I hope this blog post finds you well attentive listener. Although based on the current geopolitical climate, you are most likely hanging on by a mere thread. If that is the case let this casual list of the top 20 albums of 2020 be your metaphorical and metaphysical lifeline to joy. A new piece of thread for you to hold on. Anyways here are the albums I thoroughly enjoyed this year in a very particular and thought out order.

20. Perfume Genius, Set My Heart on Fire Immediately

Like a lot of people this year, Perfume Genius made a sad album. It is not really Taylor Swift sad but more muted than anything. Compared to his very vibrant previous record, No Shape, Set My Heart on Fire Immediately contains different instrumentation. No Shape was filled head to toe with these strings that were somehow solemn yet uplifting while Set My Heart on Fire Immediately clings to instrumentation that is sparser. This is not at all a bad thing as the mood that is created through this technique is quite chilling. A lot more emotion comes through these songs as the stories seem to be the main focus of the record instead of the music. Perfume Genius’ music deals with the plights and themes of being a queer man in modern America. This album makes it more apparent than ever and as you know we support the gays and theys in this household. Also his music seems to be in coming of age movies a lot and I love that as well.

19. Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher

Phoebe Bridgers has been hip with the indie kids for a couple of years. Her EP in 2017 along with her involvement with the female supergroup boygenius gave her a good foundation of notoriety. Bridgers’ first full length album, Punisher, catapulted her to indie stardom giving her numerous Grammy nominations and a top ten hit in “Kyoto.” While there has always been melancholic, soft spoken indie rockers, (Soccer Mommy, Julien Baker, Fiona Apple, etc.) Bridgers brings a specific zoomer aesthetic that seems to resonate with people. It really might be that she seems very genuine on social media and the skeleton getup is very spooky. Besides that, Punisher is a very well thought out album with a couple of certified sadboi bangers.

18. Waxahatchee, Saint Cloud

I still don’t know if I spelled this band’s name correctly. It is apparently the name of a creek where the main singer grew up around in Alabama. Crazy stuff. Waxahatchee has been another integral part of the indie rock scene for much of the 2010’s but I had never like their stuff that much. Saint Cloud is different and really leans in to the band’s southern roots and is more indie-folk or americana than indie-rock. All these monikers are really arbitrary and they really piss me off the more I write about them. The album is named after the lead singer’s father’s hometown growing up. Even crazier stuff. Many of the songs in the album also refer to other places throughout the south. Just bonkers. Besides all the roots in rural America, Saint Cloud has some of the best album art that I have seen all year and truly encapsulates the mood of the album. Would recommend.

17. Adrianne Lenker, songs/instrumentals

Last year Big Thief (Adrianne Lenker’s fantastic indie band) had quite the year releasing two critically acclaimed albums and took over a lot of the conversation. Adrianne Lenker has done a lot in her solo career as well and her latest projects are no exception. Compared to her work with Big Thief, songs/instrumentals is much more muted. Not in a bad way but the magic sauce is much more concentrated on the lyrics and instrumentals (even the albums names are very simple). The albums are bare and yet all encompassing. They truly feel like a tiny desk concert basking through the airwaves into your ears. Besides all the beautiful sounds, Lenker is just a master storyteller and empath and it truly knows how to get to your core.

16. The Strokes, The New Abnormal

The Strokes have been out of their prime for a good while and have almost been relegated to dad rock at this point. Can I get some f’s in the chat boyz? Like the strokes used to be The Strokes an all power garage rock band that were super dope. I remember playing “Reptilia” over and over on guitar hero (or rock band?) like god damn that’s a childhood right there. While The New Abnormal doesn’t bring The Strokes back from the grave into former glory, it does establish that the band can still make interesting and creative new music. They do not try to reinvent the wheel. They are still a scrappy set of boys from Manhattan and they still are willing to sing about New York politics (now it is about the Mets instead of the cops). While they show glimpses of their youth, they also definitely show their age. Regardless of this, it is a very sobering listen.

15. Fleet Foxes, Shore

Fleet Foxes have been part of my obsession the past few years. They just don’t miss and have really brought me to love folk music in a whole different light. Their latest offering, Shore, which was a surprise album released on the spring equinox. The “springness” of it all plays well as the album is very light and relaxing. A stark comparison to their 2017 project, Crack-Up which sounded like it was conceived on a dark dreary night in New England. While I do prefer the macabre nature of much of the Fleet Foxes catalogue (i.e. “White Winter Hymnal”) the general cheeriness of the album was a welcome feeling. I could see myself listening to this on the beach (a Shore of sorts) and just vibing.

