The 10 Best Albums of 2020

Wow. I did this post every year for a long time. Then, I don't know, things got busy and things got dark and things got crazy. I remember it mainly being too busy in 2018, but both years were pretty weak on the album front. There were bright spots, sure. But we want to do a top 10 here and if I can only list six albums that I think were well put together, then... eek.

More than a handful answered the call in 2020, though. In fact, i previous versions of this blog, I did a whole "honorable mention" thing, but we're going to skip that and say a nice thing about a bunch of albums that didn't make my top 10:

• The Weeknd was solid with After Hours and "Blinding Lights" is a legit thing.
• Fleet Foxes put out Shore and helped us all agree that The Crack Up never happened.
• Phantogram kept just being workmanlike dependable on Ceremony.
• The Death Stranding soundtrack was an easy listen and included Chvrches' title track that is immediately one of that band's best songs.
• Hayley Williams put out Petals for Armor and it had more hits than misses and she's becoming one of the more interesting people in pop.
• Charli XCX put out the best pandemic-themed album of the year in How I'm Feeling Now.
• Lady Gaga put out Chromatica and made us forget Joanne ever happened
• Diplo put out a "country" album that, at least for me, passed the sittin'-by-the-river-drinkin'-can-beer test with Thomas Wesley, Chapter 1: Snake Oil.
• The Killers' Imploding the Mirage solidified them as commanders of arena-sized guitar hooks and also shows them getting better as they go.
• Ava Max dropped Heaven & Hell and, as pop debuts go, this was pretty great.
• Haim's Women in Music Pt. III also was a step forward fo them.

A couple great songs, too:

• "WAP" by Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion not only was a great song, but it really pissed of some white dudes and even got Ben Shapiro to imply on Twitter that he's bad in the sack. This was also one of many songs we were robbed of the opportunity to experience on a crowded dance floor this year.
• Janelle Monae's "Turntables" hit the right note at just the right time in a crazy year.
• Molly Sanden as My Marianne contributed "Husavik" to the Eurovision: The Story of Fire Saga soundtrack and it's a legit great pop song.

Anyhow, it's nice to have enough new music to be excited about again. So let's go. As always, a second opinion included so you know I'm not nuts.

10) Jessie Ware - What's Your Pleasure

Second opinion: Pitchfork

Damn right we needed a disco album this year. It dives right in with "Spotlight" and if you don't start moving right away, even in your work-from-home setting, you need to check your vitals. Ware is at times breathy, breathless, swagger-y... you can feel the lights (even if - and this will be a recurring theme - we were robbed of a chance to dance these tracks out). And, like a good disco DJ would, ware sends the crowd home with my favorite track on the album, "Remember Where You Are." It's about as good of a lights-are-coming-up-but-bliss-is-way-up track as I can picture. The album reminds us that, when we do get out of this pandemic, we have some real catching up to do.

9) Pearl Jam - Gigaton

Second opinion: Rolling Stone

Yes, it's 2020 and, yes, a Pearl Jam album made this list. Because something - the Trump administration, climate change, realizing they're still a bad-ass band, all of these things - got into them and they put out their best album since their 2006 self-titled effort. Gigaton brings the heat without going through the motions, something other rock bands of this vintage have struggled with. Proof? The straight up growl of "Quick Escape." The energy of "Superblood Wolfmoon." Opening track "Who Ever Said" that would have fit on Vitalogy. The years of experience shine through with songs like "Seven O'Clock" and twangy "Comes Then Goes." My wife and I have joked that, without kids, we're going to live like we're 25 forever. Pearl Jam found that energy on Gigaton and here's hoping we all do.

8) Run the Jewels - RTJ4

Second opinion: Paste

It was a rough year, folks. And it's not too much to say there were more than a few moments where you had a chance to go beyond posting a black square on Insta to show where you'll be when the chips are down. Run the Jewels made it pretty damn clear where they stand. Killer Mike (proof that democrats, despite what some would like you to believe, are into guns) and El-P put out an absolutely incendiary rap album that reflects on the state of America as much as calls you to arms. Zach de la Rocha shouting "Look at at these slave masters posin' on your dollar!" brings the point home like no other. Not that there isn't fun to be had. Tracks like "Ooh La La" are what RTJ has been about the whole time and it still sounds fresh. It's "Walking in the Snow" that contains the chilling line written before we all knew who George Floyd was: 

And every day on the evening news, they feed you fear for free
And you so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me
Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, "I can't breathe"
And you sit there in the house on couch and watch it on TV
The most you give's a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy.

Like I said... where were you when the chips were on the table?

