John Luther Adams

Canticles of the Holy Wind

Contemporary Choral Music







Teddy Afro

Ethiopia

Illegal Ethiopian Dance Music







Arca

Arca

Fragile, Ultra-Slow Latin Electropop







Daymé Arocena

Cubafonía

Contemporary Afro-Cuban Music







Sam Baker

Land of Doubt

Raw, Self-Produced Singer-Songwriter from the Texas Prairie





Scott H. Biram

The Bad Testament

Funkish Punkish Country Music







Björk

Utopia

Groove-Free Techno with Flutes & Birdsong







Theo Bleckmann

Elegy

Elegaic Jazz







Stefano Bollani

Mediterraneo: Jazz at the Berlin Philharmonic

Jazz with Classical/Cinematic Ingredients







Brooklyn Youth Chorus

Black Mountain Songs

Contemporary Music for Youth Chorus







Betty Buckley

Story Songs

Cabaret/Broadway









Sarah Cahill

Eighty Trips Around the Sun: Music by and for Terry Riley

Piano Music Composed (or Inspired) by Terry Riley







Celestial Sirens/Musica Secreta

Lucrezia Borgia's Daughter

Anonymous 16th Century Polyphony for Nuns







Bill Charlap

Uptown Downtown

Jazz Piano Trio







Billy Childs

Rebirth

Jazz







Clann An Drumma

Order of the Stag

Tribal Drumming with Scottish Bagpipes







Gary Clark, Jr.

