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Best music of 2017

  • Northern Irish artist and electronic composer Hannah Peel.

    Observer readers' hidden musical gems of 2017

    Last week, Observer music critics nominated albums that didn’t get the coverage they deserved. Now it’s the readers’ turn…
  • Albums of 2017: top row, Wolf Alice, Father John Misty, Paramore, Broken Social Scene, King Krule; middle row, Jens Lekman, Fever Ray, Lorde, Les Amazones d’Afrique, Jane Weaver; bottom row, Thundercat, Jlin, J Hus, Baxter Dury, Vince Staples

    The best albums and tracks of 2017: how our writers voted

    We’ve revealed our top albums and tracks of the year – now it’s time to look behind the scenes and discover the favourite albums and tracks of the Guardian’s music critics
  • Annie Clark aka St Vincent

    The best albums of 2017, No 1: St Vincent – Masseduction

    Annie Clark makes a rock-star power play by embracing thrilling glam traditions while producing something strange, new and unequivocally moving
  • Kendrick Lamar press image

    The best albums of 2017, No 2: Kendrick Lamar – Damn

    With an incendiary beginning and deeply personal social commentary, Lamar’s fourth album reveals an artist at his real and metaphorical peak
  • Solána Imani Rowe, who records as SZA, in New York.

    The best albums of 2017, No 3: SZA – Ctrl

    This nakedly honest debut album, told defiantly from a female point of view, signalled an artist in complete ctrl
  • BESTPIX: 31st Annual ARIA Awards 2017 - Show<br>SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - NOVEMBER 28:  Lorde performs on stage during the 31st Annual ARIA Awards 2017 at The Star on November 28, 2017 in Sydney, Australia.  (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images for ARIA)

    The best albums of 2017, No 4: Lorde – Melodrama

    The singer’s soaring overnight success should have made her second album a catastrophe. In fact it was a work of insight, strength and gloriously self-aware wit
  • Perfume Genius at Heaven, London.

    The best albums of 2017, No 5: Perfume Genius – No Shape

    Mike Hadreas’ genre-switching fourth album was breathtakingly original, his lyrics of personal pain spiking a shimmeringly sublime score
  • Moody, pulsating epic… James Murphy and LCD Soundsystem returned in 2017 with American Dream.

    The best albums of 2017, No 6: LCD Soundsystem – American Dream

    Plot twist! James Murphy and co returned with an exquisite ode to love, musical heroes and middle-age
  • from left, Anthony LaMarca, David Hartley, Adam Granduciel, Charlie Hall, Jon Natchez and Robbie Bennett of the War on Drugs performing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

    The best albums of 2017, No 7: The War on Drugs – A Deeper Understanding

    Adam Granduciel’s star shines bright on a record that combines 70s rock sounds, 80s MOR pop and melancholic melodies to glittering effect
  • Thundercat - press publicity portrait
Credit: B+

    The best albums of 2017, No 8: Thundercat – Drunk

    Deliciously surreal funk, squelchy soft rock, fart noise and a homage to his cat: ace of bass Thundercat’s breakthrough album travels from consciousness to conscience
  • Icy synths and classic structures … Kelela

    The best albums of 2017, No 9: Kelela – Take Me Apart

    Alternative R&B found its emotional side in this striking study of a breakup, from separation to reconciliation to renunciation
  • Excavating the past ... Richard Dawson performing live.

    The best albums of 2017, No 10: Richard Dawson – Peasant

    The Newcastle singer-songwriter’s avant-folk stories of a troubled medieval age have striking relevance to our own fraying society
  • Simon Rattle with the LSO at the Barbican in September.

    Fiona Maddocks’s best classical music of 2017

  • St Vincent

    Kitty Empire’s best pop of 2017

  • Global hit … Dua Lipa performing in São Paulo, Brazil, in November.

    How Dua Lipa became the most streamed woman of 2017

  • trail-albums

    The best albums of 2017: the full list

  • Lorde performs at the 2017 Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards on November 16, 2017 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)

    The top 100 tracks of 2017

    In the year the album’s power eroded, we collate the 100 best songs of 2017 as voted for by Guardian critics – and put them in a giant playlist
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