The 100 Best Songs of 2020
Whether your year was more “people, I’ve been sad,” “certified freak, seven days a week,” or “fetch the bolt cutters,” the best songs of 2020 provided a brief escape from the turmoil outside our windows. They offered a comforting shoulder to cry on, a lit match to long-simmering rage, and a temporary substitute for the dancefloors and mosh pits the pandemic stole from us. Until the day we get to gather again in sweaty clubs, packed basements, and sold-out arenas, we’ll keep turning to these 100 tracks to soundtrack our lives.
Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2020 wrap-up coverage here.
Domino
Ela Minus: “dominique”
After years of playing in emo bands and releasing candy-coated electropop, Ela Minus splits the difference on “dominique.” The standout from her debut LP, acts of rebellion, is a depressive ode to sleeping all day and never leaving the house set to bright, buoyant melodies. Even as she teeters on the edge of the abyss, wasting away with coffee and liquor as her only companions, she finds humor in the downward spiral: “I should probably eat something that’s not liquid,” she deadpans. Recorded more than a year before much of humanity was sheltering in place, its themes of isolation and delirium feel prescient, offering a view from indoors that, for many, will look like a reflection. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz
Listen: Ela Minus, “dominique”
2MR
Pale Blue: “I Walk Alone With Acid”
The jarring dissonance between a four-on-the-floor acid-house beat and the burden of having a body makes electronic duo Pale Blue’s “I Walk Alone With Acid” more incisive than your average dance banger. “Is my body mine?/Is my fear real?” Elizabeth Wight asks breathily over Mike Simonetti’s propulsive beats, checking her glass before she sips, remembering that her keys can be a weapon in the dark. It’s a song for girls, gays, and theys leaving the club with a can of pepper spray and a prayer: an ominous reminder of the dangers of the walk home, a sonic shot of cortisol. –Linnie Greene
Listen: Pale Blue, “I Walk Alone With Acid”
Young Turks
1010 Benja SL: “Dobby”
There’s power in the intimacy of this song, in the scrape of the acoustic guitar’s strings and the finger snaps that guide its rhythm. Listening to “Dobby,” it feels like you’re right there in the room where singer-songwriter Benjamin Lyman is expressing his gratitude for the woman he loves in pure, unflinching language. The song is primarily a showcase for Lyman’s voice, and he fills its empty space with thrilling, wordless runs and tremulous melodies. He circles around the adoring chorus, using it as both a placeholder and a mantra: “She really loved me and she really gave it to me…” The air around him crackles with the joy of creation. When the song ends and the spell breaks, you can’t help but see your own loved ones with his wide-eyed wonder. –Jamieson Cox
Listen: 1010 Benja SL, “Dobby”
Whatever’s Clever
Caitlin Pasko: “Horrible Person”
Sometimes, trying to find a path forward after someone’s depleted you can feel like building a house of cards with a wet deck. On “Horrible Person,” the standout track from Brooklyn experimental musician Caitlin Pasko’s Greenhouse, you can hear the tension of someone painstakingly putting their life back together. “You… know… you… are… a... horrible... person,” she sings, as though she’s deliberately placing another soggy card down. Synths briefly wail alongside her, suggesting an undercurrent of rage. “Please stop texting me on... my... birthday,” she calmly requests, offering a glimpse into this person’s specific but universal kind of horrible. The song ends with a crunching loop of distortion, sonic rubble from which to once again become whole. –Emma Madden
Listen: Caitlin Pasko, “Horrible Person”
Warp
Jockstrap: “Acid”
Jockstrap spent their conservatory studies molding pop and its pleasantries like haunted Silly Putty. With “Acid,” their debut single for Warp, the London duo angle their funhouse mirror at the sort of contemporary chanson-pop that soundtracks indie rom-coms and Francophile café culture. Beneath the lackadaisical surface, however, is a distinct lack of joie de vivre. Queasy electronics and sighs of “gas and blood and blood and blood” creep in on the subconscious level, disturbing the peace like dead pixels in lush cinematography. Whether portraying a complicated love or something more sinister, it’s an arresting vision of trouble in paradise. –Jazz Monroe
Listen: Jockstrap, “Acid”
DEEK
Bullion: “Hula”
The slow-motion electronic pop of Bullion’s “Hula” soundtracks a series of vacations, recounted as pleasantly fogged memories. The music is seductive, almost narcotic, with synth pads exhaling in long, overlapping layers. But something feels off. The instrumental break following an unexpected chord change lurches like a luxury liner in choppy water; melodic lines become queasily detuned. The London-based producer-songwriter is taciturn as a lyricist and a singer, but such off-center musical moments help to fill in the blanks, suggesting that holidays and hula dancing offered only partial reprieve from some looming anxiety. “Are people in pain where you are?” he wonders repeatedly, then thinks better of it: “I’ll ask you tomorrow.” –Andy Cush
Listen: Bullion, “Hula”
Island
The Killers: “Caution”
Like most of the Killers’ best songs, no one knows what “Caution” really means, but it gets the people going. Trying to make literal sense of why Brandon Flowers spends every verse sketching out a hard-luck heartbreaker with “Hollywood eyes” only to belt out on the chorus that he’s throwing caution to the wind is as futile as locating “South Detroit” on a map. Despite the blatant A Deeper Understanding fanfic, the Killers aren’t trying to copy the War on Drugs on “Caution” so much as paying the same kind of homage to them as Journey once did to Bruce Springsteen. Because there’s a time to lend quiet dignity to all the “black top white trash” and “featherweight queens,” and a time when they just want to burn brighter than the Las Vegas skyline. –Ian Cohen
Listen: The Killers, “Caution”
South Coast / Interscope
DaBaby: “Rockstar” [ft. Roddy Ricch]
In 2019, Charlotte rapper DaBaby bull-charged rap with 100 frenetic variations on a single song, like a jabbering, grinning, dumb-punchline-dispensing perpetual motion machine. His yearlong blitzkrieg campaign garnered him a No. 1 album, a billion streams on Spotify, and a persistent reputation as a one-note artist. There are entire memes devoted to this idea; DaBaby spoofed it himself in the video for his Lil Yachty and Drake collaboration “Oprah’s Bank Account.” In 2020, DaBaby showed that he wasn’t just unstoppable; he was flexible. Yes, when he opens his mouth it still feels like being trampled by clowns. But on his hit “Rockstar,” he also showed that his brand of bottled energy could pop off with pretty much any soundtrack, including the kind of winsome faux-flamenco guitar over which Young Thug might explore his soulful side. –Jayson Greene
Listen: DaBaby, “Rockstar” [ft. Roddy Ricch]
Double Double Whammy
Lomelda: “Hannah Sun”
Lomelda’s Hannah Read reckons with physical and emotional distance on “Hannah Sun.” She begins with a transatlantic separation, then zooms in progressively, first to a hometown phone call, then a close embrace. The music builds excitedly behind her, with flashes of synth joining the jittery acoustic guitar pulse. “Glad you held me, too/Though I didn’t know how to be closer to you,” Read admits at the climax, holding the last word for 20 aching seconds, an entire lungful of “you.” In an era of isolation, the song is a reminder of the simple warmth of being near. –Will Miller
Listen: Lomelda, “Hannah Sun”
XL
Yaeji: “WAKING UP DOWN”
In the flattened cycle of life in pandemic times, even the most mundane things can feel like arduous tasks. Yaeji released her glassy-eyed marvel “WAKING UP DOWN” just before the new normal set in, and it epitomizes the art of surviving an anxious existence by simply conquering the everyday. Over a tick-tock electro beat, the bleary synth production grows in intensity as hard-panned stereo effects become more disorienting. In English, she intones a little mantra about how well she’s coping—waking up, hydrating, cooking, and listening are among her accomplishments—as if warding off insecurity. Then, in Korean, she coos an important caveat: having it together is a war of attrition. –Sheldon Pearce
Listen: Yaeji, “WAKING UP DOWN”
Room40
Beatriz Ferreyra: “Echos”
Argentine composer Beatriz Ferreyra is renowned for the disorienting spatiality and shape-shifting abstraction of her electronic and tape-based work, but it’s the human scale and raw intimacy of “Echos” that startle. Recorded in 1978 but released for the first time this year, the piece is woven entirely from the voice of Ferreyra’s niece Mercedes Cornu, who died in a car accident prior to its composition. In places, the young woman’s voice flickers and trembles with playful delight, sounding impossibly alive. At other points, the melted murmurs and shimmered syllables feel soothing and psalm-like, as though the girl’s ghost is mourning herself. Listening to “Echos” is as poignant as stumbling upon a roadside shrine of flowers, candles, and photos, but Ferreyra goes beyond creating a memorial to Mercedes: She defies death itself and resurrects her niece as an aural apparition. Heard at any time in the four decades since its making, “Echos” would be touching. But in a year like this one, it breaks your heart. –Simon Reynolds
Listen: Beatriz Ferreyra, “Echos”
Dirty Hit
beabadoobee: “Care”
