News Editor
Over the past week, New Hope students have been nominating and voting for their favorite albums of 2017. We received over 50 votes encompassing over 20 very diverse albums. Below are the five that got the most votes from New Hope students and a brief introduction to each.
5. Ed Sheeran - Divide (4 Votes): Ed Sheeran is best described as “perfectly pleasant”. He’s almost wholly inoffensive and, under the right circumstances, offers easy-listening tracks that are exceptionally warm and comforting. But since the inception of his role as an arena-filling torch-bearer for the Coldplays and Snow Patrols of yesteryear, his act has become rather stale. His most recent album, Divide, reroutes his career somewhat by questioning and re-evaluating his notions of fame and success. Its opener, “Eraser”, offers an uncharacteristically grave meta-commentary on the emptiness of stardom and gives way to several attempts by Sheeran to reinvent his tired standard sound. For example, instead of a lead single like the sweet, but ultimately weightless “Thinking Out Loud”, Sheeran gives us “Shape of You”, a beat-heavy ode to a mysterious woman with an enthralling figure. The album still dips into Sheeran’s seemingly bottomless well of airy acoustic tracks, which makes it hard to embrace as a full 180 degree turn. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the Divide tracks that diverge from the beaten path are enough to make Sheeran an act worth following up on.
4. Pink Guy - Pink Season (5 Votes): One’s enjoyment of “Pink Guy’s” sophomore release is truly a matter of taste. The brainchild of Youtube comedian Filthy Frank, this mixtape is packed to the brim with complete, unadulterated absurdity. The album is purely humorous, with most of the material being derivative of the strange, puerile comedy found on Frank’s Youtube channel. While the overtly raunchy material is largely hit or miss, the best tracks on the nearly 80-minute-long album are the ones with twisted concepts that come clean out of left field: the most notable of these are “Dog Festival Directions” and “Goofy’s Trial”. The former is a cheery-sounding ukulele track with lyrics that provide nothing but detailed directions to a Chinese festival dedicated to the consumption of dogs. The latter is a skit depicting Goofy, the lovable Disney character, taking the stand in court after perpetrating a mass homicide - a skit made absolutely hilarious by the deadpan seriousness of the prosecution and defense attorneys countered by Goofy nervously and insanely uttering “garsh!” and “hyuck!”. It’s not humor that will work for everyone, and the album is assuredly not for the faint of heart, but it has some riotously funny material for fans of black comedy.
3. Harry Styles - Harry Styles (6 Votes): The eponymous debut album for the newly minted solo artist Harry Styles is impressive for a number of reasons. For one thing, it manages to successfully shed the specter of One Direction in a way that’s believable, avoiding the trap of artificial edginess that some of his former bandmates fell into upon their first solo releases. But it is also comfortably more mature than his One Direction outputs as well. The album manages to survive on its own merits because, while everything fits into the box of accessible pop songs that won’t alienate the rabid 1D fandom, there is enough variety to keep the album engaging.
2. Kendrick Lamar - DAMN (8 Votes): If nothing else DAMN. is proof that Kendrick Lamar is capable of producing more subdued tracks with roaring success. It may not pack the raw intensity or thematic unity of its successor To Pimp a Butterfly, but DAMN. arguably has just as many high points. Lamar is as venerable a writer as ever, as shown on dense narrative tracks like “XXX” and “DUCKWORTH”, which explore death and fate with remarkable deftness. But on DAMN, Lamar also displays a breezier, more effortless appearance than he has in the past, and it results in anthemic tracks like “YAH” and “PRIDE” that rival the best of his career.
1. Khalid - American Teen (11 Votes): There is no better messenger to explain human connection in the information age than a person born into it. American Teen’s creator, Khalid Robinson, is only nineteen years old, but is responsible for what might be the most insightful, relevant album of 2017. On American Teen, Khalid explores the trials of love and loss in a way that is simultaneously original and immediately understandable in the modern age of communication. The intimate communications he describes are complicated by a distance that is unique to the modern age - this is illustrated beautifully in the album’s breakout hit, “Location”, where he finds himself pleading with his online love interest for the barriers that are intrinsic to their internet relationship be torn down. American Teen is a unique window into the world of the modern teenager.
Honorable Mentions:
Imagine Dragons - Evolve (4 Votes)
Lorde - Melodrama (3 Votes)
Tyler the Creator - Flower Boy (2 Votes)
Grace VanderWaal - Just the Beginning (2 Votes)
Halsey - Hopeless Fountain Kingdom (2 Votes)
