Music’s winners and losers for 2020, so far
Quick — who won at this year’s Grammy Awards? If 2020 has broken your brain like it’s broken ours, you might have trouble remembering that the Grammys even happened this year.
But music’s premier awards show really did go down in late January, just as the pandemic was about to banish artists from stages — and make everything that happened before that feel like ancient history.
Billie Eilish was the night’s big success story: only the second artist in history to sweep the four major categories and the youngest ever, at age 18, to take the prizes for album and record of the year.
Recovering this lost knowledge the other day led us to wonder who else in music could be described as victors this year.
So with the first half of 2020 mercifully behind us, behold our rundown of the biggest winners — and losers — of the year so far.
Winners Lil Baby:
Just a few months ago, the 25-year-old rapper from Atlanta was telling interviewers that he wasn’t especially interested in stardom. Now, his “My Turn” is 2020’s moststreamed album, with hundreds of millions of plays of tracks that layer his blurry yet melodic flow over throbbing trap beats. And whether or not he wants all those eyes on him, Lil Baby is taking advantage of his platform; in mid-June, he released “The Bigger Picture,” a startlingly frank account of why folks are marching in the streets.
Bob Dylan and Fiona Apple:
Right behind Lil Baby on this week’s Billboard 200 is Dylan, whose No. 2 showing with “Rough and Rowdy Ways” makes him the first artist to reach the chart’s top 40 at least once in every decade since the 1960s. But Dylan isn’t the only revered singersongwriter out with his first set of original material in eight years; just as ecstatically reviewed was Apple’s “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” which like Dylan’s album seems to have inadvertently captured the fevered emotional spirit of quarantine.
As half of Run the Jewels (alongside rapper and producer El-P), Killer Mike provided protesters with a welcome psychic boost on “RTJ4,” a furious hip-hop record that sublimates rage into joy. But in TV appearances and in an emotional news conference with Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Mike has also been a steady source of wisdom about the racial injustice currently under examination.
Killer Mike:
Like the Grammys, Super Bowl LIV — where this Puerto Rican rapper and singer made a surprise appearance during the halftime performance by Shakira and Jennifer Lopez — seems like it took place a century ago. Since then, though, Bad Bunny has released two full albums, including one he finished in lockdown, while his hit “Yo Perreo Sola” has become a kind of isolation anthem. Its indelible chorus translated to English? “I twerk alone.”
Bad Bunny:
A year after “Old Town Road,” the wildly popular video-sharing app has become music’s most reliable launching pad for new viral hits. The question for acts like Benee (“Supalonely”), Surfaces (“Sunday Best”) and StaySolidRocky (“Party Girl”) is whether they can create another hit on their
TikTok:
own. Either way, TikTok’s valuation keeps growing.
So her latest album, “Lover,” hasn’t devoured pop radio the way her older stuff did. By taking a vocal stand in the kind of political matters she once conspicuously avoided, Swift is arguably setting herself up for a long career more like those of her idols than like anyone passing her on the Hot 100.
Taylor Swift:
Ina year with no clubs and no festivals, you might’ve assumed dance music would go into hibernation. Instead, we’ve gotten vivid, clever dance-pop LPs from Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware and Lady Gaga — each a happysad soundtrack for the Studio 54 of your mind.
The disco revival:
Has anyone taken a more circuitous path to success in 2020?
Doja Cat:
Long a familiar presence in several distinct internet demimondes, this singer and rapper scored a No. 1 smash in May with “Say So,” an irresistibly breezy pop jam that showed off Doja Cat’s instinct for smoothing just the right amount of eccentricity from her music.
Losers Doja Cat:
A let’s-call-itcomplicated victory, “Say So’s” trip to the top spot refocused attention on Doja Cat’s producer, Dr. Luke, for whom the song was his first No. 1 since being accused of rape in 2014 as part of a still-active legal battle between him and Kesha. And it was followed quickly by the surfacing online of footage showing Doja Cat participating in alt-right chat rooms — activity for which she quickly apologized.
After tasting disappointment when he failed to show as expected at November’s Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival, the reclusive R&B star’s ultra-devoted followers were beyond ready for his long-awaited return at Coachella in April. Then the festival was postponed to October before finally being called off altogether.
Frank Ocean fans:
John Lennon’s legacy:
classic totem of socially conscious pop has been as mishandled this year as “Imagine,” which didn’t exactly start from a place of unquestionable brilliance. Still, the late Beatle’s drippy ballad hardly deserved the abuse it experienced at the hands of Gal Gadot and her famous pals in a laughably out-of-touch (and brutally out-of-tune) rendition released in the early days of the pandemic.
Though his slinky love song “Intentions” has been hanging around the top 10 for months, Bieber’s “Changes” album didn’t quite deliver the full-on comeback he’d been hoping for; in early March, before the concert business shut down, he moved several scheduled stadium dates to smaller arenas reportedly as a result of low ticket sales. Then the dude somehow got roped into a revival of the socalled PizzaGate conspiracy theory when an Instagram video sparked wild speculation that he’d been a victim of child trafficking.
Justin Bieber: Chase Rice and Chris Janson:
No
Somebody has to be the first to bring live music back to a world changed by the coronavirus. But nobody had to do it as soon as these two grinning Nashville bros, who triggered instant criticism (including from some fellow country acts) by separately playing packed concerts last weekend to mostly unmasked crowds.