Beatrice Laus, aka beabadoobee, initially gained attention as a bedroom indie artist who dreams of Pavement and scored her first major success earlier this year playing the Dido to Canadian rapper Powfu’s Eminem on his sad-sack TikTok smash “death bed (coffee for your head).” But with “Care,” the lead single from her debut album Fake It Flowers, Laus makes a bid for stardom on her own terms. Striking the sweet spot between the folky yearning of Lisa Loeb and the bubble-grunge of Veruca Salt, “Care” is a readymade ’90s alt-rock anthem that sounds right at home in 2020—because, let’s face it: reality still bites. –Stuart Berman
Listen: beabadoobee, “Care”
Atlantic
Kehlani: “Hate the Club” [ft. Masego]
Kehlani turns temperamental nerves about her love life into measured cool on “Hate the Club.” The singer coos capriciously throughout: She stubbornly sits in the VIP alone to avoid her paramour before conjuring the courage to make amends. “Maybe if I drank enough/I’ll make my way over to ya,” she thinks out loud. The tension is eased by a slinky sax from future-soul artist Masego and then heightened by a polyphony of backup vocals that engulf the chorus with internal turmoil. The song climaxes with a confrontation, as the DJ shouts her out, blowing up her spot—“I still need you,” Kehlani pleads—though by the end it’s still unclear whether her dreaded trip out was worth the trouble. –Claire Lobenfeld
Listen: Kehlani, “Hate the Club” [ft. Masego]
Incienso
DJ Python: “ADMSDP” [ft. LA Warman]
Halfway through the gentle ebb of his album Mas Amable, DJ Python turns down a slipstream of inner consciousness. Poet LA Warman’s wary monologue sways over a faint backbeat suffused with the kind of dread usually found in haunted dubplates. Coming from Python, an ostensibly jolly club producer, “ADMSDP” might leave you grasping for your bearings. But then, what is a chill-out room if not a sensory deprivation tank with beanbags? The soft power of this 11-minute guided dissociation holds true of any therapeutic method: The more you give in to it, the more necessary it becomes. –Gabriel Szatan
Listen: DJ Python, “ADMSDP” [ft. LA Warman]
Interscope / Fiction
Tame Impala: “Breathe Deeper”
What makes Tame Impala mastermind Kevin Parker so compelling is how he melds the sounds of his favorite pop idols with a production style that updates arena rock for the age of microdosing. On “Breathe Deeper,” you can hear Mariah Carey in the syrupy verse, the Neptunes in every raw drum hit, early Daft Punk in the finale’s acid house groove, and yet there’s no mistaking this for anything but a Tame Impala song. Parker said it was inspired by his first experience with MDMA, which accounts for the rave outro and the blissful piano hooks that make it the danciest cut on this year’s The Slow Rush. But he also sneaks in the briefest of guitar interludes, once again relying on incidental audio spliced in from our real world—the flip of a tape deck switch, the click and hiss of a needle on a vinyl record—to better bring us into his own. –Noah Yoo
Listen: Tame Impala, “Breathe Deeper”
Classic
Cakes Da Killa / Proper Villains: “Don Dada”
The best part of the video for “Don Dada”—a cocky, bouncy, sexy slice of hip-house courtesy of New York rapper Cakes Da Killa and producer Proper Villains—is when Cakes, in an ice-white tennis skirt, steals the focus from a leonine model by shaking his ass in triple-time. He’s always been less concerned with genre confines than with rapping over anything that ensures that he’s the main character, and this Paris Is Burning credits-worthy, vogue-ready burner feels like a final, ascendant role by several orders of magnitude. Hearing a track this haute and juicy in 2020 is borderline rude for how much it makes us miss the rush of nightlife, but Cakes has never really been polite about his spotlight. –Mina Tavakoli
Listen: Cakes Da Killa / Proper Villains, “Don Dada”
Atlantic/Sugar Trap
Rico Nasty: “IPHONE”
The first single off of Rico Nasty’s raucous album Nightmare Vacation considers the peaks and valleys of romantic love as analogous to our unhealthy relationships with our phones. Peppered with references to early aughts technological obsessions (“He on my hip like a Tamagotchi/Leave a heart on my wall so I can know you like me”), the track offers nostalgia wrapped up in the saccharine chimes and futurist hyperpop of 100 gecs mastermind Dylan Brady’s production. In the track’s most tender moments, the maxed-out vocal effects are toned down to center Rico’s melodic pleas for affection, capturing the unique angst of chasing love behind a screen. –Jessica Kariisa
Listen: Rico Nasty, “IPHONE”
Kranky
Ana Roxanne: “Suite pour l’invisible”
Ana Roxanne makes even silence sound vivid. A former student of Mills College’s acclaimed experimental-music program and current member of the Kranky Records roster, which includes the likes of Grouper and Tim Hecker, Roxanne draws inspiration from classical Hindustani singing and sacred choral music in her ambient soundscapes. “Suite pour l’invisible,” from Roxanne’s second album, Because of a Flower, maps self-knowledge onto a soothing drone and keys that twinkle like bokeh. “I hold your joy/I hold your pain,” she sings over heavenly synth tones. It’s the sound of the self turned into an atmosphere. –Emma Madden
Listen: Ana Roxanne, “Suite pour l’invisible”
Adult Swim
Moor Mother / billy woods: “Furies”
Restless experimentalist Moor Mother couples her searing spoken-word delivery with New York rapper billy woods’ oblique rhymes to mesmerizing effect on this one-off collaborative single. The duo’s rapport is even-footed and intimate over flutes and knocking hand drums. Where Moor Mother speaks to battling inner and outer demons, her intoning voice echoing and relentless, woods is an ideal foil, adding drifting verses that lead to a needling concern: “What did I want?” The artful “Furies” leads listeners along its own orbit, with no easy answers to its cryptic questions. –Eric Torres
Listen: Moor Mother / billy woods, “Furies”
Transgressive
Beverly Glenn-Copeland: “River Dreams”
On the deeply spiritual “River Dreams,” a new song included on Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s career-spanning 2020 compilation Transmissions, the pioneering experimental musician sings rich and soft invocations that encourage reflection, accompanied by circular piano melodies and synthetic orchestral chords. The meditative track speaks to finding fulfillment out of what little you have around you, learning to tune into the universe when it speaks, and grounding yourself in small moments of serenity—necessary reminders amid a year of unprecedented turmoil. –Jemima Skala
Listen: Beverly Glenn-Copeland, “River Dreams”
Top Dawg / RCA
SZA: “Hit Different” [ft. Ty Dolla $ign]
SZA has an unparalleled ability to draw out the most intoxicating parts of an unhealthy relationship and turn them into an intoxicating song. “Hit Different” is misted with heady sluggishness, dragging drums, and Ty Dolla $ign’s honeyed voice, soft with the truth of a late-night realization. But SZA is buoyant as she sings about her inconsistent love. He’ll never prioritize her, but she presents her conflicting shame and pleasure openly. Getting carried away by languid harmonies and the open wound of SZA’s honesty, you start to wonder if there’s anything you’re hiding from yourself. –Ashley Bardhan
Listen: SZA, “Hit Different” [ft. Ty Dolla $ign]
RVNG INTL.
Kate NV: “Sayonara”
Outwardly, Kate NV’s “Sayonara” is an ebullient hybrid of Japanese city pop and early-’80s avant disco; each element is daubed on in bold splotches of color, and its empty space suggests voluminous proportions. But there’s also something lonely and maybe even a little spooky about the song, which the Moscow musician says was written during a difficult time. In a high, breathy voice wreathed in delay, she sings short, repeated phrases mostly in Russian: “Yes, yes, yes/No, no, no/Sayonara, goodbye.” Affirmation, negation, disappearance. Entering the world of this song is like walking into an opulent room where a party has just concluded, as the host’s farewell fades down the hallway. –Philip Sherburne
Listen: Kate NV, “Sayonara”
Self-released
Drakeo the Ruler: “Backflip or Sumn”
Drakeo the Ruler has long been unfazeable, but on his latest LP, Thank You for Using GTL, recorded on a payphone from the Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles County, ice water flows through his veins. Staring down trumped-up conspiracy charges in which his music was on trial as much as his actions, Drakeo oozes with swagger over a moody JoogSZN beat on “Backflip or Sumn.” He casually drops threats and flexes on the case he eventually did manage to beat, all the while stressing how unimpressed he is by it all. That he would cut a record full of the same kind of lyrics being used against him in a sham court proceeding is more than just chutzpah. It’s evidence that he remains unfazed—by the county sheriff, by the prosecutor, and by that giant bag of money at the strip club. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz
Listen: Drakeo the Ruler, “Backflip or Sumn”
ANTI-
Fleet Foxes: “Sunblind”
On “Sunblind,” Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold proudly partakes in the age-old tradition of memorializing one’s heroes in song. He invokes late greats like Richard Swift, Judee Sill, and Elliott Smith, wrapping their works around him like a security blanket. “I’m gonna swim for a week in warm American Water with dear friends,” he proclaims, playfully nodding to Silver Jews’ David Berman, who passed away last year after decades of tortured brilliance. Even though “Sunblind” is an ode to the departed, it never succumbs to melancholy. Instead, it serves as a celebration of music as a source of solace and rejuvenation, and an exhilarating reminder of its profound potential. –Quinn Moreland
Listen: Fleet Foxes, “Sunblind”
ICY / Artistry / Warner
Saweetie: “Tap In”
