The 10 Best Albums of 2020
Is it daring to say pop is the most important genre of music?
If it’s popular, it speaks to a universal truth, and in an art form that claims to be a universal language, the pop genre comforts huddled masses through times like these better than any other.
The only thing uniting these albums other than their release date are the threads of pop that entirely frame or gently nudge them into place. Essentially, these albums should be easy to like or love, in some capacity.
I spent some time looking through year-end lists to ensure I wasn’t missing anything. These albums showed up without fail, in varying ranks, always there. Surrounding them were masterpieces of their own, but also far too many projects that only a music critic could love.
Here, I’ve trimmed the hedges and dulled the thorns to reveal what I believe are the most widely enjoyable but deeply creative albums of the year.
20 / Phantogram / Ceremony
19 / Ryan Beatty / Dreaming of David
18 / Allie X / Cape God
17 / Phoebe Bridgers / Punisher
16 / Arca / KiCk i
15 / Tame Impala / The Slow Rush
14 / Run The Jewels / RTJ4
13 / Oklou / Galore
12 / Poppy / I Disagree
11 / Yves Tumor / Heaven To A Tortured Mind
10 / Taylor Swift / folklore / evermore
(indie, folk, pop)
Best tracks / august, gold rush, evermore
If “1989” was a bright summer’s day, and “reputation” a dark winter’s night, sister albums folklore and evermore are beautiful autumn afternoons.
The big stadium theatrics are gone, with Swift ushering in the help of The National’s Aaron Dessner and frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff to produce an indie-folk album that basks in the glow of a warm fireplace rather than paparazzi flashes. Around that fireplace, Swift crafts stories out of thin air, with songs like “no body, no crime” witnessing the scandalous murder of a husband, or the innocent and cute redemption story detailed on “betty.”
If you’re familiar with The National, many tracks sound like adopted material, but Swift effortlessly fits into the acoustics, with delicate piano notes and strings swelling into rushes of life, “august,” and utter emotional defeat, “my tears ricochet.” There might be a few too many tracks that swerved the cutting block, but even the weakest fuel the cozy and clean tempered cottage Swift has built.
9 / Charli XCX / how i’m feeling now
(pop, noise, electronic)
Best tracks / claws, pink diamond, party 4 u
Oh to be a fly on the wall in the halls of Charli XCX’s antithetical victorian party mansion during the first half of 2020. Gone are the weekend balls and jet setting to futuristic live sets and afterparties. What remains is a social butterfly trapped in a cage, webcams and camcorders privy to the process of constructing a wall of sound, a 37-minute rager of an album, in just a few weeks.
This is Charli’s grittiest work yet, not just due to time constraints, but to fan participation in single artwork, votes on song structures and verses, and home-hosted raves. Bouncing around the walls, pulsing dance beats and explosive static embolden Charli’s unique meditations on long term relationships, “7 years,” and also how those relationships can quickly sour when circumstances permit too much time together, “enemy.”
“party 4 u” is simultaneously intimate and massive, a love letter to your one-and-only that dovetails into “anthems,” which anticipates finally reuniting with “the heat from all the bodies.” “how i’m feeling now” proves that there’s always a way to party even when the world doesn’t want to.
8 / Sevdaliza / Shabrang
(trip-hop, art-pop, folk)
Best tracks / Lamp Lady, Oh My God, Rhode
The album artwork for Sevdaliza’s third album “Shabrang” is a siren song in and of itself. Absently gazing towards us, Sevdaliza takes great risk but reaps artistic reward in her emotional brutalism. Opening track “Joanna” strums a villainesque guitar riff, “evil personified” the first words to pour out.
What happens over the next hour is a carefully weaved tale that feels biblical in scale, with hushed vocals breaking under the weight of sweeping strings and crunching beats. “Lamp Lady” is a culturally dense myth that critiques its preachings, “Who decides what we are, when all we have is ourselves?” And in “Wallflower” those same cryptic tales take form in spoken poetry, actualizing into a confident, driving beat.
“Oh My God” is the clear standout track, with its hypnotic chorus, too-close-for-comfort vocals in the verses, and ruthlessly slick production. Sevdaliza perfectly frames bombastic tracks with operatic ballads, before finally landing on “Rhode,” a track that lasers and warps you into a psych-rock trance. With a vision as brooding as this, who wouldn’t be captivated?