14. U.S. Girls, Heavy Light

Meghan Remy (sole member of U.S. Girls) has never shied away from integrating her political voice into her music. This was especially prevalent in 2018’s massively successful In a Poem Unlimited which saw her criticize every man woman and child in the government. While her latest project, Heavy Light, has a similar tone in the beginning (“4 American Dollars” and “Overtime” are not very subtle) the rest of the album is intensely personal. Three interlude type tracks show Remy and others creepily whisper monologues about very intense emotional musings. Topics like advice to your teenage self, the most hurtful thing someone has ever said to you, and the color of your childhood bedroom are discussed. While these are chilling, they bring a more personable and emotional feel to this album that gives it the chutzpah to be more than a political cry. In essence a more holistic album. Good for college applications and such.

13. HAIM, Women in Music Pt. III

Not gonna lie the last HAIM album was pretty trash. I can’t recall a single track off of it like damn. I loved “The Wire” era HAIM and so the last album was a pretty big disappointment but there was light on the horizon… Last year HAIM released the best song that they have ever consummated “Summer Girl.” And while all the little boys and girls were singing about a hot girl summer, I, an intelligent gamer, was bumping to these three pasty white girls (I’m basically a pasty white girl at this point) and their trumpets. I love the vibe on this song and it was only foreshadowing things to come. Women in Music Pt. III really encapsulates this relaxing California-carefree-summer vibe that started with “Summer Girl.” They really do be just sounding like a mid-90’s jam band and the authenticity oozes through to the listener. The Grammy nomination for album of the year was very warranted.

12. Dua Lipa, Future Nostalgia

Future Nostalgia is probably my favorite album title of the entire year. No title truly encompasses the material better while keeping a creative and catchy name. The music is a very loving throughout to the era of disco and electronic music but Dua Lipa somehow manages to make it also sound so far out and modern. All the while making an incredible pop album in its own right. Quite the feat. I wasn’t truly a Lipa gang member after “New Rules” as nothing else from her debut album seemed to be of that caliber. Even when “Don’t Start Now” came out I was like eh. But my beautiful gf played it for me over and over and I suddenly realized/real-eyes what was going on. After that I was hooked and have loved Future Nostalgia ever since.

11. Rina Sawayama, SAWAYAMA

Getting a shoutout from Elton John to Dua Lipa is a crazy trivia answer that belongs to the one the only Rina Sawayama. Though Sir Elton has made some weird choices in what to be featured on in the last few years (Gaga and Gorillaz songs), he does have an ear for dem bars. And miss Sawayama delivers those bars in spades. Like the whole deck of spades. SAWAYAMA has like six different genres given to it on Wikipedia and that is no lie. The record gives such a display of love for different styles of music it makes my heart melt. There is everything from pop to R&B to industrial to disco to etc. I think if you are buying stock in musicians (someone should make that a thing, maybe just by record label stock!!??!1?) Rina Sawayama is a prime stock selection. I would also sell all your Elton John stocks.

10. Tame Impala, The Slow Rush

I can feel God at this Tame Impala concert tonight. That is how I felt seeing the band at ACL last year (rip to live concerts). While this does indeed make me a basic bitch, it does not detract from the fact that the band is groovy. A couple songs from The Slow Rush were released before that fateful ACL concert but the band did not play them. The first few listen throughs of this album gave me pause. It was not the cataclysmic psychedelic rock that Tame Impala’s previous two albums felt like. Being an inch short of a disappointed parent when their “gifted” child got a B-, I soldiered on. After a few more listens I realized that The Slow Rush was not like the other girls. The album is a little less rock and a little more electronic (of course the banging drums are still there) which in retrospect makes sense as their last album, Currents, seemed to be headed in that direction. I don’t think this album would go as hard live as Currents does but it is still some solid material.

9. Taylor Swift, Folklore

Swifties got OVERLOADED this year and thank god the tumblr years are over cause that shit would’ve been outta pocket. Anyways this was the first year that tay tay would be able to rerecord her old albums as they were mercilessly taken from her by the dirty capitalists. People were expecting some throwback to early Taylor, a renaissance of sorts. Swift took a left turn and came out with two brand new albums. The first, Folklore, features some of the best songwriting of Swift’s career and a maturity in constructing a concept album. That word gets thrown around a lot in the music world to kinda show a level of sophistication that mere plebs could not understand. But in this case, Taylor puts together a touching and heartrenching collection of Americana stories that feel like they were created by a small group of flannel wearing millennials hiking through the Appalachian trail. Aside from the storytelling, which has always been Taylor’s strong suit, the album is pretty sonically compelling as well. It is very subtle but you can tell Aaron Dessner of the National’s influence. Very cool stuff.