Saweetie builds contemporary hits out of ’00s hip-hop anthems, consistently inverting their masculine attitudes to make them her own. “Tap In” twists West Coast legend Too $hort’s “Blow the Whistle” into a mnemonic device for bagging a man with big money, and her tone is matter-of-fact, like she’s the smartest student of the game in your study group. After the California rapper caught flack for her overt materialism this year, she clarified that she demands riches of men more symbolically than literally. So even if you’ll never meet a dude earning eight figures, “Tap In” is an energizing lesson in assessing your worth and asserting your standards. –Mankaprr Conteh
Listen: Saweetie, “Tap In”
Warp
Oneohtrix Point Never: “Long Road Home”
Experiencing Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Long Road Home,” with its soft-rock swirl enveloping Caroline Polachek’s mystical vocals, is like immersing yourself in a supernatural coming-of-age road-trip movie. It feels like looking up at the stars on the way back home when you’re 16 and missing your friends; Peter Gabriel is on the radio and the new issue of Heavy Metal awaits you in your bedroom. (Judging from the sound of the production, it’s 1983 via 2083.) A torch song from Mars, “Long Road Home” is OPN with his romance meter at full gauge: romance of the very far away, romance of a car at night with a long way to go, romance of reuniting after isolation. –Leah Mandel
Listen: Oneohtrix Point Never, “Long Road Home”
Adult Swim
Helado Negro: “I Fell in Love” [ft. Xenia Rubinos]
While Helado Negro’s Roberto Carlos Lange has been exploring experimental sounds and textures for more than a decade, his more recent work adopts more pleasant frequencies in service of space-age lullabies and healing spells. “I Fell in Love,” a one-off single featuring the eclectic Brooklyn singer-songwriter Xenia Rubinos, is likely the most direct song either artist has ever made. Yet there’s power in this simplicity—it eliminates any obstacles that might stand in the way of the song’s sentiment, becoming an aural manifestation of love itself. Lange’s soothing voice turns hypnotic when drenched in reverb, and Rubinos returns the energy in kind, beaming lights into the dark. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz
Listen: Helado Negro, “I Fell in Love” [ft. Xenia Rubinos]
XL
Standing on the Corner: “Angel”
Standing on the Corner have a way of capturing the wooziness of love. In its tenderest moments, the experimental jazz-indebted ensemble slows things down in order to disorient and emotionally disarm—the sonic equivalent of watching the world melt as your darling walks away upside-down and backward on the ceiling. “Angel” is another lovesick moment, resembling the group’s doleful rendition of the jazz standard “Body and Soul.” The melody is sumptuous, somewhere between carnal and spiritual, with bursts of distortion or horns punctuating the wobbling beat. “Angel” is sad but happy, alluring yet absurd, expressing the simple things we struggle to define. –Matthew Strauss
Listen: Standing on the Corner, “Angel”
Columbia
Koffee: “Lockdown”
Koffee’s summertime anthem opens with a question that most people have probably asked themselves at some point in 2020: Where will we go after this whole “quarantine ting” is over? On “Lockdown,” reggae’s youngest Grammy winner sings of spirited plans to drive around and travel, but she also reveals there’s something else—someone, actually—to this dream of an island adventure. “Me ah go put you pon lockdown,” Koffee insists, the clever wordplay spelling out a shamelessly jubilant love story in the age of ’rona. –Jenzia Burgos
Listen: Koffee, “Lockdown”
Republic
Taylor Swift: “mirrorball”
On a different Taylor Swift album, “mirrorball” might have been the shining pop centerpiece. The songwriting is airborne and graceful, using lyrics about hushed conversations, burning discos, and “shimmering beautiful” visions as melodic cues. But instead of aiming for the sugar rush of Swift’s early work or the arena grandeur of 1989, it stands as one of folklore’s subtlest moments. The atmosphere is intimate and understated, as if we’re hearing her thoughts before she has time to process them. “I’ve never been a natural,” she sings over dreamy electric guitars and a lapping drumbeat that sounds buried under several layers of comforters. She seems lost in the moment, like she has no one to please but herself. –Sam Sodomsky
Listen: Taylor Swift, “mirrorball”
ESGN / ALC / EMPIRE
Freddie Gibbs / The Alchemist: “Scottie Beam” [ft. Rick Ross]
Alchemist’s flickering piano keys are ideal for spilling loose ruminations. Freddie Gibbs floods the screen with drama—a police traffic stop that risks turning violent; warning cops about his personal arsenal—but when he repeats, “The revolution is the genocide/Look, your execution will be televised,” it feels like the perfect flip of Gil Scott-Heron’s message for an era when footage of Black death floods the news. Then Rick Ross rides in to drop his best guest spot since “Devil in a New Dress” and the message of “Scottie Beam” from the two veteran rappers couldn’t be clearer: they’re still getting better. –Dean Van Nguyen
Listen: Freddie Gibbs / The Alchemist, “Scottie Beam” [ft. Rick Ross]
Atlantic
Roddy Ricch: “The Box”
There’s something infinitely charming about the first 15 seconds of Roddy Rich’s chart-topper “The Box,” before the song’s hi-hats, reverse 808s, and run of inescapable melodies even get going. At the beginning, it’s just Roddy, screeching “eeech urh” into the mic, like a toddler exploring vowel sounds for the first time. It’s ludicrous. But it works, locking listeners into one of the most curiously infectious hits of the year. –Jonah Bromwich
Listen: Roddy Ricch, “The Box”
Nonesuch
Lianne La Havas: “Bittersweet”
British singer-songwriter Lianne La Havas would be forgiven for simply coasting on her rich voice and its impossibly slow vibrato. Instead, she’s spent three albums piecing together her own painfully intimate take on neo-soul. “Bittersweet,” the opener of her eponymous third LP, envelopes La Havas’ heart-wrenching ache with production that’s as warm and inviting as a crackling bonfire. The pathos of its most powerful lyric—“No more hangin’ around”—is fitting for the way our most intense feelings are sometimes shrouded in casual language; the things that sound trivial when we say them are made concrete by La Havas’ startling performance. –Natalie Weiner
Listen: Lianne La Havas, “Bittersweet”
XL
Arca: “Mequetrefe”
Arca’s music has always challenged listeners to free themselves from the constructs of pop, embrace bedlam, and find melodies in the noise. While her earlier releases were sometimes marked by nearly impenetrable abstractions, KiCK i feels just accessible enough to draw listeners into its maelstrom of chaos. Few tracks exemplify this duality as well as “Mequetrefe,” an ode to self-expression sans shame. Losing none of the aggression and confrontation that make her records so arresting, “Mequetrefe” is buoyed by a sweet and tender string melody that’s at odds with its twitchy surroundings but at peace with itself. –Matthew Ismael Ruiz
Listen: Arca, “Mequetrefe”
Jagjaguwar
Angel Olsen: “Whole New Mess”
The title track to Angel Olsen’s stripped-back 2020 album is one of her most haunting songs in a catalog full of them. Thick with reverb, Olsen’s flinty vibrato sounds worn-down and raw, as the fraught strums behind her recall the spartan folk music of her early records. Her spare sound palette is in service of an insatiate self-analysis on fame, addiction, and feeling unrooted in life. Olsen’s elegiac melody gives weight to her words, offering a troubled tribute to maintaining your sanity when everything else seems to be falling apart. –Eric Torres
Listen: Angel Olsen, “Whole New Mess”
Jewel Runners / BMG
Run the Jewels: “JU$T” [ft. Pharrell Williams and Zach De La Rocha]
Like any superhero team-up or buddy comedy, the formula for an RTJ song is carved in stone by now: Killer Mike the swaggering priest and El-P sardonic philosopher, threatening R-rated violence and revolutionary action over sounds rescued from hip-hop’s golden era and retrofitted for pre-pandemic festival stages. As with all must-see serialized dramas, the guest stars are just as impressive as the main cast. Enter Pharrell, reciting a mantra about the circular clutches of modern capitalism in the laconic tone he once used to brag about his Gandalf hat; enter Zack de la Rocha, erstwhile Rage Against the Machine frontman, incendiary and conspiratorial about wanting to rip those systems apart. El-P’s production reins in his usual glitchy energy of a in favor of near-military restraint as he memorializes Eric Garner, and Killer Mike casually advocates for the murder of our corporate overlords. Take direction at your own risk, but nobody can doubt their commitment. –Jeremy Gordon
Listen: Run the Jewels, “JU$T” [ft. Pharrell Williams and Zach De La Rocha]
Hyperdub
Jessy Lanza: “Lick in Heaven”
Rage can be a powerful force for good when focused, but taming it is often difficult. This tricky dance between intensity and chaos plays out on Jessy Lanza’s “Lick in Heaven”: The bounce of the bass synth and Lanza’s angelic voice are red herrings for the song’s angry underpinnings. On one level, the song is about letting loose with the feelings you keep pent up inside. On another, it’s about catching yourself in the throes of your worst moments, taking a step back, and reclaiming control of your life. –Noah Yoo
Listen: Jessy Lanza, “Lick in Heaven”
Iron Works
Ka: “I Love (Mimi, Moms, Kev)”
Ka’s Descendants of Cain paints a bleak picture of the Brownsville rapper’s hood, where street justice and biblical judgement go hand in hand. The album’s first 10 songs are a litany of bullets, scars, and endless striving, but the mood shifts with the closing “I Love (Mimi, Moms, Kev),” a tribute to his wife, mother, and late friend. In contrast to the album’s eerily stark beats, “I Love” blossoms unexpectedly. “Now death is minor, ’cause you got me livin’ life major,” he tells his wife, the key change mirroring his outlook. He marvels that his mother “showed me love when all I seen was hate.” His typically labyrinthine verses straighten out, as though the page itself had become unburdened. Capping an album that lingers hauntingly on his past, “I Love” is a tribute to the very streets that shaped him: “Everybody called it the slums, but we know it as home.” –Philip Sherburne
