For me, the last few years have often felt like a process of constant motion. Travel has taken me all around the US, all around the world. I’ve spent countless hours on airplanes, on trains, in cars, on subways. So much of that time was spent listening to music. The songs that defined those periods therefore have an intense association with place and time.
This year has obviously been different. When I hear these songs, I process them together, as the soundtrack to a tightly-wound experience of place and time. As I listen, the seasons slowly change, while I sit motionless. Waiting. Simply waiting.
There’s something lost in that process. And I do wonder how I will process these songs in coming years. Will they have etched themselves as deeply? Will I feel them with the same burning force? I hope so. Because these are wonderful tracks, from one to fifty. They’ve done a lot to brighten my year, when it has been sorely needed. I hope that sharing them will bring you some joy as well.
As always, these are just my favorites, not a claim about what was objectively the best. One song per artist.
I’ve created a Spotify list, but Spotify pays artists effectively nothing so please if you like the music, go buy it. Almost every artist here is available on Bandcamp–including a few who aren’t on Spotify at all.
50. There Is a Space in Between – Lucy Gooch
There’s something powerful about liminal spaces–between memory and forgetting, between the sacred and profane, between heaven and earth, between self and other. What do we make of them? What do they make of us?
49. Angel School Anthem – STAR
An early 90s throwback in terms of style–with the atmospherics of a lost My Bloody Valentine or Ride cut–but the sentiment is pretty 2020: “When they say everything’s okay, it’s time to panic.”
48. Partir dans la nuit – Carla Bruni
The title translates to ‘go into the night,’ and it speaks to the joy of quiet spaces, of setting yourself free and waking up fresh in a bright new world.
47. The Lure Follows The Line – Eerie Gaits
The slow wash of sounds is deeply soothing, like a warm summer breeze bringing you the smell of the ocean in the distance.
46. Living Life – Steady Holiday
One of the things I’ve desperately missed this year is the tiny interactions that come when you’re out in the world. Those moments that make you feel just a little bit closer our shared experience of humanity. Where we look at each other and share a little knowing smile, and then return to our own worlds.
45. Note To Self (ft. Empress Of) – Jim-E Stack
A simple vehicle of bits and bops, perfectly designed to lift up Lorely Rodriguez’s voice and let it shine.
44. Rain On Me (feat. Ariana Grande) – Lady Gaga
“I’d rather be dry, but at least I’m alive” seems like a pretty workable rallying cry for those of us who made it to the end of 2020.
43. GREYHOUND – Petite League
A grungy little song about love in dark times, or possibly about dark times in love. Reminds me a lot of Sebadoh, particularly in the guitar breakdown that comes about halfway through.
42. not a lot just forever – adrianne lenker
The delicate guitar picking, the wrenching vocals, the quiet desperation. An emotional hurricane.
41. The Beauty of the Universe (ft. Mimi Page) – Yuta Itani & ミミ ページ
A collaboration between Japanese ambient artist Yuta Itani and American composer and singer Mimi Page. It’s languid, soft, soothing. A moment of tranquility in a turbulent world.
40. The Ascension – Sufjan Stevens
An unrelentingly bleak song, rendered with such grace and awareness that it still feels holy. I can’t quite tell if that’s an example of Stevens’ genius overwhelming the intent, or whether it’s a perfectly intentional expression of the contradiction inherent in belief. Either way, it’s a majestic experience.
39. Skeleton Couch – Seablite
60s girl group vibes filtered through some 80s post-punk fuzz. What’s not to love?
38. When the Smoke Clears – Jasper Lotti
Self-described as dystopian pop, which is perfectly apt. When she sings “tell me the time and the place” it sounds equal parts tender and threatening.
37. Other Side of the Wheel – Nadia Reid
I love Nadia Reid for the sparseness of her songwriting, the way she takes empty spaces and makes them sing. So it’s a little surprising that my favorite song from this record was one of the most traditional. There are still touches of strangeness, but it’s really just a lovely little folk-inspired pop song. Which, fair enough.
36. Cursed – Kllo
Quiet, introspective electro-pop, with glitchy beats designed to unsettle you. Silky-smooth vocals to bring everything back home.
35. Sunlight – Radical Face
The chorus begins “Could you share a little piece of your sunlight?” and that feels like an appropriate mission statement for a song that begins in the dark night, with crickets chirping and the daylight far away and concludes in the warm light of dawn.
34. Scene Suspended – Jon Hopkins
Nothing but a piano and light touches from a violin. It’s the sound of a morning sunrise after a long night, and the promise of warmth that it brings.
33. Gap Tooth (On My Mind) – Best Ex
A sugary sweet synthpop song that’s actually almost too sugary in its construction. But the bitterness of the lyric sharpens the edge, and makes the eventual turn toward self-care all the more fulfilling.
