The 50 best albums of 2020: 50-21
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.