Listen: Ka, “I Love (Mimi, Moms, Kev)”
Drag City
Bill Callahan: “The Mackenzies”
“The Mackenzies” begins inauspiciously, with a broken-down car and some unsolicited advice from a neighbor. From there, the turns it takes are so quietly strange, and strangely moving, that any further discussion of its lyrics might require a spoiler alert. Against a spare acoustic guitar backdrop, in his own increasingly fatherly baritone, Bill Callahan tells a faintly supernatural story of parents and children, life and death, and the profound closeness and distance that can coexist between people. The song’s final scene—forgive the spoiler—is indelible: A man drifts off to sleep while two elder strangers stand in the doorway. “It’s okay, son,” they tell him. “We’re okay.” –Andy Cush
Listen: Bill Callahan, “The Mackenzies”
Roc Nation
Jay Electronica: “The Neverending Story”
A decade ago, the New Orleans native Jay Electronica enchanted with a series of cryptic dispatches, then vanished in a cloud of smoke and British tabloids. This year saw the release of not only his long-lost debut—precipitated by a targeted leak—but also a replacement record, a restart of sorts, which paired him with Jay-Z. The latter, A Written Testimony, often grapples with the pressure that drove Electronica from the spotlight. But on “The Neverending Story,” he raps over Alchemist’s pensive Litto Nebbia loop about the wonder he still sees in the world—a motorcycle ride to the desert, the gold teeth that make his smile shine like a Frankie Beverly song. –Paul A. Thompson
Listen: Jay Electronica, “The Neverending Story”
Columbia
The Chicks: “Gaslighter”
The Chicks dropped “Gaslighter”—the title track of their first album in 14 years—on March 4, shortly before 2020 went all the way up in flames. Its belt-along chorus and Natalie Maines’ post-divorce barbs make the song immediately satisfying, a dose of the band’s familiar blistering humor served with an assurance that they were ready for the current moment after so much time away. Maines’ admissions of vulnerability only further root her battle cries in her humanity, speaking to a righteous channel of rage, sorrow, and bewilderment at the hurt of a relationship gone to hell. The salve of “Gaslighter” is easy to apply to almost any wound, whether or not it involves a now-ex-husband misbehaving on a boat. –Allison Hussey
Listen: The Chicks, “Gaslighter”
Atlantic
Charli XCX: “forever”
Written and recorded in self-isolation at home in Los Angeles—under the pressure of a self-imposed May deadline—Charli XCX’s how i’m feeling now already feels like a relic of another time. The album’s lead single, the soaring, heartfelt “forever,” captured the early-quarantine mood perfectly: vulnerable and sincere, the song finds Charli bearing her emotions with stunning clarity and candor. “I’ll love you forever,” she swears, over a rush of radiant synths, “even when we’re not together.” It’s a moving testament to a romance that right now means everything—even if it ultimately fades away. –Calum Marsh
Listen: Charli XCX, “forever”
Rimas
Bad Bunny: “Yo Perreo Sola”
Perreo, as a genre, dance, and movement, has always been about power. And with “Yo Perreo Sola,” Bad Bunny offers a consent-driven treatise centering a woman’s independence on the dancefloor. The video even features the superstar donning the chains, latex, and thigh-high boots of the song’s narrator, as he exhibits a genuine desire to play with gender expression in a genre often catered to the male gaze. But “Yo Perreo Sola” also repeated reggaetón’s long-standing pattern of relegating female vocalists to anonymity; Puerto Rican rapper Nesi, who delivers its chorus with a passionate drawl, was uncredited upon the song’s release. The oversight was later rectified with a remix featuring her (this time with a credit) alongside pioneer Ivy Queen—whose legendary “Quiero Bailar” set the terms for this track—providing vindication for the caballotas who just want to dance in peace. –Stefanie Fernández
Listen: Bad Bunny, “Yo Perreo Sola”
Atlantic
Burna Boy: “Onyeka (Baby)”
No man is a whole movement. But Burna Boy—who put out an album ambitiously titled African Giant last year, then doubled down on his promise with 2020’s Twice as Tall—has made his career by convincingly begging to differ. “Onyeka (Baby)” is an indestructibly sweet, sunny moment amid a colossal album of dancehall, Afrobeats, and pop, another of Burna’s Sisyphean efforts to compress the breadth of pan-Africanism into his person. Not since Fela Kuti has one artist blended the contradictions, agonies, and triumphs of the continent with so much muscle. –Mina Tavakoli
Listen: Burna Boy, “Onyeka (Baby)”
Quality Control
City Girls: “Pussy Talk” [ft. Doja Cat]
Yung Miami and JT of City Girls are grade-A, gold-standard shit talkers. It’s what makes their music so fun to listen to, and on “Pussy Talk” they’re at their best, enlisting Doja Cat in a rundown of all the things their pussies want, can or can’t do, will or won’t tolerate. When considered as part of a pussy-exalting trilogy, with Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” and Meg’s “Don’t Stop” as the grand finale, “Pussy Talk” gets even better. In 2016, the 45th president all but ruined the word, but now with the end of his reign, pussy can spend the rest of the 2020s reclaiming its identity. According to City Girls, it is multitalented, multilingual (“English, Spanish, and French”), rich, demanding, and in complete control. –Allison P. Davis
Listen: City Girls, “Pussy Talk” [ft. Doja Cat]
Secretly Canadian
Porridge Radio: “Sweet”
“Sweet” is a character study of a woman on the edge of mania. Porridge Radio frontwoman Dana Margolin sings as if her insides are aflame, delivering lines with nearly feral bravado. As her narrator bites her fingernails and fends off a mother’s backhanded expressions of concern, the song oscillates between nervous, flayed post-punk and outbursts of metallic distortion. The music illustrates the Sisyphean task of feeling better: Each time it reaches some measure of calm, the noise comes roaring back. –Sophie Kemp
Listen: Porridge Radio, “Sweet”
Merge / Dead Oceans
Destroyer: “Cue Synthesizer”
Like so many Destroyer songs before it, “Cue Synthesizer” is a grim view of a dilapidated world, led by a tour guide who can hardly stomach the sight. “Been to America, been to Europe,” Dan Bejar sings distractedly. “It’s all the same shit.” To accompany the voyage, he commands a small band in his head—“Bring in the drums/Cue fake drums,” he sighs—but the actual accompaniment refuses to follow his orders. It’s all ghostly ambience, groovy slap bass, and serpentine, canned electric guitar solos. The result feels slightly apocalyptic, weirdly funny, and right on time. –Sam Sodomsky
Listen: Destroyer, “Cue Synthesizer”
The Lunch Crew Company
Bfb Da Packman: “Free Joe Exotic” [ft. Sada Baby]
There are few acceptable places to play “Free Joe Exotic” outside of your own headphones. On the jaw-dropping track, Flint, Michigan-raised Bfb Da Packman raps about how he would rather hurl himself from a bridge than wear a condom, twists the Sour Patch Kids slogan into a pun about oral sex, and accuses a girl of telling a tall tale about the size of his junk: “She said she can feel it in her stomach, stop capping/Ol’ lyin’ ass bitch, my dick ain’t that big.” And all that’s in just the first verse. Not even in Michigan, the current rap capital of darkly funny shit talking, will you find anyone thinking more unholy thoughts than Packman. –Alphonse Pierre
Listen: Bfb Da Packman, “Free Joe Exotic” [ft. Sada Baby]
ATO
Nick Hakim: “QADIR”
Nick Hakim’s tribute to a deceased childhood friend shines in the details. Steady yet anxious congas, a gentle flute, and bright keys meld into an affectingly soulful plea for a kinder world. Like passing through a space inhabited by the spirits of lost loved ones, “QADIR” is both comforting and unsettling. As the track swells to symphonic levels, Hakim’s dusty timbre staggers to a halt and gives way to a haunting 10-person chorus, surrendering to a feeling that can no longer be expressed by words. Much like a life, “QADIR” reverberates long after it ends. –Jessica Kariisa
Listen: Nick Hakim, “QADIR”
Columbia
Haim: “I Know Alone”
“I Know Alone” may have been written before the pandemic, but its reflections on solitude hit especially hard in a year when pretty much everyone was forced to live life as a glorified hermit. The song is a groggy anthem for those days when counting the spots on your ceiling can feel like too much work. “Nights turn into days, that turn to gray, keep turning over,” Danielle Haim sings with quiet desperation. The moody bassline delivers a melody to curl up in and brood, while the uptempo beat towards the end is a reminder that even loneliness ends. –Dayna Evans
Listen: Haim, “I Know Alone”
Smalltown Supersound
Kelly Lee Owens: “Melt!”
“Melt!” might tap into the space-age magic of early techno classics like Cybotron’s “Clear,” but instead of using ascending synth notes to reach toward the heavens, London producer Kelly Lee Owens focuses on anchoring you to Earth with sternum-cracking bass. The unrelenting drums are a perfect match for the field recordings of glacial melt that Owens sprinkles in for ambience and texture, her shuffling hi-hats pinging across the tundra. This is club music sequenced with computers and hardware, but “Melt!” is resolutely human at its core—a frenzied celebration of our planet that also warns of its impending demise. –Noah Yoo
Listen: Kelly Lee Owens, “Melt!”
