Being home so much this year, I listened to even more new music than usual -- I easily listened to over 200 new albums in 2020, 300 if I count EPs (although this year, for the first time, I made a separate list of
my favorite EPs). But I've long had a tendency to keep moving from one record to the next in search of another one I'll like instead of spending more time getting to know and love the best albums I've heard, so I really worked on that and tried to revisit these albums more throughout the year and see how they've held up. I miss concerts, but until those return, there's a lot of great music to stay home with.
1. Ashley McBryde - Never Will
Ashley McBryde is an incredibly cinematic songwriter, writing little 3-minute movies that deftly put you right in the middle of a story: "Shut Up Sheila" is a song about the death of a matriarch, from the perspective of an irritable mourner, snapping at a relative's girlfriend who's getting a little too talkative in the hospital room. "One Night Standards" is an acutely observed but unsentimental look at casual sex, but a couple tracks later, "First Thing I Reach For" is drenched in the remorse of the morning after. And then after 10 masterful songs like that, McBryde ends Never Will with a silly ditty about styrofoam.
2. Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia
I felt like one of the biggest fans of 2017's Dua Lipa in America before she really broke big here, and I've rooted for her all along the way -- my ideal pop star has always been someone that can sing ballads but mostly chooses not to. But even I was a little surprised as her artistic growth spurt on her second album, becoming a more consistent songwriter with an eye on conceptual coherence and a dedication to a neo disco aesthetic that suits her voice really well. But it was the fact that virtually every song had an absolutely killer bassline, from funky slap bass riffs to bubbling synth arpeggios, that really tied Future Nostalgia together for me.
3. Hayley Williams - Petals For Armor
If Hayley Williams had never grown creatively beyond what she did on Paramore's Riot! as a plucky 18-year-old, I would've been pretty content to hear her rehash that album a few times. Instead, she's grown creatively with each album, with especially huge strides for 2013's self-titled Paramore album and for Petals For Armor. And it's a cathartic divorce album looking back at her past with a different perspective -- when she sings "I stayed too long, skipping like a record, but I sang along to a silly little song," I have to wonder if she's taking a jab at Paramore's jubilant love song "Still Into You." But there's also hope and beauty and new beginnings here, and appearances from her bandmates, particularly Paramore guitarist Taylor York, whose experimental, borderline lo-fi production gives Petals For Armor a texture unlike any of their previous work that highlights Williams's incredibly delicate, nuanced vocal performances.
4. Chloe x Halle - Ungodly Hour
Chloe and Halle Bailey have been studying at Beyonce's feet for half a decade, but they haven't been training to be relentlessly perfect entertainers like B in 2003 so much as self-possessed artists like B since 2013. So even their first real move towards radio-friendly beats has a certain spacey art pop undercurrent to it that I hope they never lose, although I hope they continue to make hit singles far beyond "Do It." This was the last album I moved into my year-end top 10 -- I liked it when it was released back in June, but it just sounds better every time I revisit it.
5. Lil Uzi Vert - Eternal Atake (Deluxe) - LUV vs. The World 2
For years, I thought that rap albums should come with a 2nd disc of songs that were on mixtapes, kind of like what The Diplomats did with Diplomatic Immunity. That's kind of a moot point now that 'mixtapes' are generally collections original songs available on official streaming and retail platforms, but so many songs now get leaked or previewed on social media that there is a whole black market demand for songs that often never come out. So when Lil Uzi Vert released the long-awaited Eternal Atake in March and it didn't feature the leaked songs that fans had been hoping for, he released a deluxe edition a week later with a whole album's worth of additional songs. And that quickly became the most influential album of 2020, as it almost instantly became an industry standard for rappers to release deluxe albums days or weeks after the original album to return to or stay on the charts. But Uzi, who had something to prove after almost 3 years without releasing album and an incredible backlog of top shelf material, had both the best album and the best deluxe edition.
