The 50 best albums of 2020: 50-31
This list is drawn from votes by Guardian music critics – each critic votes for their top 20 albums, with points allocated for each placing, and those points tallied to create this order. Check in every weekday to see our next picks, and please share your own favourite albums of 2020 in the comments below.
50
Clipping. – Visions of Bodies Being Burned
Rapper Daveed Diggs is best known for playing Jefferson and Lafayette in Hamilton, surveying the violent chaos at the outset of the US – here, he seems to survey the same thing at its end. This is horrorcore hip-hop, but deadly serious rather than cartoonish, an apocalyptic world filled with blood, petrol, drugs and rust where “core snap like yolk, floor crack like joke / More cat eye opens, sky racked like coat”. Producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes use “electronic voice phenomenon” ghost recordings, corroded signals and electroshock bursts of bass and noise to keep you constantly choosing fight or flight. BBT
49
Destroyer – Have We Met
Soft rock’s poet laureate returned with one of his strongest sets yet, with the coldwave chill that arrived on Ken (2017) now getting right into his bones. His lyrics are surrealism of the kind André Breton originally intended for the movement back in 1924, “an absolute reality, a super-reality”: bizarre imagery that nevertheless feels true to life, and in thrall to it. Humanity, for example, is “a room of pit ponies / Drowning forever in a sea of love”. BBTRead the full review.
48
Soccer Mommy – Color Theory
The recent craze for bedroom pop had a further boost this year as so many of us were increasingly confined to our bedrooms, although there’s a sneaking suspicion this term can undersell the
ambition of these (often female) artists. Like Beabadoobee, Clairo and other recent breakthroughs, Soccer Mommy actually makes full-bodied, melodically strong indie rock – at times you can draw lines towards Real Estate or Deerhunter, but the drowsy yet determined vocals are inimitably hers. BBTRead the full review.
47
Teyana Taylor – The Album
Across 23 tracks, the American R&B star builds a deep, rounded portrait of the highs and lows of a romantic relationship. There are frequent pleas for better communication and reciprocity, likely to comfort anyone gaslighted into thinking, “Is it just me?” But when the connection works, it really works, as evinced by the numerous rapturous slow jams. Taylor shows how sex itself is communication, adding up to one of the hottest, most emotionally astute albums of the year. BBTRead the review.
46
The Necks – Three
The bustle of pre-Covid life seems to be evoked by Tony Buck’s drumming in the latest release by the veteran Australian avant-jazz trio, particularly on the opening track Bloom, which clatters and rustles with ferrety industry. The second of these 20-plus-minute pieces, Lovelock, turns anxious and distracted, before Further closes the set out with one of their most purely gorgeous compositions, a lush rainmaking groove anchored around a two-note organ motif. BBTRead the review.
45
Selena Gomez – Rare
Considering the dramatic origins of her third album – lupus, a kidney transplant, splitting from Justin Bieber and the Weeknd, rehab for her mental health – Gomez could justifiably have released an hour of equally high-intensity bloodletting, but Rare abides by the maxim “when it’s hot, write it cold”. Aside from the wrecking ballad Lose You to Love Me, it’s confidently unruffled, taking the Talking Headsaided oddness of her 2017 single Bad Liar as her template. The often very funny Gomez excels at nimble vocal kiss-offs, which she layers into satisfyingly percussive patterns: the chorus of People You Know seems to fold in on itself like origami; you’d expect Vulnerable to burst into gaudy EDM, but it pares back to Gomez caressing every syllable of the word, as if putting her own seams on show. LS
44
Jessy Lanza – All the Time
It is testament to the allure of her sweet club-pop visions that Jessy Lanza’s breakout stemmed from her most insular work yet. When she sings, the effect is of catching someone unwittingly mumbling along to Janet Jackson through their headphones; her quicksilver vocal intimacy allows for flirtation and hurt to flicker through like electrical surges. The tenderness of Jam and Lewis, west coast hip-hop at its sugariest and the innocence of Japanese city pop are fractured by shivering dubstep and even the exuberant chatter of UK garage. Like a sky laced with pastel cirrus, it is effervescent and aweinspiring. LSRead the full review.
