The Best Songs of 2020 So Far

ISSUE #111

Considering how miserable this year has been for everyone, it's astonishing how great the music is. Maybe it just seems better because it's my only solace; maybe it happened to line up that way. Either way, this was the year the old Myspace adage became true — music has saved my life. Lists are dumb because they impose hierarchies on art, but I like using them for their other function: to tell a story. Here's the story of the past six months, one of grief and isolation, but also of help and unusual compassion.

20. GIA MARGARET | body
Where is it that the self resides? Is it my face that houses "me?" Or am I my eyes? My voice? Singer Gia Margaret faced this question after losing her voice from touring her brilliant 2018 debut There's Always Glimmer. Unable to record a follow-up, she refused to falter, and instead made a voiceless album of ambient wonder. On "body," she takes a lecture called "Overcome Social Anxiety" from philosopher Alan Watts and lays it over these euphoric glints of synthetic blips that soothe like popping bubbles, a grid of electric frisson to remind us that our hairs can stand without us asking. Would we consider that a self as well? Perhaps it resides in the goosebumps.

19. ADDY | Planted
When the chorus of Addy's "Planted" peels away to the third and fourth lines: "Think I'll go away for awhile / See if I grow," the song becomes our latest road trip anthem, an update on Tallest Man on Earth's "I'll be leaving in the fall." Adam Watkins sings it calmly, an autumn's leaf bidding goodbye to its elm. Sometimes we're forced to go; there's not enough sun in the shadow of heartbreak, and whatever water you do get can easily drown you. In 2020 we've been rooted in place, but we use what we can — struck match, hot wax — to try and breathe easy like plants do.

18. KEHLANI | Toxic
By now — you'll have to pardon me for this — it feels like I've never fucked in my entire life. I remember more headaches than I do orgasms, both fading throbs, both the symptoms of toxins. No one knows the complex venom of loving wrong like Kehlani, scholar of problematic dick and its distinct addiction. Neuroscience recognizes dependence on things as long as they have chemical structures; physical dependencies on other people routinely get dismissed. There may be no treatment yet, but "Toxic" gives us a good first step.

17. SQUID | Sludge
"Sludge" picks up where LCD Soundsystem left off circa 2005, grabbing The Stooges side of James Murphy's split personality and leaving the disco behind. 130 BPM! This is scientifically perfect for a workout. Squid takes a Fun House freak-out and adds what sound like cowbells and a bassline that jumps off the walls. The joy lives in the space between the shouts; it rips a hole to another dimension and begs us to kick out the jams.

16. YAEJI | WAKING UP DOWN
The double meaning of "down" gives us two different readings here: either we're waking up depressed or waking up ready to go. It doesn't take long to realize they go hand-in-hand, like waking up at 3 p.m. to a call from a friend — he's outside with the car and needs to buy shoes — and you jet out the door because you've just spent the last eight hours (if you're lucky) all alone. "WAKING UP DOWN" helped me get through early quarantine, energetic enough to pick me up but low-key enough that I didn't miss going out (well, maybe I did, but not as much as other house music). As my friend Marcus said, this is post-apocalyptic dance — it makes you want to rail a xan and turn off all the bedroom lights.

15. OKLOU | Entertnmnt
With production by Mura Masa, "Entertnmnt" sounds like it was recorded by Kraftwerk's step-daughter on a Eurotrain under the Alps. The sheer depth of the bass sounds unstable for speakers. If only we could split our consciousness and see our bodies through other eyes. This is the importance of loaning thoughts to others — we trust someone to see us and relay back our selves so we can shape a better whole. With this we are each others' eyeglasses, one of the ways to know we're beautiful.

14. MOSES SUMNEY | Me in 20 Years
Ten jobs, four aborted love affairs, two state license plates, two and a half tons of beer, and three recurring nightmares — the metrics on my past twenty years. We all bargain with the Great Beyond, singing "just a little bit longer and a little bit longer and a little bit longer." With Sumney, it's the voice of an intervening angel, a chorus of divine register to commiserate with fluid grace. We're all just holding out for something unforeseen, in the hope that someone will care enough to ask in twenty years.

13. DENZEL CURRY | DIET_
Denzel Curry has real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde energy here, but if Hyde buried Jekyll years ago under cans of crushed Red Bull. I love the way his delivery stretches, all demented modulation, like he's weaving through a world of falling bricks, untouchably air-bending, slipping in and out of Mission: Impossible lasers without letting up that DMX energy. It makes me want to dislocate my shoulders and reassemble myself as a Gundam.

12. MAYBEL | Bird Song
This is the most lucid mountain music I've heard this century, stark truth compared to anything else from country radio or whatever. That's because Montreal's Maybel are channeling Trio, the 1987 supergroup album by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris. The result is the sun's mint kiss on a subzero day, squirrels climbing naked chestnuts to wait out the melting snow. Mostly it's nice to hear three-part harmonies again, people singing in the same room, voices together, all parts in unison, alluding to our greater selves.

11. YVES TUMOR | Kerosene!
Yves Tumor is in rock star mode here, with Diana Gordon by his side, channeling a realm where guitars do the heavy talking. This one is nasty; you can smell the smoke and see the stage. There's a fire burning somewhere. Over and over the guitars screech, bodies desperate to go off like fireworks. We all want feeling to flood us, we want to be set on fire, we want the sparks from striking our souls against each other.

10. TENNIS | How to Forgive
Indie rock has morphed itself recently into lounge-funk led by white people, embodied by the likes of Tennis and TOPS and Men I Trust (all bands I perpetuate and thoroughly enjoy). "How to Forgive" changed things for me though, sent me from passive to active listening with something I had to put on repeat. Maybe it's the languor of the drum machine, marching just behind the beat, like something from a Sanyo tape deck at the frontline of a parade, or a can-can, or a carnival's burlesque. Then it breaks into two sides, both clarity and fuzz, right at the beginning of the bridge. These two are husband and wife, offender and offended switching constantly I'm sure, but the beauty of coupling is in this interplay, and moving on is just an act of surrender.

