The year we all want to forget, hit fast-forward on and move on to newer and brighter things. While I generally share these sentiments, I do think hindsight will reveal some bright spots during these troubling times, and one area that was able to overcome the oppression of COVID-19 was creativity. In music in particular, I feel this was a strong year of releases across the board, that in some part makes up for the loss of experiences – oh how I miss live music – as a result, this has become a much more personal expose of music than years past. These albums proved to be the soundtrack to my groundhog day existence, a welcome distraction during my long walks with the dog, or motivation for work, workouts and taking on another day.
Some of these artists are surprisingly new discoveries for me, like someone suddenly watching ‘Band of Brothers’ or ‘The Wire’ for the first time – like how have I not listened to this artist before?! The challenge of our current world situation is a consistent theme across most of these albums, whether that is contending with isolation, lack of social interaction, political action/frustration, or flat out escapism. The determination of what makes music powerful in my opinion is the kind that makes you either feel, think, or move in any order. I used this criteria to determine and rank my picks, while also limiting this to new releases from 2020 – sorry no reissues, otherwise Tom Petty’s ‘Wildflowers and All The Rest‘ would be included for sure.
Here are my picks for Best Albums of 2020, hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
-MFK
| Artist | Album | Key Track |
| 1.Waxahatchee | Saint Cloud |
Can’t Do Much |
| 2. Charli XCX | how i’m feeling now | detonate |
| 3. Fleet Foxes | Shore | Can I Believe You |
| 4. Caribou | Suddenly | Home |
| 5. The 1975 | Notes On A Conditional Form | Roadkill |
| 6. Fiona Apple | Fetch The Bolt Cutters | I Want You To Love Me |
| 7.Run The Jewels | RTJ4 | JU$T |
| 8. The Beths | Jump Rope Gazers | Out of Sight |
| 9. Chris Stapleton | Starting Over | Starting Over |
| 10. Songhoy Blues | Optimisme | Assadja |
| 11. Phoebe Bridgers | Punisher | Kyoto |
| 12. Raye Zaragoza | Woman in Color | The It Girl |
| 13. Gunna | Wunna | Dollaz On My Head |
| 14. Mipso | Mipso | Shelter |
| 15. Black Thought | Streams of Thought Vol. 3 | Fuel |
| 16. Sault | Untitled (Black Is) | Wildfires |
| 17. The Strokes | The New Abnormal | The Adults Are Talking |
| 18. Idles | Ultra Mono | Anxiety |
| 19. Fontaines D.C. | A Hero’s Death | Televised Mind |
| 20. Deep Sea Diver | Impossible Weight | Impossible Weight |
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