43
Wizkid – Made in Lagos
Nigerian pop continued to establish itself more firmly on the international stage in 2020 with successful albums by Burna Boy, Davido, Tiwa Savage, Tems and more. The best of them all was this lilting, versatile record by Wizkid. Guest stars from across the Black Atlantic – Skepta and Ella Mai from the UK, HER from the US, Damian Marley and Projexx from Jamaica – create the sense of a diasporic dialogue, where reggae, dancehall, rap and Afro-swing seamlessly and sensually intertwine. BBTRead the full review.
42
Kylie Minogue – Disco
The uber-Kylie album thunders through the genre’s history, from the Voulez-Vous-ing of Last Chance and sly references to Gloria Gaynor and Earth, Wind & Fire to its stylish 90s French touch reincarnation. More than simply disco literate, it is also a wonderfully meta exposition of Kylie’s pop identity, how she has embodied hope and joy and lived in service of the perfect pop song – its own bid for immortality. She had spent a few years off the pulse with try-hard Kiss Me Once (2014) and Nashville-inspired, retirement-tempting Golden (2018). But Disco didn’t just compete with this year’s surprisingly widespread revival of the genre; Kylie’s fantastical dancefloor, one of catharsis and community, resonated precisely with these weird times. LSRead the full review.
41
Actress – Karma & Desire
Darren Cunningham cements his place as one of the great poets of club culture, spanning glacial ambient, UK garage, Larry Heard-ish deep house, bumping techno and high-speed rave, all rendered in monochrome, dirtied watercolours. Guest vocals can be either gnomic (“destiny is stuck in heaven blowing nitro”, Zsela intones) or collapsing (Sampha’s corrupted cries), though Loveless’s chorus of “don’t you want to know me better?” makes for his best earworm since 2010’s Maze.
40
Ariana Grande – Positions
Thirty years after the invention of the “parental advisory: explicit content” sticker, pop celebrated Tipper Gore’s prudish legacy with its filthiest year in recent memory. Ariana Grande’s sixth album made no bones about its primary concern – namely bones every which way until Tuesday, upholstered by slinky, lavish R&B. Often, young women who sprang from kids’ entertainment have used sex to assert their outrageousness and maturity. But Grande’s horniness has been part of her artistic identity for years – on Positions, it offered a safe retreat from headlines about heartbreak and tragedy. It’s also a great smokescreen: the album’s implicit content, about grief and anxiety, is far more revealing than the raunchy stuff. LSRead the full review.
39
Jeff Parker – Suite for Max Brown
The guitarist with jazz-rockers Tortoise, who has released numerous solo records and played sideman to Meshell Ndegeocello, Makaya McCraven and more, was in personal and crowdpleasing form on this LP, which breezes between funk, hip-hop rhythms and cosmic jazz in honour of his mother (named in the title). By sampling, editing and chopping together his own recordings, and folding in various collaborators, including his teenage daughter Ruby, he gives it an impulsively impressionist feel. BBTRead more.
38
Kassa Overall – I Think I’m Good
This is a blessedly uncategorisable record by the New York drummer and hyphenate talent, spanning Frank Ocean-ic romantic R&B lamentations, autobiographical improv, bumping neo-soul, flute fantasies, triphop and more, with guest stars ranging from Vijay Iyer to Angela Davis. The effect is like clambering inside a single particular mind, one that is – as the brilliantly unreadable title suggests – jangled by anxiety but also fumbling towards happiness. BBT
37
21 Savage and Metro Boomin – Savage Mode II
The Atlanta rapper-producer power duo follow their hit 2016 tape with another trap masterclass. Metro’s usual atmospheric snares, chords and nighthawk mood are offset with some gloriously cute flourishes, such as the dreamy backwards tones of Mr Right Now or the classic electro of Steppin’ on Niggas. Savage’s voice is still one of the best in contemporary rap: withering, jaded, but slicked with dark humour. It’s all tied together with oracular pronouncements from Morgan Freeman, who muses on the nature of snitches with a twinkling gimlet eye. BBT
36
The 1975 – Notes on a Conditional Form
After disaffected candour swept literature, many criticsasked whetherself-awareness had gone too farin fiction. There’s not much between the 1975’s Matty Healy and the creations of Naoise Dolan and Sally Rooney: across the band’s fourth album, Healy is acutely aware of his flaws, satirising and shrugging at his ego, his horniness, his political flakiness – and, yes, his overwhelming self-awareness. But where his fictional counterparts were criticised for declining to delve beyond surface recognition, Healy’s frustration at the social dynamics that affirm such behaviour is all over Notes on a Conditional Form. Nothing Revealed/Everything Denied sighs at life spent on the defensive; I Think There’s Something You Should Know sets Healy’s self-alienation to fractured two-step. Sincerity and connection, he suggests, are the only tonic: it’s there in the album’s guileless evocations of American softrock and emo (at 31, Healy comes from the last generation to experience an unmediated adolescence and with it unselfconscious teenage tastes) and its yearning for true devotion. Me & You Together Song vibrates with naivety, a vision of uncomplicated romance and unrelentingly Tiggerish indie-pop that remains insistently in the moment, swapping introspection for admiration. LSRead the full review.