Warner
Dua Lipa: “Physical”
Dua Lipa’s “Physical” is pure adrenaline: a stand-up-the-second-you-hear-it masterpiece of power pop that can transform a dancefloor into something feral, or at least help you eke out one last push-up. Sweaty and cathartic, it’s the high-water mark of Lipa’s knockout second album, Future Nostalgia. “Physical” is just that, from the threatening, Eurythmics-adjacent synth line that anchors the beat, to Lipa’s soaring chorus, which pleads for human touch as much as it demands it. It’s the sound of a precocious pop star throwing off the restraints, cracking her knuckles, and stepping into the fray. –Jackson Howard
Listen: Dua Lipa, “Physical”
Brainfeeder
Thundercat: “Dragonball Durag”
Thundercat has Dragon Ball Z tattoos all over his body. He also wrote “Dragonball Durag,” a strange and glorious ball of fuzz that, like his best songs, threatens to flutter away at any moment. On the track, the L.A. virtuoso best known for his imaginative bass lines and staggering fretwork embarks on a quixotic quest to woo a love interest with his speckled headwear. The goal is out of sight, the means absurd. But the groove is so serious that it’s all gospel. –Mano Sundaresen
Listen: Thundercat, “Dragonball Durag”
Asthmatic Kitty
Sufjan Stevens: “The Ascension”
After eulogizing his late mother on 2015’s startlingly bare Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens is now grappling with the death of his own ego. The songwriter sounds like he’s taking himself to task on the title track from his eighth studio album, suggesting the hushed hopelessness and conflicted faith that propel so much of his work add up to little more than a performative mess. But he doesn’t do away with those trademarks on “The Ascension”; he uses them as a mirror for even deeper self-investigation. As a muted instrumental flutters in the background, recalling a hollowed-out version of his anthem “Chicago,” a choir of Sufjans repeatedly asks, “What now?” Against the odds, a swell of synths finally hints at something like salvation. –Ryan Dombal
Listen: Sufjan Stevens, “The Ascension”
G.O.O.D. Music / Def Jam
070 Shake: “Guilty Conscience”
070 Shake’s hypnotic voice makes hard things go down easier. In 2018, it was her verse on Kanye West’s “Ghost Town” that saved ye from complete, disaffected gloom. Now, on her debut LP, the GOOD Music/Def Jam recruit pours a spacey sheen over her own battles with substance abuse, heartbreak, and suicidal ideation to self-soothe, rather than self-destruct. And she does it best on “Guilty Conscience,” a big, ambient pop record that tells of a lover’s remorse after catching their partner cheating, only to reveal that they cheated first. With the sound of her vocals soaring over gauzy ’80s synths, even guilt gets its moment of grace. –Jenzia Burgos
Listen: 070 Shake, “Guilty Conscience”
ANTI-
Half Waif: “Ordinary Talk”
Half Waif’s Nandi Rose loves the process of working through her problems, but she’s never captured the bittersweet realities of what that means like she does on “Ordinary Talk.” Atop solemn synths and pulsing bass drum, she establishes guidelines for facing personal struggles: cry openly, laugh at TV, fold laundry, and, above all else, be prepared to do it alone. It’s a cold truth made warm in Rose’s hands, thanks to revitalizing choral harmonies that mirror the magic of self-affirmation with each swell. –Nina Corcoran
Listen: Half Waif, “Ordinary Talk”
Quality Control / UMG
Lil Baby / 42 Dugg: “We Paid”
With the touring industry stalled in 2020, it seemed like every rapper on Earth tried to make up for the loss with their very own digital deluxe reissue, padding out recent albums with extra tracks. For the most part, though, quality lacked. Only one artist made his album better with its deluxe edition: Lil Baby, who added a number of great songs to My Turn. None were greater than “We Paid,” his triumphant collaboration with protégé 42 Dugg. Baby plays the elder statesman on the quietly menacing track, rapping more ferociously than usual while letting Dugg take the lead. “We Paid” is smooth and confident: If you can’t hustle like you used to, Baby suggests, find new ways to flourish. –Matthew Strauss
Listen: Lil Baby / 42 Dugg, “We Paid”
Skint / BMG
Róisín Murphy: “Murphy’s Law”
Róisín Murphy’s glossy totem to the dancefloor is based on an adage that feels extremely appropriate given this year’s circumstances: anything that can go wrong will go wrong. But consequences be damned, there’s no hesitation when Murphy’s smoky voice sings about getting back on her feet. She’s said that this song is the story of her life, and while she’s right that things go wrong no matter what, the lyrics also pose a reasonable question for the rest of us: what have you got to lose? Take chances, live life, and dance as much as possible. –Evan Minsker
Listen: Róisín Murphy, “Murphy's Law”
Tan Cressida / Warner
Earl Sweatshirt: “WHOLE WORLD” [ft. Maxo]
Earl Sweatshirt and Maxo have both made their homes in the rain-blurred realm where raps feel like unspoken thoughts, where beats resemble humming machinery a block away—a world of smudged loops, two or three notes long, punctured by diaristic jottings that flash like lightning. “Devil hittin’ my peripherals,” Maxo mutters on “WHOLE WORLD,” over a three-minute heart-murmuring loop from Alchemist. Earl’s own flow is hesitant, probing for meaning in the cracks between sound and sense: “Anxious, moving at a pallbearer’s pace/My family flank me in the rain.” The two of them are standing completely still, speaking in code, letting the wind take their thoughts to whoever might hear them. –Jayson Greene
Listen: Earl Sweatshirt, “WHOLE WORLD” [ft. Maxo]
Triple Crown
Dogleg: “Kawasaki Backflip”
Dogleg honed the wild catharsis of “Kawasaki Backflip” across dozens of shows in bars and small rooms before it opened Melee, the Michigan emo wrecking crew’s debut album. In another year, its layered guitar work and massive drums would have prompted massive pits and reckless stage dives at outdoor music festivals. Instead, self-isolation became an oddly fitting context for frontman Alex Stoitsiadis’ screams about solitude, destruction, and an uncertain future. Hopefully, for Dogleg, that future involves kids doing literal backflips into much bigger crowds. –Evan Minsker
Listen: Dogleg, “Kawasaki Backflip”
’94 Sounds / RCA
Flo Milli: “Like That Bitch”
Flo Milli’s “Like That Bitch” is like a shot of bad bitch juice, a potent steroid for dealing with enemies, envy, and haters in general. Over three and a half breathless minutes, she shoots off rounds of snappy taunts and neck-breaking flexes; you can practically feel Flo Milli curling her lips and flipping her hair as she compares you to “a toilet with some lips.” The Alabama rapper serves up plates of deliciously petty barbs and flaunts four different flows, offering us a taste of her lifestyle of money-making and man-taking. All you can do is bask in the power of Flo Milli shit. –Isabelia Herrera
Listen: Flo Milli, “Like That Bitch”
Dead Oceans
Phoebe Bridgers: “I Know the End”
“I Know the End” packs an album’s worth of ideas into five minutes and 45 seconds. One moment the Punisher closer is a hushed acoustic ballad, the next it’s a swelling mid-tempo strummer, and then it explodes into an orchestral fanfare, and each section has its own emotional arc. It’s something like Phoebe Bridgers’ version of Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush,” in which fear and bombed-out desolation are buoyed by an undercurrent of defiance. She has a rare ability to connect the fragmented images passing by the window to what she feels inside: She shows us funnel clouds dropping from the sky, a slaughterhouse, and a shopping mall, and turns each into a signpost for her own confusion. As the song builds, despair is tempered by a burst of energy that hints at survival. When it finally detonates and a seeming cast of thousands join in to shout “The end is here!” we come to understand her apocalypse as one frightening and cathartic in equal measure. –Mark Richardson
Listen: Phoebe Bridgers, “I Know the End”
Dirty Hit
Rina Sawayama: “Bad Friend”
Pop music loves to memorialize doomed romances and terrible exes; the genre offers considerably less for failed friendships. But on “Bad Friend,” Rina Sawayama gives friend breakups their own ballad. She confronts her guilt for fading out of a friend’s life, chronicling the memories of intimacy—sweaty karaoke singalongs, summer nights in the city—and the quiet corrosion of falling out of touch. A sense of shame courses through the track, undercutting her excuses (“Don’t ask me where I’ve been/Been avoiding everything,” she admits) until a choir of voices swells up to join her in communal confession: “Put your hands up if you’re not good at this stuff.” The relief doesn’t come easy, but once it does, the song softens and shines. Sawayama’s catharsis demands interrogation and forgiveness. –Dani Blum
Listen: Rina Sawayama, “Bad Friend”
Verve
Blake Mills: “Vanishing Twin”
One of the year’s greatest, and most unusual, guitar solos arrives near the end of “Vanishing Twin,” when Blake Mills conjures a haunted rumble that echoes like a ghost that’s not quite ready to cross over. It serves as the grand finale to an especially intimate folk song, hinting at the virtuosic talent he often keeps behind the scenes. The California artist had a breakthrough year lending his touch to albums by Bob Dylan, Phoebe Bridgers, and Perfume Genius, but on his own record, Mutable Set, he explored an elegant quiet that’s entirely his own. He sings “Vanishing Twin” in a double-tracked whisper over a deceptively complex arrangement of fretless bass, plucked strings, and distant percussion. “Skin on skin,” he murmurs. “Soon you will know where I’ve been.” And then he reaches for the guitar and shows you where he’s going. –Sam Sodomsky
Listen: Blake Mills, “Vanishing Twin”
Memory Music
Bartees Strange: “Mustang”
With “Mustang,” Bartees Strange took everything he knew about indie rock and put it into one massive song. Set to walls of guitar and synth hooks, his lyrics contain a nod to the music that inspired him as a Black teenager interested in punk and indie, and to the unfulfilling jobs he worked for years to pay the bills before quitting to focus on performing and producing. Throughout “Mustang,” Strange offers intimate confessions like, “It's nice to think that folks are near/Waking up was hard this year,” but the song is unapologetically loud enough to get anyone out of bed. –Hannah Jocelyn
Listen: Bartees Strange, “Mustang”
Columbia
Haim: “The Steps”