6. The 1975 - Notes On A Conditional Form
When a band says they're working on 2 albums that will be released back-to-back, I tend to worry that the later album will invariably feel like a collection of leftovers (I know there are people that prefer Amnesiac to Kid A, but I'm not among them). Of course, the two albums from The 1975's Music For Cars 'era' wound up coming out a healthy 18 months apart, and the latter was their longest release to date and very much a complete album unto itself. The 1975 have recently befriended their idol Brian Eno, and there's talk of him possibly producing one of their albums in the future, but I think Matt Healy and George Daniel have proven themselves as pretty impressive students of Eno on Notes On A Conditional Form, with the ambient interludes threaded in with the full-throated songs more gracefully than ever before. Matt Healy talks about girls and sex about as much as usual, but at the end of the album he tells his bandmates that they're the love of his life, and as someone who thinks that being in a band is at its best a really special kind of bond, I can't imagine a more moving closing track than "Guys."
7. Flo Milli - Ho, Why Is You Here?
Flo Milli's major label debut exists because "Beef FloMix" became a Twitter meme, and the title Ho, Why Is You Here? is itself a Twitter meme (via VH1's Love & Hip Hop). But her album is as consistently enjoyable as anything that her peers with radio hits and more traditional career paths have made this year, and when I listen to bangers like "Not Friendly" and "Pockets Bigger" overflowing with personality and one-liners, I don't see why she can't elbow her way to Mulatto or Saweetie's level.
8. Young Dolph - Rich Slave
Memphis has quietly been one of southern rap's most important scenes for decades, and Young Dolph has been leading the city's revival in recent years, but I always took him for granted as a solid but kind of predictable mid-level star. This whole album really hits from front to back, though, thanks partly to producers Bandplay, Sosa 808 and Juicy J, and Dolph deservingly got his highest charting album and solo single this year while remaining independent.
9. Lil Baby - My Turn
It's odd to think of My Turn as an era-defining blockbuster that vaults a rapper to the genre's upper echelon like Get Rich Or Die Trying or Tha Carter III -- maybe it's just Lil Baby's tight-lipped delivery and reserved personality or the production's steady midtempo pace, but it just doesn't particularly sound like a cultural phenomenon coming out of the speakers. And yet it really is one of the best multi-platinum rap albums of the last few years, perhaps partly because it doesn't feel like it's noisily trying to justify any hype or bend over backwards for crossover appeal, it's just the sound of a sharp young guy hitting his stride and taking the baton from the previous generation of Atlanta stars.
10. All Them Witches - Nothing As The Ideal
The most famous album recorded at Abbey Road Studios is a half century old now, but artists big and small still journey to London to make albums there, including the Nashville quarter All Them Witches. Their 6th album is their typical heavy bluesy psychedelia, with shorter concise songs as well as slowly unfolding 9-minute epics with drum solos, but it's all so gorgeously recorded, whatever they spent to cross the Atlantic and record at such a legendary place was well worth it.
11. Madeline Kenney - Sucker's Lunch
On her last two albums, North Carolina singer/songwriter Madeline Kenney has been backed by members of one of the best bands in the world, Baltimore's Wye Oak. But she's got her own voice and songwriting style that's similar to Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner in some ways but distinct in others, and a lot of Sucker's Lunch is is full of interesting guitar textures and unpredictable arrangements that make it feel like a world unto itself.
12. Beabadoobee - Fake It Flowers
Much has been made of how Beatrice Laus, born in the year 2000, drew heavily on the sound of '90s alt-rock for the sound of her first full-length album. But the airy voice and autobiographical lyrics she honed on a series of gentler lo-fi EPs and Louis Semlekah-Faith's tumbling drums give Fake It Flowers a texture all its own that doesn't feel like a mere tribute to a 1994 episodes of "120 Minutes."
13. Hellbound Glory - Pure Scum
Shooter Jennings was one of 2020's most prolific producers, recording albums by Jaime Wyatt, Marilyn Manson, and American Aquarium, but my favorite was Nevada-based band Hellbound Glory's second album for Jennings's Black Country Rock label. Leroy Virgil indulges in a lot of gallows humor on "DUIORDIE" and "Diall 911," but he's got a great voice and an ear for wounded ballads like "Someone To Use" that renders Pure Scum as more than a broad caricature of life in Reno.
