With concerts reduced to livestreams, curating an entertaining playlist has become an increasingly important in the months since the world shut down. To help populate your playlists with new content, The A.V. Club has waded through the new music offerings of the first half of 2020 to compile 25 of our favorite tracks—many of them speaking, intentionally or not, to our current tribulations.
Before we get to the music, here were the guiding principles for creating our (unranked) list:
1. The track must be featured on an album released in 2020, and/or the track must’ve been formally released as a single in 2020.
2. When deciding between tracks with similar vibes, we opted to highlight the lesser-known artist over a marquee name. (Carly Rae Jepsen, Selena Gomez, and Jessie Ware were all unfortunate victims of their notoriety.)
3. In an effort to spread the attention around, any artist featured on our Best Albums list (also out today) was ineligible to be included on this list. Otherwise, we might have ended up with all Dua Lipa and Perfume Genius tracks.
30 Comments
WHY THE FUCK IS THIS IN SLIDESHOW FORMAT? THIS IS AWFUL. You guys did so well with the movies list.
People I’ve Been Sad by Christine and the Queens has been by far my favourite new song this year. Her haunting voice,the droning synth and the lyrics which evoke this awful year and the isolation we’ve all experienced makes it a true standout for me.
It’s a good tune and this list actually introduced me. Pretty rare for AVC list to do that these days, for me anyway.
Is this the first of the “Best [X] of 2020 So Far” to be slideshow-ed? I’m kinda conflicted on how I feel; I’m glad they managed to hold out this long but sad they finally caved (I’m sure it falls under some mandate by the higher-ups)…As far as the list here, it’s been a slow music year for me, so I’m sure I’ll check some of these out. I’m really surprised that neither Fiona Apple nor RTJ made the list (though I’d be hard pressed to pick a fave track for either of them) but I admire the commitment to picking lesser-known acts (save Gorillaz and *cough* BTS).ETA: Oh, I was so perturbed by the slideshow that I never noticed the disclaimer at the start of the article. Mea culpa.
On a computer, if you shrink the horizontal window dimensions to 50%-ish, it’ll revert into a scrollable article.
Yep, it’s pretty much a one-click preset for all the PCs I use. Maybe the AVC should be smart and just run that advice as a disclaimer at the top of every slideshow article.
thats a genius tip – THANK YOU.Using that from now on. You’re a legend
“In an effort to spread the attention around, any artist featured on our Best Albums list (also out today) was ineligible to be included on this list”Hence no Fiona Apple or RTJ.
Thank you for offering the correction to the thing I already corrected. Oh, sure, I *could* have actually rewrote my post to actually reflect my new knowledge, but that would require some future technology that can remove previously type-set letters. Preposterous! Incredulous! Stupefying! We are not living in some distant future utopia, where such things are possible! I say, good day, sir!
Musical tastes differ widely with regards to “the best songs of 2020″, but I firmly believe there are only two types of people on this earth: those who feel Lianne La Havas singing Bittersweet with the BBC orchestra is the best live performance of 2020 (I mean, it’s not like competition will be stiff this year anyway); and those who haven’t yet seen Lianne La Havas singing Bittersweet with the BBC orchestra …
I cannot wait for her album! Bittersweet, Can’t Fight, Weird Fishes, everything has been so good so far.
I liked every song on this list save one: the Naked and Famous track. It is not good. This is a song that will be playing in Target til the end of time.
“we opted to highlight the lesser-known artist over a marquee name.”I’m glad you wen this route and were able to highlight such niche acts as Michael Stipe and Beyonce? Did I even spell that last one right? She sounds pretty good, surprising I haven’t heard of her before this. Definitely nowhere near the household name Carly Rae Jepsen is.
Having been working from home, I’ve been listening to a lot of great new music this year. Some picks that would make my Best Songs of the Year list:-Yves Tumour ‘Kerosene’-Mura Masa ‘Deal Wiv It’-Jeff Rosenstock ‘Scram!’-Damien Jurado ‘Birds Tricked Through the Trees’-Grimes ‘So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth’
Ja Ja Ding Dong. Song of the year.
All kidding aside, I kind-of half-expected to see “Husavik” on the list.
Jessie Ware doesn’t get on for reasons? C’mon guys – I like a good music nerd pedantry but that seems pointless.cos Save a Kiss is the single of the year.
This slideshow format…
[Shout out to Jessie Ware who was
ineligible for this particular list because she was a “marquee name”
(unlike that little known singer featured on the Megan Thee Stallion
track…what’s her name? Beyonce…? Mark my words, some day everybody’s gonna know that name!). What’s Your Pleasure? is a fantastic album start to finish.] ANYWAY… My top 5 here with a Spotify of the top 25 (so far) at the end. Celeste – “Stop This Flame”Moyka – “Violet”Navvy – “No Hard Feelings”Ella Eyre – “New Me”Arlissa – “Healing”https://open.spotify.com/playlist/57tjKu1XJB70qylGOvzXhI?si=0e6Kr11IRXSyf12tJ5WwPQ
This list makes me feel 1000 years old.
is that you, Baby Yoda?
My favorites:
So no to Carlie Rae Jepsen because she’s too famous, but yes to Michael Stipe and Gorillaz.Okay.
My favorite so far…
You mean “fame,” not “notoriety.”
this list can suck a rock. how the fuck are you going to leave Run the Jewels off? their album is amazing. Ooh la la, Ju$t, or Walking in the Snow. one of those tracks should be on here. I hate lists.
Literally nothing off of the most important album of the year, “RTJ4″Come back to me after you listen to it, and Walking in the snow.
Aries but not Désolé? Interesting. I prefer the latter. Fatoumata Diawara’s voice is a powerhouse.
I’m a bleeding heart, BLM-y, Trump-hater…and “March, March” is, by far, the worst song the Chicks have ever released.
It’s trite kitsch that was likely reworked from something on the scrap heap of Maines’ solo record.Beyond their singles’ continued erasure of the Erwin sisters (two of the best instrumentalists this side of Amanda Shires)…they really haven’t played to Maines’ vocal strengths, either.If you were desperate to include a Chicks song, Gaslighter is far, far better…but this is also a lost opportunity to highlight a bona fide independent artist like Isbell or Caitlin Cannon.
“Turn The Bow” by Local H. Just sayin’.
The correct list is every song on RTJ4. Twice.