For those of us raised on the red meat of American classic rock, “The Steps” is the kind of song you know as soon as you hear it. Does the Haim sisters’ embrace of simple pleasures—the bubblegum guitar riff, the easy harmonies, the big chorus—signal a lack of imagination? Not any more than someone who manages to make jeans and a T-shirt look beautiful. “I can’t understand why you don’t understand me, baby,” Danielle complains. Maybe it’s because she’s more complicated than the song lets on. Just because it’s comfort food doesn’t mean it’s easy to cook. –Mike Powell
Listen: Haim, “The Steps”
Self-released
Noname: “Song 33”
At the apex of this summer’s racial-justice uprising, Noname released the J. Cole diss track “Song 33.” He had launched the first volley with “Snow on tha Bluff,” a grating whinge about being out-woked by a woman widely presumed to be Noname. She swats him away handily, the diss track equivalent of receiving a long text and dismissing it with a “K.” Its opening line, delivered in her characteristic hush, reflects decades of Black radical feminist critique: “I see a demon on my shoulder, it’s looking like patriarchy.” After coolly ethering Cole—over a cascading Madlib beat, no less—Noname busies herself with more important things: eulogizing murdered activist Toyin Salau, highlighting the crisis of violence against trans women, name-checking George Floyd, and calling for a break up of Amazon. And it only takes her a minute. –Rawiya Kameir
Listen: Noname, “Song 33”
Self-released
Shamir: “On My Own”
One thing nine months more or less alone reveals is whom to miss and whom to let go. Always ahead of his time, Shamir wrote an anthem for figuring this out before lockdown; lucky for us, he released it just as the loneliness really set in. “On My Own” is bittersweet like prime Breeders, its sugary hooks enrobing drums as light and crunchy as puffed rice. His voice, dexterous as Prince’s, does the most in a full range of light and shade. But the simple precision of the song’s sentiment—“And I feel it in my bones/Inside myself is where I belong”—is what stands out the most. In a year defined by dancing on your own, Shamir made it sound like self-actualization. –Jesse Dorris
Listen: Shamir, “On My Own”
Republic
Taylor Swift: “the last great american dynasty”
Taylor Swift’s Rhode Island estate was already notorious—for those spectacular Fourth of July parties, for the Tom Hiddleston photos, for costing so much money ($17.75 million, in cash) that it inspired the governor to propose a new tax on second homes. But even Taylor Swift-sized drama doesn’t seem so juicy compared to “the last great american dynasty,” a highlight from her summer quarantine album folklore that traces the glamorous, troubled life of 20th-century heiress Rebekah Harkness, who married into Standard Oil money and—here comes the big reveal—lived in that very same enormous hilltop mansion. With the intrigue of a story song and the intimacy of a biography, Swift delves into socialite anthropology and returns with an epitaph for a woman she’ll never meet. The real magic is the winking humility of the image in the mirror: a woman criticized endlessly for being too rich and too gauche who knows that living well is still the best revenge. –Anna Gaca
Listen: Taylor Swift, “the last great american dynasty”
Merge
Waxahatchee: “Lilacs”
Katie Crutchfield christened her solo project Waxahatchee in honor of a creek in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama; she now lives in Kansas City, a metropolis bifurcated by the country’s longest river. But the water she sings of on “Lilacs,” a stunning highlight from this spring’s Saint Cloud, comes in a bottle: Her flowers drink Topo Chico, a sparkling mineral water sourced from an inactive Mexican volcano with purported healing qualities. There’s a built-in reverb grounding Crutchfield’s falsetto, and it sounds like an unexpectedly early thaw, like the comforting promise that when flowers wilt and eventually die, it’s because they will soon bloom anew. So too will she. “I’ll fill myself back up like I used to do,” she trills, buoyant over a wide-open, folky guitar. Like a gentle river, time passing slowly is better than it not passing at all. –Rawiya Kameir
Listen: Waxahatchee, “Lilacs”
Platoon
Amaarae: “FANCY”
Amaarae’s delicate vocals melt into a beat like butter on a warm slice of bread. On “Fancy,” glistening drums and spare guitar strums set the stage, but the Ghanaian-American singer’s babyish delivery is the real draw. She uses her candy-sweet vocal melodies to boldly and justly praise her own glamour: “Every day I do my dance in the mirror ’cause I feel so damn fancy.” Then she goes on to repeat the word “fancy” a few more times, reiterating her bravado with the ease of a feather floating down from the sky and landing on your nose. –Alphonse Pierre
Listen: Amaarae, “FANCY”
Generation Now / Atlantic
Lil Uzi Vert: “POP”
Lil Uzi Vert just beamed down in a pair of Balenciaga jeans that cost more than your biweekly paycheck (before taxes), and he is ready to rap. “Straight bars,” he announces at the top of “POP,” before making good on that promise with the kind of stream-of-consciousness spree we haven’t heard since Lil Wayne’s mixtape heyday. Listening to this song is like living in a Sonic the Hedgehog speedrun—it’s zany, breakneck, and features a surprising number of ’90s references (congratulations My Cousin Vinny and Cindy Crawford, you are now Uzi-approved). Over an intergalactic beat that churns and gurgles like Jabba the Hutt with an upset stomach, Uzi rifles through flex after flex about everything from his gleaming fists to his minty-fresh dick to his (why not) “multi, multi, multi, multi, multi-grain” granola bars. It’s a direct line into one of music’s nimblest minds. –Ryan Dombal
Listen: Lil Uzi Vert, “POP”
Dirty Hit / Interscope
The 1975: “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)”
“If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” is the 1975 incarnate. A minefield of modern neuroses laid over top of a euphoric blast of ’80s schmaltz (complete with a bombastic saxophone solo), it’s a snapshot of what the band does best: grandiose uncertainty. This time, Matty Healy is hung up on the “girl of your dreams,” who he can only connect with via FaceTime. “I need to get back, I’ve gotta see the girl on the screen,” he announces. But time and time again, his efforts to rendezvous with his digital paramour are interrupted by real-life obstacles, from locked hotel rooms to the awkwardness of online intimacy. “If You’re Too Shy” doesn’t find any resolution to these problems, but rarely does disconnect sound so good. –Quinn Moreland
Listen: The 1975, “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)”
Fire Talk
Dehd: “Loner”
Though the solitude that Chicago indie rockers Dehd invoke in “Loner” is self-imposed, this anti-breakup-song became a fitting soundtrack to a time of little human connection. Over beachy guitar riffs and bouncy hand claps, singer-bassist Emily Kempf expresses a desire to detach herself from the limitations of relationships, painting separation as a bittersweet opportunity for growth. The difference between independence and loneliness, Dehd suggest, is your relationship with yourself. –Abby Jones
Listen: Dehd, “Loner”
OVO Sound / Republic
Drake: “Laugh Now Cry Later” [ft. Lil Durk]
The world might not need a song of triumph from Drake in 2020, but when he steps into the role of self-aware charmer, it’s hard to resist. On “Laugh Now Cry Later,” Champagne Papi slips on his silk robe, so unperturbed by old feuds that he’s willing to be publicly annihilated by Marshawn Lynch and Kevin Durant in the video. The video and brassy horn production are punctuated by knowing looks, swaggering “baby” ad-libs, and long overdue roses for Chicago drill legend Lil Durk. It’s Drake’s reminder that he can be cool-headed and breezy, a form he excels at. Even this stylish opportunist has still got some charisma left. –Isabelia Herrera
Listen: Drake, “Laugh Now Cry Later” [ft. Lil Durk]
Big Beat / Atlantic
100 gecs: “hand crushed by a mallet (remix)” [ft. Fall Out Boy, Craig Owens, and Nicole Dollanganger]
You might consider this as kind of like one of those pop-punk covers of turn-of-the-millennium hits gone spectacularly right. And given that the artists responsible are gecs, one of the slipperiest, most brilliant-dumb acts going, it’s both more and less complicated than that. Sure, the remix unites two iconic wailers of the 2000s Alternative Press set—Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump and Chiodos’ Craig Owens—for arresting vocal turns that transport you back about 15 years. But as the barbed guitar riffs and methodical bass plucks give way to a chorus made for a hot-pink dressing room montage scene played at 1.5x speed, and a happy hardcore breakdown devolves into a spiky loop of unclean vocals, it becomes clear that the remix is somehow even more amazingly chaotic (and infinitely catchier) than the cyber hellscape that is the original. –Jillian Mapes
Fat Possum
The Weather Station: “Robber”
“Robber” unfurls like a cerebral crime drama, the kind that lures you in with a moody pilot and leaves you glued to your couch until you figure out whodunnit. Tamara Lindeman sketches out a villain—the titular thief, silent and cool—before lifting the veil on larger forces at work: laws, banks, a rotten system that forces people to act in their own self-interest. The song’s rhythm is insistent and unsteady; saxophone and electric guitar spray like seafoam, wild and untamed at the edges. By the time "Robber" reaches its urgent climax, Lindeman has transformed a personal reckoning with societal failures into a reflective prompt for the listener. Can you blame yourself for ruthlessness if you were never given a choice? –Jamieson Cox
Listen: The Weather Station, “Robber”
XO / Republic
The Weeknd: “Blinding Lights”
The Weeknd’s misanthropic, bacchanalian persona was ahead of its time when he broke through in 2012, but with druggy nihilism essentially one of the unifying moods of 2020, Abel Tesfaye’s album After Hours felt freshly urgent in ways both enjoyable and horrifying. “Blinding Lights” was its rallying cry, a cold New Wave song about a protagonist so detached and listless that clamoring to turn his obsessive carnal fantasies into reality is all that appeases him. Max Martin’s polish helped make it a number one single for four weeks, the hurried drumbeat, surging choruses, and neon ‘80s synth allowing Tesfaye’s falsetto the euphoric if grinding edge of an amphetamine high. But it’s also easy to hear the broader spiritual resonance in this ode to a lonely man with little joy left except for intoxicants and the object of his desire. –Alex Frank
Listen: The Weeknd, “Blinding Lights”
PMR / Friends Keep Secrets / Interscope
Jessie Ware: “What’s Your Pleasure?”
