With so many boundary-pushing releases in so many genres, choosing the top albums of 2017 was no easy task. But, with the help of a team of Bay Area music writers, we came up with not one but two lists. Here you’ll find our list of top 10 Bay Area albums of the year; it spans music scenes as diverse as rap, folk, electropop, and Ethio-jazz, recognizing local artists that honed their crafts and made magic this year.
Our second list features our top 20 mainstream and notable indie releases from across the country, with artists who made significant cultural impacts, challenged genre conventions, and gave us respite from everything going on in our communities and in the news.
We know that’s a lot of music, so we made you one big Spotify playlist with songs from our local and mainstream favorites of 2017. Enjoy it over the holidays — there’s no Christmas music on here, we promise.
