50 Albums I Had Some Thoughts About in This Very Shit Year
So, after having a handful of people tell me they liked my list last year, and more importantly, after having had fun writing last year’s list, I decided to do it again.
I feel pretty confident that these are my Top 50 albums, although I haven’t ordered them because I can’t realistically imagine deciding that Jessy Lanza is definitively better than Sharhabil Ahmed or vice versa. Better for what? Where am I listening to them? What am I doing? What kind of day am I having? This seems almost impossible and kind of a waste of time.
I liked these albums. There are 50 of them. They are all good. And so much sucked this year, it was nice to have 50 good albums to listen to.
Jessie Ware, What’s Your Pleasure?
Look, this was a year of compromise. We wanted to hug and hang out with our friends, we got weird elbow taps and sitting seven feet apart in the yard. We wanted birthdays and weddings and Bar Mitzvahs and Christmas parties. We got those, but on Zoom. We wanted a Robyn album. We got this Jessie Ware album instead. That’s not a slam. This is one of my 50 favourite albums of the year and a top five female pop vocal album for me. It’s great. It’s just not quite what I was hoping for. But like a Zoom Christmas party, I’m glad it happened. I needed it.
MGK, Tickets to My Downfall
Never have I liked an album this much, while also finding it so infuriating. Do you mean to tell me that MGK could have been giving us this excellent rustbelt version of “I Miss You Era” Blink, and instead we got Bloom and Lace Up? That’s some bullshit.
Big Baby Scumbag, Big Baby Earnhardt
Technically, this is a Southern rap album, with a focus on Zaytoven/Lex Luger-style late ‘00s/early ’10s style trap beats — shit, is that retro already? I feel old — and vocals that are spat out aggressively. In reality, it’s all over the place. Name a genre, it’s in here. Pop punk? Yeah, absolutely. Country? It’s in there. Tropical house? Sure. A Lil B song from the late ’00s, named after a celebrity, featuring the actual Lil B? You bet.
The Avalanches, We Will Always Love You
I will never not love The Avalanches. I just want to crawl inside their uplifting, beautiful all-encompassing collage of samples and live there forever. That, and the selections of guest vocalists (Denzel Curry! Mick Jones! Vashti Bunyan! Tricky! Karen O! Tricky again!) that reads like a music journalist’s weird sex dream and I cannot imagine anything better.
The Weeknd, After Hours
An R&B singer making an A-Ha album. Or vice versa. The feeling of the third worst guy you know making a very good and well thought out point in album form. I didn’t want to like it but I couldn’t help myself and neither could anyone else.
Denzel Curry & Kenny Beats, Unlocked
Kenny Beats has a weird gift for making me love rappers who I didn’t really get before. Last year, he finally got me into 03 Greedo, and this year he’s making me see the light on Denzel Curry. (To be clear, I liked Denzel Curry just fine before, I just wasn’t bowled over by him like everyone else.) But here, his gruff growl hits with maximum impact over Kenny’s boom-bap drums and sound collages that sound a little sci-fi. Whoa, Kenny.
Westside Gunn, Pray for Paris
Another artist it took me a long time to come around on. I’ve spent the last couple years writing off Griseldamania as a bunch of dudes my age and slightly older getting too excited about listening to new rap that sounds like old rap. But this album is really good. Westside Gunn has really well constructed rhyme schemes and a gift for vivid storytelling and a truckload of bravado and every beat just drips with threat. Also, he uses a weirdly high number of wrestling and hockey references.
Blackpink, The Album
As someone who has never been able to understand the appeal of K-pop, let me just say: OK. I fucking get it now. You win. You’re perfect. You’re literally engineered to make it impossible for me to not love you and it’s worked. Every song on this album is a perfect pop song and it’s possible we should just leave pop music to the Koreans now.
Bob Vylan, We Live Here
Bob Vylan is a duo made up of two guys named Bobby Vylan and Bobb13 Vylan. They make punk chopped up with grime and noise music. Their songs are about racism, police brutality, social inequality and how generally fucked up things are in the U.K. after 40 unbroken years of austerity politics. It is the musical equivalent of being punched in the stomach repeatedly, but with the knowledge that you kind of deserve it.