Jessie Ware and producer James Ford know their disco, but on “What’s Your Pleasure?” they not only pay tribute to classics like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” but also to the era’s overall feeling of smoky sleaze. Atop a steely sequencer, Ware’s vocals swoop like the bell sleeve of a chiffon disco gown sweeping you toward the floor. While she luxuriates in the heady, horny stuff of the verses—of perfect symmetry and blown candles—the beat throbs with lockstep control, less feeling love than meaning business. For every spangly synth, there’s a bit of brass that growls in a beastlier key, or guitars that practically salivate. And if you listen closely, she finishes each chorus with a gleeful whoop, completing the homage: There’s no pleasure without fun. –Katherine St. Asaph
Listen: Jessie Ware, “What’s Your Pleasure?”
2 B Real
India Jordan: “For You”
With euphoria in short supply and dancefloors shuttered around the globe, 2020 hasn’t been particularly kind to dance music. Outside the context of booming sound systems and late-night revelry, even the most expertly crafted club tracks have lost some of their luster, which makes the glittering elation of “For You” all the more precious. Bounding along atop a turbo-charged filter-house template, the song gleefully reanimates the ghosts of French touch and harkens back to the days when house producers regularly (and rightfully) landed in the Top 40. As the title track of Jordan’s For You EP—an effort reflecting the London artist’s struggle to move past the homophobia and small-mindedness that pervaded their formative years in the North of England—the song is a joyous ode to self-love and self-acceptance that underscores the healing power of a good rave. –Shawn Reynaldo
Listen: India Jordan, “For You”
RCA
Jazmine Sullivan: “Lost One”
Jazmine Sullivan has a gift for eulogizing relationships that are beyond saving, and even beyond possibility. On “Lost One,” a crackly ballad that concedes to the slipperiness of time, she confesses into an abyss about the sting of falling short in a partnership. Anguish turns to grief as Sullivan’s hoarse, fragile vocals retreat into a guitar that sounds as hollow as her defenses, landing somewhere between gospel and otherworldly. The song is profoundly sad because it isn’t a two-way dialogue between souls—it’s a soliloquy. The beauty of the song lies in the author’s awareness of the imbalance at hand. From the very beginning, she knows she’s singing to an apparition. –Clover Hope
Listen: Jazmine Sullivan, “Lost One”
4AD
Adrianne Lenker: “anything”
Adrianne Lenker’s music feels like a whisper even when her band screams behind her, and on her solo music, that whisper is pinpoint-accurate; listening to her sing feels like a tap on the shoulder. “Anything” is another one of her simple, warm folk songs, just another drop in the larger reservoir of work that seems to live within her. The vocal melody encompasses a range you could find under one hand on the piano, just a few notes, while her fingerpicking works its familiar, comforting magic. The lyrics are a series of simple affirmations and intimate scenes that express Lenker’s ongoing plea, audible in every breath, for a connection that transcends the bounds of talking. “Wanna listen to the sound of you blinking,” she sings. “I don’t wanna talk about anything.” The song makes space for the kind of silence she craves, the kind held by two people. –Jayson Greene
Listen: Adrianne Lenker, “anything”
Ninja Tune
Jayda G: “Both of Us”
There were so very few reasons to break out in ecstatic dance this year, but Jayda G offered a sublime exception. The London-based producer dropped her bubbly single “Both of Us” mid-summer, and it felt like being rescued by a party barge while lost at sea. Bright, bouncing keys are the driving force of her spirited house banger, but what happens on the song’s perimeter is just as entrancing. Dry, papery beats, synchronized claps, and muffled chit-chat lend the atmosphere of a packed, pulsing nightclub—and the molasses-slow breakdown offers one of the best beat-drop payoffs of the year. After months of inertia, Jayda G brought the dancefloor to us. –Madison Bloom
Listen: Jayda G, “Both of Us”
4AD
Grimes: “Delete Forever”
Grimes’ vision of our technologically mediated future is either marvelously prescient or totally wrong, but inside the elaborate cryogenic chambers of her albums, everything goes her way. Until “Delete Forever.” Here, in the misfit of Miss Anthropocene, a loose, extremely un-Grimes acoustic guitar strum becomes the setting for an affecting tribute to friends and fellow artists who’ve died in the opioid crisis. It’s not a testimonial; it’s a fragile meditation on lost innocence, surrender, and the contradictions of trauma. “Funny how they think us naive when we’re on the brink,” she sings in a high, crystalline coo. Some might find it crass to describe death in the same words as a wiped hard drive, but, well, this is still Grimes. “Delete Forever” extends the kind of empathy no AI can. –Anna Gaca
Listen: Grimes, “Delete Forever”
Epic
Fiona Apple: “Fetch the Bolt Cutters”
The title of Fiona Apple’s spectacular fifth album is a call to “fetch your tool of liberation [and] set yourself free,” and its title track captures the cautious jubilation of accomplishing that feat. It opens with percussion that sounds like a rapping at the door, a wake-up call. Apple shakes off the burden of expectations and demarcates her own growth, building toward a Kate Bush-worthy insistence that she’ll make it up her hill. After a raft of heavy breaths, barking dogs, and a pounding-heart bassline that convey the frazzled yet determined energy of finding your footing, the song ends with a twinkling flourish of keys—a playful ta-da underscoring the realization that a broken lock is just the beginning. –Allison Hussey
Listen: Fiona Apple, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters”
Parkwood / Columbia
Chloe x Halle: “Do It”
Chloe x Halle polished their slinky R&B formula this year on sophomore album Ungodly Hour, and “Do It” was the duo’s glittering crown jewel. Their rich, fluttering harmonies pirouette over trap snares, finger snaps, and wobbling bass, all the while painting a portrait of a perfectly unbothered night out with friends. Light on its feet and effervescent, “Do It” is the sound of Chloe x Halle gracefully gliding across a vocal tightrope, with each sweetened back-and-forth accented by fabulous self-confidence. –Eric Torres
Listen: Chloe x Halle, “Do It”
4AD
U.S. Girls: “4 American Dollars”
Meghan Remy wears the perfectionist swagger of American pop like a disguise. Her stylistic shifts might seem willfully evasive, but as she puts it on "4 American Dollars," "It's not personal, it's business." The song is a standout from Heavy Light, her sauntering, sensuous seventh album as the frontwoman of U.S. Girls, which revels in the sounds of hard-fought freedom—gospel, blues, Springsteen—utilizing their easy familiarity as a Trojan horse for materialist critique. With sky-high synths and a girl-group chorus, “4 American Dollars” drapes her daggers in velvetine funk. “No matter how much you get to have/You will still die, and that's the only fact,” she coos, sugar-coating capitalism’s alienation. Inverting a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., “4 American Dollars” accessorizes the trappings of a rags-to-riches mindset: “You gotta have boots if you wanna lift those bootstraps.” –Arielle Gordon
Listen: U.S. Girls, “4 American Dollars”
Loma Vista
Soccer Mommy: “circle the drain”
If asked to pinpoint the primary emotional experience of quarantine, you might go with listlessness, or fatigue. But neither quite nails it. With a bit more prodding to open up, maybe you’d land on: I’ve been falling apart these days. Sophia Allison of Soccer Mommy nailed our constant recursion, atrophy, isolation, gall, and grief back in the early spring. It’s more than just the chorus lyric of “circle the drain,” the lead single from Allison’s synesthetic indie rock album Color Theory; it’s how she sings it. The line’s path is dizzying, catching an updraft on falling apart, that feeling of rust as our sweatpants become thinner with wear. Then it floats back down and alights on these days, the great borderless period of time in which we find ourselves. The song’s warm familiarity, which Allison modeled in part after bright pop-rock hits of her youth, like Sheryl Crow’s “Soak up the Sun” or Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn,” gives it the quality of a quilt filled with stones. It’s comforting but heavy, the weight of the world on your chest—even, as Allison reminds us, when everything is fine. –Jeremy D. Larson
Listen: Soccer Mommy, “circle the drain”
Jagjaguwar
Moses Sumney: “Cut Me”
On his sophomore album græ’s first true song, Moses Sumney wields his falsetto like a lancer: He thrusts in unexpected directions and blocks when necessary. “Masochistic kisses are how I thrive,” he croons, staking a position in the line of ethereal queer singers like Jimmy Somerville who revel in pain because they’re otherwise not long for this world. But Sumney, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Adult Jazz’s arrangement doesn’t let listeners get comfortable. The five-note synth bass serves as the foundation to a track of spiraling complexity keyed to the Ghanaian-American singer’s descents and swoops: a piano here, a horn there, as precise as punctuation. “Guess I’m a true immigrant son/No vacancies, no vacations,” he sings, resigned but resilient. –Alfred Soto
Listen: Moses Sumney, “Cut Me”
Interscope
Lady Gaga / Ariana Grande: “Rain on Me”
Following detours into Tony Bennett-style crooning, lightly country-fried rock, and Oscar-winning melodrama, Lady Gaga made her ferocious return to the club with the all-bangers-no-ballads Chromatica. On an album centered in dance music’s ability to heal, “Rain on Me” is the apex, a group therapy session disguised as a turn-of-the-millennium Euro-house floor-filler. Gaga’s lusty bravado and Ari’s airy coos complement each other perfectly as they sing about the restorative power of uncontrollable sobbing. No tears left to cry? That’s so 2018. In 2020, it’s all tears, all the time. –Amy Phillips
Listen: Lady Gaga / Ariana Grande, “Rain on Me”
Merge
Waxahatchee: “Fire”
It begins like a faithful car being jump-started to make the last leg of a long trip; a spark of life followed by relief. Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield is driving with her partner through a Memphis sunset when a realization strikes, and on its face, “Fire” is a piercing love song that chases after the brief brilliance of the day right as it settles into sleep. But it also wears a graceful disguise. Warm, lo-fi keys and a loosely strummed guitar cushion the restlessness of self-work and sobriety, as she plainly states that she’ll “put on a good show for you.” Her voice crackles as she wrestles with the precarity of declaring acceptance—what it means to give it to yourself, to others—and the nerves of speaking a truth in shared company. By the end she recognizes there’s hope in the dark, too. –Puja Patel
Listen: Waxahatchee, “Fire”
Dead Oceans
Phoebe Bridgers: “Garden Song”
On her debut album Stranger in the Alps, Phoebe Bridgers stopped analyzing her dreams. “I don’t believe in that stuff anymore,” she admitted in “Funeral,” a song about being consumed by the tragedy of a classmate’s death. Bridgers has said that her first album documented her trauma, while her second, this year’s Punisher, is about understanding how she processes it. So on its lead single, “Garden Song,” Bridgers is dissecting her dreams again, delving into her subconscious to understand what she wants and what it feels like to actually get it.
