Best Albums of 2020

In a year when everything was awful all of the time, it sometimes felt like we were being held afloat by a constant drip of fantastic albums.

From February — with Tame Impala’s sprawling and immaculately produced The Slow Rush — on through to the day of this draft on a Friday in mid-December — Taylor Swift’s Evermore — barely a week went by without an established artist’s strong new release or an emerging musician announcing their arrival. Each year, I keep a list of all the albums I listen to (or intend to get around to listening to). Usually it’s around 25–30 albums long. This year, it’s at 57. I’m getting ready to add another two to it as soon as I finish writing this. Of those I’ve spent repeated listens with, I could say that at least a solid 30 of those are worth your time.

We could ask whether 2020 truly was a great year for music or everything just seemed better and fresher than it was because we were all stuck at home, isolated and bored — our brains searching and primed to receive new stimuli. Only time will tell. I can admit to having a greater affinity for albums released since the pandemic began, and emotional intensity generally seems to heighten our senses and response to information. But it certainly felt like a high-watermark year.

In compiling this or any music list, I try to balance the albums that announce themselves as truly unique, compelling and/or defining statements — Taylor Swift’s Folklore, for example — with what I played the most. These generally line up, but who else is putting The Killers in their top five?

Enough. Here’s my list.

30. Dan Deacon — Mystic Familiar
29. Rufus Wainwright — Unfollow the Rules
28. Alanis Morrisette — Such Pretty Forks in the Road
27. The Flaming Lips — American Head
26. Sturgill Simpson — Cuttin’ Grass, Vol. 1
25. Charley Crockett — Welcome to Hard Times
24. Fleet Foxes — Shore
23. The Weeknd — After Hours
22. Protomartyr — Ultimate Success Today
21. Childish Gambino — 3.15.2020
20. Travis — 10 Songs
19. Pretenders — Hate for Sale
18. Marilyn Manson — WE ARE CHAOS
17. Sault — Untitled(Black Is)
16. Destroyer — Have We Met

15. Kathleen Edwards — Total Freedom

A welcome return from one of the 2000’s best songwriters. On Total Freedom, Edwards sings about the joys and pains of domestic life: the love of partners, friends and dogs alike, and the loss of the same. All of it comforting as a warm blanket.

14. Matt Berninger — Serpentine Prison

Greatly stripped back from his usual work with The National, Berninger’s solo debut benefits from a lack of clutter that marred last year’s I Am Easy to Find and the usual immediacy of his melodies and lyrical slant.

13. Tame Impala — The Slow Rush

Is this the album I anticipated most in 2020? Probably. Currents was my favorite album of the two-thousand-teens, and Kevin Parker’s quiet collaborations and single releases in between were compelling. The Slow Rush is a producer’s album first: songs warp and weave, the mix showing off dazzling new ear candy every few seconds. Beyond the sonic density, there’s a twinge of disappointment: It’s two songs too long, the middle sags, and some of the best music is the interstitial transitions from one track to the next — rather than the songs themselves. No matter: “Borderline,” “It Might Be Time to Face It,” “Lost in Yesterday,” “Is it True,” “Breathe Deeper” and “One More Year” are bangers. Next to El-P’s work on Run the Jewels, this is the best-produced album of 2020.

12. Deftones — Ohms

The nu-metal stalwarts return with 10 updated takes on their signature sound. Musical sophistication and arrangements always set the Deftones apart from their peers. Is it metal? Is it prog? Is it a little screamo? Yes. Where Gore’s twilight sadness was soothing, Ohms is genuinely unsettling. There’s no rest, no complacency in these songs, and there’s plenty of detail to come back to and unwrap. Plus, the opening and closing tracks — “Genesis” and “Ohms” — are among the best the band have ever recorded.

11. The Psychedelic Furs — Made of Rain

Impossible. The Psychedelic Furs have been touring as a nostalgia act for some years. Yet, here they shake disparaging characterization with their first album in 30 years. Despite sounding quite like it could have been released in 1983 — their critical and commercial peak — it still sounds urgent and declarative. Richard Butler’s rasp is as vital as ever, and the band kicks up some genuine dust behind his gothic-tinged lyrics.

10. Bright Eyes — Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was

At first this one didn’t make much of an impact, but repeated listens rewarded. It’s classic Bright Eyes — proven to be more than Conor Oberst’s pretentious troubadour-isms through a series of less and less rewarding solo releases — and Mike Mogis and Nate Wolcott are the magic ingredients that made the band’s releases of the ’00s so compelling. There’s plenty to love here, starting with “Dance and Sing” and “Mariana Trench,” to the string-drenched closing of “Comet Song.” Comforting nostalgia, with just enough new ideas and new things to say.

9. Taylor Swift — Folklore

Haters gonna hate, but Taylor Swift is an immensely talented songwriter. That wasn’t as apparent on the cluttered Lover or the brittle Reputation. Folklore is the first album in a long time where she sounds comfortable as herself. Not trying too hard for hits or singles, just a confident — and often masterful — collection of well-crafted songs full of the lyrical detail that sets her apart. Critics couldn’t stop extolling the virtues of “Cardigan,” but it’s “Last Great American Dynasty” that shines brightest. Like “Blank Slate,” it’s proof that Swift’s greatest gift is her uncanny ability to use her autobiography to create sly personas and cultural commentary.

