Rolling Stone's 20 Best Pop Albums of 2017

Four years after Lorde illuminated suburban teendom with *Pure Heroine*, she captures the dizzying agony of adolescence on *Melodrama*. “Everyone has that first proper year of adulthood,” she told Beats 1. “I think I had that year.” She chronicles her experiences in these insightful odes to self-discovery that find her battling loneliness (“Sober”), conquering heartbreak (“Writer in the Dark”), embracing complexity (“Hard Feelings/Loveless”), and letting herself lose control. “Every night I live and die,” she sings on “Perfect Places,” an emotionally charged song about escaping reality. “I’m 19 and I\'m on fire.\"

Outgrowing the wild-hearted club anthems that defined her ascent, Kesha sounds reborn on her third album, commanding a set of sonically broad, heartfelt pop. Here, she punctuates the assertive funk of “Woman” with The Dap-Kings’ horn section and sings country-touched harmonies with Dolly Parton. But *Rainbow* is held together by Kesha’s elastic, giggle-to-roar vocal, which sounds best on blasting, jittery confections like “Boogie Feet” and “Learn to Let Go.\"

You don’t need to hear Taylor Swift declare her old self dead—as she does on the incendiary “Look What You Made Me Do”—to know that *reputation* is both a warning shot to her detractors and a full-scale artistic transformation. There\'s a newfound complexity to all these songs: They\'re dark and meaningful, catchy and lived-in, pointed and provocative. She\'s braggadocious on “End Game,” a languid hip-hop cut with Ed Sheeran and Future, and then sassy and sensual on “…Ready for It?” and “I Did Something Bad.” But songs like “Call It What You Want” and “Delicate” bring Taylor\'s many emotional layers together and confront the dynamic between her celebrity and personal life: “My reputation’s never been worse/So, you must like me for me,” she offers. It all makes for a boundlessly energetic, soul-baring pop masterpiece—and her boldest statement yet.

Following 2013’s *Paramore*, Hayley Williams became “tired of self-doubt and losing friends” and considered decommissioning the band. It makes this rich, vibrant, defiantly poppy return as surprising as it is satisfying. On an album indebted to the ’80s, there are echoes of Talking Heads (“Hard Times”) and Blondie’s forays into reggae (“Caught in the Middle”), while guitarist Taylor York’s love of Afro-pop informs “Told You So.” Darker moods sit beneath the shiny surface though, and Williams’ lyrics offer compelling studies of frustration and self-sabotage.

For the most part, Lana Del Rey’s fifth album is quintessentially her: gloomy, glamorous, and smitten with California. But a newfound lightness might surprise longtime fans. Each song on *Lust* feels like a postcard from a dream: She fantasizes about 1969 (“Coachella - Woodstock In My Mind”), outruns paparazzi on the Pacific Coast Highway (“13 Beaches”), and dances on the H of the Hollywood sign (“Lust for Life” feat. The Weeknd). She even duets with Stevie Nicks, the queen of bittersweet rock. On “Get Free,” she makes a vow to shift her mindset: \"Now I do, I want to move/Out of the black, into the blue.”

On this adventurous mixtape, Charli XCX offers her own spin on contemporary pop trends, from Auto-Tuned hip-hop (“Dreamer feat. Starrah & RAYE”) to melodic dancehall (“3AM Pull Up feat. MØ”) to bubblegum bangers sauced with rap (“Lipgloss feat. CupcakKe”). Each sound gets the Charli treatment: pitched synths, distorted vocals, and a full dose of IDGAF attitude. In that way, she’s not just meditating on today’s pop landscape—she’s placing herself firmly at the center of it.

Released as singles, the defiant tropical house of “Hotter Than Hell” and “Lost In Your Light”’s love-giddy electro-pop have already established Dua Lipa as a pop powerhouse distinguished by her husky, soulful voice. Now, on a debut album inspired by past relationships, she gets to showcase her striking range. From the stinging dismissal of a remorseful ex (“IDGAF”) to a tender duet with Chris Martin (“Homesick”), the Londoner’s richly emotive singing and songwriting maintain her steeply upward trajectory.

On her triumphant eighth album, Kelly Clarkson summons her inner Aretha. Trading her signature hook-laden pop-rock for gutsy soul, it’s a straight-talking, hater-shaking, hear-me-roar smash that shows off her superhuman range and vocal strength like never before. For the Nashville-based star, happiness is a happy marriage (“Meaning of Life”), an open mind (“Move You”), and a bulletproof self-confidence (“Go High”). But the highlight has to be “Whole Lotta Woman,” a rip-roaring collaboration with Earth, Wind & Fire that bulldozes bullies and body-shamers: “I ain\'t no girl/I\'m a boss with orders.”

“I just want to listen to people’s stories, hear what they have to say,” trills Gothenburg-born singer-songwriter Jens Lekman on “To Know Your Mission”, his fourth album’s euphoric curtain-raiser. That’s no understatement. Across 10 exultant modern vignettes, Lekman skips nimbly from skittering odes to rebellion (“Hotwire the Ferris Wheel” with Tracey Thorn) to glorious disco workouts (“How We Met, The Long Version”), and cements his place as one of indie-pop’s most affecting—and unconventional—bards.