14. Busta Rhymes - Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath Of God
Busta Rhymes announced ELE 2 way back in 2013, and one of the initial singles he released at the time, "Thank You" with Q-Tip, is better than anything that made the final album. But 1998's original ELE has always been a classic to me, and I found it really gratifying to see one of the greatest MCs of all time receive his flowers and kind of return at this apocalyptic cultural moment right when the themes of his early albums seem so relevant.
15. The Lemon Twigs - Songs For The General Public
Sometimes it can feel like you and your siblings are multiple people operating with the same brain, and I'm always fascinated to see how that dynamic plays out with siblings who are in bands together. Usually in those situations, one person emerges as the songwriter or creator whose ideas get fleshed out by their siblings, so I'm especially impressed that Brian and Michael D'Addario of The Lemon Twigs are both proficient songwriters, and I enjoyed
interviewing Brian for Spin and picking his brain about the differences in how they work. On
Songs For The General Public, their lyrical and vocal styles get more distinct than they were on the first two Twigs albums, but there's a certain yin/yang logic to how they play off of each other, Brian's more earnest songs contrasting with some of Michael's kind of arch stylistic exercises and weird voices.
16. Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters
Another one of my favorite interviews this year was with
Soul Coughing's Sebastian Steinberg about his work on
Fetch The Bolt Cutters. Obviously it's of a piece with Fiona Apple's other solo albums, but I found it really interesting that someone at this point in their career would form a band and make an intensely collaborative album that could've been credited to the whole group, I love all the weird DIY percussion and kind of unnerving moments where it feels like Apple is whispering right in your ear.
17. Benny The Butcher - Burden Of Proof
I'm glad that Burden Of Proof recently became the highest charting Griselda Records release, because I was starting to feel like I was taking crazy pills when it seemed like Westside Gunn's annoying voice and weak bars were getting more hype than his two far more talented labelmates. And while I always thought Hit-Boy's strength was in weird, unexpected electronic textures, he really proved here that he can excel the sample-driven boom bap beats too.
18. Lee Ranaldo & Raul Refree - Names Of North End Women
This is an album that continues to surprise me, even as someone who's listened to dozens of albums by Lee Ranaldo both with and without Sonic Youth, putting it on a few days ago there were sounds and melodies I hadn't remembered, strange and beautiful textures. Ranaldo has done a lot of work with tape loops and lock grooves and found sound samples over the years, but this feels like a huge step forward where Raul Refree really helped him incorporate it into his singer/songwriter work in a new and interesting way.
19. Thurston Moore - By The Fire
As exciting as it was to hear Lee Ranaldo and Kim Gordon try new things on their latest albums, I am glad that Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley are still frequently making music that sounds like what they did in Sonic Youth. And By The Fire is one of my favorite records from Moore in a long time because it starts out with some predictable Murray Street-era jams but then moves into some darker no wave sounds on tracks like the incredible 16-minute "Locomotives."
20. Lindsay Ell - Heart Theory
People love to joke about how CanCon broadcasting requirements help Canadian musicians achieve the kind of radio success at home that they rarely enjoy in America. But Lindsay Ell is one of the most talented singer/guitarists in country music right now that she has a growing catalog of hit singles in Canada but fairly little airplay in America outside of her Brantley Gilbert duet. And Heart Theory is a beautifully recorded album that finds Ell growing as a songwriter as she journeys through every step of a breakup as stages of grief.
21. Maddie & Tae - The Way It Feels
Like Heart Theory, The Way It Feels is a country concept album, albeit about the entire life cycle of a relationship rather than just the breakup. Madison Marlowe and Taylor Dye topped the country charts as teenagers with "Girl In A Country Song," but then the label they were on folded, and they took two years to sign with a new label, and two more years of releasing singles for their sophomore album to finally get released. And I'm really glad that they were vindicated after all that with the beautiful "Die From A Broken Heart" becoming their second #1 hit this year.