Grimes, Miss Anthropocene
Grimes may well be one of the five most annoying humans in music, but goddamn this album is good. “4AEM” is one of my favourite songs of the year. “You’ll Miss Me When I’m Not Around” is an absolute earworm with a great bassline. And then there’s “My Name is Dark.” In a year where everyone was — for reasons that are somewhat beyond me — desperate to rediscover and rehabilitate the image of nü metal, this was one of the better efforts. Orgy wishes they wrote something that good.
Rico Nasty, Nightmare Vacation
Rico Nasty is really in her element here. She’s a rapper who’s borrowed from pop punk’s snotty delivery and leaned into some glitchy, pop-meets-industrial production, and also can really, really rap. And she’s fucking funny. I just want rappers who can make me laugh. I want someone who can take a piece of dialogue from Mean Girls and make it a chorus. Is that too much to ask?
Chucky73 & Fetti031, Sie7etr3s
I’m always (justifiably) apprehensive to write about albums in languages I don’t really speak, but according to people who do speak Spanish, Sie7etr3s is in such a deep Bronx-Dominican slang that it probably doesn’t matter much. What I do know is that there was a period in the spring where I couldn’t get enough of Fetti’s deep monotone, Chucky’s bendy, versatile flow, and the weird, horn-and-cowbell laden, slightly cheerier — or at least less menacing — take on drill beats.
Jessy Lanza, All the Time
I love Jessy Lanza’s ability to be unapologetically weird without delving into weird for weird’s sake. (Although weird for weird’s sake can be cool too. 100 Gecs is also on this list.) All the Time starts with a simple concept — breathy pop vocals, dancefloor beats, occasional R&B flourishes — and then whacks it with a hammer a bunch of times and puts the pieces back together with a blindfold on. Breathy vocals get chopped and distorted until they sound masculine, or sometimes alien. Drum beats get missed. Basslines get muffled and distorted. Keys get warped. Jessy Lanza and her co-conspirator, Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan, are Canadian treasures.
100 Gecs, 1000 Gecs and the Tree of Clues
Christ this band is so weird and I love it so much. Technically, this was a remix album, but it sounds almost nothing like last year’s 1000 Gecs, which is the source material. It’s even more nonsense, somehow. It features basically all of the PC Music gang, Rico Nasty, Fall Out Boy, and a version of “xXXi_wud_nvrstøp_ÜXXx” that wouldn’t be out of place on an MC Mario compilation from 1996. How can you not love this album?
Illuminati Hotties, Free IH: This is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For
Another one to file under glorious nonsense. This “mixtape” by “tenderpunk” outfit Illuminati Hotties was made for the express purpose of getting out of a record deal. (What are words? Indie rock bands have label drama now? What the fuck?) Anyway, it’s an album that’s based in power pop and garage punk, but also borrows from Sonic Youth and Fela Kuti and cheerleaders and folk music. Lyrically it careens from tongue-through-cheek irony to painful earnestness and back.
Teenanger, Good Time
Honest to God, in a more just world Teenanger would be one of the 10 biggest guitar-based bands in the world. They have been consistently great for a decade, and their evolution from snotty, sweaty straight-ahead punk band to wry, art-y, occasionally psych-leaning new wave has been super well executed. Most punk bands don’t manage to move to a cleaner sound while keeping the edge and attitude and outlook that made them great in the first place. Anyway, this album has a song about how much Doug Ford fucking sucks on it and that alone is enough for me.
Mura Masa, RYC
OK, so first of all, this album was subject to one of the meanest reviews I’ve read in a minute and legit it pissed me off. This reads like something I would have written when I was a 19 year-old aspiring journalist and thought teeing off on an album was a way to prove you were tough and not just another dumb fan. It’s cheap and easy and fuck the guy who wrote it.
Anyway, producer Mura Masa decided he wanted to make an album with more guitars, and this is the result. It has a couple good pop-punky numbers and a weepy break-up song that turns into a late ’90s big room house rave-up part way through and Slowthai being Slowthai and yelling about how gentrification is making beer too expensive. It’s fun. I’m gonna go to London and punch that Guardian guy in the dick once we can fly again.
