My Favorite Albums of 2020
Perhaps not the best music objectively speaking, but certainly the music that had the greatest impact on my year
Every year, I like to do some kind of write-up of the music I enjoyed the most.
There was a lot of good music this year, and I listened to it while in quarantine, while moving over the summer, and ultimately adjusting to what life looks like in 2020. Below, in reverse order of how much I liked them, you’ll find my favorite albums from this year.
8. Waxahatchee — Saint Cloud
I distinctly remember first listening to Saint Cloud during the early months of the pandemic. Its late-March release primed this album to become my background music to coping with a changed world and adjusting to working from home. It seems so odd now to look back at projects like this (books, music, or anything else) that came out right when the pandemic hit. How long must these ideas have been in the works for? How did these artists feel, watching their passion projects come out to a completely different world?
Waxahatchee is Katie Crutchfield, a songwriter from Birmingham, Alabama. Her music falls into the broad indie-folk category, with flavors of artists like Jason Isbell or Brandi Carlile. Her songs aren’t quite as smooth or melodic as these contemporaries though, and I’ve found that it often takes me a few listens to really digest everything I’m hearing.
But after a few listens, it’s clear that Saint Cloud is an excellent collection of music. Crutchfield is a master lyricist, and the songs here are layered tales of self-reflection and maturity. They’re backed up by diverse and varied instrumentals, a mix of acoustic tones that fit nicely with a spring or summer afternoon. For anyone from the South — or even Alabama, specifically — there are plenty of local references and descriptions that will feel right at home.
7. Phoebe Bridgers — Punisher
I’m going to start this mini-review by stating the obvious: for fans of the indie rock scene, it seems like Phoebe Bridgers is everywhere. Better Oblivion Community Center, her collaboration with Connor Oberst, was one of my favorite albums from 2019 and I was thrilled to see that she had another solo project to release this year. I think her songwriting took another step forward with Punisher — it’s poignant, catchy, and a reminder that some of Bridgers’ best work comes when she’s on her own.
Phoebe Bridgers makes her living on Punisherbetween bouncy and upbeat songs (like “Kyoto”) and much more heartfelt ones (like “Chinese Satellite”). The former is a bouncy pop song with a driving beat; the latter is a somber reflection on losing a loved one. “Took a tour to see the stars,” Bridgers sings, “but they weren’t out tonight. So I wished hard on a Chinese satellite.” It’s a moment that feels both slightly ridiculous and deeply sad, and there’s perhaps no batter encapsulation of her work as a musician.
Punisher is a dark album. Even the songs that sound happy often have melancholy messages that lie right beneath the musical surface. That’s going to be true of a few more albums higher up on the list as well, and I understand if it turns some people off. But in dark times, I think, it can be helpful to listen to dark music.
6. The Classic Crime — Patterns in the Static
Unlike the first two albums on this list, this one was written by a band I listened to pretty consistently during my teenage years. The Classic Crime’s 2009 album The Silver Cord and 2012 album Phoenix are two wonderful collections of music that I can still partially recite from memory. Some of the band’s other material is more hit-or-miss, but I was surprised and delighted to see Patterns in the Static when it came out earlier this year.
Patterns is a solid rock album that fit perfectly with the summer weather that accompanied its late-spring/early-summer window. I’ve always enjoyed the way singer and writer Matt MacDonald looks at the world. In this album, he reflects on faith, growing up, and day-to-day life. Not new ideas, certainly, but his blend of world-weariness and optimism always strikes me as unique.
The best songs on this album are “Highlights,” “P.I.T.S,” and “Before I Woke Up.” The first two are catchy rock songs that fit equally well on a running playlist or while driving down the highway. The last is a philosophical album closer, one that slowly crescendoes into a poignant and memorable finish. This album doesn’t add much new to the band’s formula, but it shows that they’re still very much at their best in 2020.
5. The Airborne Toxic Event — Hollywood Park
One of the songs on this album — “Brother, How Was The War?” — is (in keeping with its title) about the Vietnam War. It traces the stories of two brothers, one who fought in the conflict and one who didn’t. It’s sad, mournful, and beautiful. These adjectives describe the entire album.
The elevator pitch for Hollywood Park is “sad, melodic indie rock with some really cool moments.” Like some of the other music on this list, the formula isn’t particularly new or particularly original. What it is though, is perfectly crafted. It’s often easy to tell when a band sounds confident and hits exactly the notes it wants to. That’s exactly what’s going on in Hollywood Park.
My favorite song on this album is “All These Engagements,” which starts out slowly and builds into a stirring finish (which is usually the formula I like the most, in all honesty). It’s also a really good example of what the band has to offer. Each song tells its own story. And while these stories may not be happy, it’s hard to argue that they aren’t well delivered.
4. Ruston Kelly — Shape and Destroy
Ruston Kelly is a singer-songwriter who shares plenty in common with other indie-folk artists like Waxahatchee and Jason Isbell. Like these two, his lyrics often delve into the darker corners of humanity; also like these two, there’s usually a sense of underlying optimism as well. I discovered some of his previous work earlier this year, and I’m happy to say that Shape and Destroy adds both growth and maturity to his catalog.
The songs on this album are easy to listen to, the perfect music to play at night with the windows down. Opener “In the Blue” is a triumphant anthem filled with pretty clear optimism and joy. That sense continues with the next song, “Radio Cloud,” but by the time “Mid-Morning Lament” rolls around, Kelly is deep into topics like addition and depression. His lyrics are written from the perspective of someone who has been through these challenges — of someone who may not be completely past them, but at least knows how to fight.
