Let’s just get this out of the way up front: This year has sucked in a lot of pretty obvious ways. I’m not going to revisit all of that here, though, because it’s also been a good year for me when it comes to pop culture. I generally don’t watch a lot of TV, so I’ve used some of the open spaces of this year to catch up television shows that I haven’t seen, and it’s been kind of glorious. Fleabag, Great British Baking Show, Vikings, Schitt’s Creek, Run, The Mandalorian, Downton Abbey, that awesome ESPN Jordan/Bulls documentary…all of that helped fill some of the void of a year without travel or a lot of human connection.
But as usually happens, music is the thing that got me through some of the hardest parts of this year. And man, was there some incredible music in 2020. Most of my favorite albums of the year were released by mid-summer, but a steady stream of great songs kept coming right up through the end of the year.
I’ve written a year-end music list off and on for the last 10 years or so, and it seems like this is really good year to keep that tradition going. I’m not sure if there was a common thread in the music I loved this year. But I do know that the music I responded to most strongly was written by people trying to wrestle with some of the really big questions: A fragmented sense of self, justice & injustice, fractured relationships, social responsibility, and spending too much time inside your head. If there was a year in which I was primed for this stuff to land hard and stick, it was this one. And it did.
In any case, here’s what’s been going through my ears this year. (Playlist is at the bottom of this post, if you want to scroll ahead or click here and start listening.) I genuinely enjoy sharing this with my friends every year, and I hope you’ll find something you like (or even love) in the mix. And if there’s something you enjoyed this year that I don't cover in this post, please feel free to add it in the comments. (Unless it's Fiona Apple's Fetch the Bolt Cutters. I've tried several times this year, and that album remains an unlistenable drag. Sorry. Otherwise, I’m always up for listening to something new.)
BEST ALBUMS OF 2020:
1) Waxahatchee – St. Cloud.
This is the album I listened to most this year, and it made me feel something new just about every time I heard it. Katie Crutchfield has been a solid, steady songwriter for years now, but she really came into her own on this album of folk-Americana experimentation. It’s a collection of songs about putting broken things back together and trying to find a sense of peace and stability in a chaotic world. It was a perfect album that landed at the perfect time, and I still think it’s the best album I’ve heard this year.
Notable tracks: “Fire,” “Lilacs,” “Hell,” “Can’t Do Much,” “Ruby Falls.”
2) Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher.
I’m not sure what to say about this one that I haven’t already told anyone who will listen. This was my go-to late-night album for most of this year. Bridgers has been incredibly prolific and consistently great for several years now, but Punisher is the best thing she’s ever created. So many of these songs offer a master-class in stream-of-conscious, associative storytelling and songwriting. And the album’s closing track, “I Know the End,” is the logical, phenomenal evolution of one of her best early songs (“Scott Street”).
Notable tracks: “Chinese Satellite,” “Kyoto,” “I Know the End,” “Garden Song,” “Graceland Too.”
3) Taylor Swift – folklore and evermore.
Taylor had the best overall year of any musician I heard this year. Without a tour or major studio production, she sat at home and wrote a bunch of reflective tracks and recruited some of the best and most-respected artists in the indie music community (notably members of The National and Bon Iver) to help her finish two astonishingly wonderful albums. These are the pensive, wistful “endings” albums that got me through some of my lowest points of this year.
Taylor found a way to pull strength out of loss, and she showed the world how good she is at writing catchy melodies and clever/poetic lyrics no matter what genre she’s working in. These aren’t country songs or pop songs or even “indie” songs. This isn’t an “evolution” of Taylor’s sound, as I’ve seen some people say. Rather, it’s a showcase of her innate, natural talent and versatility. This is where her head was, and she followed that impulse. It was the biggest musical flex of the year, but it was done with a startlingly light and sensitive touch. And we’re all better off for it. folklore is probably a stronger overall album than evermore, but the two are parts of a creative continuum for me and belong together, so I’m treating them that way in this list.
Notable tracks: “the 1,” “exile,” “betty,” “august,” “cardigan,” “ivy,” “willow,” “long story short,” “champagne problems,” “closure,” and “evermore.”
4) Run the Jewels – RTJ4.
This album dropped right after George Floyd’s murder, and it ended up being the soundtrack to a summer of civil unrest and pent-up anger. Killer Mike and El-P spit straight fire all the way through this album, and it remains the most intensely cathartic music I heard this year. It channeled the rage and fury I felt as I watched the moral chaos of our country repeatedly swell and crash in waves all through the summer and autumn. It’s been a long time since a hip-hop album landed this way with me, and it felt good.
Notable tracks: “goonies vs. E.T.,” “walking in the snow,” “JU$T,” and “ohh la la.”
5) Pinegrove – Marigold.
I wasn’t sure what to think of this one when it dropped. Pinegrove’s Cardinal is one of my favorite albums of the last decade, and maybe I was expecting a return to that. Instead, the band stretched in a lot of new directions both musically and lyrically, and the results work really well even if they’re esoteric and occasionally very insular. This collection improved and settled comfortably the more I listened to it, and it reminded me why I fell in love with their sound to begin with.
Notable tracks: “The Alarmist,” “Phase,” “No Drugs,” “Spiral,” “Endless.”
6) The 1975 – Notes on a Conditional Form.
This is the most fragmented, variegated, and unfocused album I heard this year, and I loved every bit of that. The band throws everything it can at the wall, and most of it sticks even if the songs sound nothing like each other. The gorgeous, contemplative “Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America” has no place on an album that includes the playful, exuberant “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know),” and yet here we are. They’re both here (alongside so many other great and different tracks), and they’re part of makes Notes on a Conditional Form an unpredictable, satisfying listening experience from beginning to end.