Lil Uzi Vert, Eternal Atake
Lil Uzi Vert is fucking great. He’s smart and playful and willing to experiment and even when he’s doing something that seems stupid (“Balenci Balenci Balenci Balenci Balenci Balenci Balenci“) it’s in service of a broader point. This album is a fucking ride. It’s a journey. You strap in and you just follow Uzi through to the end. You trust him and it pays off.
Snake Eyes, Skeletons
Honestly, my old ass is glad young rock bands are getting into grunge. It got so horribly distorted in the back half of the ’90s and early ’00s until suddenly rock radio was nothing but a bunch of seventh generation photocopies of Eddie Vedder hunger-dunger-danging us all into madness and oblivion. And that sucks. Because grunge was great. Snake Eyes get it. This five song EP has four songs of punchy, distortion pedal soaked riffs, some solid choruses and a little bit of feedback-as-instrument, then one big, slow, creepy, dragg-y one at the end, because you need that. Perfect. A British Mudhoney for Gen Zs. Get the fuck into it.
Dogleg, Melee
Apparently the Gen Zs have also discovered mid-to-late ’90s midwestern emo? Fuck yeah. Every song on this album rips. There is no deeper analysis required.
Smoke Boys, All the Smoke
Apparently this is the last release from UK drill pioneers Smoke Boys (née Section Boyz), and that’s a bummer for fans of British rap, but if you’re gonna leave, leave on a high note. On All the Smoke, Smoke Boys remind us that while Chicago may have invented drill, London perfected it. Dark, heavy beats are topped with dense, smartly formed bars. Each member of the six-man crew is trying to top the next one. But it’s not just punchline lyrical, it’s cinematic. Smoke Boys paint a picture of their world, and while it’s not pretty, it is incredibly vivid.
Charli XCX, How I’m Feeling Now
How do you even make art about this incredibly fucked up year? People are trying. The BBC has released the first pandemic sitcom. COVID exists in the Shondaverse. And Charli XCX made this album. It’s about missing your friends, missing the club, feeling helpless, feeling frustrated, depression naps, and also feeling overwhelmed with gratitude that you have people in your life to help you through this. Thanks Charli.
Chromeo, Quarantine Casanova
This is another way to do it: just as directly and ridiculously as possible. Chromeo have the gift of being able to say ridiculous things seriously and just making you buy in unquestioningly. “Here. This is a synth-funk song with the line ‘If I could re-incarnate tonight/I would be your Clorox wipe’” “Thanks Dave One and P-Thugg, this is what I’ve always wanted!”
Pup, This Place Sucks Ass
This EP isn’t about the pandemic per se, but it definitely reflects the mood of the year. “Anaphylaxis” is a great shout along song. “AM 180” is the rare cover that I actually like better than the original. Pup continue to crush it.
Mil-Spec, World House
On one hand, this is a straight-up, blistering, full speed ahead hardcore record. On the other, it is so much more. It’s an album that hits you with something different every time. A layered dual-guitar attack, a strong sense of melody, and really, really poetic lyrics push World House beyond genre and create an album that packs a whole lot of complexity into just over 20 minutes.
Dua Lipa, Future Nostalgia
Rooted in retro-futurist aesthetics (hence the name), Future Nostalgia synthesizes the last 40-plus years of dance music — disco, R&B, Eurodance, techno, funk and beyond — and turns it into something new, bold and unapologetic. This is an album that grabs you by the lapels and refuses to let go for 40 minutes.
Disclosure, Energy
Just another album absolutely filled with solid dancefloor bangers in a year where there were no dancefloors, but I did take up running this year, and this album really helped with that. There were a couple of times where I just wanted to stop and yell “Fuck running!” and then “Douha (Mali Mali)” would come on and I’d decide to keep going.
Roshin, Unrequited
OK, so full confession, Roshin is a friend of mine and one of my favourite people in the world, so I’m biased, but honestly, everyone I’ve played this for has loved it, and none of them know my guy. After spending a decade-and-a-half as a “Yo! Bars, son!” rapper’s rapper, Roshin switched gears profoundly, mixing rap with R&B and ’70s AM radio rock (yes, actually) to create a perfect suite of songs about heartbreak and the recovery from it.
