Greetings all, it’s a new year and time for the first ever guest playlist! That’s right, I Johnny Lobo, am here to present a curated playlist created to showcase the songs I discovered throughout 2017. Bear in mind, not all the songs on the playlist were created in 2017. In fact, some are from much earlier. However, my idea was to pull together “the favorites” – the ones my lucky ears just happened to hear for the first time last year. Many of these songs were recommended in my Spotify Weekly Discover playlist, but others came from TV shows, movies, friends’ recommendations, etc. I then saved all the best that stuck in my mind and made a playlist from this collection, a catalogue amassing more than 50 songs. This is quite long for a playlist, so I did my best to whittle it down into this 20 track journey.
Raury’s “All We Need” was clearly a great song to start the list, with its slow electronic build into an acoustic guitar accompanied by his clear voice. The song has such an uplifting message and positive feeling to it, and he truly is a versatile artist. Next up I decided to go with a song by Mr. Jukes featuring Charles Bradley. By the sound of Bradley’s voice, you’d think he’s a soul singer from the 1960s, but his musical career started much later, just breaking before the beginning of the 21st Century. I heard he passed away last year, but had never heard any of his music, so when this song appeared on my Discover I was paying attention, and it was not the least disappointing. Paired up with this song is Johnnie Frierson’s “Have You Been Good to Yourself”, another soulful song with a great message on the temptations of life, with a subtle reminder that we must always take care of ourselves, so that we can be good to others. And following up on that track is Liam Bailey’s “Stun Me”– a beautiful, soulful, and jazzy song that sounds very similar to John Legend. I learned that Bailey had a connection with Amy Winehouse years ago, so that spurred me to dig deeper into his music. The album containing this song is fantastic, definitely worth further exploration.
Brad Mehldau Trio’s take on Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place” is a wonderful segue. It’s a song that reminded me of the opening credits to “House of Cards”, and was placed here as an instrumental break between the opening 4 tracks, and the next 3 songs that were purposefully grouped together. Of this next group, the first is Kadhja Bonet’s “Honeycomb”, which showcases her airy, graceful voice. In reading more about her, she is a classically trained violinist, and somebody that I would love to see perform live. What follows is “Where Did I Go?” by Jorja Smith. Smith came to my attention in an unfortunate circumstance; I heard this song and then went investigating on the web whereupon I realized she was actually in Chicago playing shows. Great news, but when I went to seek tickets, I quickly learned the show had already happened. Don’t pity me quite yet, because I already have tickets for her return show in Chicago this coming May. To finish out this trio is “River” by the twin-sister act of Ibeyi. This was something that came up on my Discover that was very different from other tracks, and it stood out immediately. The mixture of influences is fascinating, with electronic productions paired with Afro-Cuban influences. The lyrics are sung in English, French, and Yoruban. A fun fact about these sisters is their father was in Buena Vista Social Club, an influential Cuban musical act that fused many distinct musical genres into one distinctly Caribbean sound.
The back half of the playlist is an eclectic mix of songs; most of these tracks are the ones that stood out as creative oddities, memorable moments in 2017, or songs that reminded me of other creative media from 2017, whether it was TV, movies, or society in general. The common thread is that all of them really jumped out at me. There are some references to other high points in pop culture last year, like the catchy track used frequently in The Young Pope, “Levo”, crafted by the European electronic band Recondite (The show is definitely worth watching, as the clip below should indicate).
https://youtu.be/WmFcUUIVIeQ
There’s a track from emerging R&B singer Daniel Caesar, who along with Jorga Smith, Blood Orange, SZA, and other fantastic R&B artists, is spearheading the bold new direction of popular music. “Otis” by the Durutti Column features some hypnotizing instrumentation with the vocal samplings of Otis Redding (hence the track title) and Tracy Chapman. Most of the popular genres from last year are represented in some fashion. From the electro-pop catchiness of “Janet” by M.T. Hadley, “It’s All Good” by Superorganism, and “U & Me” by Yangze, to the the lo-fi electronica and ambient waves of “Suddenly” and “Kissing Disease”. For a few weeks last year I became obsessed with “I Get Overwhelmed” after hearing it in the trailer for A Ghost Story (one of my top movies of last year, maybe another post?).
One of the aspects of the playlist that I am most pleased with is the way it unfolds with energy, from the very start with Raury, and then seems to slowly wind-down into a nice fade out with the last two tracks. Beck’s cover of Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You in the End” (discovered in the season 2 finale of the Netflix series Love) is a nice acoustic gem from the veteran songsmith which somehow worked really well transitioning into the last song, the beautiful jazz cut “Tezeta (Nostalgia)”, from the Ethiopian Jazz legend Mulatu Astatke.
I hope that this playlist points others in the direction of new music, aged or modern. It served as a nice capstone for the year that was 2017 (a strange, and dubious year), a playlist I hope to revisit in the future that will remind me of where I was at this time in my life, and what I was listening to. I’d love to hear what tracks stood out to you, either from this playlist, or from throughout 2017 for you.