Jens Lekman describes his new record playfully, but also honestly, as “a thirties-crisis disco album; it’s an existentialist record, about seeing the consequences of your choices”. Across three studio albums, the Swedish singer/songwriter and musician has proven not only his flair for telling very personal stories with a sharp self-awareness, but also his skill for balancing depth of emotional expression with droll and often self-deprecating detail. It’s a winning pop combination. His fourth, Life Will See You Now is a typical Lekman album in several ways: sly humour is key to its heartfelt nature; it inverts pop’s writing norm by making songs with sad concerns sound happy and songs with a happy subject sound sad; and it plays with notions of identity and the self. Life Will See You Now is expansive, the upbeat sound of a revitalised Lekman, who is just one of many characters in his new stories about the magic and messiness of different kinds of relationships. It’s also the result of deliberate steps he took to create this fresh sound. Although Lekman is present in all of the songs on Life Will See You Now, it’s sometimes as a listener or spectator, rather than solely as the central active figure. Male characters get more of the spotlight than before. Lekman’s previous records have been female-centric, “I wanted to see what would happen if I wrote about men. It was inspiring at first, but writing about masculinity went down a very dark path. And there was a sadness that was very real; I had trouble finding stories that weren’t horribly depressing” he admits. “How Can I Tell Him” is one of a few songs saved from that shelved plan, a touching ode to male friendship that addresses the behavioural boundaries drawn around expressions of intimacy for generations of men. Another big choice was a decision to experiment with different kinds of rhythms – disco, calypso, samba and bossa nova all get a bespoke twirl in the spotlight – and so he called on producer Ewan Pearson (M83, The Chemical Brothers, Goldfrapp) to help realise his new songs. “I was looking for something more rhythmical. That was just what was intriguing me at the time – how you structure rhythms and build changes and time signatures. For me, not being trained in music, to learn a few of the tricks was very fascinating.” The alluringly offbeat lilt of “Our First Fight” is a perfect example of this subtle shift. More obviously upbeat are “What’s That Perfume That You Wear?”, which features a steel pans sample from Ralph MacDonald’s “The Path” of 1978 – “one of my favourite records ever,” enthuses Lekman – “To Know Your Mission”, whose jaunty, sing-along chorus belies its serious subject (self-doubt and indecision versus self-belief and faith) and the irresistibly buoyant “How We Met, The Long Version”, a disco-pop cracker with strings and piano that samples Jackie Stoudemire’s 1983 track, “Don’t Stop Dancin’”. The writing of Life Will See You Now was somewhat of an attempt to overcome periods of self-doubt, a process helped by Lekman’s two interim projects – Postcards, in which he committed himself to writing and releasing one song every single week in 2015 and Ghostwriting, where he asked other people for their stories and wrote songs around them, rather than his own experiences. “There was a part of me that was really sick of this Jens Lekman character,” he confesses, “and I wanted to write myself out of my songs. “ Jens laughs: “After I did the Ghostwriting project I was able to let that go, and also realized how important it is to be in your own songs to be able to communicate an emotion.” It may be very much inspired by stories told to him by friends and random acquaintances, but for Lekman, Life Will See You Now is still “a very personal record”. In “To Know Your Mission”, the perky Euro-pop number set in August of 1997 that pictures him – or at least, a character called Jens – as a teenager contemplating his future, one line that’s particularly pertinent to his ideas about this singer/songwriter business stands out. “In a world of mouths, I want to be an ear,” croons Lekman, sweetly. “If there’s a purpose to this, then that’s why God put me here.” It’s not a statement of religious belief, just a simple recognition of what he was in some way called to do. Life Will See You Now proves how right he was to listen.

Demi Lovato’s always had the most powerful pipes of their fellow Disney Channel alumni, but with their sixth album, they officially hit their stride. On *Tell Me You Love Me*, Lovato reaches peak soulfulness: “You Don’t Do It for Me Anymore,” a slow-burner for breaking up with your vices, smolders without sacrificing their voice’s strength, and on the triumphant “Sorry Not Sorry,” they send gospel harmonies soaring. But the album\'s just as striking in its vulnerability, fitting for a singer who’s radically transparent about their mental health: The deceptively upbeat “Daddy Issues” is a wry, raw appraisal of the relationships with the men in their life.

On his first solo album, Niall Horan embraces the role of openhearted singer/songwriter. Flicker is a disarming and deeply personal set whose warmth recalls ‘70s folk-rock (“Fire Away”), but with a romantic urgency that feels evergreen (“This Town”). What’s more, Horan’s pop pedigree continues to shine: The sultry funk of \"Slow Hands” and lush harmonies of “Seeing Blind,” a duet with rising country star Maren Morris, are both understated and undeniable.

Amber Coffman is best known as a singer and guitarist for the genre-bending Dirty Projectors. Co-produced by head Projector Dave Longstreth, *City of No Reply* proves Coffman a dynamic songwriter in her own right, from the off-kilter girl-group shoop of “No Coffee” to the dusky, Caribbean inflections of the title track. “There’s a voice inside of me/And it’s time to listen,” Coffman sings amid the ‘50s-ish lilt of “All to Myself.” Time to let it out, too.

On her seventh studio album, P!nk achieves perfection. Featuring contributions from Jack Antonoff and longtime creative partner Billy Mann, *Beautiful Trauma* is a cathartic and wholehearted fusion of the personal and political. It begins with the piano-driven, Antonoff-produced thrills of the title cut and never wavers—from devastating ballads (“Barbies”) to festival-ready anthems for the disenfranchised (“What About Us”) and a devilish collaboration with Eminem (“Revenge”). The result is pop without filters: bold, frank, beautiful.