22. War On Women - Wonderful Hell
War On Women have been a great band since day one, but I have to admit that I did wonder early on if Shawna Potter and Brooks Harlan's heavier and more overtly new political band would end up a little more one-dimensional than their previous band, Avec. But after a decade and four killer records (three albums and an EP), it feels like they continue to have so much to say and new ways to say it, with nuanced and witty lyrics and big, ominous riffs and knotty 7/8 grooves.
23. Ariana Grande - Positions
I wasn't too surprised when Ariana Grande got engaged the other day, since she just released probably the horniest quarantine album of 2020. And really, it's annoying to see wealthy celebrities sing "Imagine" in their mansions, but if some of them want to sing about all the sex they've been having at home this year, I don't see any problem with that (although I think this album would have gone over bigger if she didn't try to pull a big splashy surprise release the week before the election). And really, Grande is coming off two back-to-back albums where she was reeling from tragedies and breakups, so it's nice to get a contented relationship record from her right now.
24. Bob Dylan - Rough And Rowdy Ways
The first three songs on Rough And Rowdy contain dozens of first person statements starting with the word "I," many of them florid and humorous boasts (my favorite: "I'm just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones/ And them British bad boys The Rolling Stones"). And it feels like Dylan was just in a playful mood throughout Rough And Rowdy Ways, even on the epic about the JFK assassination, dismantling his own mythology and making weird jokes and shouting out favorite records just to amuse himself.
25. Amine - Limbo
Amine may never make another single a fraction as popular as "Caroline," but it increasingly feels like he can build a pretty solid career but continuing to make albums as excellent as Good For You and Limbo. I only just listened to the new songs on the deluxe version the other day, but they're pretty good too. It's kind of a weird year to do best-of lists and so many albums I liked earlier in the year have grown by 20 or 60 minutes since I last listened to them.
26. Brendan Benson - Dear Life
I tend to think of Brendan Benson as consistent to a fault, turning out catchy, jangly songs year after year. But Dear Life proved he's a little more curious and experimental than I gave him credit for, experimenting with loops and beats and stuttering vocal effects here and there and even trying his hand at character sketches outside of his usual autobiographical mode on the title track, and it's fun to hear a guy try a few new things as he's turning 50.
27. Carly Pearce - Carly Pearce
Michael Busbee produced 4 of my favorite country albums of the last few years, two by Maren Morris and two by Carly Pearce, before brain cancer took his life in 2019, with his final work on Pearce's sophomore album coming out a few months later. Pearce has a gorgeous voice that wrings so much feeling from her ballads, some of which hit a little harder since she announced her divorce shortly after the album's release.
28. Infinity Knives x Brian Ennals - Rhino XXL
Brian Ennals is a really talented rapper I've followed for a long time and first wrote a
Baltimore City Paper feature about back in 2012. And when I interviewed Infinity Knives a couple months ago for
Spin about the new reissue of his 2019 solo album
Dear, Sudan, which featured Ennals on several tracks, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he actually looked up Ennals's music and befriended him after reading my piece back in the day. So in my little indirect way, I can take some credit for these guys becoming collaborators and making this album, and I'm proud to say that, it's a really unique and entertaining record that sets the stage for an upcoming Ennals solo album exec produced by Infinity Knives.
29. MAX - Colour Vision
In a year without a Bruno Mars album, MAX came through with the next best thing, a fast and flashy album of retro pop pastiches from a magpie with a great voice. I spent a couple years mentally filing Max Schneider away with douchey young male Top 40 singers like Bazzi and Bryce Vine, but I'm glad I threw this album on and gave it a chance, because I have a completely different view of him now, mainly because the guy can really sing.
30. The Nels Cline Singers - Share The Wealth
Nels Cline is one of my favorite guitarists of all time and I love to just hear him play in any context, especially when he's going off on a flashy tangent. But if I don't give him enough credit for anything, it's that he really writes beautiful, memorable melodies, and Share The Wealth has a few, especially the opening track "Segunda," which has been in my head a lot lately.
31. Moneybagg Yo - Time Served
I don't think Moneybagg Yo has gotten enough credit as one of the best rappers in the south the last few years, the guy just snaps on every song and has a great ear for beats. But he had a big 2020 with Time Served becoming his first gold album even though it didn't contain his biggest single, "Said Sum."
