The 2020 end of year music lists thread

turning 40 tomorrow so here's my top 40 (listened to) albums from the last 365 days regardless of release year, which is pretty much why I read ILM, to get this from everyone else, so thank you and you're welcome

1 The Sir Douglas Quintet - The Complete Mercury Masters
2 Al Green - Gets Next to You
3 X - Wild Gift
4 Various Artists - Bachata Roja: Acoustic Bachata from the Cabaret Era
5 Mission of Burma - Signals, Calls, and Marches
6 Them - Them Again (feat. Van Morrison)
7 The Funkees - Dancing Time, The Best of Eastern Nigeria's Afro Rock Exponents 1973-77
8 Glen Campbell - The Capitol Years 1965-1977
9 Mulatu Astatke - Ethiopiques, Vol. 4: Ethio Jazz 1969-1974
10 The Dead Milkmen - Big Lizard in my Back Yard
11 James Brown - Love Power Peace (Live at the Olympia in Paris, 1971)
12 Merle Haggard - A Portrait Of
13 The Replacements - Tim
14 The Meat Puppets - II
15 James Brown - Live At Home With His Bad Self
16 Stan Getz - Verve Jazz Masters 53
17 Mac Dre - What's Really Going On?
18 Stephen Malkmus - Traditional Techniques
19 The Howling Hex - All Night Fox
20 Los Tucanes De Tijuana - Para Tucanillos y Tucanillas
21 Susso - Kiera
22 The Left Banke - Walk Away Renée/Pretty Ballerina
23 Jimmy Smith - Softly As A Summer Breeze
24 Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady
25 The Replacements - For Sale: Live at Maxwell's 1986
26 Sharhabil Ahmed - The King of Sudanese Jazz (Habibi Funk 013)
27 Women - Public Strain
28 Al Green - Let's Stay Together
29 Novos Baianos - Acabou Chorare
30 Teenage Fanclub - A Catholic Education
31 The Replacements - Let It be
32 Walter Wanderley - Rain Forest
33 Ghostface Killah - Fishscale
34 Trumans Water - Spasm Smash XXXOXOX Ox & Ass
35 U-Roy - Versions Galore
36 Various Artists - Habibi Funk: An Electic Selection of Music From the Arab World
37 Dick Stusso - In Heaven
38 Dungen - Haxan
39 Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey - Ebenezer Obey in London
40 Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo's Factory (40th Anniversary Edition)

Very cool list--happy birthday

Love the Waxahatchee record, don't care for her earlier efforts though! This one has been on heavy rotation all year. Her take on Country Roads (Take Me Home) with Whitney is very addictive as well.

hb burrito!

The bar is pretty low but Vice is the best list so far. Wouldn't surprise me if it stayed that way.

I don't care for "WAP" but they're the only one so far with RMR in the top 10 which tbh should be in every tracks list this year.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgzgp7/the-100-best-songs-of-2020-noisey

noisey list made me realize "if you're too shy" is pretty underrepresented on these lists

i guess "critically-acclaimed band the 1975" was doomed to be a short-lived phenomenon :)

No Clean Singing's 'great' metal albums of 2020:

https://www.nocleansinging.com/2020/12/09/2020-a-year-in-reviews-the-great/

omg what a nice surprise at the end

https://daily.bandcamp.com/best-of-2020/the-best-club-music-of-2020

Made in Lagos at 74 and Twice as Tall at 21 (the reverse would have been more accurate), slim Afropop pickings on an otherwise interesting list.

― fat ass deep state operative (breastcrawl), dinsdag 8 december 2020 23:41

agree with that, hopefully they'll include some more african inclusions in their tracks list.

― la table sur la table (voodoo chili), dinsdag 8 december 2020 23:47

they did not, just... one: Wizkid's "Blessed" ft. Damian Marley at... 89 (it would be a strange pick as the highlight of the album imho, let alone as the de facto best afropop song of the year).

it's nice to see Lila Iké's "I Spy" in there tho.

The 1975 confuse me in a way that I find unpleasant.

Very well put, that's exactly it for me as well.

Looking forward to the Vinyl Factory album list. In the meantime, this one aligns nicely with my tastes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/best-music-2020-theo-parrish-pop-smoke/2020/12/07/2039bc8c-3581-11eb-b59c-adb7153d10c2_story.html

Especially happy to see Ulla and Bergsonist in there. Really enjoy those.

I actually went and listened to a bunch of the new album by the 1975 last night, as well as older tracks, to try and figure it out.

The songs are decent pop, lyrics inoffensive and crooned in a fine range of different voices. I think there's something about the production that bothers me. It's very polite and seems made for an Apple commercial-- I want to say it is too quantized, but my music production chops have fallen by the wayside over the past decade.