Live in North America 2016

Electric Blues







Anat Cohen Tentet

Happy Song

Semi-Big-Band Jazz









Jessi Colter

The Psalms

Gospel/Country/Folk







The Como Mamas

Move Upstairs

Gospel







Andrew Cooperstock

Leonard Bernstein: Complete Solo Works for Piano

Modern Classical Music







Danish String Quartet

Last Leaf

Nordic Folk Music/Chamber Music







DeJohnette/Grenadier/Medeski/Scofield

Hudson

Old Rock in New Jazzy Guises







Del Sol Quartet & Gyan Riley

Terry Riley: Dark Queen Mantra

Music for String Quartet and Electric Guitar







Ani DiFranco

Binary

Singer-Songwriter







Emerson String Quartet

Chaconnes and Fantasias: Music of Britten and Purcell

Chamber Music







Emika

Melanfonie

Czech Orchestral Art Pop







Brian Eno

Reflection

Ambient Music









Heloísa Fernandes

Faces

Brazilian Music/Jazz







Fink

Fink's Sunday Night Blues Club, Vol. 1

British Blues for Moderns







Champian Fulton

Speechless

Jazz Piano







Galley Beggar

Heathen Hymns

British Folk-Rock With a Touch of Metal







Molly Gebrian & Danny Holt

Trios for Two

New Music for Viola, Piano and Percussion







Rhiannon Giddens

Fr eedom Highway

Americana







Stanley Grill

At the Center of Things

Contemporary Chamber Music Inspired by Early Music







Erik Griswold

Ecstatic Descent

New Music for Prepared Piano







Jo Harman

People We Become

Moody British Singer-Songwriter Comes to Nashville







Stephen Hartke

The Ascent of the Equestrian in a Balloon

Contemporary Classical Music









Fred Hersch

Open Book

Solo Jazz Piano







Jennifer Higdon

All Things Majestic

Ecology-Inspired Contemporary Classical Music







Ifriqiyya Électrique

Rûwâhîne

Sufi Trance Music from Tunisia with a Post-Punk Twist







The Infamous Stringdusters

Laws of Gravity

Bluegrass







Vijay Iyer

Far From Over

Jazz







Ahmad Jamal

Marseille

Jazz







Jasper String Quartet

Unbound

Contemporary Chamber Music









Jlin

Black Origami

Percussion-Driven Multicultural Dance Music







John Joubert

Jane Eyre

Contemporary Opera







Mari Kimura

Voyage Apollonian

Music for Violin & Interactive Computer







The Kraken Quartet

Separate / Migrate

Dance & Trance Music for Percussion and Electronics







Julian Lage & Chris Eldridge

Mount Royal

Folk/Americana









Nguyên Lê & Ngô Hồng Quang

Há Nôi Duo

Vietnamese Music/Jazz







Charles Lloyd

Passin' Thru

Jazz







The Magnetic Fields

50 Song Memoir

Pop-Rock Art Songs







Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Indo-Pak Coalition

Agrima

Jazz/South Asian Music







Laura Marling

Semper Femina

Singer-Songwriter







Hayes McMullan

Everyday Seem Like Murder Here

Previously Unreleased Country Blues Recorded in 1960s







Björn Meyer

Provenance

Ritualistic Music for Solo Bass Guitar (Six-String Electric and Acoustic)









Father John Misty

Pure Comedy

Faux Ecclesiastical Singer-Songwriter







Stanton Moore

With You In Mind: The Songs of Allen Toussaint

New Orleans Funk







Randy Newman

Dark Matter

Mordant Singer-Songwriter







North Mississippi Allstars

Prayer for Peace

Roots & Blues







Víkingur Ólafsson

Philip Glass: Piano Works

Minimalist Piano Music









Ed Palermo Big Band

The Great Un-American Songbook, Vol 1& 2

Irreverent Rock Repertory Big Band Music







Aaron Parks

Find the Way

Jazz







Maurizio Pollini

Chopin: Late Works

Classical Piano Music







Billy Porter (with Guests)

The Soul of Richard Rodgers

Flamboyant Updatings of Broadway Tunes







Chris Potter

The Dreamer is the Dream

Jazz







Awa Poulo

Poulo Warali

Peulh Music from Mali







Quercus

Nightfall

Folk/Jazz







Jason Ricci & The Bad Kind

Approved by Snakes

Dirty Harmonica Blues







Pepe Romero/Vicente Coves

Federico Moreno Torroba: Guitar Concertos 2

20th Classical Music for Guitar







Ryuichi Sakamoto

async

Soundtrack Without a Film







Cécile McLorin Salvant

Dreams and Daggers

Jazz Vocals







András Schiff

Encores After Beethoven

Classical Piano Music







Adam Schoenberg

American Symphony/Finding Rothko/Picture Studies

Neo-Romanticist Contemporary Orchestral Music







Raymond Scott

Three Willow Park: Electronic Music from Inner Space 1961-1971

Previously Unreleased Electronic and AI Music from 1960s







SFJAZZ Collective

Music of Miles Davis & Original Compositions

Jazz









Peter Silberman

Impermanence

Singer-Songwriter







Songhoy Blues

Résistance

West African Desert Rock as Political Protest







Tyshawn Sorey

Verisimilitude

Pointillistic Anti-Jazz







Wesley Stace

Wesley Stace's John Wesley Harding

Singer-Songwriter







Colin Stetson

All This I Do For Glory

Experimental Saxophone Trance Music







Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly and James McAlister

Planetarium

Introverted Pop for Star-Gazing







Quinn Sullivan

Midnight Highway

Bluesy Rock-Pop







Systema Solar

Rumbo A Tierra

Cumbia/EDM/Hip-Hop







Tale of Us

Endless

Tech-Noir Chillout Music from Deutsche Grammophon







The Tangent

The Slow Rust of Forgotten Machinery

Neo Prog Rock









Otis Taylor

Fantasizing About Being Black

Trance Blues







Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau

Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau

Jazz/Folk Hybrid







Thundercat

Drunk

R&B/Hip-Hop







Tinariwen

Elwan

African Desert Blues









Tohpati Ethnomission

Mata Hati

Indonesian Jazz-Rock







Ralph Towner

My Foolish Heart

Jazz Guitar







Tribalistas

Tribalistas

Contemporary Brazilian Popular Music







The Unthanks

Diversions, Vol. 4: The Songs and Poems of Molly Drake

Brooding Songs by Nick Drake's Mother Molly Drake (1915-1993)







Kamasi Washington

Harmony of Difference

Jazz with a Tinge of Soul/R&B







Dale Watson and Ray Benson

Dale & Ray

Roadhouse Country







Willie Watson

Folksinger, Vol. 2.

