Some of the year’s best classic rock came from pop stars like Kesha and Harry Styles some of the year’s most acclaimed pop statements came via glossier sounds from alterna-rock icons like Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, St.

But music in 2017 was also about a more slippery sense of self, as genre lines fall away and artists searched for identity and purpose in weird times. And indeed, artists did get explicitly political, from Randy Newman to Jason Isbell to Jay-Z. Albums came with titles like American Dream (LCD Soundsystem), American Teen (Khalid) and All American Made (Margo Price). Music was full of fury, confusion and resistance in our first post-election year.