monday, february 1st
My favorites of 2020
Happy February!
I know you all were just on pins and needles for the final Monday Morning Mixtape of 2020 😉. So on this Nor’easter of a Monday a month into the new year, I’m extremely excited to present my favorite songs and records of last year. You’ll find three sections below: favorite songs released in 2020, favorite “old songs” discovered in 2020, and, finally, favorite albums of 2020. In the name of the delay, there is no accompanying “mixtape” in a traditional sense, so you can find a Spotify playlist for both batches of songs. I may follow with “Top Ten” mixtape for posterity, but we’ll see. Additionally, this is a particularly long post, so it’ll be best to open it in a web browser.
Putting the mixtape together is true a labor of love, and I’m grateful to everyone who offered their art, suggestions, time, eyes, and ears throughout this fall. There are a lot more people than just me who make this the little thing that it is and it means a lot to have a group of friends and devotees who are so attuned.
So with that, I bid adieu till next fall, though there may be the odd one-off here and there throughout the spring and summer. There’s so much to listen to and so little time…I can’t wait to see what the future holds.
Favorite Songs Released in 2020
Below are my 30 favorite songs that were released in 2020. I made no bones about my favoritism, and as such you’ll find several repeat artists throughout the list. Undoubtedly, this list will change in the months and years to come, but the below is a moment in time from the end of the year that captures where I was at. You can listen to all tracks via the Spotify playlist below.
30 - 21
Miley Cyrus - “Heart of Glass (Live From the iHeart Festival)” [Plastic Hearts]
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - “Dreamsicle” [Reunions]
Gil Scott-Heron, Makaya McCraven - “Me and the Devil” [We’re New Again - A Reimagining by Makaya McCraven]
Freddie Gibbs, The Alchemist - “God Is Perfect” [Alfredo]
Bob Dylan - “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You” [Rough and Rowdy Ways]
Sylvan Esso - “Ferris Wheel” [Free Love]
Car Seat Headrest - “Can’t Cool Me Down” [Making a Door Less Open]
Quin Kirchner - “Pathways —> Sahara” [The Shadows and the Light]
Taylor Swift - “mirrorball” [folklore]
20 - 11
HAIM - “Don’t Wanna” [Women in Music Pt. III]
Cardi B - “WAP (feat. Megan Thee Stallion)” [WAP - Single]
Fontaines D.C. - “A Hero’s Death” [A Hero’s Death]
Jessie Ware - “Spotlight” [What’s Your Pleasure?]
HAIM - “The Steps” [Women in Music Pt. III]
Fontaines D.C. - “I Don’t Belong” [A Hero’s Death]
HAIM - “Leaning on You” [Women in Music Pt. III]
Dua Lipa - “Hallucinate” [Future Nostalgia]
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - “Only Children” [Reunions]
HAIM - “I Know Alone” [Women in Music Pt. III]
10 - 1
Lianna La Havas - “Green Papaya” [Lianna La Havas]
HAIM - “Gasoline” [Women in Music Pt. III]
Run the Jewels - “walking in the snow” [RTJ4]
HAIM - “Now I’m In It” [Women in Music Pt. III]
Dougie Poole - “Los Angeles” [The Freelancer’s Blues]
Dua Lipa - “Levitating” [Future Nostalgia]
Jessie Ware - “What’s Your Pleasure?” [What’s Your Pleasure?]
Phoebe Bridgers - “Garden Song” [Punisher]
Dua Lipa - “Physical” [Future Nostalgia]
Run the Jewels - “holy calamafuck” [RTJ4]
Favorite Pre-2020 Songs
If you listened to the MMM this fall, you know that the discovery of “old” songs is just as much as a part of the experience as exploring newly released music. As such, I’ve compiled a few handfuls of my favorite songs from the spring and summer: things that would have made the mixtape if it ran year round.
Favorite Albums of 2020
These were my favorite albums that I (more or less) discovered in 2020. I didn’t predestine slimming the list to a top five or ten, so there are 14 of them, coincidentally split even between seven from any time before 2020 (you’ll notice that I am partial to the 70s) and seven from the year itself. The albums are listed alphabetically by artist name, so there’s no deliberate ranking, though, admittedly, I could likely commit to a favorite if needed.
Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher (2020)
In his groundbreaking book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell presented the path of the archetypal hero as told throughout the mythology of all human cultures. If you want the Sparknotes, it may be easier just to listen to Punisher. The record is Phoebe Bridgers’ Iliad, the story of her trials on the road, coming to terms with her fame, and her attempt to save those in ruin around her upon her return. It’s often a grim tale, but breathlessly funny and self-deprecating throughout, the songwriter’s first masterpiece. In the end, she’s a wavering prophet, uncertain whether the end of the story holds destruction or relief.
Fontaines D.C. - A Hero’s Death (2020)
“Life ain’t always empty” may be the most depressing glass half-full utterance ever put to record. To be sure, A Hero’s Death isn’t exactly an easy or uplifting listen: on the record’s prettiest song the weather is described as “fine.” But the album has a wellspring of redemptive defiance. I kept hearing echoes of Dylan throughout with lines of cutting, uncompromising demands for individuality which spat in the face of any thuggish, mind-numbing groupthink. (You might call it punk.) Sure enough, “A Hero’s Death” reads like the earnestly paranoid 2020 update to “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” told from the perspective of someone who’s done it all wrong.
Grateful Dead - Europe ‘72 (1972)
At the end of 2019 my love of Father of the Bride had taken me down a deep VW rabbit hole. I found myself listening to Time Crisis every time I was in the shower and quietly taking note to its many Grateful Dead musical interludes with unprecedented interest. The mythological world of the Dead’s live recordings is a daunting place, especially to outsiders, but I did my research and settled on a steady dose of Europe ‘72 (though real Deadheads will tell you that this is hardly “live”). It’s weird Americana felt like finding a home I didn’t know I had, the electric extension of the gorgeous American Beauty. This was only the beginning.
Grateful Dead - Grateful Dead (1971)
The opening chords of “Bertha” were the sound of my summer, propelling me forward, rolling and tumbling. The music sounded so exuberant and life-affirming, but what I came to learn is that the Dead were pretty dogged, albeit in a sly way, like grinning in the devil’s face. The songs on Grateful Dead are tough tales (turning 21 in prison, whacking your avuncular partner in crime, goin’ down the road feelin’ bad) told in a “good old days when times were bad” type of way. In the summer of 2020, when things were as bad as they’d ever been and as good as they could be, it almost felt too on the nose to listen to a group so nominally morbid and thankful.
HAIM - Women in Music, Part III (2020)
Random thoughts on Women in Music, Part III: In 2020, there’s no album I turned to more than WIMPiii…Underrated: Danielle Haim’s drumming…In different turns the record is melancholic, horny, empowered, and insecure. Those felt like all the bases that needed to be covered for me…The Haim sisters are the Jonas Brothers for indie rock dudes…The Father of the Bride of 2020..Not sure why the bonus joints aren’t just part of the actual album…90s hip-hop, Fleetwood Mac, ska, Joni Mitchell’s “Coyote,” glitch pop, bass saxophone…Big Deli Energy…At this point we’re far past women running rock ‘n’ roll, it’s just a matter of expanding the canon.
Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia (2020)
To put it lightly, the first few months of quarantine were hard and, like many, many others, I took the long way down to actually coping with its immobilizing effects. When I finally shook the cobwebs off in mid-May, biking became my source of sensation. On a daily basis I’d sneak out of work to fly down Boulevard and Sedgwick and just feel something good. Dua’s pulsing, future-facing record was always the soundtrack. As I sweated through these rides I felt better; I realized that Future Nostalgia wasn’t so much about physicality and bodily fluids alone, but these things as a road to resilience, even self-confidence. Dua knew what I needed to hear: movement is the key to disrupting paralysis.
Hailu Mergia and the Dahlak Band - Wede Harer Guzo (1978)
There’s time of night that’s so dissociative that everything falls away and it feels like it could be the night of any age and place. This is where Wede Harer Guzo lives; it’s New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century, Kingston in the mid-’50s, and Berlin in the early ’90s. Or, in this case, it’s Addis Ababa in 1978. People are living under the gun and Hailu’s occasionally unsettled sounds aren’t an accident. But more often it’s woozy and light-headed, the organ wafting like shisha smoke through a club where people smell of champagne and move without restraint, momentarily loosened under the cover of darkness.
Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark (1974)
In her essay “Some Notes on Attunement,” author Zadie Smith writes of her passage from Joni-hating youth to adult overwhelmed by “uncontrollable tears” with each listen of Blue. I relate to this all too well: Joni’s pitchy squawking and complex emotional arcs are not for the inexperienced. It ain’t teenage music, much more of a beautiful mess. Court and Spark plays out like some kind of L.A. Astral Weeks; a song cycle on superficial people torn between childlike impulses and adult consequences. Joni’s characters are “flirting and flirting, hurting too,” all trying to dance the delicate balance between love and freedom, sometimes laughing at themselves, sometimes crying over their despair. Think of it as that beautiful Jo March monologue set over 40 minutes of soft California rock.
