The 35 Best Albums of 2020
Counting down the best records this wild year had to offer
2020 was a brutal year, with an incredible soundtrack. I don’t know how else to say it.
Between career-capping masterpieces concocted by some of the greatest songwriters in the history of songwriting, noisy “fuck you” anthems whipped up by furious punk rockers and hip-hop heads alike, immersive breakout projects from a new crop of under-heralded artists, and a bevy of intricately arranged, and wonderfully imaginative new records across genres of every conceivable stripe, there really was something new and exciting to listen to each and every week.
So without further ado, here are my picks for the best 35 albums that dropped in 2020.
35. Fleet Foxes - Shore
I spent a lot of time in 2020 listening to David Berman. Actually, I spent a lot of time in 2020 listening specifically to Berman’s 1998 Silver Jews album American Water. It’s a magnificent record filled with thought-provoking wordplay and gloriously twisted Stephen Malkmus guitar lines. The kind that burrow deep into your marrow. All that’s to say, I immediately felt a kinship to Fleet Foxes latest album Shore when it dropped in September. I was startled the first time I heard the song “Sunblind,” where Robin Pecknold tips his cap to Berman, and other heroes of mine like John Prine and Bill Withers who had also recently passed. In a year where we all felt so many losses big and small, I appreciated that somber moment to reflect on those titanic figures and the immense wake they left behind.
34. Stephen Malkmus - Traditional Techniques
Speaking of Stephen Malkmus, this record is the absolute best thing he’s put out since Real Emotional Trash in 2008. Traditional Techniques leans more toward something like effervescent jangle of The Notorious Byrd Brothers than it does to say, the almighty sludge of Slanted and Enchanted. But that’s really part of its charm. I already know and admire what Malkmus can do with a Stratocaster and a few fuzz boxes. It’s far more fascinating at this point to hear the ways he explores folkier textures with a 12-string acoustic in his hands. “The Greatest Own in Legal History” might also, low-key, be one of the funniest tracks of 2020.
33. My Morning Jacket - The Waterfall II
When My Morning Jacket released their seventh studio album The Waterfall back in 2015, lead singer Jim James alluded to the fact they the band had stockpiled enough material for a sequel. I assumed we’d get to hear within the next year or so, but then James put out four different solo albums, and a collaboration record with Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra instead. Then I forgot all about The Waterfall II until it seemingly dropped out of almost nowhere in July. While I maintain that the first Waterfall record is superior – “In It’s Infancy (The Waterfall)” is a Top-5 best MMJ track – this record has its moments of jangly transcendence. The lithe single “Feel You,” for instance. The true highlight however, is “Wasted,” a brutal 6-minute guitar romp accented by searing leads and a full horn section.
32. Hum – Inlet
I admittedly didn’t know much about Hum before 2020. They were one of those bands that I had kinda heard about in passing, but hadn’t taken the time to properly check out. But then, after a 22-year hiatus, they dropped this heavy, riff-riddled package of blissfully, blistering shoegaze-y excellence, and well…I’m a fan. Tidal waves of fuzzed-out guitar melodies swell and crash over every single song, drowning you in a psychedelic ocean of purely twisted noise. This is especially true on the nine-minute opus “Desert Rambler,” my favorite track on the record.
31. Lil Uzi Vert - Eternal Atake
Lil Uzi Vert had one one helluva 2020. I mean, he didn’t get to stage dive 50 feet into roiling masses of humanity as he is want to do from time to time, but between the collaboration tape he made with Future, Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World 2 and this album, Eternal Atake, he truly fulfilled the promise he’d hinted at during his wild run back around 2016-17. Eternal Atake is Uzi’s best album by a mile. It’s a P-funk inflected, otherworldly epic of filled with clever wordplay and a cinematic scope. The dude rapped, “King of my city like Leon, mane,” and then name-checked Elon Musk, Peyton and Eli Manning in the next few stanzas. King shit.
30. Chris Stapleton - Starting Over
While Starting Over doesn’t’ quite reach the highs of Stapleton’s guaranteed-to-be-a-classic album Traveler, it’s far, far more fleshed out than either volume of From a Room that came before it. My dog Page sadly passed away this Summer, and I found a lot of tear-stained catharsis in Stapleton’s ode to his own pup in “Molly’s Song.” Seriously, there should be some kind of emotional manipulation warning before that track begins. “Cold” also joins the pantheon of show-stopping vocal fireworks that are quickly becoming one of Stapleton’s signatures.
