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Year In ReView: Vanyaland’s Top 25 songs of 2016

This was an odd year for music. As Vanyaland senior writer Daniel Brockman details in his annual Year In Pop roundup, the two-way highway of comings and goings produced a wealth of in-crisis pop, solemn rock, and schizophrenic hip-hop alongside a cruel abundance of iconic deaths and life-lessons from rock's dinosaur guard. And as this Vanyaland contributor list proves, it was another wildly eclectic and eccentric year of sound, proving that genre restriction is truly dead for those who still actually care. For our Top 25 Songs of 2016, we pitched and polled our writing staff about their favorite tracks of the year, then condensed each list for a composite ranking. Below are the results, with the song's nominator doing the honors of telling us why the song cracked the list in the first place. It may not be perfect, but it's ours, and it's worth more than just taking a Chance on.

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24. Lush, “Out Of Control”

With so many successful shoegaze reunions in recent years, it was only a matter of time before Lush got back together. The Lush reunion lasted barely a year but in that time, we got a number of reissues from 4AD and in April, new music in the form of the Blind Spot EP. Led by the single “Out of Control,” Blind Spot gave us the the first new music from Lush in 20 years. The EP doesn’t stray far from the band’s signature ethereal, dreamy sound found on early releases like Spooky and Split. Introducing “Out of Control” at Royale in Boston back in September, frontwoman Miki Berenyi joked that the song was inspired by her experiences as the parent of a teenager. The lyrical content is more mature, but musically, it’s the same Lush. Unfortunately, the Lush reunion came to an abrupt end in November so it’s unlikely that we’ll get more new music from the band in the future.

— Kayley Kravitz

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