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Year In ReView: 16 of our most favorite Boston songs of 2016

Choosing our favorite 16 Boston songs of the year is like choosing your favorite child -- if you were the Duggars or some other family with a few hundred kids. While mainstream pop continued to die a slow painful death, it was another bang-up year of music coming out of the isolated Boston music scene. What we have in our region are legions of musicians making music on their terms and their own way, and the result is a fantastically eclectic batch of new tunes that proved this year was one of the best around town. The selections below, listen alphabetically, aren't any sort of ultimate Best Of, though they do reflect what we've enjoyed the most, what we've hyped on these digital pages, and what we had spun on VanyaRadio. If you read this website on the regular, you should be quite familiar; if not, then dive in and hear something new and exciting.

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Marissa Nadler, “Janie In Love”

Marissa Nadler continues to develop a passionate following around the world while Boston is a bit slow to catch up. No bother. On her sixth and latest album Strangers, out here on Sacred Bones and on Bella Union everywhere else, Nadler enhances her haunting storytelling, and “Janie In Love” provides an eerie sense of love and longing. Nadler’s chilly brand of folk really shines through here; “Janie In Love” is enchanting as it sweeps along, almost gothic in nature. She was nominated for a pair of Boston Music Awards in top-shelf categories (Artist of the Year and Song of the Year, for this track) so maybe her hometown is catching up after all. Either way, it’s impossible not to notice.

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