Pop music has always carved out a little air time for the weirdos. Artists from David Bowie and Björk to Frank Ocean and Gorillaz have managed to crack charts with tracks that are downright bizarre either in vocal delivery, song structure, or musical arrangement. Yet what we think of as pop music has often remained somewhat stable. A pop song has a catchy melody or vocal hook, straightforward yet memorable lyrics, and pristine production value. Production costs kept the ability to make music we recognize as ‘pop’ in the hands of artists backed by record labels who saw in their talent an opportunity for profit.

With the opening of an economic floodgate that allows artists to produce and stream their music easier, there is a wave of artists making demented pop music that sounds both infected and infectious. Fittingly, the global chaos of 2017 was accompanied by some of the best avant-pop yet. After all, if the world is going crazy, why not throw your hands up and dance?

Playlist Highlights:

“Software Upgrade” by Poppy

YouTube enigma Poppy may or may not be a robot pop star building a cult through pop music and bombastically fashionable outfits. Much of her appeal is the weirdness of her online presence, yet her debut EP “Bubblebath” pretty much ignored that in favor of straightforward pop songs. Her 2017 record “Poppy.Computer” finally married her music to her personality, resulting in gems like “Software Upgrade” where Poppy contemplates an unsatisfactory relationship with a hologram. With earworm vocal hooks straight out of the uncanny valley and a hard drive’s worth of synthesizer hooks, “Software Upgrade” makes a great case for jamming tomorrow’s robo-pop today.

“S.A.D.” by Kirin J Callinan

The Australian singer/songwriter attained meme immortality this year for his ridiculous “Big Enough” video, but “S.A.D.” — or “Song About Drugs” — stands as his most ambitious and wildly successful pop music send-up. “S.A.D.” takes pop music’s lyrical obsession with drugs and injects it into every aspect of the track, leaving the listener with hilarious non-sequitur lyrics (“Dropped down the stairs/Wrapped up in plastic/Feeling fantastic”), a spoken word passage over a guitar solo, and over five mock-epic key changes over the course of the song.

“I Got It” by Charli XCX feat. Brooke Candy, CupcakKe & Pabllo Vittar

Barely three years ago, “Boom Clap” leapt from the soundtrack of teen romance blockbuster “The Fault in our Stars” into the Billboard top ten. Since then, she’s taken a startling left turn by aligning herself with avant-pop UK collective PC Music. 2016’s collaboration with PC Music member SOPHIE, the “Vroom Vroom” EP, often fell on its face as its pushed its experimentation towards grating yet ungratifying extremes. Yet Charli stuck to her guns in 2017 and found her stride on two excellent mixtapes which notably featured many overlooked artists from the LGBTQ community. “I Got It” stands as a representative gem, pairing one of Charli’s most relentless vocal hooks with an absolutely relentless industrial trap beat and a slew of killer vocal features. Pop music has never sounded so uncompromising.

Honorable Mentions:

Kim Petras – “Faded”

RINA – “Take Me as I Am”

Baths – “Yeoman”

Hannah Diamond – “Concrete Angel”

SOPHIE – “It’s Okay to Cry”