 
7) The Naked and Famous - Recover

Second opinion: Popmatters

After a "Stripped" tour that, in retrospect, was Thom Powers and Alisa Xayalith deconstructing their previous work (and defunct romance), swapping out band personnel and finding a path forward, the LA-via-New-Zealand band showed their path forward and, in doing so, make a strong case that there isn't a more underrated band in music. It's tempting to call the album a departure. The sugary sounds of "Sunseeker" and "Come As You Are" almost want you to say so, even though you'll be singing along as you would have with their arena-sized hits from the past. Songs like "Monument" and "The Sound of My Voice," though, show the band up to its old tricks and pulling them off expertly. The path forward, and all the reason to continue to be excited about what could be ahead are songs like "(An)aesthetic" and, best-track-here, "Bury Us." On the former, the band takes some of the minimalism of stripped and adds some layers that bring everything up a notch. On the latter, they combine everything in their repertoire for a bouncy, lyrically-interesting bop that, when that bridge hits and Xayalith's vocals take over, you know this is the band you've always known. If, all they've been through, they can find a bright path forward, perhaps we can, too.

6) Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - Reunions

Second opinion: American Songwriter

2012 me would be very confused (more on that top come). A friend and I discussed whether this is "country" or just plain rock. Either way, this album rose above the fray through its plain-spoken reflections on frailty (both Isbell's and our own) and and even plainer call to action that should stir. On the reflective side, the album jumps in with "What've I Done to Help?" Literally the first line of the album on the first beat of the album, Isbell is asking questions, looking at his history of addiction, the state of his family and life and, ultimately, the world. The whole album just rolls from there, as tight a 41minutes as you'll get. More reflection comes on "It Gets Easier," but gleams of light and hope come with tracks like "Dreamsicle" and, especially, "River." But, the even darker edge of the album comes as Isbell weaves the state of the world into the songs. "Doesn't seem so long ago that we thought we could change their minds," Isbell sings on "Overseas" (which happens to very deliberately rhyme in the final verse with "refugees.) But it's "Be Afraid" that is an absolute anthem for the moment. "We've been testing you, and you failed," it starts before launching into an absolute takedown of those who literally won't use their voices to stand up for what's right: "We don't take requests, we won't shut up and sing" Isbell exclaims on the bridge and, if I can feel emotional typing it, wait 'til you hear it. And, in case you didn't get the message, he lets you know "if your words add up to nothing then you're making a choice to sing a cover when you need a battle cry." 

5) Grimes - Miss Anthropocene

Second opinion: The Guardian

In this feature, we separate people's personal lives from their music unless they're doing harm (hence, not a mention of a rapper whose name rhymes with "Don Yay" to the confusion of my 2012 self). Grimes is not like you or me. Her partner is problematic. She named her kid something off-the-wall weird. Those two things are hardly unusual in music and if we want to write off the weird folks, bye bye to Prince, Bowie and how many others? The music... no one is making music like Grimes. Setting a whole damn mood on opener "So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth," Grimes paints a dark landscape on a concept album about the post-climate-change-dystopia that's likely coming. But it's the layers of musicianship, of a willingness to try shit and pulling nearly all of it off and a general lack of giving a shit what the papers say about her private life that makes this music so alive even in a dark space. And dark it gets (shit, one track is titled "My Name is Dark" and, lo and behold... it's dark!). "Violence" is equally dark, with its alternating asks of why someone wants to "make me bad" or "hit me back" but the club lights and infectious beat make it as much a dance floor banger as anything else. And you can argue that no one has written about the opioid pandemic as well as Grimes does on "Delete Forever." There's a consciousness to album-building that I respect here, too. The initial single for this album, "We Appreciate Power" was left off the main version of the album. And, in context, one sees why. It just didn't add to this body of work on the whole. There's an art to this and Grimes pulls it all off.

4) Taylor Swift - Evermore

AND

3) Taylor Swift - Folklore

Second opinion: Rolling Stone

Again, 2012 me is so confused. I mean, out dancing? Yeah, I was always ready for "Shake It Off" or "Look What You Made Me Do." I love a pop banger. But yeah, this is the year Taylor Swift decided she was happy talking about politics and saying "fuck" and, oh yeah, working with The National and Bon Iver and Jack Fucking Antonoff to make folk-pop. I keep trying to imagine Antonoff, long a collaborator with Swift (and the man who is attached to personal favorite Lana del Rey) feeling like a kid in a candy store working with the staff he had for this. 

Folks, this is GOOD MUSIC and as someone who frequently had not-as-nice things to say about Taylor Swift, I'm dealing with it. And it's likely as simple as this is a person who was always talented and write her own songs who got screwed over by people in her professional and personal lives and, combined with literally no more to prove in the pure pop realm, has just grown to be her own damn thing and, what can I say? She's pulling it the hell off.

