The 2020 end of year music lists thread

haven't listened to it yet; keeping powder dry for the EOYs. maybe i'll like it! 'spotlight' is pretty archetypical middlebrow catnip tho, i was convinced i'd heard it before when i first did

xp You figured it out but yea my snark was re: katie dey's stupid entitled sounding tweet and not re: any music from ilm people. I def empathize with the frustration detailed upthread and have nothing but respect for ilm musicians.

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/02/930492613/the-50-best-albums-of-2020-page-1

npr list is interesting

NPR list is very NPR.

Of the stuff I haven't heard, the Siti Muharam and Nubya Garcia seem cool. As though there wasn't enough catching up to do...

Nice to see Victoria Monét show up on a list.

NPR list reminded me of the Buscabulla album, which I like but had sort of forgotten. Also nice to see Lido Pimienta near the top of a list, that album's great.

https://www.loverecordstores.com

The #loverecordstores ‘Independent Albums of the Year’ list is 2020’s favourite releases from independent labels voted for by a cross section of notable independent record stores including Drift, Resident, Rough Trade, Normans, Piccadilly, Bear Tree, Assai, Banquet, Stranger Than Paradise, Bleep and Monorail among many others.

Rose City Band in the top 10, that's one of my faves and it hasn't shown up many places.

the orielles record was solid and overlooked too, glad to see the love (record stores)

I think the NPR list is vastly more interesting than most

yeah the NPR list is interesting. The description of Clarice Jensen's The experience of repetition as death intrigued me & holy cow this is my thing. Any tips for other things in the vicinity would be appreciated!

As in drone music?

If so, this year I quite liked Alison Cotton's Only Darkness Now, Anna von Hausswolf's All Thoughts Fly and Ellen Fullman & Teresa Wong's Harbors, which feature different degrees of single-minded droniness. You may also enjoy Sarah Davachi's Cantus, Descant.

I don't know, is this drone music? I am enchanted, that's all I know.

I call it low-cal classical

Not a dis, I love this shit

Happy to hear it!

Let me know if the others pique your fancy.

xp heh, that's a good way of putting it.

low-cal classical is a great name & def something I like a lot

I will go for the others too, playing the Debussy-Rameau off that NPR list now (Vikingur Ólaffson), a little higher cal I guess

beautiful record that ólaffson one

Love seeing Sault at #1 for NPR.

Surprised to see Tame Impala on the list at all - I thought that was a huge critical dud. (I certainly didn't like it!).

I root for the Spillage Village collective, love a lot of their past work (including various Earthgang & JID releases). But I was disappointed in the album they released this year.

the tame impala record is the best tame impala record imo

puts me in the mind of like a sprawling '70s double album with weird subspaces to get lost in, while also being majorly funky and fusion-y

Based on Rob Mitchum's sheet, NPR has ~ 5 or 6 albums in their top 20 that don't appear on any of the other lists logged so far. For those who haven't checked out the Katie Pruitt thread/album yet (their #16), I expect it to do well in the ilm poll.

Here's the sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vpxZunN4M8gvnsireG4TEPSlA-pxo8Ta9Y6Kj8zgWwg/edit#gid=1452150872

the extent to which the zines concur is always just incredibly mindnumbing

if only they were to concur with specific user such as imago instead

well i wouldn't want that either, but there are SO MANY albums released in a year & yet the overlap on these lists is always just ridiculous, it (criticism) really is just mutual backscratches and lifestyle blogging now

at least the quietus list, for example, is genuinely unlike any other, even if i don't like most of it

anyway can we get on with the ILX EOYs which are invariably an improvement on all this nonsense

I haven't looked at Rob's spreadsheet yet so maybe I'd be proven wrong, but the NPR one seemed generally filled with stuff I haven't seen popping up a lot (with a few obvious exceptions). Seemed to be the first one of the "big" ones I've seen that had a ton of stuff I was unfamiliar with.

yeah that's fair

Assume Chloe x Halle was covered in the rolling R&B thread but I'd never heard of them before. Made the Complex, NPR, and Uproxx lists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9HIaGcBocc

Yes – "Do It" is one of the year's top tracks for sure.

ilx 2020 traxpoll feels absolutely wide open tbh

https://medium.com/@joshuacopperman1/what-your-favorite-album-of-2020-says-about-you-930285dad454

Excruciating

Impressive, I couldn't even make it past the first sentence in the first blurb.

It took 16 people to write that

A contender for OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?.

Hahaha yeah it’s not good

"Hm, the lead single was called 'Cardigan', this one just writes itself!"

I hope you won't mind my x-posting it there, Moka.

xp

I’m also certain half of the jokes in there are recycled from previous years. I think the concept could be fun but the execution in here is trying too hard.

are you saying they do this every year

actually i have some dim memory now

Not at all pom. It’s worthy of that thread.

I have no beef with the concept itself, but it's just one faceplant after another.

Lolol wow

Some pop album: You are a messy bitch who TikTok bisexual lighting horoscope candle bops swipe right corncob

You’re honestly weird to be around.

You’re honestly weird to be around.

You’re honestly weird to be around.

You’re honestly weird to be around.

You’re honestly weird to be around.

That Ari one though, jfc.

a Singles Jukebox contributor trying too hard???

(sorry, I know there's a few TSJ writers on here but I couldn't resist)