A law prohibiting unlicensed dancing in New York City lived long past its original intent. DJ and producer Louie Vega celebrates its repeal with a 91-song playlist, one for each year of its lifetime.
It's been a year of complacency deferred and sleeping giants roused. So it's only natural that much of 2017's best music would reflect that tumult, albeit in radically different ways.
2017 was a year of chronic whiplash, not only for the ceaseless horror show of news headlines, but for the overwhelming number of great albums and songs that were released.
World Cafe's Talia Schlanger picks 10 records that made the world feel more colorful. They aren't happier records necessarily — they do infuse the grayscale of newsprint with the chroma of dreams.
Here's a list of 10 albums that deserve more year-end love than they're generally getting, a counter to an age where music has taken on an introspective function.
The best albums of 2017 delivered both comfort and challenge — both salve and spur. (That also applies to the honorable mentions listed, any of which could easily have come off the bench.)