First, let's talk Evermore, which has been out for a big 72 hours as I write this so you almost can't review it (and it's a fucking flex that she put it out after most of the major year-end lists are out.) Still, "Gold Rush" and "Willow" and "Dorothea" are so immediately good that there is no reason to question if it can hang with Folklore. The fact that I'm going to listen to this daily this week already shows that it can. But "'Tis The Damn Season" is all I needed to hear. The most perfect little guitar bit (which... not entirely dissimilar to del Rey's "The Next Best American Record") is coupled with a home-for-the-holidays-tryst story that is probably best that it didn't drop in my early 20s when everyone is susceptible to nostalgia. It's a great album. And she did it twice.

Because Folklore is just transcendent music. Smart songwriting and production with the pop singer to pull it all off? We're always here for that. "August" was one of the first ones to get me with it's summertime whimsy and irresistible chorus. "Betty" was another. Then it was "Cardigan," which a friend said might as well be a song by The National. Then it was "This is Me Trying," which is just a ridiculously good bit of songwriting and dare we say vulnerable?

What's crazy here is how the songs key into some emotion we all feel. "They told me all my cages were mental, so I got wasted like all my potential, and my words shoot to kill when I'm mad. I've got a lot of regrets about that." Who among us hasn't been there? Even if Swift says these songs involved a lot of imagined situations and characters, they tap into some basic things for all of us. Maybe that's why "Exile" has generated so many memes of women in admittedly happy relationships falling SO HARD for that song.

In a year where we've all been at home with our feelings, Taylor Swift put them to music. Twice.

2) Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia

Second Opinion: Stereogum

It's as perfect a pop album as I've heard. It's a crime we did not get to dance these tunes out. It's brutally honest lyrically. I can go on an on... so let's a bit!

Being British with an alto voice is stacking the deck in your favor to start with in pop music, but Dua Lipa makes the absolute most of it with an album that just goes and goes and when it's done going, you just hit play again. We can joke about the irony of how lines like "Don't show up, don't come out" hit in a pandemic, but the overall theme of the song of a woman who isn't going to abide sitting at home being left on read is just the start of a smart pop album that is empowering women as much as it hits at insecurities. Actually... it's not the start. It's the opening title track where Dua Lipa says she "can't tell a man how to wear his pants" and adds the chuckle to drive home the double entendre. "Cool" was absolutely the anthem of the pre-action-in-the-streets summer (at least it was as far as I know... not like I went anywhere at that stage of the year). "Hallucinate," to use the current vernacular, slaps and the months "Physical" was on my curated-by-Amazon workout mix were the best. The bridge of "Physical" is probably illegal in some states because of how it makes people move. And the album's sign-off "Boys Will Be Boys" with its sing-a-long chorus combined with brutal honesty about how society is raising boys all wrong shows the brains behind the beats. 

It's been a year that has needed a lot of joy and Future Nostalgia brought it. So much of it.

1) Riz Ahmed - The Long Goodbye

Second Opinion: Pitchfork

The world in 2020 was a complicated place. Many albums alluded to it. This one, to me, is the only one to truly rise to the moment. An account of one brown person's "breakup" with Great Britain - and what it feels like to be other-ed in post-Brexit Britain - translates almost seamlessly to Donald Trump's America and the struggles of, well, anyone who's not calling the election rigged and wonders what happened to to the country we were told we had by our teachers.

The album is hot fire, punctuated by eastern instrumentation that at once harkens to where Ahmed's family held roots, but more immediately to the color and vibrancy they brought to England. Bear in mind that chicken tikka masala is considered one of the "national dishes" of Great Britain and, folks, fucking tea didn't come from that island in the North Atlantic. 

Ahmed dives right in with a spoken word history of the whole relationship... one party looking up to the other and seeing a chance to prove its worth in that world, the other using and abusing the first for its own gratification and then, one day, changing the locks on the house. Ahmed talks about being a man without a land, doing so directly on the album's other spoken piece "Where You From." "I could tell 'em Wembley, but I don't think that's what they want," he says, going on to stir up a fury that concludes with the pure truth: "where I'm from is not your problem, bruh."

Clocking in under 30 minutes, it's all killer and that includes the filler, with "voicemails" from an all-star team of east-Asian or Muslim talent ranging from Mindy Kaling and Yara Shahidi to Mahershala Ali and Hasan Minhaj. 

Every song channels all the feelings into a neat package. Back-to-back bangers (well, Mindy comes in between) "Toba Tek Singh" and "Fast Lava" bring what may be actual fire. "Any Day" and "Can I Live" turns the tempo and little else down. Are the horns opening "Can I Live" a call to action or a call to arms? Ahmed may well want you to live with that tension. 

The album closes out with "Karma," intro-ed by Minhaj sums it up: in the case of Brexit, is Britain going to be better off, or is it all going to come around to bite the Isle in the ass? Extrapolating, we can ask the same here in America: we didn't just go to the precipice. A lot of folks went over that edge and will keep trying to pull us all down with them. It's in the balance now. And that balance is captured perfectly on this album that simply begs for you to truly listen to what voices like Ahmed's are saying.