Down to the wire with this! I thought I'd make it easier on myself this year by keeping a running list of favorites but there's a couple problems with that: unfair advantage to early-in-the-year faves and extreme difficulty in deleting precious memories. Yes, that's what the songs are to me. Solution? Don't delete, just re-do for the blog. Haha, square one, basically. Anyway, I managed to make a tidy top 10* once I gave myself permission to also link you to my top 40.
*It's actually 11, because I could not NOT put Mitski's "Your Best American Girl" on here, though her song was technically released in '16. I first heard it the last week of last year and not only is it an amazing song that has had heavy rotation for me throughout this year, but we also got to see her perform it at Boston Commons this spring - so it just FEELS 2017 to me. So it's here, but I didn't count it.
Without further ado, apology or explanation here is the delightfully melancholic/retro vibe that is the very Most Important Songs of 2017: