The 2020 end of year music lists thread

Mystery City, Blues for Randy, and I trust my guitar etc. are all pretty good. I just can't get into anything else...and the new one just sounds awful, but I'll give it another go. Might be one of those bands that really only appeals to me live.

Interesting promotional item in Dalston (possibly items, I have seen it in two spots now) for the Pa Salieu record: a traffic diversion sign by the roadside.

the overall paste list is pretty limp, sure, but they did make room for some awesome records that i'd be surprised to see in too many other lists: ela minus, chubby & the gang, young jesus, thanya iyer

young jesus making my list for sure

i liked the slum of legs album a lot btw!

’Tis the season…for Album of the Year lists! Here’s the 2020 spreadsheet, with data wizardry from @jrock16c. Bookmark this link:https://t.co/dzYEyN0V53

— Rob Mitchum (@robmitchum) November 30, 2020

Where the hell is Taylor Swift on the Paste list, or have I totally misjudged where that publication is these days?

xxpost to Indexed, scroll through the bylines of that list and you can probably figure out why that is

(i'm not saying it's a bad thing.)

― alpine static, Monday, November 30, 2020 12:16 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

am i supposed to know these names or is it just the fact that there are like 5?

one of them appears 20+ times, if my ctrl+f is correct. i'm just saying there's a writer there whose taste imprint is on that list, that's all.

indexed, the kind of indie-sphere folk that paste champions, especially considering the contributions from dessner and vernon

*folklore is the kind, etc.

Lol I stopped myself from soft-ripping on the tQ list for snubbing Slum of Legs

emily, really like the Slum of Legs record! listened while working this afternoon

Thank you emily!

Hearing it now! Agree with pom love those folk undertones but the synth really sells it for me, really like the mix of styles, I wasn’t expecting where it went in that opening track (great opener btw)

So far my fav is track 3, kind of reminded of the Sugarcubes (it might not be an influence at all but for me it’s a good thing)

Ah jeez, thanks guys. Now let's get a crew together and picket Quietus HQ.

Sugarcubes not a conscious influence but certainly not a bad thing imo!

Moar lists

https://thefortyfive.com/opinion/best-songs-of-2020/

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/nov/30/the-20-best-songs-of-2020

https://www.gorillavsbear.net/gorilla-vs-bears-albums-of-2020/

Nice whirled music list in Songlines:
https://www.songlines.co.uk/explore/guides-and-lists/top-10-albums-of-2020

Not much love for the Hayley Williams or Killers albums so far

> https://www.gorillavsbear.net/gorilla-vs-bears-albums-of-2020/

nice to Cindy Lee getting a top 10 spot there. both albums! (that second mini-album-y one that's only available via a blinking geocities-page is especially wonderful).

Also, the international perspective. Oor is the Netherlands' Mojo/Q/Rolling Stone: https://oor.nl/news/eefje-de-visser-maakt-het-beste-album-van-2020/

noteworthy in that it’s the first time in their almost 50-year history they’ve chosen an album by a Dutch artist (singing in Dutch to boot) as the year’s best.

Salem brought out an album this year wtf? oh my god loooool

also, is this the year where all the album covers are really dark and deliberately underexposed? the opposite of The Great Millennial Colour Drought

Dog Latin, all I got for a few weeks was suggested videos for Salem. I was like 'WHY'

i gave the opening tracks a quick listen and, yeah, nobody asked for this

Is Gorilla vs. Bear a hipster fashion magazine or...?

basically yes

One of the biggest mp3 blogs that is still standing, also recently founded a record label called Luminelle Recordings with the following acts:

Anemone
Bodywash
Das Body
FADE
Hana Vu
Helena Deland
Jackie Mendoza
Lisel
Magdalena Bay
Morabeza Tobacco
MUNYA

Kind of cheating since his top pick (Helena Deland) is on Luminelle but all of the artists in there are actually good and very “on brand” to the music he likes. Helena Deland in particular is really good, I’d have no problem picking her as a top 20 AOY.

I’ll check out Deland, if only to pretend I’m keeping up with local acts.

I’d say he was definitely influential for hipster subculture in the mid to late 00s so yeah describing it as a hipster fashion zine is not that off.

Stereogum's list is up. I did not vote (and there are no jazz albums on it), though I did review two of the listed albums for them during the year — Thundercat and Autechre.

Jessie Ware has been ranked way too low in every list so far. Happy to finally see Haim in the top 10, that album defined my early quarantine months.

Boldy James & Sterling Toles, Hum, Kelly Lee Owens, Autechre, Ka: 5 faves out of 50 is more than I expected.

just chiming in to say that the slum of legs album is straight fire! I barely listen to indie(i mean 'indie' in the british broadest possible way) any more probably because it used to be p much all i ever listened to alongside hip hop. Now all I mostly listen to is kpop and whatever paolo posts on the grime thread, but listened to slum of legs and it was absolutely joyous. only complaint would be that it took me 45 mins to get past 'RUTHE14ME' cos i had to keep playing it over and over. Probably haven't so wholly enjoyed an album in this sorta genre since los campesinos.

sometimes wonder if people outside the emo thread regulars here would love the touché amoré record, feel like it really earns its placement on the stereogum list

feeling bad that this is the third year straight i haven't been tapped for pfork eoy blurbs but i certainly voted, god help us all

man not to be a bitch but both my albums this year got album of the week on steregum and there hasn't been 50 weeks in this year yet how is neither album in the top 50 albums is this because i said ur new website is hard to read im sorry my bad

— katie dey (@katie_dey) December 1, 2020

it's ok im grateful im grateful . shoutout phoebe bidges

— katie dey (@katie_dey) December 1, 2020

Brad, they need other people to say some Philadelphia band's record is "a beacon of connection in a year marked by isolation"

Here’s a snapshot (Dec. 1) of RYM’s top 50 albums of 2020:

1. The Microphones – Microphones in 2020
2. clipping. – Visions of Bodies Being Burned
3. Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters
4. Jessie Ware – What’s Your Pleasure?
5. Run the Jewels – RTJ4
6. Oranssi Pazuzu – Mestarin kynsi
7. Charli XCX – How I’m Feeling Now
8. Ulcerate – Stare Into Death and Be Still
9. Nobuo Uematsu / Masashi Hamauzu / Mitsuto Suzuki – Final Fantasy VII Remake Original Soundtrack
10. Paysage d’Hiver – Im Wald
11. Natalia Lafourcade – Un canto por México Vol. 1
12. Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist – Alfredo
13. Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
14. Adrianne Lenker – Songs
15. R.A.P. Ferreira – Purple Moonlight Pages
16. Aesop Rock – Spirit World Field Guide
17. Lianne La Havas – Lianne La Havas
18. Fleet Foxes – Shore
19. Mac Miller – Circles
20. Neptunian Maximalism – Éons
21. Yves Tumor – Heaven to a Tortured Mind
22. Jeff Rosenstock – NO DREAM
23. Protomartyr – Ultimate Success Today
24. Kaatayra – Toda história pela frente
25. Blu & Exile – Miles
26. The Strokes – The New Abnormal
27. Akhlys – Melinoë
28. Chuck Salamone & Mason Lindroth – Hylics 2 OST
29. Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately
30. Kevin & the Bikes – Ironic Songs
31. Deftones – Ohms
32. Eternal Champion – Ravening Iron
33. Of Feather and Bone – Sulfuric Disintegration
34. Róisín Murphy – Róisín Machine
35. Against All Logic – 2017 - 2019
36. Boldy James & Sterling Toles – Manger on McNichols
37. Mick Gordon – Doom Eternal (Original Game Soundtrack)
38. Havukruunu – Uinuos syömein sota
39. Imperial Triumphant – Alphaville
40. Gustavo Santaolalla – The Last of Us Part II
41. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – K.G.
42. Rina Sawayama – Sawayama
43. Lunatic Soul – Through Shaded Woods
44. Wobbler – Dwellers of the Deep
45. The Ocean Collective – Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic / Cenozoic
46. Chris Stapleton – Starting Over
47. Esoctrilihum – Eternity of Shaog
48. Spectral Lore & Mare Cognitum – Wanderers: Astrology of the Nine
49. Kaatayra – Só quem viu o relâmpago à sua direita sabe
50. Mach-Hommy – Mach’s Hard Lemonade

obviously too much metal for most folks but really a pretty good list

the Natalia Lafourcade album is the business

the ff7r soundtrack in the rym top 10 is particularly baffling even by rym's standards of regularly highly rating vg soundtracks. also still don't get why they like that very mediocre strokes album so much, especially when they hated comedown machine which is probably the best thing the strokes ever did.

RYM list is p great (vmic ik)

I really *hated* the Microphones album but there’s a lot of excellent stuff in that top 50 (and beyond). I’m also a bit puzzled by the obsession with video game soundtracks, but pourquoi pas.

the ff7r soundtrack is just some perfunctory rearrangements of some of the original ff7 soundtrack + some pretty terrible new tracks. at no point when i was playing it did it really stand out as good to me, often the opposite. like there are plenty of vg soundtracks where i enjoyed them and understand why they've ended up highly rated on rym but this was really not one of them.

complaining about your own album's eoy list "snub" is a new low imo

katie dey is a wonderful internet presence how dare u

complaining about your own album's eoy list "snub" is a new low imo

complaining about your own album's eoy list "snub" is a new low imo

Thought that was directed at me for a minute. Tbh I think katie dey's response is more similar to mine than you might think - not angry b/c we thought we were entitled to placement, just a bit bummed out we didn't make it and finding somewhere to express that (me here, her on twitter). But I dunno, maybe she is an entitled cow. Maybe we both are!

just chiming in to say that the slum of legs album is straight fire! I barely listen to indie(i mean 'indie' in the british broadest possible way) any more probably because it used to be p much all i ever listened to alongside hip hop. Now all I mostly listen to is kpop and whatever paolo posts on the grime thread, but listened to slum of legs and it was absolutely joyous. only complaint would be that it took me 45 mins to get past 'RUTHE14ME' cos i had to keep playing it over and over. Probably haven't so wholly enjoyed an album in this sorta genre since los campesinos.

― oscar bravo

On the other hand, after a drainingly shit day today, this was so so nice to read and made me crazy emotional. Thank you, oscar bravo.

Tbc I otm’d re: Katie Dey, not you, emil.y.