29. Dogleg - Melee
The sheer number of bands and artists who got fucked this year because of Covid is almost too enumerable to count. And yet, I can’t help but feeling like Dogleg got fucked worse than most. “Kawasaki Backflip” rips. “Fox” rips.” “Wartotle” rips. “Cannonball” d-e-v-e-s-t-a-t-e-s. The fact that this band couldn’t play these songs in America’s finest, beer-soaked dives all summer long is an incalculable loss.
28. Paul McCartney — McCartney III
Paul McCartney making records with collaborators <<<< Paul McCartney making records entirely by himself playing all the instruments. This quarantine project is one of the weirdest-sounding entries in Macca’s entire, legendary canon and my favorite thing he’s done in at least a decade. I probably need some more time with this record on whole, but I’m currently obsessed with the moody, nine-minute long “Deep Deep Feeling.” It’s kind of Pink Floyd-y which checks out…
27. Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia
“Don’t Start Now” slaps. “Levitating” knocks. And “Break My Heart” rules. The best pop album of the year.
26. Sturgill Simpson - Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 1 & 2
The best of Sturgill Simpson, but Bluegrass! Easily the best album cover of 2020. Maybe of the entire decade. “Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)” hits even harder than ever before on Vol. 2.
25. 2 Chainz - So Help Me God
For whatever reason, So Help Me God didn’t get the spotlight that I thought it deserved this year. Call it 2 Chainz fatigue. Call it media oversight. Call it whatever you’d like, but this is one of the most fun and listenable records I encountered all year. The opening, from “Lambo Wrist” to “Can’t Go for That” is especially strong. You give me Ty Dolla Sign harmonizing over a Hall & Oates sample and I’ll give you my heart.
24. Bruce Springsteen - Letter to You
While I genuinely appreciated Springsteen’s last solo album Western Stars – it features some of the best, pure singing of Springsteen’s entire career – I was more than happy to hear him return to the studio with the mighty E Street Band backing him up for Letter To You. Written in just about a week and a half, and recorded over only a few days, this album is one of the least, labor intensive of his, intensely laborious career. It’s an album about music, and death, and houses filled with a thousand guitars; subjects that Springsteen is almost certainly well-acquainted. If you’re looking for me the next time The Boss visits Seattle, I’ll be the guy in the pit holding up the sign requesting “Janey Needs a Shooter.”
23. The War on Drugs - Live Drugs
Live albums seldom get much shine on year-end lists. I certainly understand why of course. There’s a much higher value placed by critics on an entirely new work vs. a rehashed version of something that already exists. I’ve hardly ever included live albums on my own year-end surveys, but every once in a while a project like Live Drugs comes along, a stitched-together collection of performances so stunning in its aural presentation, and so powerful in its execution that leaving it off a list like this would feel a little bit like a lie by omission. So here it sits at No. 23. My only regret is that “Thinking of a Place” wasn’t another 20-minutes longer.
22. Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper, Terrance Martin & 9th Wonder - Dinner Party
Anyone else go through a minor jazz phase this year? I know I did. There was a week in August where I listened to nothing besides the deluxe edition of Bitches Brew by Miles Davis over and over and over again. I have zero regrets. Once my Miles phase waned, I dug into Kamasi Washington’s 2018 sprawling masterpiece Heaven and Earth, which put me right on the fast-track to this album. I missed it when it first dropped in July, but the amalgamation of avant garde jazz, neo-soul, hip-hop and ‘70s R&B lit my senses on fire. At a tight 23-minutes Dinner Party doesn’t overstay its welcome either and I know I hit that replay button more times than I can remember as soon as the last vocoder-painted vocals on “LUV U” fried away into oblivion.
21. Neil Young – Homegrown
Okay, so this is admittedly kind of a cheat, because Neil Young originally wrote and recorded this album between 1974 and ’75, but seeing as how it only finally saw the light of day for the first time this year, it seems like fair game to me to include on this list. I first heard about Homegrown while reading Jimmy McDonough’s immortal Neil biography Shakey about a decade and a half ago. Legend has it that back in the day, Young was caught between releasing this collection of largely acoustic tracks and another record he’d whipped up a few years before called Tonight’s the Night. I think he made the right decision all things considered, and yet it was an absolute thrill to finally hear songs like “White Line,” “Try,” and “Kansas” in all of their understated splendor.