Los Angeles Times top 10 album list plus honorable mentions list is out. Main item of interest really to me is Kali Uchis new Spanish language album making the top 10 there. That’s a nice late year effort. Also nice to see Moses Sumney there. No one currently living in Latin America, Africa, or Asia made the list.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-12-09/the-10-best-albums-of-2020

...and the accompanying songs list:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-12-09/the-50-best-songs-of-2020#nt=00000176-48c0-d174-adff-7bfdbb600002-liE0promoSmall

calling matt healy's lyrics inoffensive and saying he croons them in a fine range of different voices is a new one for me

those are the two elements that most people hate in my estimation

the 1975 play explicitly with pop artifice and they are meta as hell tbh, i can see how this might grate but calling them polite misses the point a bit

They're post-post-pomo.

or pomenitul in short

Please, I'm post-post-post-pomo.

the text is reading itself, away from our gaze

Precisely.

and that text is the listmakers wondering how the hell to retrofit NEW TAYTAY OMGGGG into their top 20s

1 The Sir Douglas Quintet - The Complete Mercury Masters
YES this is the best, most rockin shit of all time

Please, I'm post-post-post-pomo.

That's not for me to say.

pomo as privilege

It's true, The 1975 are the sound of privilege in 2020.

but are you polite?

(let me know)

Some cool stuff I hadn't heard of on Sasha Geffen's list at Artforum: Dreamcrusher, Mhysa..

Stereogum's jazz list, by me.

10. James Brandon Lewis Quartet, Molecular
9. Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Axiom
8. Shabaka & the Ancestors, We Are Sent Here By History
7. Ndabo Zulu, Queen Nandi: The African Suite
6. Black Art Jazz Collective, Ascension
5. Aaron Diehl, The Vagabond
4. Nduduzo Makhathini, Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworlds
3. Matthew Shipp Trio, The Unidentifiable
2. Irreversible Entanglements, Who Sent You?
1. Ambrose Akinmusire, On the Tender Spot of Every Calloused Moment

I'm gonna give the Ambrose Akinmusire another shot. My first encounter with it was frankly awkward, and not in a good or particularly challenging way.

there was another christian scott album this year? damn.

Yeah, I apparently missed out on that too!

At this point I think the Aquarium Drunkard wrap-up is the only interesting one I'm still waiting to see.

If you're gonna buy the Christian Scott, buy it on Bandcamp - there are exclusive bonus tracks that extend it to 2 hours plus.

it's a live album, no?

it's a live album, no?

Yeah, recorded at the Blue Note in NYC right before the city shut down in March. I was actually supposed to go to one of the shows but bailed.

the 1975 play explicitly with pop artifice and they are meta as hell tbh, i can see how this might grate but calling them polite misses the point a bit

― imago, Thursday, December 10, 2020 6:44 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

So imitating songs that used to be played on Apple commercials so that those songs can be played on Apple commercials is the new 'meta'?

Maybe polite is too polite a term. I should have gone with 'fucking boring'.

just my own personal hang-up but generally speaking I greatly prefer jazz with zero singing or spoken-word stuff. any of the records on your list fit that bill, unperson?

just my own personal hang-up

This holds true for many, perhaps even most of us tbf.

Thought the Makaya McCraven Gil Scott-Heron re-imagining would get more love. Made the Line of Best Fit list, which is worth a browse. They also rated Samia's The Baby at #2, a really good coming-of-age indie debut with lots of hooks and sardonic lyrics; riyl: Phoebe Bridgers, Nilufer Yanya, Soccer Mommy, etc.

https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/articles/best-albums-2020-ranked

just my own personal hang-up but generally speaking I greatly prefer jazz with zero singing or spoken-word stuff. any of the records on your list fit that bill, unperson?

James Brandon Lewis Quartet, Black Art Jazz Collective, Aaron Diehl, and Matthew Shipp Trio. And there's only singing on two tracks from the Ambrose Akinmusire, so don't skip that one. (I'm generally anti-vocals myself, it just worked out that a lot of the records I liked this year had them.)

Many xposts: My own personal hangup with the 1975 is the vocal production. The first song I heard by them was "If You're Too Shy," where the first thing you notice are the vocals running through a resonating filter (aka vocoder with one key held down), and I thought "Oh that's a nice use of that effect!" But I feel like at least half of their other songs that I've checked out since then have the same effect on the vocals, and it just wearies me.

the 1975 are just not my thing.. love if it we made it” is awesome, though, it reminds me of Tears for Fears.

“Love it if we made it”, whatever

haven't paid that much attention to them, but I really love that song