8. Lady Gaga — Chromatica

No ballads, all updated house and dancefloor gloss. Chromatica is Lady Gaga’s best album since 2009’s The Fame Monster. It also feels like her most confessional, a stark contrast from the syrupy artifice of her last few albums where she was trying a little too hard. Everything on Chromatica feels effortless, as one insistent earworm cuts to the next with startling economy. If nothing is as catchy as “Poker Face” or as ubiquitous as “Bad Romance,” it all sticks through 13 tracks of perfect EDM pop (and three symphonic segues). The Elton John duet, “Sine from Above,” is spectacular and “Enigma” is a throwback to her weirdo best.

7. Phoebe Bridgers — Punisher

Sometimes a little too precious, Bridgers’ songs play like home movies: Frozen moments flicker vividly through “Kyoto” and “Graceland Too” like a travelog. By the time the “Solsbury Hill”/ “Subterranean Homesick Alien” abduction fantasy update “Chinese Satellite” queues up, you’re under her trembling spell like the tractor beam she longs for. A damn good songwriter, she embellishes these diary entries with perfect details at just the right moments: Appalachian fiddles and banjos, horns, gentle vocal distortions, ghostly synths. Her flutter of a voice lands these songs like a punch in the gut.

6. Christine and the Queens — La Vita Nuova

Technically an EP, this advances the sophisti-pop of 2017’s brilliant Chris into more fragile territory. The key track is “People, I’ve Been Sad” — a song title wholly befitting 2020. Balladry, icy ’80s disco, torch songs, no matter the language, it’s Heloise Letissiere’s vocal ability and the restraint she’s capable of that continues to distinguish her moody songs. Short and sweet, this is a tantalizing glimpse of where she’s headed next.

5. Run the Jewels — RTJ4

Good god, what a duo Killer Mike and El-P are. Landing with ferocity in the midst of civil unrest, here was the sound of social consciousness in 2020. “J.U.S.T.” is the centerpiece, forcing us to picture George Floyd’s murder by police and confront the slaveholders immortalized on U.S. currency. RTJ4 provides endless layers to peel away and discover, from the rapid-fire rhymes through to El-P’s dizzying production. It felt like an instant classic from the first play.

4. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit — Reunions

Isbell is absolutely one of America’s best songwriters, spinning tales of survival with lived-in grace. “What’ve I Done To Help” is my vote for anthem of 2020, that insistent chorus’s question burying its way into my brain and reappearing with every headline and doomscroll. “Dreamsicle,” “Only Children,” “Be Afraid,” the incendiary “Overseas,” the Bob Seger-worthy “Running With Our Eyes Closed”: Reunions keeps the hits coming well into the second side, only settling in the final tracks. Nearly perfect.

3. The Killers — Imploding the Mirage

No other musician absorbed the 1980s as thoroughly as Brandon Flowers. His every note feels peeled from that decade, ready for its MTV premiere. Mirage could have been just another Killers album: a few great singles, some middling but slick filler surrounding them. Instead, it emerged a perfect thing. Unlike their first two albums, it’s impossible to tell where one influence ends and another begins. Springsteen, The Cars, U2, Duran Duran, Peter Gabriel, Dire Straits, Fleetwood Mac (whose Lindsey Buckingham fires off a volcanic solo to end “Caution”), Erasure, Talking Heads. On paper, it’s a mess. Coming out of the speakers, it’s both ridiculous and impossibly catchy. “My Own Soul’s Warning,” “Blowback,” “Dying Breed,” “Lightning Fields,” “Fire and Bone” … These are big, bold hooks that rarely waste a note and form The Killers’ best album to date. Completely unoriginal, yet sounding like no one else these last 16 years, there’s still fuel left in The Killers’ hit machine.

2. Perfume Genius — Set My Heart on Fire Immediately

Another near-perfect album from Mike Hadreas, easily my favorite artist of the 2010s. Set My Heart on Fire Immediately vibrates with life, hopping from chamber pop to countrified grunge to menacing Depeche Mode-balladry, to dance-pop to Beatlesque flights of fancy. There’s apparently nothing Hadreas can’t do and do exceptionally well. That the stories and intimate moments in his lyrics are as wildly imagined and vividly rendered as the music almost goes without saying at this point. He’s a master. That he can make all these sounds, all these ideas and contradictions, fit together in a coherent statement is what sets him apart as a once-in-a-generation talent.

1. Fiona Apple — Fetch the Bolt Cutters

Eight years in the making inside her house — beating on walls and recording her dogs barking and clanging kitchenware together — Apple couldn’t have timed the release of her fifth album more perfectly. I remember wanting to spin around my living room the first time playing “I Want You To Love Me” (I finally got my chance after Bob left for work that morning). From the opening piano scales, it’s clear no one else writes, plays or performs like her. Genre-less, she directs her wordsmith attention to joy, frustration, betrayal, jealousy, encouragement, lust, love, courage, defiance. It’s all bracing and breakneck, but presented without pretense. She finally sounds at ease, flipping through experiences with the wisdom of age and distance. Then there’s her fearless, idiosyncratic, elastic voice. She can soothe, she can rile, she can tell you the truth in a whisper or a growl or a sly, half-lidded coo. Never content to be pretty when grit is required, Fetch the Bolt Cutters only deals in blunt truths. That’s what I craved most in 2020.