My Top 50 EPs of 2020
Growing up in the CD era, EPs seemed kind of silly, like you'd often have to pay as much for one as an album even if it's less than half as much music. And even my favorite extended players were often ones I heard as bonus tracks on an album by the same artist, like Sonic Youth's Kill Yr Idols. But in the streaming age, when you can release any number songs at a time without having to justify the expense of a piece of physical media, it feels more appealing to both artists and fans to have smaller collections of songs in between the big albums. And one side effect of the COVID-19 lockdown is that a lot of musicians had a lot of time at home to write and record, but they didn't necessarily want to roll out a whole album at a time when they couldn't tour. So there have been a lot of EPs this year, often with titles like Quarantine Pack or Corona Pack or House or In Isolation or Solitude. Hell, my bands released three EPs this year, two of which were recorded at home in quarantine.
Every year for probably a decade, I've thought that I should do a list of the best EPs of the year along with my top albums, but then I just put a couple favorite EPs in the albums list and call it a day. So this year I'm finally getting it done. Of course, what qualifies as an EP can be a little fuzzy. I think 3-8 songs is the range where it's easy to call something an EP, but that could be an album too if the songs are long enough. 2 songs is generally considered a single, but if you give the release a name that is not the title of one of the songs, like J. Cole's Lewis Street or Drake's Scary Hours, then suddenly people call it an EP. Kanye West and G.O.O.D. Music released a series of 7-song releases in 2018 that were all officially considered albums, and this year Ingrid Andress and Huey Lewis released 26-minute albums that I hemmed and hawed about whether to consider EPs. But for the most part, these are all uncontroversially EPs.
Here's a playlist with all of the EPs on this list that are available on Spotify.
1. Christine and the Queens
- La Vita Nuova
Chris was my #1 album of 2018, and when La Vita Nuova came out in February I kind of assumed it was probably just a teaser for a full-length to come this year -- perhaps it was, before COVID-19 changed everyone's plans. But I'm glad we at least got these 6 tracks -- 5 songs, one sung in both English and French -- from Heloise Letissier this year, including the instant classic "People, I've Been Sad" that continue to advance her art pop-meets-'90s R&B sound.
2. Beauty Pill - Please Advise
Most of the 20 years they've been a band, Washington, D.C.'s Beauty Pill didn't release any music at all, but this year they stayed busy, releasing the stage play score Sorry You're Here, the amazing "Instant Night" single, and the 4-track Please Advise, which continues the tradition of great early Beauty Pill EPs The Cigarette Girl From The Future and You Are Right To Be Afraid. I interviewed Chad Clark and new singer Erin Nelson about the EP for Spin, and the article was primarily about the surreal and kaleidoscopic "Pardon Our Dust." But there was so much that didn't fit in the article, including Nelson declining to sing the EP's cover of the Pretenders classic "Tattooed Love Boys" before Clark decided to sing it.
3. Wye Oak - No Horizon
I love all of Wye Oak's albums, but sometimes 2010's My Neighbor / My Creator EP is my favorite thing they've ever done. So I'm cool with them doing shorter releases like the quartet of singles they rolled out in late 2019 and early 2020, and this EP of collaborations with the Brooklyn Youth Orchestra that followed over the summer. The slippery, unusual time signatures on "Spitting Image" and "No Place" make an interesting match for the wall of sound vocal harmonies.
4. Yung Baby Tate – After The Rain
Georgia singer/rapper/producer Young Baby Tate, the daughter of '90s star Dionne Farris, just released this EP last week, but it's a great follow-up to her 2019 album Girls with features from Flo Milli and 6lack. She has so many different styles, even just on an EP, that I'm curious what kind of sound she's gonna make a big hit with eventually, because I know it's coming, but my favorite is the slow jam "Cold."
5. Semisonic - You're Not Alone
Semisonic made 3 lovely albums and one big hit in the '90s before they gracefully bowed out, without ever really breaking up, and Dan Wilson moved on to a wildly successful and Grammy-winning career as a songwriter. And with the same charm and lack of fuss or drama that Semisonic did everything with, they've resurfaced two decades later with 5 catchy songs that could've been on 1996's Great Divide minus a little major label gloss.