7 / Rina Sawayama / SAWAYAMA
(pop, electronic, nu-metal)
Best tracks / Dynasty, XS, Akasaka Sad
Late in 2017, a great disruption was felt in the fabric of pop music – an EP created by RINA and titled RINA, self-proclaimed ordinary superstar and girl on the screen. Mix the British swagger of the Spice Girls with the sweetness of Britney Spears, dress her up in Y2K baggy jeans and grunge T-shirts, then throw the instrumentation into a genre-defying blender.
SAWAYAMA completes the introduction of her undeniable talent by taking us on a grand tour of music and lineage. “Dynasty” is a warlike rock ballad that rejects tradition for its own sake, beckoning us to “break the chain.” Vanity and wastefulness are critiqued on “XS,” a pop banger that weaves striking guitar slashes between 2000’s pop choruses.
The absurdity of modern life is a central theme, so too is acknowledging the importance of family wherever you find it, security whether it’s online or in the confines of your mental health, or in reflection of the past or peace in the present. “Paradisin’” is the anime-intro-ballad to Rina’s life, rewriting a story far in the rearview mirror that voraciously feeds the fantastical future Rina is speeding into.
6 / Dua Lipa / Future Nostalgia
(pop, disco)
Best tracks / Don’t Start Now, Levitating, Love Again
There was no doubting the potential of Dua Lipa’s stardom, a pairing of model invoked coolness, and a popstar vocal inflection unlike few before. “New Rules” was the perfect storm of modern production with an age-old call for sisterhood. The question that anticipates any sophomore effort was how would that energy persist and evolve into a lasting force?
“Future Nostalgia” is the answer, a title so well-designed it’ll have you disregarding the few tracks that shelve the nostalgia portion. Lead single “Don’t Start Now” is perhaps the catchiest single from a pop project in the past half-decade, with its abrupt turns from funky bass line to biting can’t-have-this lyrics. The live version also proved Lipa could smash through expectations – live arrangements, remixes, and dance routines breathing life into a track already addicting and sweet like honey, no expiration date in sight.
“Physical” sees Lipa’s sultry vocals float across a dark synth line that recalls Gesaffelstein or vaporwave remixes. It’s super fucking cool, like the trajectory of excitement on “Hallucinate,” or the butterfly disco energy on “Levitating.” Or, like the anticipation we have knowing Lipa is only just getting started.
5 / The 1975 / Notes On A Conditional Form
(pop, indie, rock, folk, house, electronic, garage)
Best tracks / The Birthday Party, If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know), Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied
Beautiful, frustrating, exciting, overwhelming, aggressive, delicate – Notes On A Conditional Form is both easy and difficult to recommend because within it’s 22-song tracklist is an album for an underground punk-rocker, an orchestra loving Disney kid, a small town banjo plucker, and a manic raver.
Emphasis on manic, with lead writer and vocalist Matty Healy genre-jumping from one idea to the next, stringing thoughts together with their signature sparkling piano ambiance and orchestral interludes. End of the world punk-rager “People ” is preceded by a Greta Thunberg climate crisis speech, and followed up with an orchestra’s grace. Tracks like “Frail State Of Mind” and “I Think There’s Something You Should Know” beautifully evoke a brisk train ride through the city, adopting garage and house beats that spill outward with a sense of urgency.
Easiest to recommend “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” and “Guys” are, in an alternate reality, the lead singles and first tracks on an album half the size, but bright spots in an otherwise highly enjoyable journey that sees a band building upon its repertoire of reference and skill. If you’re too scared to admit it’s a good time, let me know.
4 / Jessie Ware / What’s Your Pleasure?
(pop, disco)
Best tracks / Remember Where You Are, Step Into My Life, In Your Eyes
House, funk, and disco collide at varying speeds, tempos, and emotional peaks, carrying us to a sorely missed moonlit dance floor. It’s an instant classic, and that’s not being dramatic, though Jessie Ware certainly is turning up the emotional drama and disco-fever on this sophisticated, sleek, and seductive night out on the town.
“Mirage (Don’t Stop)” orchestrates building tension, the bass-line underlining Ware’s soothing vocals, “You are the only fantasy I see,” before excitingly commanding a sea of moving bodies, “Don’t stop moving together!” And the closer “Remember Where You Are” is a sublime celebration of life, welcoming pain and joy, twists and turns, beginnings and ends.