8. Grimes, Miss Anthropocene

While Grimes choses violence every morning in 2020, her music is still very compelling. Besides having the honor of creating some tracks for CD Projekt Red’s colossal scandal, Cyberpunk 2077, she released Miss Anthropocene. A very fitting title as someone has to be really in tune with the human experience to be as cracked out as she is on a daily basis. The album is suppose to be about a mother goddess of climate change who is coming down to earth to cause the reckoning, or something like that. I really just hear ‘beep, boop bop bop beepity boppity boob.’ To each their own you know. All joking aside this album is a great mix of everything that makes Grimes great. Lowkey bops that could honestly pass as pop songs if Demi Lovato sang them like “Violence,” some anime shit like “Darkseid,” and no Elon Musk references (giv me tesla plz).

7. Angel Olsen, Whole New Mess

This album hit me like a mad salesperson during Toyotathon (we celebrate the one true holiday in this household). Even though a majority of the songs are rerecordings of her last album, All Mirrors, Olsen gives these songs a whole different feeling. She recorded this entire album in a empty church and the atmosphere is incredibly palpable sending shivers down my spine. Olsen’s singing is out of this world as she is able to convey so much new emotional depth into songs I already love and cherish. Apparently this was recorded before All Mirrors but we are just gonna forget this for now. The two new songs, “Whole New Mess” and “Waving, Smiling,” seem at home on this album as I would find it hard for their emotional punch to be felt as clearly around the dense instrumentation of All Mirrors. If live music ever comes back (please bring kobe back too), Olsen would be top of my list to see.

6. Run the Jewels, RTJ4

During the actual most tumultuous time of 2020, Run the Jewels decided to drop this absolute bomb of an album. Killer Mike an El-P are not new to using their medium of choice to display their grievances and RTJ4 is no exception. During the height of the riots over the summer, Killer Mike addressed his community on TV in Atlanta and then dropped this insane album just a few days later. It is hard to describe how I feel about this album but it just bops. It is absolutely ruthless and subliminal and all the usual stuff that goes into a Run the Jewels album. On top of that I think RTJ4 has the best overall sound and production out of any of their albums. This is a tall, almost slanderous take in some circles as there are some die-hard Run the Jewels 2 and Run the Jewels 3 fans out there. The only gripe I have about this album is its name. Like

what is up with this? Imagine if there next album is called Run the Jewels 5 or R5. This is like one book in the series having a different spine. Just does not sit right with me.

5. Lady Gaga, Chromatica

Coming off of A Star is Born and Joanne the gays were hungry for some classic Gaga. With the release of the lead single off Chromatica, “Stupid Love,” it had seemed as if their wish was granted. Certified club bangerz with baked in trauma is just the recipe for success on this truly illustrious album. I wasn’t exactly a little monster in middle school but my friends and I did bump to Gaga quite a bit on the ole school bus. I vividly remember only one of us having an MP3 player and it was really only filled with the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga. Hearing “Stupid Love” sent me way back and at first I didn’t enjoy it. I was really into the direction that both Joanne and A Star is Born went for Gaga and this lead single felt more like a lazy attempt at revitalization than anything. After “Rain on Me” came out my feelings started to shift as the more I heard the Ariana Grande “yuh,” the more I was transported back to the present. When the album finally arrived, I remember running on the banks of the great Houston bayou and thinking “god damn isn’t this something. I want to dance but my legs hurt.” It did feel like older Gaga to some extent but with all the learnings and maturity of the past few years. It hits so hard the more you listen to it. The only bad part is Elton John in “Sine from Above” but that is still passable. I truly was not expecting to love this album as much as I did and the fact that we can’t go dance in the klerb over and over to this is truly a shame.