Mdou Moctar - Ilana (The Creator) (2019)
Guitar heroics died a long time ago, but Mdou Moctar missed the memo. Thank god, or ilana, or whoever because it’s been a while since someone so honorifically and expertly devoted themselves to shredding and riffage. Listening to Moctar play is a bit like that cartoonish trope of seeing sparks fly from a player’s instrument as they really start to let loose. But that’s not to say this is a one trick-pony: the band delivers on groove after groove and Moctar’s lyrics are politically-charged, hatefully delivered toward injustice. For classic rock heads looking to expand their taste, this might be a good place to start.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes (1979)
If you came up with my musical background, it could be easy to dismiss Tom Petty. His ubiquity on classic rock radio isn’t exactly the mark of an artiste, and he’s got that goofy-ass McConaughey grin that had me convinced everything was flying at half mast for the guy. Nonetheless, I took a shot with Damn the Torpedoes at the beginning of the year and was pleasantly surprised. While the songwriting was very well-crafted from front to back, the real kicker was Petty’s storytelling. The emotions were real and the details were acute in a way I hadn’t anticipated, and I felt hooked into all his girl-at-the-high-school-dance summer night flings.
Quin Kirchner - The Shadows and the Light (2020)
There’s something really enjoyable about the dynamics of a percussionist as a bandleader. Jazz, for all of its improvisational drama, still needs someone to hold down the fort, to keep a steady undertow to tap into, and for logical reasons drummers usually get pinned with the duty. But The Shadows and the Light feels more alive as a result of Quin Kirchner’s autonomy within the group, waking up pieces that crave his flourishes. As a whole, the group proves themselves to be at once wonderful practitioners of the past and excellently inventive, makes renditions of Kelan Phil Cohran and Sun Ra pieces feel right at home.
Run the Jewels - RTJ4 (2020)
When I went to see the Stones up in Boston a few years ago they played a hype video to stir the blood in the moments before the band walked out. The only bit that stuck with me was a shot of Iggy Pop saying that the Stones made “good music to do bad things to.” As I listened to RTJ4 again and again over the summer and fall, those words kept ringing in my head. You could probably count on a thumb the number of times I’ve done something legitimately “bad” in my life, but blaring “walking in the snow” while feeling pissed off at the world and driving around with the windows down in my dad’s Toyota Camry, I almost could’ve fooled myself.
Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel of Love (1987)
The Boss had always been about breaking out, running for the horizon, chasing down visions of self-realization. After an unbroken string of classics dating back to 1975’s Born to Run, Tunnel of Love was different. Introverted and domestic, the record is Bruce’s adult foil to teenage dreams of the past, a realization that the struggles of the Self can be just as oppressing as any merciless foreman or unjust cop. Set against the backdrop of a crumbling marriage, Tunnel of Love is adamant in its reminders of the responsibilities of ordinary love. The six dollar coffee-stained LP I found on a lonesome autumn afternoon in Bushwick served as admonishment and companion through many fall nights.
75 Dollar Bill Little Big Band - Live at Tubby’s (2020)
Shortly after the pandemic hit in full force, there was an outpouring of support for artists who had lost their means of income for the indefinite future. (See: Bandcamp Fridays.) In determining who to support, I must’ve stumbled upon a Twitter recommendation for 75 Dollar Bill, a band who I had heard of only tangentially and knew nothing about. With its extended, hypnotic explorations into the cross-pollination of Saharan blues and hardcore sax-n-drums funk, Live at Tubby’s hit a weird, welcome spot. But what really makes this record special is its ambience; tracks linger long after the band has finished each piece, allowing listeners to settle into the sounds of a cozy bar in upstate New York on a late winter weekend. In fact, the record’s best moment may not even be musical: before the final song, one of the band members hollers into the small crowd, seeing if she can thumb a lift home with anyone going north. Someone happily obliges. Seemingly insignificant, the request says everything about the loose, communal nature of the show, the blurring of the appreciated and the appreciator, and how moments like those were more precious than they seemed.
Finally, thank you all, again :) I’m already excited for next September to come around so I can start up again. Until then, stay healthy, stay safe, and care for one another.
With all love,
TG