Caribou, Suddenly
There are a handful of atmospheric, emotional albums that really kept me from absolutely freaking out at the beginning of this pandemic. I spent a lot of nights in April wandering along an empty Geary Ave., smoking weed, crying, and listening to “Sister” on repeat. Thanks Dan Snaith. I needed to feel those feelings.
Yves Tumor, Heaven to a Tortured Mind
Another one from the early pandemic heavy listening list. This glitchy, warped, noisy take on psychedelic soul is an all-immersive listening experience and that was what I needed at the time.
Paul Chin, Full Spectrum
Another album by a friend. Also another album that kept me from freaking the fuck out in the spring. Also also, Paul is legit one of the smartest people I know, about music and also maybe everything, so I’m a little intimidated to even write on this one. One of the challenges on a producer-driven project is creating a cohesive through line while still allowing all the different guest vocalists space to work. Paul Chin absolutely nails this, with his collage of sound that incorporates the whole gamut of drum-machine based music, from hip-hop to dream pop to dancehall.
Junia-T, Studio Monk
You know that thing where you don’t realize how hungry you are until you start eating? The same idea here, except in this case I didn’t know how hungry I was for a really good jazz-rap record until I started listening to it.
Headie One, Edna
Headie One has bars for days and this is a solid UK drill album, but where Edna gets really interesting is when it gets away from the genre’s conventions: syncopated drums and buzzy synth basslines on “Mainstream,” weird lounge vibes on “Parlez-Vous Anglais,” simultaneously sampling Lady Saw and the Chili Peppers (or M-Dubz and Crazy Town, depending on how you look at it) on “Ain’t it Different.” A strong breakout album.
DijahSB, 2020 the Album
I have a soft spot for albums where the lyrical content and the music don’t match up. So obviously an album that talks about mental health, suicidal impulses and being broke over bouncy, house-influenced beats is a big yes from me. But it’s ultimately an album about overcoming all those things to blaze a trail and shoot your shot. Dijah is raw and honest and funny and unapologetic, and honestly we should probably all try to be more like them.
Sharhabil Ahmed, The King of Sudanese Jazz
Not really what most of us think of as a jazz record, but amazing nonetheless. This remastering of recordings by ’60s Sudanese guitar wizard Sharhabil Ahmed features a rich mix of riff-driven, Link Wray-ish rock, funk, jazz, as well as the traditional music of Sudan and sounds borrowed from Congolese guitarists. It absolutely rips. I spent a lot of time biking around, blasting this out of Bluetooth speaker this summer and I regret nothing.
Run the Jewels, RTJ 4
I was just gonna put a GIF of Jay Bilzerian shouting “I’m 40” in this space, but apparently it doesn’t exist? That seems like an oversight. Jokes aside, this might be my favourite RTJ since the first one. Killer Mike and El-P have always specialized in making great music for horrible times, so this is really their time to shine. Also, there’s a Cutty Ranks cameo, so I’m always here for that.
J-Hus, The Big Conspiracy
At 25-years-old, J-Hus has already helped invent a whole genre of music. Afroswing is a little bit afrobeats, a little bit grime, some R&B, some garage, some melodic trap, and goddamn it hits hard. On The Big Conspiracy J-Hus takes that mélange and turns it into an album that’s somehow both smooth and menacing, mellow, yet dripping with threat. It sounds impossible, but here it is.
Fontaines D.C., A Hero’s Death
So, initially I wasn’t sold on this album because it didn’t straight up grab me by the throat like Fontaines’ full-length debut Dogrel, which was probably my favourite guitar album of 2019. But the more I listened to this album, the more it grew on me. Dogrel was angry. This is desperate, claustrophobic and a little sad. Which is kind of how we’re all feeling right now.
Manga Saint Hillaire, Make It Out Alive
No album made me feel better about being alive this year than Make It Out Alive. Manga Saint Hillaire has a classic, rapid-fire, old school grime flow, but he applies it to material that’s frankl, honest and confessional. There’s no flexing here. He’s talking about depression and how hard it is to make a living as an independent artist and a whole heap of other real life, relatable shit. But he does it in a way that’s funny and engaging and optimistic and fucking absolute lyrical fire. This is the album I needed this year.