This album isn’t perfect. Some of the songs are far less memorable than the ones I’ve mentioned here, and I think as a whole there’s a little too much repetition. But at its highest points, Shape and Destroy is some of the best music I’ve heard this year. I listened to “In the Blue” several times while I sprinted down streets on my bicycle. I found a sense of euphoria there that no other song this year has matched. Because of the sheer talent here, Ruston Kelly easily earns a spot of my top albums of 2020.
3. Taylor Swift — Folklore
Somehow, this is the first of two Taylor Swift albums that came out this year. I haven’t listened to Evermore (out just a few days ago) enough to render any meaningful thoughts on it, but I can pretty confidently say that Folklore is the better of the two. It’s also an excellent piece of music on its own.
Folklore sounds like an indie rock album, a brand of music that once would have sounded anathema to Taylor Swift’s catalog. The National’s Aaron Dessner worked with her, and the influence is unmistakable. However, in ways that become apparent once one starts listening, this is still very much a Taylor Swift album. Her voice, musical style, and lyrical approach are clear from beginning to end.
My personal favorite song on this album is “Exile,” a duet between Swift and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. It’s a pretty conventional song about a breakup on the one hand, with the two trading verses and choruses before a sweeping bridge near the end. But these are two veteran musicians at the top of their game, and their performance is expansive and confident.
I listened to this album pretty consistently during the summer months. It usually left me with a sense of quiet melancholy, a description I think is fitting for the entire album. I personally think this is Taylor Swift’s best work to date, though I’m not sure if I’m qualified enough to truly weigh it against everything else in her catalog. In any case, Folklore is a welcome evolution of Swift’s style and a reminder of her writing skills. It’s an excellent listen that I highly recommend.
2. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit — Reunions
Jason Isbell is one of the best songwriters that I’ve ever had the pleasure to listen to. I’ve written about him before, but what draws me back to his music again and again is how he can draw deeply emotional experiences from just a few words. Isbell is one of the very best in the business, and with Reunions he’s at the top of his game.
For an example of cutting lyrics, look no further than “Dreamsicle,” the second song on the album. It’s a song about family, abandonment, and growing up, punctuated by beautiful guitar tones and vivid imagery. “Why can’t daddy just come home, forget whatever he’s done wrong,” Isbell sings at one point. A few lines later, he belts out “New sneakers on a high school court and you swore you’d be there. My heart breaking through the springtime, breaking in June.”
There’s also a stunning amount of self-reflection on Reunions. The opener “What’ve I Done to Help” quite literally asks that question over and over again. Isbell has clearly enjoyed a large and earned amount of success from his music. I imagine that it must be a profoundly odd experience after growing up in poverty in rural Alabama That tension is reflected beautifully in this song.
But my favorite moments of the album come on its lead single “Be Afraid.” It’s my most-listened to song on Spotify in 2020, a fact I find immensely fitting. I’ve listened to this song while running, while writing, while working, and nearly everywhere else in between. Just like “What’ve I Done to Help,” “Be Afraid” finds Isbell reflecting on the cultural power that musicians like himself have. His conclusion — that they have a responsibility to use their influence for societal change — is powerful and his delivery on the song is moving.
1. Touché Amore — Lament
Many years, there are 2–3 albums that all have roughly equal chances of winning the top spot on my list. This year, as December approached, I quickly became aware that wasn’t the case. Lament is far and away my favorite album of 2020.
To truly understand why Lament is such a good album, I think its helpful to give some context to what came immediately before it: Stage Four, released in 2016. Stage Four is about vocalist Jeremy Bolm’s mother, her fight with cancer, and his experience of losing her. It’s passionate, beautifully-written, and probably the saddest album I’ve ever listened to.
So if Stage Four was an album about a devastating personal experience, Lament is an album about what comes next. There’s still grief and pain in Bolm’s lyrics — emotions also clearly telegraphed in his vocal delivery — but there’s also a sense of greater maturity and acceptance as well. With age comes wisdom.
Perhaps nowhere is this sense of maturity and acceptance more evident than in “Limelight” (which features Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull). The song (as best as I can tell) is about a dying relationship, but it’s delivered with a sense of “let’s enjoy this while it lasts” rather than despair. At the album’s anthemic conclusion, Bolm and Hull trade lines like “Let’s embrace the twilight, while burning out the limelight” several times in what is one of the most powerful moments in music I experienced this year.
Other excellent songs include “Reminders,” which NPR featured as one of their favorite songs from earlier in the year, as well as “Savoring,” or “A Forcecast.” In truth though, there are no weak songs on this album. Each one has some interesting turn of phrase, guitar riff, or bridge with incredible vocals.
This year has been a difficult one to live through, though I’ve had it so much better than many. I think, with that in mind, one could make a really powerful argument that the best music to listen to would be songs that are light-hearted or playful. But with all due respect to that line of thinking, I think years like 2020 call for music like Lament — raw, passionate, with dashes of both hope and despair.
In January of 2020, I never would have expected that an album Lament would end up as my favorite collection of songs, but I’m much the better for it. Touché Amore is a fantastic band with songs that will stick with me for a while.
The views expressed are mine alone and do not represent the views of my employer or any other person or organization.
