The Best and Worst of 2017, in 80 Lists

Presenting our annual List of Lists. Let the arguments begin.

By The Editors
December 28, 2017 9:00 am

Sitting here in our robes (from home, to be clear), we pondered 2017.

Turns out it wasn’t all bad.

Evidence: our fourth annual List of Lists, a compendium of 80 Best (and Worst) Ofs that sum up 2017, as collected by our favorite publications from all over the web.

Think ingenious inventions. Memorable photos. Our favorite Instagram models.

Provocative. Debatable. And at times a bit NSFW.

POP CULTURE

Stereogum’s 50 Best Albums
NPR’s 50 Best Albums
Vulture’s 10 Best Music Videos
2017 on Netflix: A Year in Bingeing
TIME’s Top 10 Television Episodes
The Best Late Night TV Moments of 2017
Pitchfork’s Best 100 Songs of 2017
The 15 Lyrics That Defined 2017
Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2017
10 Playlists That Mattered
Vinyl Factory’s Best Turntables of 2017
KCRW’s Best of 2017 Music Awards
Pandora’s Top “Thumb Hundred” Playlist
Your 2017 Spotify, Wrapped
Bloomberg’s Best Books of 2017
5 Amazing Books Bill Gates Read This Year
YouTube’s Top 10 Trending Videos
The Best Cinematography of 2017
Vulture’s Best Podcasts of 2017
Audible’s Best Audiobooks of 2017

(Ed. note: Special Bonus: Year-End Lists: All the Critics’ “Best Of” Lists, in One Place)

TECH, CARS, GEAR

The Best Concept Cars of 2017
Motor Trend’s Car of the Year Awards
The Recode 100: The People in Tech, Business and Media Who Mattered in 2017
The Best Inventions of 2017
42 Women in Tech Who Crushed It in 2017
The Best Camping Trailers of 2017
The 5 (Well, 7) Best Watches of 2017

PHOTOGRAPHY

Red Bull’s Best Action Photos
The Atlantic’s Top 25 News Photos
National Geographic’s Best Pictures of 2017
The Best Science Images of the Year
The Political Year, in Photos
Bloomberg‘s A Year of Climate Change, in Photos

EVERYTHING POLITICAL

Word of the Year
45 Facts That Have Become Debatable in 2017 Thanks to Politics (34. Puerto Rico is part of the United States)
How Pop Culture Reacted to Trump
How Congress Used Social Media in 2017
10 Protest Songs That Defined 2017

MISCELLANEA

Good Things That Happened in 2017
The Best News Bloopers of 2017
Reddit’s Most Upvoted Posts of 2017
Hopper’s Where We Traveled in 2017
The Ringer’s Favorite Sports Moments of 2017
The 2017 Eater Awards
The Coolest Scientific Discoveries of 2017 (Including a bunch of new animals that look like penises.)
The Most Uplifting Science Stories of the Year
The Year’s Top Baby Names (Do NOT name your kids Aiden or Grayson)
The Best Memes of 2017
The Best New Buildings
The Top 10 Whiskeys of 2017
The Best Longreads Stories of 2017
57 Startups That Became Unicorns This Year (and Seven Which Lost Their Horns)
2017’s Top 100 Architecture Trends
52 Things I Learned in 2017 (25: Women are 8x more likely to ask Google if their husband is gay than alcoholic.)
Google’s Year in Search

NSFW

What Did We Get Stuck in Our Rectums Last Year? (Curtain rod. Wow.)
Lifehacker’s Best Sex Posts of 2017
The 9 Most Insane Sex Diaries of 2017
The Most Provocative NSFW Fashion Ad Campaigns of 2017
The Top 10 Most Followed Models on Instagram in 2017
The 9 Best TV Sex Scenes of 2017

THE WORST

The 20 Worst Films of 2017
The 25 Most Popular Passwords of 2017, You Sweet Misguided Fools (123456 … Seriously?)
The Least Influential People of 2017
Worst Ads of the Year
The Biggest Breakups of 2017
The Worst Musical Collaborations of 2017
The Worst Songs of 2017
The Worst Gadgets of 2017
11 Worst Stories from Uber’s Year in Hell
The Biggest, Baddest Hardware Failures of 2017
The 3 Types of Bad Apologies That Dominated 2017
Digg’s Worst Timeline of 2017
Poynter’s Top Media Corrections of 2017
The Onion’s Worst Potluck Contributions of 2017 (Four-Pack Of Jones Soda: We get that Alison is sober now, but these went untouched the entire night.)

A LOOK AHEAD

The Best Places to Work in 2018
Culinary Trends for 2018
The Best 18 Stocks to Buy in 2018 (Charles Schwab ain’t sexy, but it’s money)
18 Things to Look Forward to in 2018
60 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018

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