10 Best Songs of 2020
10 Best Songs of 2020
For all the terrible shit 2020 threw at us, there was also a deluge of good-to-great music that started in January and ran all the way through the last week of the year. As for my top 10 songs, you won’t hear a single male voice—women ran roughshod over this year, from soothing self-talk to filthy tongue twisters. Here are the best of a very good year. (There’s a playlist of selected songs at the bottom of the post.)
10. “Don’t Start Now” by Dua Lipa
My garage became my gym this year, and nothing made me boogie between sets like this sleek, bouncing kiss off. They don’t make bass lines like this anymore, and though it’s a bummer nobody got to dance to it in clubs this year, it’ll outlast COVID and make the year sound way more fun than it was.
9. “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” by Fiona Apple
Leave it to Fiona Apple to come out of hiding right when the rest of the world hunkers down indoors. Her homemade instant classic of an album is best represented by its gentle, wordy title track, a statement of purpose about ridding yourself of others’ expectations and growing into yourself. I listened to it so much that Eastwood eventually stopped perking his head up when the dogs start barking in the song’s outro, a sign of approval I can’t argue with.
8. “Time” by Arca
Arca’s first post-transition album, kick Ii is all over the place, but the bounding, reverb-heavy “Time” stands out amongst everything else on the album (or her discography, for that matter). It’s dolphin squelches and thumping bass sound like Panda Bear, of all things, and it hits those same pleasure centers when she sings about taking time for yourself and staying in. Idiosyncratic to the nth degree, but a warm sonic bubble bath to soak your ears in.
7. “Kyoto” by Phoebe Bridgers
For the sizable mark Elliott Smith left on the musical landscape, I can think of few artists who capture his je ne sais quoi as well as Phoebe Bridgers does. “Kyoto”, the best straightforward indie rock song of the year, sounds like it was ripped straight out of XO without cribbing Elliott’s style, applying her own sharp eye for detail in a song about not-quite-forgiving someone (it’s about Ryan Adams, right?) and feeling out of place in her own skin. It’s a remarkably joyful-sounding song for such bleak subject matter, and by the time she screams “I’m a liar/who lies/‘cause I’m a liar” at the end, I feel like she’s singing about me.
6. “ingydar” by Adrianne Lenker
A heartsick lullaby about watching the person you love slowly slip away, it’s “ingydar”’s vivid imagery that cuts through songs’ laments like a knife. Running cherry juice, flies landing on a horse’s eyes, scars like meteors…Lenker’s always been a poet, but her eye for detail sharpened to Hattori Hanzo-levels on songs.
5. “Fire” by Waxahatchee
It took me most of the year, but Katie Crutchfield’s ode to radical self-acceptance finally won me over. “If I could love you unconditionally/I could iron out the edges of the darkest sky” became an aspirational mantra, enough to mist my eyes in those moments when 2020 pushed me to my breaking point.
4. “august” by Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift’s two(!) surprise albums of 2020 are filled with gems, but her best is this mournful, Cocteau Twins-indebted sugar rush. Swift’s delivery is all longing nostalgia, and producer Jack Antonoff proves why he’s become the go-to producer for pop-star-career-best reinvention albums. It’s a totally different take on the swooning Taylor Swift song than we’ve heard before, and it’s her best yet.
3. “Night” by Kelly Lee Owens
A couple of songs from Kelly Lee Owen’s sublime Inner Song could have made this list (shoutout to “L.I.N.E.S.”), but the slow building, spooky, punishing “Night” is the one that no one else could have made. She takes a refrain—“It feels so good to be alone”—that could feel like a mockery in 2020 and makes it feel like an escape.
2. “WAP” by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion
In any other year, “WAP” could’ve maybe won me over to Cardi B. (I still can’t stand her, FWIW, though Megan Thee Stallion is bomb.) But in a year where most fun was outlawed and hugs were off limits, nothing made me gasp/laugh/rap along more that this filthy ode to, um, “WAP”. It’s a much-needed jolt of electricity, a dazzling showcase of Megan Thee Stallion’s technical capabilities, and one of the best music videos of the last ten years. Bring a bucket and a mop, because I can’t stop gushing about this song.
1. “Save a Kiss” by Jessie Ware
This was an awesome year for analogue sequencers in pop music (hello, Chromatica), but Jessie Ware’s euphoric “Save a Kiss” is the best of the best, a euphoric endorphin rush that makes you wonder what the hell she’s been doing all these years. Disco fits her like a sequined glove, and there’s nothing I’m more looking forward to in 2021 than hearing this on the dance floor.