9. CHARLI XCX | forever
Ever since Charli teamed up with A.G. Cook from PC Music, she's taken off — but not in a normal airplane, more in like mecha-suit, the kind with wings, soaring over vaporized lands of desert darkness, overlaid with sonar grids of green like in those tank games from Atari. Then the lyrics sink in — from there, it's more like Toy Story, all arms out and soaring over parts of your vast bedroom, those water cups and polaroids and shoebox memories just souvenirs standing in for a missing person. This will be the album that represents the isolation of the COVID era the best.

8. CARLY RAE JEPSEN | Heartbeat
Starting at about 2:54, after a (graciously) long verse-chorus-verse-chorus with those pianos ascending a cosmic staircase, a harp comes in to unzip Carly's brain and the feelings start rolling out of her head. There's permission for so much at that moment, dissolving the crippling fears of expressing any feelings, and the melody serves as pure catharsis. I haven't heard a bridge like it in a long time; and what is pop for if not the bridge? That closing argument, the last stop before home, the final chance to turn around and let yourself feel everything.

7. PHOEBE BRIDGERS | Garden Song
"Garden Song" is about manifesting your desires, pulling them out of dreamland just before everything erupts in flames. These instruments play behind a thin scrim of static, fading in and out like an old AM radio, and that kick drum is so buried you can feel it in your throat, floating up from your solar plexus or that liver she's talking about. More and more, Phoebe feels like a new Bright Eyes, so lyrically deft she carves images like statues — that skinhead neighbor, the flatbed of roses, those flames that leave the notches and the door frames — that gesture at the emotions too big to describe without getting lost.

6. PERFUME GENIUS | On the Floor
The terror of desire is that it breeds extremes — we either want our crush on top of us or gone from this world forever. This song brings back those delirious tremors, all the writhing and cold water and desperate calls for peace. The bass here buzzes like our yearning skin, the sliding guitars like gasps and palpitations, and all in 6/8 that makes triplets sound like our racing pulse. It mimics the thoughts that swirl around our heads until we finally just melt in the end, that slow drifting down corridors of another wet dream.

5. WAXAHATCHEE | Oxbow
I've never heard an album start quite like this, so heavy with a kick drum that blows down the door to a room I've never seen but was decorated by the one I love. Then it starts to dust the floor with the sturdy grace of that piano. An oxbow shackles two beings together, an image of love and labor that's drenched in Americana, making it the perfect title to an opener for an album of codependency and how love "breaks your neck [and] builds you a delicate shrine." All this is Crutchfield at her best, marrying rhythm to lyrical precision, and by just half a minute in she lets on how it feels to want it all.

4. SAULT | Wildfires
Arriving full of mystery and draped in power, the album SAULT released last week came with little information and even less fanfare, to the point where I know nothing about them outside an NPR write-up and a few older albums in their discography. Well, I guess I know one thing — it sounds unlike anything else. Timely, timeless, soulful, arcing, its resilience rises from the fire of art and perches on that hell of a bassline. It's the wiry sound behind the claps that astounds me, like feet that catch a taut wire fence, the sound of metal bands entwined to form an iron rope, stronger together, far less brittle, and able to bend but never break.

3. MAC MILLER | Good News
Around 2018, Mac met producer Jon Brion, composer of scores for Eternal Sunshine and Punch-Drunk Love, and recruited him to produce his next three albums, which he was hoping would start a new sonic phase of his career. Brion is a master of mood, a longtime collaborator of Fiona Apple and Elliott Smith, and encouraged Miller not to shy away from the more confessional songwriting that made up his experiments. The resulting album, 2018's Swimming, is brilliant. Miller died a month after its release.

Three months after that, his family called Jon Brion and wanted him to finish the second album. He had more than enough material. Initially hesitant, Brian agreed to their wishes, and for the better of everyone — the result was the stellar Circles, released January of this year.

Brion may have completed the album, but this is still Mac's show, all from Mac's brain; Jon just got out of the way. It's incredible, and makes his loss even more unspeakable. This song perfectly addresses what it's like to answer "How are you?" this year and how hard it is to deliver good news. In a country that actively avoids change, Miller remains an example of what we lose when we write someone off, proof that artists can grow into many things, all surprising.

2. FIONA APPLE | Drumset
After being dumped by Jonathan Ames, Fiona wrote this melody in one take by singing into her phone. She claims that's why the lyrics aren't poetic, but it's precisely what makes the whole thing great, giving it the sheer forceful rhythm of the rejected. Her losses here are clear as ire and justified as wrath. The best is she anchors the chorus with a triplet, my favorite musical feature, to emphasize and orient, the "Not– want– to– try" like the rapping of her knuckles on the counter just to make sure her point gets through. It's there to knock the injustice into his thick head, her rhythmic version of "listen to me — I want that fucking drumset back."

1. BECKY AND THE BIRDS | Do U Miss Me
The first half of this song takes place through text message; I'm convinced that's why the vocal filter is used. You can picture her voice rising straight up through the phone. She sings in person halfway through, appearing all at once before him, Nude Descending a Staircase in a soft satin slip, warped by her knowledge of what he's been doing. Nightly grief turns a bed into more of a deprivation tank, the conscience floating flat on a liquid dream. Then senselessly we astrally project — through the misty night to a home that's dark save a kitchen appliance, then up the stairs to that familiar bed. Once there, we whisper an age-old question, one born from ego and forged by that rejection, as Sauron's searching eye waits hungry for an answer: "Do you miss me?"