The Best Albums of 2020

“It’s a story about being super in your head and being in a down place and waking up and not wanting to get out of bed and having crazy thoughts,” cautioned Danielle Haim. She was speaking about writing on her and her sisters’ latest LP, which was penned as she conquered a bout of depression, but as 2020 wraps, it’s a sentiment that feels universal. Similarly startling frankness serves as a defacto spine for the set—supporting thrilling explorations of new influences, like glitchy electro and ‘90s Lilith Fair—elevating their output from good, often even great, to downright necessary. —Madison Vain

There is perhaps no artist—present or past—comparable to Taylor Swift. A brilliant businessperson, a brand, a mythos, a tabloid pop star, a writer, a singer, a composer. She’s been in feuds, in relationships, in trouble—and she’s written through it all. Often her songs are labyrinths of references, Easter Eggs, and mysteries tangled up in diary entries. Even when it wasn’t it was about the artist. But, with two albums in 2020, her sound became significantly less about Taylor Swift. Her songs told stories that, while likely based on her own life experience, included characters outside of her own point of view. She expanded her scope, she wrote stories. She became a literary storyteller, the likes of which she’d never been before. And the music itself evolved with her into a gently moving stream of indie-rock, of country, of soft pop. It’s the artist she always was meant to be, and has always been behind her own towering shadow. folklore is the Taylor Swift we needed in 2020. It is the album she has had in her since she began writing as a kid. — Matt Miller

“The entire year got stolen,” our Winter issue cover stars lament in the making-the-best-of-a-pandemic anthem “Fly To My Room,” and they have reason to be disappointed: 2020 would have had them leveling up yet again with their Map Of The Soul world tour. But they shook it off and changed course, writing and recording Be, an album about hope in the face of frustration. “This album talks about our story,” Jung Kook told us in September, “and tells that even in the new normality of COVID-19, our life goes on. It imparts a message of healing and comfort to our fans and everyone around the world.” They invited you in with their sunny first English-language single “Dynamite,” and served up a defiantly positive album, so confident it contains a full three-minute conversation between the men among its lean eight tracks. American top-forty radio still doesn’t quite know what to do with our guys, but the group and fans of good pop music aren’t waiting for the industry to catch up: Be became their fifth number-one album in the US. -Dave Holmes

The best selling female band in the history of the United States returned in 2020 with a new name and a monstrously good reminder of what we were missing during their 14-year hiatus. Produced by Jack Antonoff (Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift) Gaslighter holds no punches, from salacious admissions regarding lead singer Natalie Maines’s divorce to bare-faced emotional pleas. —Madison Vain

“I have had no prouder moment in music than that,” Killer Mike told Esquire this year, talking about when he saw people marching through Atlanta chanting his words while protesting police violence. Mike and El-P have made music calling for the destruction of crooked, racist, and unjust systems in America their entire career. And the fact that another slaying of an unarmed Black man by police preceded the release of their fourth record is only an inevitable, common coincidence in America. Along with becoming an anthem for the protests following the murder of George Floyd, RTJ4 is a no-holds-barred assault on late-stage capitalism, against the evils of the Trump administration. But it’s also a deeply personal album about the artists themselves, in which the men discuss their own fears, families, and anxieties. — Matt Miller

20-year-old Brit Beatrice Laus soaked up the ‘90s indie influences of her youth– Juliana Hatfield, Liz Phair and the soundtrack to The Craft are right there at the top– and synthesized them into an album that is pure 2020 heartbreak pop heaven. But it’s no throwback; Laus, whose pseudonym is cribbed from her Finsta screenname, infuses the record with an attitude that is uniquely hers. “I feel like I wear my heart on my sleeve on this record, and I really hope that it helps other girls like me who are going through the same thing,” she told Variety this year, “I want Fake It Flowers to be that album for girls. Like just be whatever the fuck you want to be, you know? No one’s stopping you.” The kids are alright. — Dave Holmes