D Double E, Double or Nothing
One of grime’s elder statesmen, D Double E set out to prove that he still hasn’t lost a step on what is somehow still only his second solo album. While his flow is a little slower than his usual machine gun bars, D Double doubles down on his other big strengths: clever wordplay, a distinctive voice and great adlibs. Also, “Tell Me a Ting” is such an absolute explosive avalanche of a banger the rest of the album could be utter dogshit and it would probably still be top 50 for me. It’s not. The rest of the album is also really good, but that’s almost a bonus.
Megan Thee Stallion, Good News
OK look, this album is too fucking long for my ADHD, but it’s still really good. Even the songs that aren’t great, Megan’s beat selection is great enough that I never find myself getting bored or annoyed. There’s fun samples, strip club 808s, a song that sounds like it was produced by Hall and Oates, she kept me tuned in. Megan is still unapologetically horny and still has the ability to change speeds on a dime and still has really fun one-liners. The deep cuts have some great bars and the singles are catchy and people are shitting on the song with Popcaan but I didn’t mind it?
Idles, Ultra Mono
People get on Idles a lot for being too earnest and too ham-fistedly leftist in their lyrics, but honestly, earnest and ham-fisted is kind of what the left does, and wrapping it up in hard-driving angular guitar riffs and drums that sound like they’re being played with Thor’s hammer is a pretty good messaging strategy. Honestly, maybe Jagmeet just needs a good post-punk band?
Rod Wave, Pray 4 Love
Rod Wave is the absolute king of melodic rap. His singing voice has gotten even richer and more soulful, his rap voice gruffer and more dynamic. Every song just drips with feeling.
Flo Milli, Ho, Why is You Here?
OK, so first of all, I love an album that asks a clear question of the listener. Beyond that, Flo Milli’s sing-song-y triplets are weirdly hypnotic, I like how she switches speeds, she’s funny and bratty as hell, and she likes a piano sample and so do I.
The OBGMs, The Ends
Drums that are urgent, swinging blasts of pure energy? Raw, wild, snarling, shrieking vocals. An album that is firmly rooted in garage punk, but isn’t afraid to throw in some psych rock or hip-hop or Pixies-style loud-quiet-loud grunge or hand drumming. It’s angry and funny and catchy and visceral. It’s an album you feel in your entire body. Christ, this was a good year for Torontonian punk.
Clairmont the Second, It’s Not How it Sounds
Clairmont’s brother is the drummer of The OBGMs. That’s a talented family. I feel like Clairmont is the favourite young rapper of every rapper I know. He has a great rap voice and a distinctive staccato delivery and a great ability to paint pictures with words. I don’t know how to describe his lyricism other than “visual.” Put that over a bed of warped keys and yeah, I get why everyone loves this guy.
Shopping, All or Nothing
I am a sucker for a really danceable post-punk record. Frontwoman Rachel Aggs sardonic takedowns of capitalism and surveillance culture are incisive and sharp and aggressively British, and her guitar riffs are hypnotic earworms.
Backxwash, God Has Nothing to Do with This Leave Him Out of It
Vicious industrial horrorcore that you feel in your teeth and stomach. Violent and cathartic and genuinely unsettling. The monsters are us.
City Girls, City on Lock
One of the great things about City Girls is that you automatically know when you’re listening to a a Cty Girls song. JT and Yung Miami have great rap voices and flows that, while not super intricate, are all theirs. I once described City Girls as “aggressively Floridian” and I stand by that. They’re unapologetic in everything they do, regardless of whether they’re talking about the struggles they’ve been through, or how large they’re living now, or the seemingly endless list of people they’re looking to fight. Also, every beat on this album is bass-y enough it makes my fillings loose.
Tame Impala, The Slow Rush
Lots of insistent, danceable drums and Kevin Parker’s dreamy falsetto and riffs that borrows from house and Hall and Oates and disco and prog rock. Music that just makes you really wanna do mushrooms. Is it impossible for Tame Impala to make a bad album? I think it is. Also, holy shit, did this album come out this year? 2020 has really been about 47 months long eh?