6. Conway The Machine & The Alchemist - LULU
Griselda Records released a ton of albums this year, as they do every year, including three projects by Conway alone. But one of the label's most acclaimed releases of 2020, with good reason, was his 22-minute EP with The Alchemist. I confess I don't really understand the hype about Griselda sometimes, because it's just 3 rappers who don't produce, and a lot of their best stuff is produced by guys like The Alchemist who have been doing gritty minimalist sample-driven street rap at a major label level for decades, but whatever, this is good, easily my 2nd-favorite record named LULU.
7. Dee Dave - Good Vibes
Baltimore rapper Dee Dave was murdered in January, and in May some of his unreleased music was compiled on this excellent posthumous EP. He hadn't released a lot of music in his lifetime, I was primarily familiar with his Al Rogers Jr. collaboration and his President Davo diss, but there are some great songs on here, and it's really sad to hear him rap about fallen friends on "Not In My League" knowing he'd die young himself.
8. Chaz Cardigan - Vulnerabilia
Kentucky singer-songwriter Chaz Cardigan released his first two major label EPs this year, and the longer and more recent one Holograma is also pretty good. But I prefer Vulnerabilia, which features the gorgeous "Tightrope" and his radio breakthrough "I'm Not OK!"
9. Megan Thee Stallion - Suga
Although her rise has been steady over the last 2 years, Megan Thee Stallion's career briefly felt like it was stalling back in March, after she'd released her most underwhelming singles, "Hot Girl Summer" and "B.I.T.C.H.," and the release that had been hyped as her debut album was suddenly downgraded to an EP. But that EP, Suga, featured "Savage," the song that turned things around and was eventually remixed with Beyonce and became her first #1. But the whole EP is good, "Captain Hook," "Hit My Phone," in some ways it has more of Meg's core sound than the album she eventually released, Good News.
10. Bea Miller - Elated!
Bea Miller was an X-Factor finalist at 13 and had one Hot 100 hit back in 2015, but she's kicked around the music industry ever since and scored a TikTok hit this year with "Feel Something." The Elated! EP features a new version of the single, "Feel Something Different," featuring Amine, but "Forever Is A Lie" is one of my favorite songs of the year.
11. DaBaby - My Brother's
Keeper (Long Live G)
There probably would have been even more EPs this year if deluxe editions hadn't become a big trend -- a lot of rappers who wanted to drop a few new songs just tacked them onto their latest album. But the always prolific DaBaby released a deluxe edition of Blame It On Baby as well as this EP, released less than 3 weeks after this brother's suicide. And he lets down his guard on here a lot, albeit sometimes in an awkward tough guy way -- the hook to "Gucci Peacoat," one of the most personal songs on the EP, starts "lately I've been in my feelings like a ho." The songs with Meek Mill and Polo G feel like they were probably songs he just already had finished and threw on there, but they're great tracks.
12. Travis Denning - Beer's Better Cold
Travis Denning got his first country radio #1, "After A Few," this year, which I think would've been a good time to release his debut album. But his label opted for caution, releasing this excellent 6-song EP to launch the follow-up single "Beer's Better Cold."
13. JPEGMAFIA - EP!
This actually came out today, although it just collects a series of singles that Peggy dropped throughout 2020. The label that released his last full-length, EQT Recordings, signed a joint venture with Universal last year, so "Covered In Money!" (where he jokingly but maybe a little seriously declares "fuck the underground I'm goin' pop!") is now on JPEGMAFIA's first major label project. And while I don't really know what the commercial ceiling is for one of the weirdest rappers to ever come out of Baltimore, I'm interested to see what this all leads to in the future.
14. E-40 - The Curb Commentator Channel 2
It's probably a good sign of how much EPs are in fashion now, and now just for up-and-coming artists, that Bay Area veteran E-40, who's frequently released 2 or 3 albums at once, released a couple of EPs this year. The second EP in the Curb Commentator series had a great Big K.R.I.T. collaboration and "Slices," probably the best semi-high concept E-40 song since "Choices (Yup)."
