Best SONG
34
Whether on a compositional level or for sheer
aural pleasure, Green Light is a song that has
it all. From its ominous beginning to its blissful
break-out, the track captures the listener and
takes them on a journey of heartbreak and
longing - embracing the strength of those
feelings before starting to put things back
together. As the first song written for
Melodrama (as well as the opening track and
lead single), Green Light introduced one of the
year’s most daring releases and as a
standalone song it’s practically peerless.BEST OF 2017
Winner
GREEN
LIGHT
STORMZY
COLD
The standout single from
Stormzy’s debut might not
have charted as high as Big
For Your Boots or Blinded
By Grace, Pt 2 but it packed
the heftiest punch. It’s the one
where the king of grime spits bars about Filet-o-Fish
and then, with the lines “All my young black kings rise
up, man, this is our year/ And my young black queens
right there/ It's been a long time coming, I swear”
created an anthem of hope for his legions of fans.CHRIS STAPLETON
SECOND ONE
TO KNOW
Mr Stapleton can consider
himself a little unlucky not
to feature in some of the
other categories this year, but
sometimes them’s the breaks.
But we’d be foolish to ignore a track that even the
most fervent of country doubters should find a place
in their collections for. A rollicking vocal performance
is matched by some searing guitar work on this road-
house rollicker which is the punchiest example yet of
Stapleton’s peerless talent.LANA DEL REY
SUMMER
BUMMER
By bringing her love of trippy
hip hop to the fore, including
guest spots from ASAP Rocky
and Playboi Carti, Del Rey
was able to create one of the
least summery summer anthems of recent years. It’s
detached and drifting, floating around like a distant
memory. And like the best memories it improves with
age, revealing hidden depths.LORDE
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