4. Charli XCX, how i’m feeling now

The past year or so I have become a true Charli XCX whore. Like it is not healthy how much I have listened to Vroom Vroom since getting back on the Charli train. I’ve always listened to Charli XCX’s music because of how much a sucker I was for “Boom Clap” but it didn’t really seem groundbreaking to me. This drastically changed when her last album, Charli was released (also started to listen to Vroom Vroom more). It seemed like she was starting to carve her own path in the electronic-pop space and I was super down. During the initial stages of lockdown earlier this year, Charli released how i’m feeling now. This album leanes in to the electronic “hyperpop” as it is called (see 100 Gecs etc.) even more than her previous few projects. While Charli was big on features and more commercial in a sense, how i’m feeling now is much more intimate and dense. It truly puts on display Charli’s skills in both songwriting and creating this music with heavy electronic influence. There are beautiful gen-z style love songs like “forever” and “party 4 u” but also absolute bangers like “pink diamond” and “anthems.” Some fine stuff.

3. Bob Dylan, Rough and Rowdy Ways

This man is actually such a national treasure. Fresh off of receiving a Nobel prize in literature (many other great songwriters deserve this) and a string of American cover albums, Bob Dylan had nothing left to prove. When artists are this big for this long, they sort of lose touch with reality as they are so loaded for so long that they don’t understand how to be relatable anymore (Rolling Stones, McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, etc.). Dylan seems be again not like the other girls. His personability and songwriting has stayed relatively constant and while his newer work is obviously not as influential as his golden age, he still manages to eek out a few great albums every decade. I wasn’t really into his previous covers album so I was super jazzed when I saw he would finally be coming out with original material. And boy did he deliver. The first single he released, “Murder Most Foul,” was an 11 minute onslaught about the days surrounding the JFK assassination. Like what a way to get our attention. The rest of the album does not disappoint and is some of Dylan’s most inspired songwriting since 1997’s Time Out of Mind (which won the Grammy for album of the year). The thing that makes this album so great compared to those of other old pop stars is that Dylan doesn’t try to reinvent himself. The last time I felt an older pop star did this was on Paul McCartney’s New in 2013 which took a lot from what made Revolver great and repackage it for the millennium. Rough and Rowdy Ways feels like classic Dylan because it is. The cover art, the lyrics, and the setting of the album feel as from a time long gone but the emotion and sentiment from Dylan still hits as much a ever.

2. Chloe x Halle, Ungodly Hour

I only knew of Chloe and Halle through the show Grownish which is pretty pog to say the least but I soon found out that they were pretty banging R&B singers. When I started doing some digging (cursory google search) I discovered that they were discovered and propped up by none other than queen bey herself. If there is anyone that I trust with up and coming R&B artist it is Solange’s sister. I also found out they sing the Grownish theme song which, as it do, kinda slaps. On twitter I saw that disclosure help to produce the lead track, “Ungodly Hour,” and I was even more pumped. While I will reserve my thoughts about the track for the next article (keep an eye out!), I will say that the influence of Disclosure can be felt throughout the album. Ungodly Hour is truly R&B with the girls incredible vocals but you can tell there was a lot of dabbling into other genres that was going on. Besides the light electronic flares from Disclosure there are hints, sprinkles if you will, of rock, pop, rap, etc. Quite and electrifying and absolutely banging album.

1. Fiona Apple, Fetch The Bolt Cutters

Fetch The Bolt Cutters encapsulated the feeling that much of the world had during the majority of 2020. The sentiment of being trapped with no outing in sight and just wanted to brute force your way out was just too real. Maybe Fiona Apple is a prophet or something, maybe witchcraft is involved, but the story of Fetch The Bolt Cutters is more about the personal entrapments (entanglements even) that Apple has found herself in.

It is really once in a blue moon that Fiona Apple releases a new album and you are almost guaranteed for it to be a good one. The last time Apple graced us with her beautiful music was in 2012 (The Idler Wheel…) when a wide eyed young music lover was just beginning to discover anything that was not Coldplay or the black eyed peas. Fetch the Bolt Cutter seems to fit The Idler Wheel’s aesthetic and Fiona Apple’s overarching sound pretty well. The pianos are very custom, jazzy if you will, and Apple’s songwriting carries a lot of the emotions. What makes Fetch The Bolt Cutter stands out in a serious way is the way Apple utilizes percussion. Not only drums but pianos and basically anything else drive the beat to feel like a rhythmic ethereal chants. It is really hard to convey how much this album absolutely slaps but all you need to know is that Apple is a master at creating these rhythms and her songwriting will have you gasping for air.

Listen to the albums on Spotify:

Listen to the albums on Apple Music:

Art created by Lorraine Ruiz :)