Buoyed by plucky guitar and Bridgers’ bare, delicate vocals, the song gently folds time—and the evolution of desire—on itself like a baker kneading dough. One minute, Bridgers is a self-assured 17-year-old; then, in a recurring dream, a college student yearning for sex; then an adult tending to the garden she’s always wanted. There’s no real beginning or resolution, just flickers of past memories, longing, and anxiety patched together like her mind’s own hedge maze. And while moments of glimmering contentment emerge from the fog, eventually reality seeps in: the garden she’s cultivated will forever be haunted. –Vrinda Jagota
Listen: Phoebe Bridgers, “Garden Song”
Matador
Perfume Genius: “Describe”
When you are swallowed into the pitch black of your misery, who do you reach for? On “Describe,” Mike Hadreas stumbles through a depressive sludge, choked by thrashing, polluted guitars. There is goodness on the other side, but he can’t make out its shape. “Can you just wait here with me?” he pleads with his partner. It’s a moving portrait of love amid torment; the tenderness Hadreas receives is “like ribbons,” slivers of loveliness to press up against his cheek. Eventually, he emerges from the wreckage into a clearing, holding still in the soft glow of the final minutes. The most pristine love, he suggests, is found as a whisper back in the dead of the night. –Cat Zhang
Listen: Perfume Genius, “Describe”
Warp
Yves Tumor: “Gospel for a New Century”
On “Gospel for a New Century,” Yves Tumor preaches the freedom to exist as they are. That means fully inhabiting their newfound rock star persona and doing away with the thin line between art and artifice. In one moment, Yves is dragging serrated horn samples across cavernous guitars; in the next, they’re casually settling into a groove worthy of Prince. This is a love song at its core but, facing down the barrel of this year, its sense of longing resonates further than that. “How much longer till December?” Yves asks at the end of the chorus. However far away, it can’t come soon enough. –Noah Yoo
Listen: Yves Tumor, “Gospel for a New Century”
Columbia
Bob Dylan: “Murder Most Foul”
Bob Dylan set the stage for “Murder Most Foul” three-and-a-half years ago with a winding speech in acceptance of his Nobel Prize in Literature: For nearly a half hour, he blithely mused about the songs, musicians, and books that have influenced him over muted lounge piano. At 17 minutes, “Murder Most Foul” is similarly extended and retrospective—the 79-year-old slowly spins a story that orbits around the 1963 killing of President John F. Kennedy while rattling off many of America’s finest musicians along the way.
As usual, there’s an ungraspable wisdom to Dylan’s meditations here, like he’s seeing something we cannot. Sung over the simplest of orchestral accompaniments, his words spill out and burn like a fever dream, as if they were bestowed unto him—or maybe he’s just associating as he goes. The historical gravity of his words are balanced with a pat rhyme scheme and self-reflexive lines like, “I’m just a patsy like Patsy Cline.” The poetry and loaded allusions come with levity. With “Murder Most Foul,” Dylan turns to a defining event of the 20th century to reveal that history is always happening right in front of our eyes, bringing with it everything that’s come before and everything that will soon be. His American tale is one of distraction, humor, and endless curiosity. The meaning of it all is right there in plain sight. Take what you’d like. –Matthew Strauss
Listen: Bob Dylan, “Murder Most Foul”
Rimas
Bad Bunny: “Safaera” [ft. Jowell & Randy and Ñengo Flow]
There isn’t a single wasted moment on “Safaera,” Bad Bunny’s epic homage to old-school perreo culture. The five-minute song is an all-consuming aesthetic maelstrom that is continually transforming; each beat change connects another link in a chain of references, establishing a masterful reggaetón timeline. With the energy of an intuitive DJ mix, producers Tainy and DJ Orma pieced together a whirlwind of a track as evocative for longtime fans of the genre as it is educational for newcomers. Standing confidently at the center of the saga is Bad Bunny himself. Amid the near-constant chaos of the song’s sonic shifts, he is resolute, moored firmly by his commitment to the music that he loves and the history held within it. –Sheldon Pearce
Listen: Bad Bunny, “Safaera” [ft. Jowell & Randy and Ñengo Flow]
1501 Certified / 300
Megan Thee Stallion: “Savage Remix” [ft. Beyoncé]
The “Savage Remix” leak hit in April like an intravenous drip of caffeine and glitter, lifting the masses out of their doldrums, if only for four minutes. Megan Thee Stallion had only grown as a beacon of that-bitch-ism since 2019, but joined by one of the 21st century’s greatest entertainers, she became bolder. In their verses on the remix, Meg and Bey owned their sex appeal, their smarts, and their success, inviting you to own yours, too. In the months that followed, Megan would go from joyously dancing to the track in her kitchen, to performing it on an elaborate dystopian stage in the desert, to making a heart-wrenching political statement with it at 30 Rock. After Megan had been shot, mocked, and gaslit, the “Savage Remix” evolved from a confident anthem to an assertion of her complex, endangered humanity. –Mankaprr Conteh
Listen: Megan Thee Stallion, “Savage Remix” [ft. Beyoncé]
Epic
Fiona Apple: “I Want You to Love Me”
On Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple skewers romantic orthodoxy with such flair that you might wonder why anyone ever bothers with it to begin with. The answer in the album’s overture, a beguiling love song of blossoming arpeggios and Philip Glass pinwheels. In the chorus, anxiety stirs and a half bar sinkholes like a lost summer; in the lyrics, Apple is radically direct, like the master painter whose final act is to draw a simple straight line. She has forged through lust, betrayal, and heartbreak to reach this beginning—to ask, in the plainest terms, to be loved.
Since the song’s debut in 2013, the identity of its “you” has flitted between real lovers and “somebody I hadn’t met yet,” Apple has said. It makes for a funny muse, this “you,” trembling through a chorus possessed equally of fierce desire and trepidation. As her coo whips into a snarl, Apple looks to metaphysics for solace, yet finds little: Spiritual wisdom, she learns, is no remedy for her primal desire to desire, to “want somebody to want.” For decades, Apple has penned damning chronicles of toxic romances. “I Want You to Love Me” suggests a limit to their power: They cannot make her love any less. –Jazz Monroe
Listen: Fiona Apple, “I Want You to Love Me”
Because Music
Christine and the Queens: “People, I’ve been sad”
Plenty of languages have a word for the nostalgic longing that comes with grief: in Portuguese, “saudade” articulates it while romanticizing the pain of absence. Shades of meaning separate the similarly despaired Romanian “dor,” the Russian “toska,” the more heartened Japanese “natsukashii.” Ethiopian “tizita” is a musical genre born from this melancholic feeling, as are the American “blues.” But in the overwhelming chaos of 2020, and coincidentally from the land that gave us “ennui,” Christine and the Queens’ Héloïse Letissier captured the many heartaches of a world in pain via a word so universal you can’t help but laugh: “People, I’ve been sad.”
In the song, she conjures the emotion with gravitas and synth-pop charm. Backed by sauntering keys and quivering strings, Letissier sings in her native French about teenage loneliness and angst. On the chorus, she pleads for presence and permanence. The lines are delivered with a confessional vulnerability, as ghostly vocals echo her own in support. You can practically feel a distance being bridged between her voice and the microphone, and between despondent fans across the globe. –Puja Patel
Listen: Christine and the Queens, “People, I’ve been sad”
Atlantic
Cardi B: “WAP” [ft. Megan Thee Stallion]
Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion rapped such a rich tapestry of filth on “WAP” that it earned a face-breaking 93 million streams in its first week and immediately went No. 1. This wasn’t a mere lyrical double-team, but two women in their career prime overpowering pop with a raw anthem attuned to the very specific frequency of certain pandemic urges; the rare instant hit that exists as a trend and future monument. Of the many words that could describe their duet—dirty, vulgar, nasty, explicit—none come anywhere close to capturing the attitude of the acronym itself. Over the tremors of a Baltimore club classic, “Whores in This House,” Cardi and Megan forgo euphemisms entirely (“I wanna gag,” etc.) to present an airtight case in favor of women expressing full-bodied lust. Megan presumably stands before an appellate court to do so, admitting, “Your Honor, I’m a freak bitch,” while a Cardi verse somehow tributes the unsung uvula amid an imposing tour de force of lecherous metaphors.
“WAP” is so decisively absent of shame that it’s now positioned alongside similar anthems by the likes of Khia, Lil’ Kim, and Trina. It’s as resonant as it is unreachable: consider that, in a year of fairly learnable TikTok challenges, the dance for “WAP” asks that you transition from a floor-hump to a windmill split. It’s a feat that the song exists at all, encapsulating a year in which women have been leading both the statistics and conscience of rap, and even forced conservative talking heads to contend with the extraordinary power of the word “pussy.” –Clover Hope
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