32. Dammit – Jenny Owen Youngs and Charlatan
It’s been almost fifteen years since a Jenny Owen Youngs song has made an appearance on the blog. Not because she hasn’t produced anything of note in that time; I’ve just never quite felt the need to write something up. I never would have guessed that the song to break the streak would be Blink-182 cover. But here we are. It’s actually from an entire album of Dammit covers (28 of them!), which…I don’t really know where to go with that.
31. No Clue – The Northern Belle
I remember the first time I heard Americana by way of Scandinavia, and I found the concept to be hilarious and fun. Many years on, and it no longer feels hilarious. Some of the finest Nashville tunes of recent years have come from the far north. The Northern Belle are a 7-piece band from Norway, and they continue the tradition in fine form. “I only want what’s best for you” she sings over the weeping pedal steel, and everything feels alright with the world.
30. Rtanj (Original Mix) – Goran Geto
If you could discover an equation capable of expressing the intersections of life and the physical world–everything from photosynthesis to the transfer of carbon dioxide and oxygen to struggle between hunter and prey–and then translated it into music, I think it would sound like this.
29. Generation Loss – Spanish Love Songs
The punk rock melodrama grows a little heavy when taken together in a whole album, but in small doses–like this song–it’s pure catharsis.
28. Lonely After – Yumi Zouma
A perfect indie pop song. The synths are light, the harmonies rich, and the songcraft is deft. If it risks feeling just a touch evanescent, that warm bass line grabs hold and pulls you back in for more.
27. Mother – Eve Owen
A song that builds and builds toward an epic crescendo. But it’s wonderful genius is that each step up the track comes as a surprise. Even after dozens and dozens of listens, I’m continually blindsided.
26. Silence – I Break Horses
When I was in Paris last year, I visited the Centre Pompidou where I saw an exhibit on light and movement. Semi-circular objects twisting and twirling to follow a designated path. If you didn’t look closely, they looked like the normal hypnotic circles you’ve seen many times before. But if you stayed with them, you discovered peculiarities–light echoes falling in strange directions. Your mind wanted to impose order, but if you looked just the right way you could open yourself to the uncertainty and experience the regularity as another type of chaos.
25. Local Radio – BAD MOVES
You work in a restaurant for less than minimum wage waiting tables for influence-peddlers and then play a show in the evening for 20-somethings still trying to convince themselves that they can live out their ideals. Everyone thinks that things should be better. No one seems to be able to actually do anything to make it happen.
24. Walking In The Snow – Run The Jewels
Released a month or so before the murder of George Floyd, but eerily prescient of what was to come. Every year is a good year for a Run the Jewels album but 2020 needed one in an existential way. The key thing they bring–which comes through on this song–is a balance of righteous outrage and genuine joyfulness. Both are necessary. There is no sustenance in rehashing the pain and suffering alone. You also need to find reasons to laugh, reasons to love, reasons to believe.
23. Siberian Butterfly – Bob Mould
Bob Mould is making some of the best music of his career these days, and this song is probably my favorite from him in decades. It’s a two minute burst of energy which begins as a critique of those who feel the need to capture natural things, to build collections, then transitions to a larger critique of our attitude toward the natural world as a whole, and concludes as an exultation of freedom and self-love (“Every Sunday the local men gather up at the barn and when the sun goes down the sky is filled with rainbow butterflies”). All in two minutes!
22. Out of Sight – The Beths
Delicate notes that bob and weave over you. But as it develops, the spine grows stronger. What began as a shimmery little pop song becomes an emphatic shoegaze explosion. You feel them reaching out over the distance, trying to bridge the gap.
21. Ms. California – Beach Bunny
A breezy California love song, but sung from the perspective of someone on the outside, filled with bitterness at losing out. The whininess hits precisely the right note–enough to feel genuine, but not so much to suggest genuine trauma. This is a song of adolescent frustrations–the perverse feeling of pleasure you get from dwelling on the pain. The way the object of your affection is understood primarily through your experience of loss.
20. Can’t Go Back – PRIZM
The New Wave is now four decades old, but it still sparkles and shines like a brand new jewel here.
19. Love Again – Dua Lipa
Most of the songs on this record failed to truly thrill me. They’re all good and I enjoyed listening to it plenty. But this is the only one that burrowed its way deep into me. That’s partly because of the wonderful sample–to my ears is inextricably linked to White Town’s late-90s classic Your Woman, but I was surprised to discover it’s actually itself a sample from a song called My Woman by Al Bowlly. Which makes this a third iteration on the theme, and all the more thrilling for that fact.
18. Mirrorball – Taylor Swift
Her genius has never been about carving out new pathways; it’s been about figuring out precisely what she wants to evoke and then evoking the absolute bejeezus out of it. This time she wanted to evoke Sarah McLachlan, and holy hell did it work.
17. Notice that, – Benoît Pioulard
A diaphanous bubble drifting over the hillside. You look back, aching for that which has been left behind. You take a deep breath, savor the feeling of new possibility to come.
