Dan’s 2020 Favorite Albums

The Top Five Includes One Major Surprise

I love exploring new sounds and artists, hearing new perspectives through sound waves and lyrics, and this year took me places unexpected.

KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic has been a great source of new music. They live in a future I’m always behind — in fact I discovered 3 of my top 2020 albums this year from KCRW’s Best Albums of 2019.

I’ve made a Spotify 202 Playlist from these, but they don’t play very well together. Each album is so different, i was disappointed to be auto-shuffling through songs from each of these albums, trampling over each other like ice cream and avocados: all great foods but definitely not meant to play together. Instead, skip the shuffle and explore them each as albums.

(If you’re looking for one cohesive and fun playlist to shuffle play for your next pickleball outing, I highly recommend Zach’s Top 2020 list on Spotify: full of college rock vibrancy and good times.)

2020 Top 5 Albums

Peter Cottontale — “Catch”: This gospel album topped my list this year: it worked everyday and Sunday mornings too. Before Catch, creator Peter Wilkins was mostly a background producer for Chance the Rapper (from my 2019 list) and Jamila Woods. Both appear on this brilliant album that…