35
Working Men’s Club – Working Men’s Club
Their widely beloved 2019 debut single Bad Blood suggested the Yorkshire quartet could go in any number of directions – vintage new wave, jangly indiepop – but they headed for the club, using the industrial synth pulsations of Depeche Mode and early Ministry, and guitars that nodded to various legendary Mancunians – Bernard Sumner, Johnny Marr, Vini Reilly. From the singsong chorus of Tomorrow to the twanging riff of John Cooper Clarke, the melodies are insistent and prodding, set to unleash a poorly coordinated army of robot dancers when indie discos reopen. BBTRead the full review.
34
Freddie Gibbs and the Alchemist – Alfredo
With two classic albums alongside Madlib, Gibbs continues his other dream producer partnership with the Alchemist (a veteran whose credits include Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Nas and tens of others) following 2018’s Fetti. As with Madlib, Gibbs pairs well with crackly soul samples, giving him the lofty statesmanlike air he needs when regarding everyone with such alpha-male hauteur, but he never sounds old. His tales of drugs and women are delivered in a hungry flow that is deceptively brilliant: conversational even when at a high technical difficulty. BBT
33
Charli XCX – How I’m Feeling Now
The title of Charli XCX’s lockdown album might be read as business as usual: she is, after all, our most hyper-present and reactive pop star, one obsessed with stimulation. Frustrated by its absence this year, the self-professed workaholic made an album of sugary obliteration that signalled her fierce hunger for the highs: “I’m so BORED,” she spat on Anthems, a bratty shriek to scare off disassociation. But keeping still forced Charli to actually sit with her feelings – a much harder job than simply acting on them – and her fourth album contains moments of dawning horror at what that stillness revealed. How I’m Feeling Now was awash with static interference, a familiar sound to anyone who’s battled through video calling in 2020 – but it also mirrored an interior conflict between signal and noise, distraction and fulfilment. LSRead the full review.
32 KeiyaA – Forever, Ya Girl
Chicago artist KeiyaA’s self-produced debut took you swimming inside her head. Calling to mind the insularity of John Carroll Kirby’s work with Solange and Eddie Chacon, Forever, Ya Girl spirals around murky thickets of R&B, harmonised incantations and stilted beats that mustered a sense of off-kilter propulsion. In contrast to that dreamlike haze was KeiyaA’s clarity of thought. She sang with an intimacy that conveyed the real-time growth of thoughts from instinct to decision, her hurt at the hands of bad men and racists calcifying into defiance. The music sounds like escapism; KeiyaA’s lyrical philosophy lays out a path by which one might truly escape. LSRead more.
31
US Girls – Heavy Light
Heavy Light surveys life and finds a rigged game at every step, from birth to work and ultimately death at the hands of environmental apocalypse. Meg Remy is pictured with a little kid on the cover – a symbol of hope, you might think, but then biological and natural maternal relationships turn out to be corrupted, too. Interludes where people recall the colour of their bedroom wall are next to songs about the insignificance of human history in the grand scheme of the universe. Yet Heavy Light made good on both halves of its name, contrasting those crushingly depressing perspectives with loose, sun-streaked funk and soul and strutting choruses – the sound of people in a room, finding hope where they can. LSRead the full review.