Springsteen returning with the E Street Band, Taylor Swift in indie folk format, Fiona Apple’s masterpiece, the rock of Strokes and Fontaines DC: the albums of the year according to Rolling Stone reporters.
And who expected such a year? Months without concerts, with big internationals reluctant to publish records not having the opportunity to promote them adequately, with great music replaced first by improvised online concerts, then by livestreams worth millions of euros.
In such a year there was a risk of a drastic reduction in record releases. But they have been 12 months full of music, with dozens of interesting releases. There hasn’t been a hegemonic phenomenon and that’s okay. It was a year of variety. Once upon a time we listened to music while remaining within a perimeter delimited by a style, a fashion, a tribe. Today he freely ranges mixing tradition and innovation, indie and majors, old songs and new sounds.
How do you tell a year like this? We asked our collaborators to indicate the discs that according to their judgment marked 2020 (at the bottom of the article you will find the names of those who voted). Not only the favorites, but also the most relevant ones, the most influential on popular culture, the impactful ones, the best in terms of production, writing and arrangements, the most innovative within the pop canon. We added up the preferences and got the ranking of the international albums of the year.
“Gigaton” Pearl Jam
The synth revolution announced by Dance of the Clairvoyants has not come to fruition, but Gigaton’s most reassuring sounds have not taken much away from what is probably the best Pearl Jam work of the new millennium. A cauldron in which they put all their souls held together by a consistency and activism that have made school. Without giving the sensation of proceeding by inertia. Thinking that Pearl Jam are the last true survivors of the Seattle sound can be sad, but having them still by our side in such a moment makes us feel less alone. Here the account of the sessions given by producer Josh Evans.
“Inner Song” Kelly Lee Owens
Expectations have been met: after the acclaimed debut in 2017, Kelly Lee Owens is back with Inner Song, an album that opens with an instrumental cover by Radiohead and that manages to catapult the listener into ethereal, at times surprising, sonic territories. Pop and techno mix, merge and take us into the dreamy dimension of Owens, where her voice is finally heard loud and clear. Not only his, there is also that of John Cale in that little gem of Corner of My Sky. The interview.
“Punisher” Phoebe Bridgers
2020 was also the year of Phoebe Bridgers. Introspective singer-songwriter, self-deprecating and irreverent pop star (follow her on social networks), talent admired by Conor Oberst and even by Lars Ulrich. Punisher is his second album. Apparently it seems more of the same as the debut, but behind the emo folk arrangements there are more studied melodies, surreal lyrics, a sharper writing, unexpected instruments (the optigan, the celesta, the hang) and at least two really songs grandiose: the introspective Garden Song and the rhythmic and nostalgic Kyoto, set in an imaginary version of the Japanese city where there are still telephone boxes.
“Women in Music Pt. III” Haim
It is Henry Solomon, but one imagines that the sax that opens the third album of the Haim sisters is played by Lisa Simpson. If she weren’t so rigid, the little girl would be a perfect fourth member for this group that combines playfulness and technical efficiency, echoes of funk and West Coast sound, gravity and foolishness, tradition and progressivism. Especially in this record born from even painful experiences (they tell them here ), yet light, melodious, frankly a bit long, but full of humble instrumental parts and the right references for thirty-year-olds who take up instruments in 2020. The sisters posed for Rolling Stone pulling down his pants and showing the motto “Women make the best rock music” written on his underwear. Not true, but it gives the idea.
“Sawayama” Rina Sawayama
Every song by Rina Sawayama sounds like the music you would hear at an unbearably cool, but still hilarious party. For some it resembles a first Lady Gaga, for others it just sounds like the record of a person who listened to Aaliyah, Britney Spears ‘ Blackout,’ NSync, Evanescence and even Korn. Said like this it can be scary, right. Instead Sawayama dives head first into the early 2000s to make them more personal than ever. And keep us entertained.
“græ” Moses Sumney
Græ is a record about isolation before isolation, it’s the future of soul, it’s a hymn to the right to be many different things in a world obsessed with definitions. It is also the breakthrough record for Moses Sumney, a brilliant author with a great voice and inexhaustible curiosity (he told us about it here ). Inside is Motown, the ambient, the past of American black music and at the same time its future, stories of astronauts and children crying in the night, reflections on what is the masculinity or identity of men and women of color. In addition, there are the collaborations of Daniel Lopatin, Thundercat, Shabaka Hutchings and James Blake.
“After Hours” The Weeknd
In 2021 The Weeknd will be on the one hand a great protagonist (the Super Bowl half-time show is assigned to him), on the other a great excluded (inexplicably, he has not received any Grammy Award nominations for this album of his). A dualism that perfectly reflects the content of After Hours, at times unsettling with its dark veins and its continuous references to the 80s. Above all, a work that is difficult to digest in hectic years like the last, in which the average life of a record is often very short due to market saturation: this is a work that must be listened to several times to be assimilated. Perhaps we will understand it better in 2022.