If “Future Nostalgia” is the youthful, naive, and exuberant younger sister, “What’s Your Pleasure?” is the experienced, patient, older sibling. The former plays games, the latter engages in a dance, fully actualized, taking control and relinquishing it without fear. It could be a quick exchange under the mirrorball, it could be the start of something much more. Either way, Ware relishes in the experience of it all.
3 / HAIM / Women In Music Pt. III
(indie-rock, pop)
Best tracks / Los Angeles, Man from the Magazine, All That Ever Mattered
Before HAIM was known for fiercely strutting down sidewalks and Los Angeles boulevards, the trio appeared, by glorious happenstance, on an episode of “Clean House” in 2006. Bass player Este is sitting upon a used motorcycle, bargaining for the bike and then her dignity as the host jokingly mounts the seat behind her. She plays it off, pushing him away, the vibe of the episode saved by a feminine composure long tested and on the brink.
That exhausted sentiment is focused into a sophomore slump recovery far greater than their debut. “Women In Music Pt. III” rallies the confidence of the sisters to push their music in adventurous directions, with “3 AM” touching upon funk, “All That Ever Mattered” featuring exhilarating screams from Alana, and “I Know Alone” entering the realms of dance and garage. Uniting them all is their cool disposition and unfettered skill in composition.
You can perfectly imagine the residual heat from the pavement and sunset in the distance on “Los Angeles” and “Summer Girl,” both are best enjoyed on a spontaneous drive with the windows down. And before things get too comfortable, “Man From The Magazine” aptly explains the response Este had on that reality TV show, closing the song with a biting “You don’t know how it feels to be the cunt.” This is the band at their peak, true cowboys in the west, kicking ass and taking names.
2 / The Weeknd / After Hours
(hip-hop, rnb, synth-pop)
Best tracks / Faith, Blinding Lights, In Your Eyes
Where would Abel Tesfaye go after “Starboy” dipped into 80’s electro-funk, and “My Dear Melancholy,” revisited the dark and brooding RnB from his early catalog? As it turns out, he’d combine those successes and gamble them away in Vegas. Then he’d stumble around in bloodied prosthetics, mime a post-coke-binge panic attack, and launch into record of the year “Blinding Lights.”
The Weeknd reflects upon his life in focused detail, cutting the fat “Starboy” carried and building a grainy, neon-lit world in which synths and high hats echo around the party monster’s desperate musings. The atmosphere is immaculate, no better evidenced by than the transition at the heart of the album, the literal ending of “Faith,” and the beginning of a four-track run so strong that it has to be experienced to be understood.
When performing “Blinding Lights” and “In Your Eyes,” expensive fireworks light up the night sky behind Tesfaye, whether he’s on a lonely city street or the top of a luxurious residential highrise. At the edge of his artistic empire, Tesfaye indulges in the risk of losing all he has built, teetering on the heights of emotional extremes.
1 / 070 Shake / Modus Vivendi
(hip-hop, electronic, soul, pop)
Best tracks / Guilty Conscience, Divorce, Flight319
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the same voice gliding across the climax on Kanye West’s “Ghost Town” would end up resurrecting as an even more evocative and pulling force elsewhere. Androgynous and unique, 070 Shake’s tone was meant to be heard, and that energy was realized two years later, at the beginning of 2020 on her debut “Modus Vivendi.”
There is an adventurous serenity to the sound crafted here. The album opens with a meditative synth and string arrangement, groans into an auto-tuned chant by the second track, and then materializes into hypnotic and beat-heavy “Morrow,” which features a Spanish guitar sample that evokes wild-wild-west imagery. African drums open “Divorce,” the track closing with expansive piano and flight sounds, a cinematic experience that primes the high of “Rocketship.”
Sci-fi reference is integral to the vision here, “Modus Vivendi” translating to compromise between warring parties, with the artwork depicting a cyborg Shake, life-sustaining wires holding her back from a fully realized potential. There is a yearning for understanding, “Oh, I’ll never know, how long I’ll stay, how far I’ll go,” and cry for meaning, “lost her only son and he wasn’t even three, now try telling her that everything is meant to be.”
“Modus Vivendi” is a triumph in sonic expedition and artistic achievement. Throughout, Shake consistently mends the gaps that facilitate understanding, reaching inflection points like on “Terminal B,” where a simple request to “Look me in my eyes before you sip it” reminds us that everything we need to feel whole is right here in front of us.