32. Kylie Minogue - Disco
Kylie Minogue is currently the same age that Cher was when she made "Believe," and is one of the rare pop stars who's still making people dance with new music well into middle age. And I'm glad she made an album celebrating disco in a year when younger acts like Dua Lipa and Doja Cat had big hits with the kind of sound Kylie's been doing consistently for decades.
33. Coriky - Coriky
Last year Ted Leonsis, the billionaire owner of multiple Washington D.C. sports franchises, offered his arena and a large sum of money for Fugazi to play a reunion show, which felt like a fundamental misunderstanding of Fugazi that probably further ensured we'll never see those 4 guys play together again. But they continue to form new bands and make new songs, sometimes with each other, and Coriky is notable for featuring two Fugazi members, Ian Mackaye and Joe Lally, along with Mackaye's wife and Evens bandmate Amy Farina. And while it's better to enjoy Coriky for what it is instead of comparing it to previous bands, it is fun to hear Mackaye cut loose on guitar a little more with a bassist holding down the groove, and Amy Farina summons a little of the Keith Moon bombast she had on early Ted Leo/Pharmacists tracks.
34. The Soft Pink Truth - Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?
A lot of the music that Drew Daniel makes, whether with Matmos or The Soft Pink Truth, has a strong conceptual or thematic underpinning. And Shall We Go On Sinning is no different, although its concept is a little more amorphous, kind of a soothing suite inspired by both classical and dance music to calm your nerves during the awful Trump era. And I would say it fulfills its mission, it's just a gorgeous album, with contributions from lots of great Baltimore musicians, including Koye Berry, who was also on my album this year.
35. Kiana Lede - Kiki
There are just so many major label R&B starlets vying to be the next SZA or Summer Walker right now, and a lot of their albums kind of blend together in my mind after I listen to them. But Kiana Lede's record stood out to me, she just has a great sultry voice and her production team Rice N' Peas took some interesting risks on songs like the jazzy "Plenty More."
36. Megan Thee Stallion - Good News
There's a funny attitude in hip hop these days that an artist's "debut album" is more an endpoint than a beginning, a big splashy crescendo to a series of buzz-building mixtapes and EPs and singles and features, and sometimes the search for the perfect moment to release that album takes years or never happens (or happens a decade later, like Jay Electronica this year). But Megan Thee Stallion played her cards right and released her big official debut shortly
37. Rufus Wainwright - Unfollow The Rules
It feels like a Rufus Wainwright album produced by Mitchell Froom is something that should have happened, or had already happened, a decade or two ago, but I'm glad they finally got together. I have a lot of respect for Rufus Wainwright's artistic range and his ability to go off and make operas and record inspired tributes to William Shakespeare and Judy Garland, but there's nothing I like more than hearing him sitting at a piano in singer/songwriter mode, and was happy to get his first straighforward solo album in 8 years.
38. 2 Chainz - So Help Me God!
For 2 months in 2015, Kanye West was going to name his next album So Help Me God (several name changes later, it came out as The Life Of Pablo). Half a decade later, 2 Chainz revived the title for himself, and Chance The Rapper seemed intent at one point on making helping Kanye finish Good Ass Job, and y'know, maybe all of Kanye's friends should just run off and use his discarded album titles...maybe preferably without his involvement, that verse on "Feel A Way" is awful.
39. Pearl Jam - Gigaton
Pearl Jam were my first favorite band, and every time they release an album I feel a little twinge of that excitement I felt waiting for Vitalogy to come out when I was 12. They've settled into a kind of predictable groove over the years, but I love that they're still at it, and there are moments on this album, like that loose jammy ending on "Who Ever Said" or the surprising funk groove on "Dance Of The Clairvoyants," that have a spark of that spontaneity I loved about the band in the '90s. I feel like Gigaton is kind of a bland title for a studio album, but would have been a funny stupid title for a live album (get it? because they gig a ton?).