20. Thundercat - It Is What It Is
Lithe falsettos, impossibly funky basslines, deeply psychedelic grooves; what’s not to love? And again, shoutout to Kamasi Washington for that fluttery sax part on “Dragonball Durag.”
19. Kevin Morby – Sundowner
The Time of Out Mind vibes on this album are very strong indeed. All of Sundowner, like most of Morby’s music — and especially his 2016 album Singing Saw — is stricken with this almost haunted aura. Maybe it’s his voice? Maybe it’s the skeletal arrangements? Maybe it’s the empty prairies of his native Kansas home manifesting itself in his art? Who’s to say. All I know is, whenever I put on “Brother, Sister” its guaranteed to get stuck in my head for the next three days, at least.
18. Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
I think it’s fair to say that we all had our moments in 2020 where it felt like we were collectively standing in front of a gigantic, impossibly dark abyss, wondering with amplified anxiety what fresh horrors the world might shower upon us. In moments like those, I often returned to Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher for a bit of sonic empathy. It’s a record brimming with melancholy, the kind that might drown you if not for the moments of levity she injects from time to time, like the opening lines of “Kyoto,” which kills me each time I hear it: “Got bored at the temple / Looked around at the 7-Eleven / The band took the speed train / Went to the arcade / I wanted to go, but I didn't / You called me from a payphone / They still got payphones.”
Brilliant.
17. Miley Cyrus – Plastic Hearts
From the moment I watched Miley Cyrus bring the LA Forum to its feet while shredding her vocal cords over the Temple of the Dog paean “Say Hello 2 Heaven” at the Chris Cornell tribute concert in 2019, I ached to hear her cook up a full-on rock album. And even then, Plastic Hearts exceeded my lofty expectations. It’s a fun record with Miley doing her best ‘80s glam impression alongside heroes of the form like Joan Jett and Billy Idol. The song “Midnight Sky” is as infectious and danceable as anything I’ve heard all year.
16. Pearl Jam – Gigaton
I’m an admittedly bigger fan of 21st century Pearl Jam than most. Their ninth album Backspacer came out while I was deployed overseas to Iraq in 2009. It was literally one of the only CDs I had, so it got A LOT of play that year. I can still feel the heat and the sand on my face when just thinking about “Got Some.” I consider the follow-up to that one, Lightning Bolt to be pretty stellar too; especially the song “Pendulum.” I didn’t expect to have to wait another seven years after that one dropped to hear some new Pearl Jam music, but I think the time away did them some good. It’s nice to hear the band make a few, unexpected sonic digressions into different realms. The lead single “Dance of the Clairvoyants,” a Talking Heads-inspired jam is as funky and off-kilter as anything they’ve put out since the ‘90s, while “Superblood Wolfman” rages with an admirable intensity. Anytime you get to hear Eddie Vedder yell, “Ay-yai-yai-yai-yai” into a blazing Mike McCready guitar solo is cause for celebration.
15. Jason Isbell – Reunions
Jason Isbell’s run from Southeastern to Something More Than Free to The Nashville Sound, and now to this record Reunions, has been one of the most impressive displays of astounding songwriting I think I’ve ever personally witnessed. I don’t know how many times I listened to “What’ve I Done To Help” during the Spring, but if it was anywhere less than 200, I’d be supremely shocked.
14. Destroyer - Have We Met
As long as Dan Bejar keeps making new albums, I’ll keep listening to ‘em. This one, Have We Met, might just be his best since Kaputt, and I promise you, that’s really saying something. I spent many days in 2020 taking long, contemplative walks with my dog with Bejar crooning “It Just Doesn’t Happen” over and over in my headphones. It definitely enhanced the surreal nature of the absurd time we’re all living through.
13. Haim - Women in Music Pt. III
As a novice guitar player, I really have to tip my hat to Haim for what they managed to accomplish on Women in Music Pt. III. The sheer amount of lush, vibrant, crunchy, and elastic guitar sounds they accumulated on this record is utterly amazing. “The Steps” alone is filled with so many different, interesting textures, from spring-y, single-coil riffs to overdriven slide parts that comes screaming over the top that I couldn’t help but reach for my own pedal board to dial up some unique sounds myself. And then you have the songwriting. There was a moment in July when I walked down to Centennial Park along the Seattle shoreline, and just as the song “Hallelujah” hit my ears, the Olympic Mountains came into full and glorious view. All of a sudden I could feel warm tears streaking slowly down my cheeks.