“I want people to have sex to it,” Ware said earlier this spring, referencing her 2020 collection. As clubs remain closed, it’s not a bad back-up plan for the funky, Hi-NRG exploration. True to its 1970s roots it may be, the breathy trappings Ware employs all across her addictive new LP never feel like costume. Instead, they’re downright spellbinding. —Madison Vain

It’s incredible that Phoebe Bridgers created one of the year’s most intense deeply felt records and also one of the most satisfyingly hilarious music moments. Most artists who released albums early-to-mid quarantine were easily lost in a year that felt decades long. But Phoebe remained relevant throughout all of 2020. The buildup to Punisher included a number of singles that showed the depth and range of her craft. The album earned her first No. 1 on a Billboard chart. It’s a powerfully realized piece of emotional clarity—a masterfully written and composed collection of songs. But, she wasn’t done yet. In early November, she promised to cover the Goo Goo Dolls hit "Iris" if Biden won the election. He did. And she did. The song cracked the Billboard Top 100, and when Bridgers was nominated for a Grammys, Lucy Dacus promised to cover Iris if Bridgers took home her award. Let’s hope she does. — Matt Miller

In an age when “alternative” means Imagine Dragons, a one-of-a-kind act like Ireland’s Fontaines D.C. is in danger of languishing in the States. Don’t let them. A Hero’s Death is a brash, sometimes belligerent record, full of repeated phrases— “Life ain’t always empty,” “Love is the main thing,” “That’s a televised mind”— inspired by the breezy advertising slogans on the billboards they passed on tour for their last record. “I had a few cans before I recorded the vocals,” Lead singer Grian Chatten told Upset Magazine. “I wanted it to sound like I was playing the role of embittered barfly, swaying themselves home after a cold night out, full of principles but surrounded by nobody.” Until we can travel again, this does a good job of standing in for a trip to Dublin. -DH

Push any chairs to the side and scoot your coffee table out of the way. Dancehalls may still be shuttered, but the fifth album from Ireland’s cult favorite demands a space to move all the same. Murphy lays bare her aim just beyond the opening notes: “I will make my own happy ending,” she says. In a year that demanded we all do the same, there exists no better soundtrack than this storm of feverish disco. —Madison Vain

When Dehd’s Flower of Devotion came out in the middle of summer 2020 it hit me hard. That longing I felt for seeing live music was suddenly unbearable. This album captures the energy of a small DIY show—one with a dirty couch, a cooler of beer, and a dilapidated deck for smoking. Their first recording in a proper studio captures the nuances of their sound, while never sacrificing the spirit of live music. With Emily Kempf’s wry, nimble, and assuredly raw vocal flourishes and “ti-ti-ti-ti-time” choruses, Flower of Devotion feels spontaneous and alive. When we can do so again, I will be first in line to see Dehd wherever they’re at. In the meantime, I have the next best thing — Matt Miller

The voice of a crooner in the body of a bro-country star, Eldredge has always seemed to have more depth than his peers, and on his fifth album he proves it. It’s got more of a 1970s Laurel Canyon vibe than a 2020 Nashville, a vulnerability that perfectly suits this challenging year. At its heart, a stunner of a title track Eldredge first heard as a demo more than a decade ago as an intern at Universal Music and kept in his back pocket until his voice grew into it. If “Sunday Drive" doesn’t reduce you to full shoulder-action sobs, your soul is in grave danger. — Dave Holmes

Listening to the newest album from the Killers makes me want to run through a wall. That’s the pitch. Need more? Okay, it’s big and it’s boisterous; orchestral and dramatic. And in an era where the guitars that get the most attention almost exclusively favor sparse lines and an indie rock lean, frontman Brandon Flowers embraces the over the top. It absolutely works. —Madison Vain