Folk Music







The xx

I See You

Dream Pop







Miguel Zenón

Típico

Jazz



Related Links:



The 100 Best Albums of 2016

The 100 Best Albums of 2015

The 100 Best Albums of 2014

The 100 Best Albums of 2013

The 100 Best Albums of 2012

The 100 Best Albums of 2011





BACKGROUND



I am often asked how I compile my

annual list of the 100 best albums.

Here is some background information.



What is different about this year's list?



I am listing my top 100 for 2017 in

alphabetical order, rather than ranking

them. This marks a change from

previous years. I am doing this

because each of these albums

deserves recognition and the

sequential ranking tended to focus

too much attention on just a few

recordings.



What styles of music do I include in my

listening?



I listen to all genres and all styles of

music. I like to listen to music that is

fresh and different, and this spurs me

to search outside the dominant

commercial categories and hit

releases. But I also listen to the

heavily promoted albums from the

major labels.



How much music do I listen to?



I like to hear new music every day.

During 2017 I listened to more

than 1,000 new album releases.

(The exact number was 1,034.)



Why do I compile this list?



Like any music lover, I enjoy

sharing my favorite music with others.

But in the last few years, a different

motivation has spurred me. I believe

that the system of music discovery is

broken in the current day. There is

more music recorded than ever before,

but it is almost impossible for listeners

to find the best new recordings. The

most creative work in music is

increasingly found on self-produced

projects and releases from small

indie labels— to an extent hardly

conceivable only a decade ago. Very

little of this music ever shows up on

the radio, where formats seem to get

narrower and narrower with each

passing year. Music fans once heard

good new music at indie record stores,

but most of them have closed. Or

they could read reviews in the

newspaper, but both the newspapers

and the music reviews are shrinking or

disappearing. And the big record

labels are the worst culprits of all,

picking acts for their looks or their

potential appeal to fourteen-year-olds,

or some other egregious reason, and

in general jumping on the most trivial

passing fads. On the other hand,

the Internet presents an almost

infinite amount of music and music

commentary—yet where do fans

even begin to separate the good from

the bad and ugly? My personal solution

to this dilemma has been to listen to

lots and lots of music, and try to

identify recordings of quality and

distinction. I share my list because

I know, from past experience, that

many other listeners are frustrated

with the broken system of music

discovery, and are also looking for

good new music.



What criteria do I apply?



I have no axe to grind. My list is

filled with music I enjoy, and suspect

others will too—especially if they

have a reasonably good ear, and

an open mind. I like recordings that

show some flair and creativity, a

sense of style, solid musicianship,

and an emotional commitment to

the moment of performance. I

appreciate it when an artist

possesses a sense of musical

tradition; on the other hand, I don’t

want to see slavish imitation of the

past. When music strikes me as

too formulaic or contrived or cold,

I start to lose interest. Like any critic,

I want my readers to think that I am

cool and hip and oh-so-up-to-date,

but I learned some time ago that

many of the best recordings are

decidedly uncool and unhip. So if

you want to laugh at me for honoring

some superannuated rocker or

unfashionable bagpipe album,

go right ahead. But also check

out some of the lesser-known titles on

the list...you might just be pleasantly

surprised by what you hear.



Happy listening!



The 100 Best Recordings of 2017





Selected by Ted Gioia



Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at

www.twitter.com/tedgioia



Here's my list of the 100 best albums of 2017 (in alphabetical order this year). They are drawn from all styles and all genres. Happy listening !