16. when i look at you. – Rosie Carney
A breakup song, but one that’s far more about the trauma that comes from within. The way you relied on someone else to keep you afloat, and the abject terror when that anchor begins to drift away. It’s a terrifying song, but also an achingly beautiful one.
15. For Those We Knew (feat. Mimi Page) – Jody Wisternoff
I almost always have a song from Mimi Page on these lists, since I love her own music and she also has excellent taste in collaboration projects. This track is her second appearance for 2020. Where the Yuta Itani collaboration above was all atmospherics and textures, this one is a gentle but insistent deep house track. Page’s vocals are bright-eyed and piercingly clear, providing the perfect counterpoint to the ebbing and flowing violin.
14. Don’t Tell Me – glimmers
Sometimes a band’s name so perfectly encapsulates their sound that there’s almost nothing left to say. That’s definitely the case with glimmers. This song hits me like a ton of bricks today. I think it would have literally broken me if I’d heard it twenty years ago.
13. Georgia – Katie Pruitt
A song written to her home state that she felt would never accept her. And to the family that she worried wouldn’t either. It sounds like her family was able to come around. And of course Georgia has been in the news a lot this year for turning ever-so-slightly blue. Which is certainly not to say the troubles are over. But it feels like a moment of possibility and hope. That the next generation of kids growing up queer in the state might find more acceptance, more love, more room to be themselves.
12. PTA – The Lawrence Arms
A scorching bit of punk rock from some of the best in the business. The final line kills me: “Remember? We used to hold hands / Now, I just go out alone when I need to dance.”
11. Helpless (Feat. Old Crow Medicine Show) – Molly Tuttle
One of my favorite Neil Young songs, and one that I’ve always felt could only be captured in his voice. But Molly Tuttle managed to make it very much her own. The etherealness is replaced with warmth, turning this beautiful song into a wondrous campfire sing-a-long.
10. Sounds Are Fine – Sophie Moon
A balm on my soul. In the longest days of the spring lockdown, when I had spent several months wholly removed from the world, this beautiful song found its way into the world. It was written by Mike Park (one of the few truly Good Guys in the music world) and sung as a duet between between Dan Adriano of Alkaline Trio and his daughter. It is good and right and never fails to make me smile.
9. I See You – Phoebe Bridgers
It’s a strange thing when an artist that you’ve closely followed for years has a huge breakout year. It’s even stranger when it’s for an album that mostly left you cold. Try as I might, I just couldn’t find a way into Punisher. With one exception: this song. It wrecks me in the way that the whole album seems to wreck everyone else.
8. Alnitak – Six Organs Of Admittance
Given its 20 minute running time, this is probably the song I’ve spent the most actual minutes listening to this year. It hangs over your shoulders like a warm scarf, asking nothing of you except the opportunity to keep you warm and safe.
7. You’ll miss me when I’m not around – Grimes
It’s a killer track on its own, with one of the purest melodies she’s ever constructed. But it’s also one of those tracks that gains strength in context. To my ears, this track and Delete Forever are the tentpoles that hold up the rest of Miss Anthropocene–and therefore create the potential for all the darkness that lurks within.
6. Animal – Katie Malco
A strong competitor for chorus of the year, and it’s not even the best part of the song. The best part of the song is the instrumental breakdown that serves as the bridge between moments of catharsis.
5. Waves – Hum
A missive launched into the cold dark night sky. It leaves behind a blistering trail of heat and light and thundering echoes of what might have been.
4. Horses – sea oleena
A single exhalation stretched out to twelve minutes. Heart-wrenching, pure as a mountain stream, effortlessly soft, impossibly beautiful.
3. Walk In The Woods – snarls
Shimmering guitars, a warm bass line, soaring vocals. It’s already perfect, and then they somehow rocket things up another level in the final chorus and I burst into a million pieces. Technically released in 2019, but I missed it, and the album is from 2020, so I’m absolutely counting it.
2. Extraordinary Life – Gordi
Most of the great love songs are really songs about infatuation, the early blush of love, the excitement and anticipation. This is something better. John Lennon called the final verse of The End a ‘cosmic line.’ I think fits here as well. It seems to me that there is no higher expression of love than: “I want to give you an extraordinary life.”
1. Tenderfoot – The Day
It was originally by Smudge, but I always knew Tenderfoot as a Lemonheads track–with that classic Evan Dando crackle being its defining characteristic. And while I like that version just fine, I would never in a million years have guessed that a new cover would end up as my favorite song of 2020. But to borrow from Vin Scully: in a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened. What began as a scuzzy drunker brawler of a song has been utterly transformed. This reimagination massively expands the sonic palette, significantly softening the edges in the process. The result is absolutely glorious. A song I could listen to on repeat for days and never get tired of hearing. It just makes me smile so much. And in 2020, that’s the greatest gift I could ask for.