Notable tracks: “Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America,” “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know),” "Me & You Together Song,” “The Birthday Party,” “Roadkill.”
7) Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit – Reunions.
Isbell is hands-down one of America’s best musical storytellers right now. He and Josh Ritter are on a different plane than most of our current singer-songwriters, and every new release is a revelation. If there’s an heir to the late John Prine’s legacy, it’s Isbell and Ritter. On Reunions, Jason continues telling bittersweet stories about ordinary people’s lives and struggles, but he also manages to confront some of the biggest social issues America has been wrestling with over the last few years. It’s an urgent album that asks us to think bigger and appeals to our better angels, and lord knows we needed it this year.
Notable tracks: “Dreamsicle,” “Be Afraid,” “Letting You Go,” “It Gets Easier,” “River,” and “Running with Our Eyes Closed.”
8) HAIM – Women in Music Pt. III.
HAIM has made feel-good pop music for years, but this album uses those great pop hooks to say something a little more meaningful. “The Steps” is about finding feminist independence in the confines of a relationship, while “Man from the Magazine” addresses a particularly condescending interview one of the band members experienced while on tour. But it’s also an album full of thoughtful songs that are relatable to just about everyone, and its universal appeal is where its strength lies.
Notable tracks: "The Steps," "I Know Alone," "Gasoline."
9) Tame Impala – The Slow Rush. Dance/electronic/psychedelic album of the year. These songs transport you into a different, more vibed-out, blissful, peaceful place, and it provided the escapism this year desperately needed.
Notable tracks: “Lost in Yesterday,” “Breathe Deeper,” “Borderline.”
10) Tennis – Swimmer.
Tennis played one of the last live shows I saw this year (I saw them the week after I got laid off), so this one was bound to stick with me. But it helps that it really is a great album. Swimmer mixes yacht rock, The Carpenters, and modern indie rock sensibilities up into an eclectic sound mix that genuinely soothes the soul.
Notable tracks: “Need Your Love,” “Runner,” “How to Forgive,” and “Tender as a Tomb.” (See also: the non-album cover of The Carpenters’ “Superstar” that Tennis released this year, which tells you everything you need to know about this band.)
5 OTHER ALBUMS WORTH YOUR TIME:
•. Future Islands – As Long as You Are
•. Destroyer – Have We Met (The last live show I saw before the world melted down.)
•. Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately (Best album title of the year.)
•. The Beths – Jump Rope Gazers
•. The Strokes – The New Abnormal
BEST SONGS OF 2020:
•. The Beths – “Out of Sight.” No other song I heard this year connected with me like this one did. I’ve heard it at least a couple dozen times, and I’ve never skipped or grown tired of it. Musically and lyrically, it’s a perfect song on par with Phoebe Bridgers’ “Motion Sickness,” Snail Mail’s “Pristine,” and Pinegrove’s “Cadmium” from recent years. There’s really no explaining how a song lands and settles into your skin, but this one definitely did for me. So I’ll just ask you to listen to it once, so at least you’ve heard it, too. •. Waxahatchee – “Fire.” I didn’t realize this song was about coming to terms with yourself until I’d heard it five or six times, but it works as well for relationships with other people as it does for your relationship with yourself. A great song that I listened to almost as much as “Out of Sight” (and that I loved nearly as much).
•. Phoebe Bridgers – “Chinese Satellite.” Bridgers' “I Know the End” might be a better-crafted song, but “Chinese Satellite” took me out of my head and my frustrations and eased me into a better place every time I heard it.
•. The 1975 – “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know).” This is a winking, wonderfully indecent dance song that makes me happy as hell. I mean…it’s not as rude-ass and eyebrow-raising as “WAP,” but it works.
• The Weeknd – "Blinding Lights"
•. Soccer Mommy – “Circle the Drain”
•. Taylor Swift – “exile” and “ivy” (I can’t/won’t decide.)
•. Tame Impala – “Lost in Yesterday”
•. Ruston Kelly – “Radio Cloud”
•. Hailey Whitters – “Loose Strings”
•. Glass Animals – “Heat Waves”
•. Matt Berninger – “Walking on a String”
•. Perfume Genius – “On the Floor”
•. Yves Tumor – “Gospel for a New Century”
•. Adrienne Lenker – “anything”
•. The Avalanches – “Running Red Lights”
•. Bonny Light Horsemen – “Deep in Love”
•. Fleet Foxes – “Sunblind”
•. Muzz – “Red Western Sky”
•. Grimes – “Delete Forever”
•. Hamilton Leithauser – “Isabella”
• Dua Lipa – "Don't Start Now"
•. Destroyer – "Crimson Tide"
I’ve pulled all of the music I liked most this year into the playlist below. It’s 200 songs long, which sounds like a lot. But a year is a long time, and this is actually pared down quite a bit from a much bigger list of good new music that I keep running as the year goes on. There are 116 different artists represented here. It’s basically the equivalent 20 albums of really great music, and there’s plenty of time to give it a listen as we move into a new year and wait for new sounds to emerge. Just pull it up and press shuffle when you have a bit of time this week, and you’ll likely hear something you enjoy.
I appreciate each and every one of these artists for using their talents and creativity to get us through this ridiculous year. And I can’t wait to get back into the Uptown, the Midland, Crossroads KC, The Truman, The Madrid, and any number of local venues to see these bands play live in 2021. This year has been too damned long and too damned hard. We need to hear music together again. And I hope to see you at some of those shows, too. Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!