I think the cool thing about Paul McCartney's little trilogy of self-titled albums where he plays all the instruments himself, released at 10-year intervals apart, is that each one was more or less a spontaneous response to his circumstances at the time. 1970's McCartney was recorded after the final Beatles album, and 1980's McCartney II was recorded after the final Wings album, Paul going back to his farm in Scotland and just messing around without a band for the first time in years. Both those albums are pretty scattershot, with occasional great songs busting out among a lot of whimsical experimentation, but his 2020 quarantine sequel McCartney III is actually the best and most consistently enjoyable of the three. There's still a little of that irritating whimsy he's never too far from, including a song called "Lavatory Lil," but most of the songs have a little more meat on the bones, and it's just great to hear him play guitar and bass and piano and drums and all his distinctive little signatures with each instrument. Two years ago he made a much more concerted effort to sound modern working with Ryan Tedder and Greg Kurstin on Egypt Station, but I don't know why he'd bother when he can still make something like this by himself at home. Obviously I already did my top 50 albums of 2020 but I heard this too late to put it on the list, but it would've made the cut. 

There have been a lot of talented women rapping in Baltimore for decades, but I think in recent years there have probably been fewer at the forefront of the scene than there were when I wrote this 2007 piece. So it's been cool to watch the rise of Miss Kam from someone who posted freestyle videos on Twitter to a really celebrated local artist who packs shows and gets featured on other people's records. And her first album really lives up to the excitement around her, "FTCU" with DDm and Kotic Couture is probably my favorite track but Kam holds it down on solo tracks like "Fight Night" and "Chopstix." Buy it on Bandcamp. 

I was hoping for a full-length follow-up to Yung Baby Tate's 2019 album Girls, but this 7-song project is great and raises my expectations for her next album, and I put it pretty high on my top 50 EPs of 2020. I've already seen "I Am" featuring Flo Milli in a TikTok so that might be the one that makes Tate a real mainstream star. 

Last month I mused that in Chris Cornell's final years he seemed to embrace his status as one of rock's greatest vocalists and had become an interpreter of popular songs like "Nothing Compares 2 U" and "Patience." I had no idea that a few days later there'd be a surprise release of a whole covers album that Cornell had finished and sequenced back in 2016, and it's got a really interesting range of material, from Harry Nilsson to Terry Reid to Ghostland Observatory, really felt like he was just singing songs he loved for the pleasure of it, it's great to hear. "Showdown" is probably my favorite track, a great and not too obvious ELO song to cover. 

Maggie Rogers self-released music for years before her 'big break' viral moment with "Alaska" in 2016 that led to her Capitol Records debut in 2019, including an album she made as a high school senior and another she made in college, both of which are still available on Bandcamp. So I think it's cool that even after becoming a Grammy-nominated major label star, she's self-releasing an hour of her early work, half of it from those two folky solo albums and half of it more rock-oriented full band stuff. It's obviously a little more restrained and less pop than the sound she's mined since "Alaska," but her voice and her writing were already pretty strong back then, and I like the banjo on the early stuff, it's a pretty enjoyable collection. "Sattelite" is a pretty impressive song for someone to have made when they were 16 or 17. 

"Whats Poppin" felt like a breakthrough creatively as well as commercially for Jack Harlow, a moment where this kid who'd been chipping away at stardom for a few years put it all together in a compact, effortless-sounding 2-minute package. But I wondered about his ability to repeat that achievement after the rest of the Sweet Action EP was mostly weird imitations of Ty Dolla Sign, and the follow-up single "Tyler Herro" felt like a joyless retread that took the wrong lessons from "Whats Poppin." Thats What They All Say is pretty solid, better than I expected, but it also doesn't feel like the white rapper crossover blockbuster that others were expecting (a month after its release, it's already one spot below a year-old Post Malone record on the album charts). I find his "letters home from rap star camp" lyrics kind of dull, maybe he'll get them out of his system but then Drake's been writing songs like that for 10 years so maybe not. I like how he's repping for Louisville hard and got some Static Major vocals on a song with Bryson Tiller. But he really didn't need both versions of "Whats Poppin" on here, he could've at least taken the damn Tory Lanez verse off the remix. 

In December, the 4th David Fincher film scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross came out, as did the first Pixar film scored by Reznor and Ross. And surprisingly, it was the Fincher movie that took them more out of their comfort zone, although it was interesting to hear how their usual bloopy aesthetic worked in the context of Soul. But Mank was recorded completely with period-appropriate acoustic instruments, and it's really interesting to hear Trent Reznor's melodic sensibility transposed into things like big band jazz, they really did a great job of conforming to what the film demanded while kind of nudging it in interesting and odd directions. The one full blown song with vocals, "(If Only You Could) Save Me" with Ardryon de Leon, is great, I hope they get an Oscar nom. 

Some albums get teased and delayed so many times that the public discourse around the album's impending arrival kind of devours the album itself, even after it's released. And the buzz for Whole Lotta Red seemed to rise and fall several times over the last year or two, as leaked tracks generated excitement over Playboi Carti's "baby voice" flow and the general idea that he was taking rap vocals to some amazing unprecedented new place, which of course generated a lot of argument. Now the album is here, and it feels like while some diehards were disappointed, generally people love or hate Playboi Carti in equal numbers that they did before. It's an alright record, I like "Slay3r" and "Place" the most, but I think what Carti's doing with his voice could've been mixed better. The vocals kid of sit awkwardly on top of the beat in a way that they didn't on his earlier records, it kinda made me go back and appreciate Die Lit more as his best album, which I guess plays into the idea that he's so ahead of his time that it takes olds like me years to catch up to him. . 

I've been too old to understand the spell Kid Cudi has cast over younger listeners for over a decade now, and I've made my peace with it. But the buzz about this album from his fanbase was so overwhelmingly positive that I thought maybe at least the production framed what he does well enough for me to enjoy it. And I was just continually amazed at how horrible Cudi sounds, possibly worse than ever. I can appreciate that there's now a whole world of people who combine singing and rapping in interesting ways that wouldn't necessarily fit into traditional definitions of impressive singing or rhyming, but everything Cudi says just kind of lands with a dull thud, drab melodies and these sad himbo haikus that are too poorly written for me to relate to on a basic emotional level. 

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