What more can one say about this most abnormal year? That, like any other, there was still an abundance of good new music? So many songs did their part in keeping me as sane as they reasonably could: droll, clever wordplay from Rufus Wainwright and The Radio Dept., neo-disco from Kylie Minogue, Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware, Roisin Murphy etc., sharp ‘80s revivalism from Future Islands and Of Monsters and Men and comeback singles from actual ’80s acts like Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, and the Pretenders whose distinct sound proved as durable as the expert pastiche of it A Girl Called Eddy essayed on “Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart” (this artist picked a heck of a time to finally release a follow up to her 2004 self-titled debut.)
Still, Covid unquestionably cast a pall over so much, from surprise early drops of long-awaited albums from Fiona Apple, Fleet Foxes and Owen Pallett to records from this period that can’t help but feel like remnants of it. The acclaimed but incredibly anxiety-ridden music Apple put out seemed almost too prescient for such a stressful time while Phoebe Bridgers’ melancholic, quietly apocalyptic sketches (I nearly included “I Know The End” instead of what remains her most crystalline melody) ended up a definitive shared musical experience for indie-pop listeners of that time. Personally, I was even more enthralled by such left-field discoveries as Kate NV’s loopy, experimental Russo-pop and Shamir’s unprecedented hybrid of The Who as if fronted by Tiny Tim.
Three more singles that kept me afloat, in the order of first hearing them: U.S. Girls’ obscenely catchy and tongue-twisting “4 American Dollars” (all together now: “I don’t believe in pennies, and nickels, and dimes, and dollars, and pesos, and pounds, and rupees, and yen, and rubles, no dinero”), Christine and the Queens’ triumphant and euphoric title track to their La Vita Nuova EP and, with help from vocalist Leon Bridges, The Avalanches’ “Interstellar Love”: wrapped around an ingenious sample of the Alan Parson Project’s “Eye In The Sky”, it was, if not exactly the sort of the magic this group trafficked in on Since I Left You twenty years before, just as effective as that touchstone of 21st century pop.
2020: Follow The Light
- Haim, “The Steps”
- Kylie Minogue, “Magic”
- Jessie Ware, “Save A Kiss”
- A Girl Called Eddy, “Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart”
- Lianne La Havas, “Can’t Fight”
- Perfume Genius, “On The Floor”
- Pet Shop Boys, “Will-O-The-Wisp”
- Erasure, “Nerves of Steel”
- Real Estate feat. Sylvan Esso, “Paper Cup”
- Waxahatchee, “Lilacs”
- Laura Marling, “Held Down”
- Ivan & Alyosha, “Wired”
- Rufus Wainwright, “You Ain’t Big”
- Ben Watt, “Figures In The Landscape”
- Future Islands, “For Sure”
- The Radio Dept., “You Fear The Wrong Thing Baby”
- Katie Pruitt, “Expectations”
- Troye Sivan, “Easy”
- The Avalanches feat. Leon Bridges, “Interstellar Love”
- U.S. Girls, “4 American Dollars”
- Calexico, “Hear The Bells”
- Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, “She’s There”
- Fiona Apple, “Cosmonauts”
- Destroyer, “It Just Doesn’t Happen”
- Phoebe Bridgers, “Chinese Satellite”
- Kate NV, “Plans”
- Pretenders, “The Buzz”
- Dubstar, “Hygiene Strip”
- Washed Out, “Too Late”
- Nicole Atkins, “Forever”
- Fleet Foxes, “Sunblind”
- Shamir, “Diet”
- Dua Lipa, “Physical”
- The Beths, “Jump Rope Glazers”
- Sylvan Esso, “Runaway”
- Cut Copy, “Like Breaking Glass”
- Owen Pallett, “A Bloody Morning”
- Christine and The Queens feat. Caroline Polachek, “La Vita Nuova”
- Roisin Murphy, “Something More”
- Of Monsters and Men, “Visitor”
Haunted Jukebox 