At a time in early quarantine when most artists were shell-shocked by the implosion of live music, when they were delaying albums, and hunkering down to ride it out, Charli XCX began writing. Written and recorded entirely in the first six weeks of quarantine, it will remain a time stamp of the moment as the title suggests. In it—through kaleidoscopic synth-pop and futuristic club ballads—she explores the loneliness and anxiety of a global pandemic. There’s a yearning for physical touch, a longing for human connection that is so powerfully connected to a time and a place. It’s emotion that shines through every single neon hook or crunchy synth line and robotic trill. Years from now, when our grandkids ask us what it was like during the pandemic of 2020, maybe we can just play them Charli XCX. — Matt Miller

Perhaps it should be old news by now, given the cadence at which her albums arrive, but the near-eight-year-wait for Fiona Apple’s latest missive was, in fact, worth it. Fetch the Bolt Cutters, just her fifth collection in more than two decades, is a startling, abrasive, euphoric, and frenzied testimony from one of rock’s most radical creators. It yawps and hollers, twisting dog barks into beats and painful memories into universally appealing release, while raising the bar, once more, for honesty in creation. —Madison Vain

Thanks to the many months locked inside, we've had plenty of time to devour every second of Moses Sumney's sprawling, two part album, Græ. But even that is not enough time to consume every twist and hidden passageway of this collection of dismantled and reassembled soul, blues, pop, and R&B, tracks. It's a record that captures the inner turmoil of year in isolation, in which introspection can be frightening, illuminating, and cathartic. — Matt Miller

Nobody could have imagined how crucial, how cathartic, how physically and emotionally necessary dancing would be in the spring of 2020. Thank goodness our Kosovar-British pop princess had a full disco album in the chamber. Future Nostalgia name-checks Googie architect James Lautner in its first line, bites hooks from INXS and White Town, declares Lipa the new “female alpha,” and accidentally makes social-distancing rules sexy with lead single “Don’t Start Now.” Other than its #MeToo anthem closer “Boys Will Be Boys,” Dua Lipa does not give you one single moment to sit down, which is a valuable service because there’s no telling what distressing truths you might contemplate while you catch your breath. Future Nostalgia is pure escape for your soul while your body stays trapped inside your home. –Dave Holmes

Few rappers can pull off scouring the musical stratosphere while remaining weirdly relatable like Lil Uzi Vert. On his new album, Eternal Atake, Uzi is vocal about his money and his fame but his clever pop culture references—everything from Yu-Gi-Oh! to G.I. Joe—keep him accessible, down to hang out with everyone else on Earth. That he’s honest about his anxieties, his heartbreaks, and his fears among the shimmering beats and stacks of money, feels especially vital. Add to that samples of the 3D Space Cadet pinball game, Backstreet Boys, Ariana Grande, Lyn Collins, and Uzi has emerged as a musical anomaly of the modern Internet Age. —Matt Miller

What do you do when you become an indie rock god by accident? If you’re 27-year-old Will Toledo, frontman of Car Seat Headrest, you craft a gas mask-wearing alter ego named Trait and embrace stadium-sized pop showmanship. Making a Door Less Open, their excellent 2020 LP, doesn’t so much fold in new influences as it does rip through them. Breakbeat electro (“Hymn,” on the streaming version of the set), gooey surf rock grooves (“Can’t Cool Me Down”), and dance rock-arrangements (“Famous”) all get their due—and you’d be tempted to call it reckless if it weren’t so damn good. —Madison Vain

Comfort blooms listening to Waxahatchee’s Saint Cloud. Released at the beginning of what felt like the end, Katie Crutchfield’s songwriting cuts through pervasive anxiety. It’s like a long, peaceful walk with an old friend—one who has the perfect thing to take the edge off of life. On “Lilacs” she sings about isolation and the rejuvenating power of nature. “I wake up feeling nothing / Camouflage the wavering sky / I sit at my piano, wander the wild whereby / And the lilacs drank the water / And the lilacs die / And the lilacs drank the water / Marking in the slow, slow, slow passing of time.” In hindsight, they read like an artist’s social distancing diary. But buried beneath the subject matter, the song has an easygoing complexion and an innate sense of hope. —Matt Miller