40. Victoria Monet - Jaguar
Victoria Monet has had her greatest commercial success as a writer, and this year she penned hits for Ariana Grande and Chloe x Halle. But I don't see any reason why she couldn't be a star in her own right, she really sounds ready for the spotlight on Jaguar, and kind of seems more comfortable doing Prince-style filthy sex jams than some of the artists she writes for.
41. Ro James - Mantic
Ro James is another singer who gets a great Prince vibe coming on some of his songs -- he's actually the nephew of Prince protege Rosie Gaines -- and his second album features "Too Much," a great collaboration with fellow Prince acolyte Miguel. The Brandy duet "Plan B" really should have been a hit.
42. Bad Moves - Untenable
The first time I heard the D.C. band Bad Moves was, oddly, when they made an animated cameo on one of my kids' favorite shows on Cartoon Network, "Craig Of The Creek." But I really enjoyed their second album, which mixed some very of-the-moment social and cultural commentary on "Local Radio" and "Working For Free" with some jangly indie rock that sounds like I could have heard it on a CMJ sampler in 1996.
43. Willie Nelson - First Rose Of Spring
Willie Nelson is 87 and still releasing albums as frequently as some of your favorite rappers -- his second Sinatra tribute album is due out in February -- and he's been writing more lately, with First Rose Of Spring being his 5th album in of mostly new songs in the last 7 years, some written by Willie with producer Buddy Cannon. And it's just so inspiring to me that he can still write a song as lovely as "Blue Star" almost 60 years after "Crazy."
44. Little Big Town - Nightfall
Little Big Town became a much bigger group when they started working with Jay Joyce and he captured Karen Fairchild's voice with the right amount of reverb to make her sound just incredible. And it seems like the band was taking notes, because their first mostly self-produced album has that magic recipe that makes her voice pop over the group's lush 4-part harmonies.
45. Pale Spring - Dusk
Emily Harper-Scott and Drew Scott make some great spooky synth pop together, I feel like coming from Baltimore's underground scene, they've got such a great vocabulary of different sounds that they're just miles ahead of a lot of other alt-pop singers who try to sound current with generic trap production.
46. Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts VI: Locusts
I've always been impressed by Trent Reznor's work ethic, and how Nine Inch Nails has continued releasing music pretty steadily even as he and Atticus Ross have begun scoring films and TV series. But I'm kind of astonished that they were able to casually release two long instrumental NIN albums in March while doing so much soundtrack work that their scores for the latest David Fincher movie and the latest Pixar movie just came out in the last few weeks.
47. Maria McKee - La Vita Nuova
I've always loved Maria McKee's voice, "If Love Is A Red Dress" from Pulp Fiction and her Dwight Yoakam duets and her work with the '80s proto alt-country band Lone Justice. And it was great to hear her return with her first album in over a decade, experimenting with a kind of Joni Mitchell vibe that suits her voice surprisingly well.
48. Niall Horan - Heartbreak Weather
This year Harry Styles extended his comfortable lead over every other member of One Direction's solo career with the enormous success of Fine Line. But I hope the other guys can continue to hang onto the charts and not become footnotes like the other four guys from N Sync, because they've all made some good solo music, particularly Niall Horan, who hasn't repeated the genius of "Slow Hands" but made a pretty solid sophomore album. My wife likes this album so much that I think she's kind of mad at Hailee Steinfeld about the breakup that inspired these songs.
49. Goodie Mob - Survival Kit
It broke my heart a little to pan
Goodie Mob's muddled 2013 reunion album, so I'm happy to report that their new album is much better. They sound a lot less beholden to capitalizing on Cee-Lo's solo stardom and are mostly back to what made Goodie Mob great in the first place, with all four members sharing the spotlight.
50. Norah Jones - Pick Me Up Off The Floor
Norah Jones had such enormous success at the beginning of her career as kind of the ultimate Starbucks jazz balladeer, so it never feels cool to champion her later work. But she's really used her fame to take risks and evolve into an interesting songwriter who toys with interesting meters and textures on songs like "Hurts To Be Alone," and there's a durable charm to that voice that sold so many millions of albums.