15. Pink Sweat$ - The Prelude
The big hit from Philly singer/songwriter David "Pink Sweat$" Bowden's third EP is the schmaltzy ballad "17," but The Prelude has a range of sounds, and I really think this guy has a Bruno Mars-level skill set.
16. Vic Mensa - V Tape
After 2014's "Down On My Luck," it seemed like former Kids These Days frontman Vic Mensa was on the cusp of major stardom, but it felt like his buzz dimmed with every successive EP or album until he became kind of a joke. But then this year V Tape kind of came out of nowhere, put his weird rap/rock experiments behind him, and got back to what made him a compelling rapper in the first place.
17. Incubus - Trust Fall (Side B)
A lot of people these days use EPs as a way to roll out an album bit by bit in 2 or 3 installments, and sometimes they follow through and sometimes they don't. And when Incubus released Trust Fall (Side A) in 2015, it seemed like they were never going to catch it with the second half, eventually releasing an unrelated full-length, 8, in 2017. But then they finally completed the set this year, and "Our Love" and the '80s Bowie homage "Into The Summer" might be the two catchiest songs they've made in over a decade.
18. Meg Myers - I'd Like 2 Go Home Now
Meg Myers also did two EPs as separate halves of a project this year, but she released Thank U 4 Taking Me 2 The Disco and I'd Like 2 Go Home Now on the same day, so they really could've been one project. But again, people really like to use EPs as stopgap projects between albums, and these projects grew out of outtakes from her 2018 album Take Me To The Disco, so I guess she didn't want it to be mistaken as her next proper album.
19. Eddie Money - Brand New Day
Eddie Money was set to release his first album in over a decade in 2019, but it was postponed when he fell ill. And after he died, his wife decided to divide the album into seperate EPs, with the second due sometime in the future. Maybe they're just trying to spread out the small amount of posthumous music he left behind, but it seems like a weird decision. Still, it's fun to hear this goofball blue collar rocker back in action one last time.
20. Jimmie Allen - Bettie James
This year Delaware country singer Jimmie Allen followed up his 2018 album Mercury Lane with a collaboration-heavy EP. And while my personal favorite is "Freedom Was A Highway" with Brad Paisley, and the songs with Nelly and Noah Cyrus were minor hits, the most important track is definitely "Why Things Happen" with Charley Pride and Darius Rucker, uniting three generations of black country singers.
21. Meek Mill - Quarantine Pack
22. X Ambassadors - Belong
23. Hailee Steinfeld - Half Written Story
24. Angel Du$t - Lil House
25. Fletcher - The S(ex) Tapes
26. Calboy - Long Live The Kings
27. Mick Jenkins - The Circus
28. Young M.A - Red Flu
29. Troye Sivan - In A Dream
30. Micah E. Wood - You Are Here
31. Wale - The Imperfect Storm
32. Elle King - In Isolation
33. Jack Harlow - Sweet Action
34. Kane Brown -
Mixtape Vol. 1
35. Summer Walker - Life On Earth
36. Drew Scott - Nocturne
37. Chelsea Peretti - Floam And Flotsam
38. Dej Loaf - It's A Set Up!
37. Chelsea Peretti - Floam And Flotsam
38. Dej Loaf - It's A Set Up!
39. Bob's Burgers - Thanksgiving
40. The Network - Trans Am
41. Lupe Fiasco & Kaelin Ellis - House
42. Eze Jackson - Goals
42. Eze Jackson - Goals
43. Monsta X - Fantasia X
44. Baby Rose - Golden Hour
45. Midland - Guitars, Couches, Etc., Etc.
46. Denzel Curry & Kenny Beats - Unlocked
47. Foo Fighters - 00959525
48. YFN Lucci - Corona Pack
49. Tori Kelly - Solitude
49. Tori Kelly - Solitude
50. RaeLynn - Baytown
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