogul or perhaps a contrite husband, however a middle-aged man trying again at his personal making. Issues ain’t what they was once, certainly. —Peter Rubin

The Mysteries of Frank Ocean’s ‘Chanel’

Frank Ocean is the grasp of songs that you’re going to find yourself spending weeks on Genius attempting to decode. (It has been 5 years and I am nonetheless finding out “Pyramids.”) “Chanel” was like that proper from it is opening line: “My man fairly like a woman, and he obtained battle tales to inform/I see either side like Chanel.” Ostensibly the track is about dualities—Ocean’s, sexuality’s, life’s—however earlier than it is finished Ocean has touched on fame, oppulence, and a lacking love. But it is the refrain’ a number of entendres, referencing the interlocking “C” emblem of way of life model Chanel and offering the near-homophone “sea on either side like channel,” that present an unparalelled reward for phrases. Ocean dropped “Chanel” on his Beats 1 radio present final March and we have been deciphering it ever since. —Angela Watercutter

Likelihood the Rapper Brings New Music to The Late Present

Again in September, Likelihood the Rapper was slated to seem on The Late Present to do a monitor off his album Coloring E-book. However being the grasp of musical spontanaety, that did not occur. As an alternative he introduced out R&B artist Daniel Caesar and carried out a track so new it did not actually have a title but. A soulful spoken-word-esque “yammer,” as he known as it, the monitor was pure Likelihood. And nothing might high Stephen Colbert’s delight at being the primary particular person to indicate it to the world. Now if somebody might simply mail Chano that Grammy already. —Angela Watercutter

Girl Gaga Debuts ‘The Remedy’ at Coachella

This final one has been a fairly random one for Girl Gaga. (No, Gaga isn’t not random, however simply go along with it.) She actually threw herself, and her model of queer art-pop, into the Tremendous Bowl. She launched a documentary on Netflix concerning the dramatic lead-up to that efficiency and the emotional recording course of for her most up-to-date album Joanne. And she or he stuffed in for Beyoncé at Coachella when the singer’s forthcoming twins prevented her from performing. And it was throughout that set of desert performances that Gaga unleashed “The Remedy”—a decent package deal of pure pop that served as the proper antidote on the finish of an extended winter. —Angela Watercutter