By Michaela Etienne
2017 was an eventful and surprising year. We’ve been through hurricanes, wildfires, White House scandals and more, but not all of 2017 was bad. The positive part about 2017 was the releasing of new movies and music. The thriller movie IT was released in 2017, which is a remake of Stephen King’s book and movie IT. The movie IT was such a hit that it raked in about $700 million. 2017 also was the debut of Sam Smith’s long-awaited album after 3 anxious years of waiting. I went around campus asking students what their favorite movie, song, or album of 2017 was, and there were lots of opinions.
Let’s start off with the best songs of 2017. Senior Jeffery Laux responded with “Post Malone- rockstar” featuring 21 Savage, “Gucci Gang” by Lil Pump, “Benz Truck” by Lil Peep, and “Ty Dolla $ign Don’t Judge Me” featuring Future & Swae Lee. “I like Lil Peep because he is different from any other artist; he can incorporate both rock and rap in his music. He recently died, and that sucks, but his music will live on forever. Gucci Gang by Lil Pump is monumental in the new age of rap–aka the mumble era–aka the repeating era. Lil Pump is very talented and he knows how to play the game right.” Another senior Grace Brown said that the best 2017 song of the year was “XO TOUR Llif3” by Lil Uzi Vert. Junior Skyla Griswold said, “I feel like its ‘Havana’ by Camila Cabello. It’s a song that I like to dance to and it gets me in a Latina mood. The music just flows right through you.” Athena O’Brien claims the best song of 2017 is “Young, Dumb, & Broke” by Khalid. “I feel like it’s a really relatable song,” said Athena. Sophomore Olivia Reed said, “The best album of 2017 is Future Friends by Superfruit who are 2 members of Pentatonix.” Junior Simone Alfred said “Favorite 2017 album is The Thrill of It All by Sam Smith. I felt like it was really good because it was something compared to all the other music we listened to.”
Now on to the best movies of 2017. Senior Grace Brown and Junior Athena O’Brien said that Disney’s animated movie Moana was the best of 2017. Grace elaborated as to why Moana was such a great movie “It has nice graphics, it’s funny, and it’s adorable.” While many people chose Moana as the best 2017 movie, what they didn’t know was that it was in fact created in 2016. Sophomore Olivia Reed said that action and fantasy movie Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 showing Chris Pratt, Zoë Saldana, and many others fighting to protect the galaxy from yet another takeover is the best 2017 movie. Freshman Tatiana Marquez and Junior Simone Alfred said that Get Out, the thriller and mystery movie directed by Jordan Peele, was the best 2017 movie. Tatiana Marquez explained that she liked the movie Get Out because of its storyline and how suspenseful it was.
In some ways, we may have had an awful year, but thanks to the wonderful and creative songs and movies that were created in 2017, at least we had a distraction from reality.