12. Run The Jewels - RTJ4
I can’t remember the last time an album met the cultural moment with greater impact than Run The Jewels did with their excellent fourth record. Listening to “Walking in the Snow” for the first time, just a week after George Floyd’s brutal, senseless murder in Minneapolis was an especially harrowing experience that I won’t soon forget. I’m not going to say much more, but allow Killer Mike to expound:
“The way I see it you're probably freest from the ages one to four
Around the age of five you're shipped away for your body to be stored
They promise education, but really they give you tests and scores
And they predictin' prison population by who scoring the lowest
And usually the lowest scores the poorest and they look like me
And everyday on evening news they feed you fear for free
And you so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me
And 'til my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, "I can't breathe"
And you sit there in the house on couch and watch it on TV
The most you give's a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy”
11. Yves Tumor - Heaven to a Tortured Mind
All of Heaven to a Tortured Mind is excellent, but my God, “Kerosene!” is on a different fucking planet. Without a shadow of a doubt, it’s the single, most mind-blowing guitar solo of the entire year. The decade has only just begun, and we already have our own, ‘20’s version of “Maggot Brain.” What a time to be alive.
10. Ganser - Just Look at the Sky
Chicago has been producing an astounding number of excellent, new rock bands over the last decade from Grapetooth to Whitney, Beach Bunny to Ohmme, and many, many more. And then you have Ganser, who have quickly risen up the ranks to become one of the city’s most exciting exports yet. The Sonic Youth meets Jimi Hendrix meets Sleater-Kinney formula this foursome have perfected is pretty irresistible, and I truly can’t wait to hear what they do next. In the meantime, I’d recommend cranking “Lucky” as loud as your stereo system would allow.
9. Waxahatchee - Saint Cloud
One of the most thrilling things about listening to an artist over an extended period, is that moment when it all finally seems to come together. I've long admired Waxahatchee — especially the album Ivy Tripp in 2015 — but damn if Katie Crutchfield didn’t hit it all the way out of the ballpark with Saint Cloud. This is an all-killer, no filler tour de force of impeccable songwriting and superb arrangement. It’s almost impossible to pick a favorite song, but I’ll narrow it down to either “Can’t Do Much” or “Ruby Falls.” The former is a jaunty, falsetto-tinged pop track that sounds like Spring incarnate, while the latter is an understand piano ballad in which Crutchfield ruminates on real, actual love. I mean, seriously, who writes like this:
“And when the picture fades
The years will make us calm
I'll sing a song at your funeral
Laid in the Mississippi gulf
Or back home at Waxahatchee creek
You know you got a friend in me
I'm an angler married to the sea”
8. The Killers - Imploding The Mirage
I fully admit that I didn’t think The Killers had this one in them. I thought they’d long settled into musical, middle age-dom by this point. You know, that space where a band you once listened to religiously puts out a record every one to three years that you listen to more out of compulsion than devotion? *cough* Green Day *cough* But, no, not the Killers! Brandon Flowers and company had the audacity to put out one of the most loose and listenable albums of their entire career. Hot Fuss, this is not. But damn if I don’t love “Running Towards a Place” and “My God” with all that I’ve got.
7. Chris Cornell — No One Sings Like You Anymore
See, this is why it’s always wise to wait until the last possible moment to put out an end of the year list. Imagine my horror had I published this even a week earlier and didn’t include a record where Chris Cornell takes on ELO’s glam masterpiece “Showdown” or John Lennon’s “Watching the Wheels” or Harry Nillson’s “Jump into the Fire.” I’ll probably have more thoughts on this album later, but just know…it rules.
6. The Strokes - The New Abnormal
At the beginning of March, I had tickets to go and see The Strokes perform at the WaMu Theater in Seattle. Due to a variety of missed opportunities and festival scheduling conflicts through the years, I had somehow never managed to catch them live before. But now, I was faced with a significant dilemma. I could go and see Julian Casablancas croon along to some of my favorite songs of the year, like “Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus,” “At the Door,” and “Bad Decisions” OR, I could stay home and not contract Covid. Needless to say, I opted to stay home. I’m still bummed about it. The New Abnormal indeed.
5. The Weeknd - After Hours
The Weeknd was robbed by the Grammys! Okay, I mean, obviously I don’t think he made the best album of the year — I assume you already got that sense by din of the fact that he made it to 5th on this list — but to not even give the man a nomination in the AOTY category was one of the most inexplicably boneheaded decisions made by a group of electors universally known for making inexplicably boneheaded decisions. Did anyone on the committee see all those delightful “Blinding Lights” dance TikToks at the beginning of the Quar? What are we even doing here??
4. David Nance - Staunch Honey
If you even slightly like Neil Young & Crazy Horse, you are going to absolutely love David Nance. The Nebraska-native has been putting out some of the wildest and wooliest projects imaginable over the past few years, from the expansive Peaced and Slightly Pulverized with his band The David Nance Group, to full album covers of Lou Reed’s Berlin and the Beatles’ fourth record Beatles For Sale. On his latest, Staunch Honey, it feels like the both the song structure and overall focus has gotten a bit tighter, to the point that you pine for just another several minutes of jamming at the end of “Learn the Curve.” It’s a downer, for sure. But a glorious, mind-altering downer.
3. Tame Impala – The Slow Rush
It’s basically impossible to come out of the box and make four excellent records in a row. And somehow, Tame Impala have done just that. From the buoyant funk of “Borderline,” the elastic groove of “Breathe Deeper,” and the electro-’80s shimmer of “Glimmer,” no one sets a better tone than Kevin Parker. He might be the closest thing we have to Robin or Barry Gibb these days, and I mean that entirely as a compliment.
2. Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways
Bob Dylan didn’t need to do this. The man has a Nobel Prize, more money than he could ever spend in a lifetime, and a burgeoning welding hobby and whiskey business crying out for his time and attention. And yet. AND YET. The man from Hibbing, Minnesota decided to gift us with one more masterpiece. For long stretches of 2020 I took to listening to Rough and Rowdy Ways, way late at night. It has that smokey, apocalyptic aura that lends itself to the inky evening air. I’d lay back and listen to Dylan as he paid homage to Jimmy Reed, crossed the Rubicon and raged against the pedestal we’ve all put him on in “False Prophet.” And then, near the end, I’d slip into the 17-minute excursion that is “Murder Most Foul” witnessing firsthand the Kennedy assassination, Woodstock, and Altamont, before Dylan handed me off to Wolfman Jack to play “‘Moonlight Sonata’ in F sharp,” and “‘A Key to the Highway’ for the king on the harp.” Damn right he contains multitudes.
1. Jeff Rosenstock – No Dream
Plague and murder. Democracy on the edge. Riots in the streets. 2020 had it all and then some. As the year wore on I tried my best to keep a positive frame of mind as one catastrophe spilled over into the next. I built puzzles, zoomed with old friends, and watched all 7 seasons of the show Alone. And yet there were still plenty of times when it all got to be too much. When the only thought I had was to escape; which was made even more difficult at the height of the Summer when the smoke from the wildfires in California drifted North up the coast, forcing us to keep our windows shut, and ourselves indoors for two entire weeks in September. That one almost cracked me. But I didn’t crack. I stayed put. I kept on living. I kept on working. And I kept on listening to records. None more than Jeff Rosenstock’s fourth solo album.
No Dream dropped like a benevolent atom bomb of sanity in May and almost every day throughout the Summer, I’d leash up my dog Page and we’d go for a walk around abandoned downtown Seattle with Rosenstock's sometimes-caustic, oftentimes-reassurant voice blaring through my headphones. It was my daily, 40-minutes of sonic catharsis and I truly needed it.
When on “Scram!” he sang,
“I've been told for most my life
"Try to see the other side"
By people who have never tried to
See the other side”
I wanted to throw my fist in the air and yell, “Right?? Fuck!”
When he screamed the phrase “You will not control,” 40 times in a row over a warp-speed metal drum beat on “f a m e,” I felt completely free.
And whenever “Honeymoon Ashtray” came on, I simply felt…better.
The best albums, the one’s that truly matter, are the one’s that are there when you really need them. No Dream was there for me more often than any other album that dropped in this seemingly cursed year. And for that reason, it remains my favorite.
Thanks for the list, albums added to my to do list! Bought my brother Total Fucking God Head for Xmas!