This year’s survey is here, offering a panoramic view of music across the genres through 2020. It’s very long and very thorough, and still somehow only scratches the surface of the full volume of music released over 12 months.
You can find many other playlists I’ve made for both Spotify and Apple Music here.
The original version of Warmduscher’s “Midnight Dipper” isn’t dramatically different from the Soulwax remix – the groove and vocal are about the same, but it’s shorter and a bit more raw. Soulwax stretch the song out and dial the disco way up, and in doing so the song becomes even more strange and silly than it was from the start. The original version was presenting its sleazy character and lewd vibe as a farce, but when the song is pushed to this extreme it just feels genuinely pervy and prurient. Listening to it feels like accidentally entering some kind of Plato’s Retreat-esque swingers club and being stuck between wanting to get out quickly or hang around to see how much weirder it’s going to get.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Miley Cyrus always seems most comfortable singing rock songs, and this makes sense – even though she can competently emote in a more R&B mode, everything that makes her charismatic and exciting as a vocalist is in the grit and raw power of her voice. She effortlessly conveys a lot of core rock values that can be hard to come by in a lot of popular rock music from the past few decades – raw sexuality, attitude, huge untamed emotions, and a touch of camp. Up until recently her career has been a bit confusing because it’s apparent how much she’s had to move away from her strong suit to stay relevant in the market. A lot of her biggest hits have basically been rock songs, but her new album Plastic Hearts is the first to come to the audience with the wild proposition that she’s giving us a big pop record that’s also a big rock record. What a concept, right?
“Bad Karma” is a sleazy rocker with a lascivious “uh huh, uh huh” hook that has a very ‘70s feel but more of a ‘90s alt-rock sense of dynamics as the verses build up tension until Angel Olsen’s guitar part crashes in on the chorus. Cyrus sings the song as a duet with Joan Jett if just to acknowledge how much of the song is owed to her back catalog, but their voices complement each other very well – it’s almost like hearing the same person at different points in her life. They both project a convincing degree of shamelessness in their vocals and that’s really all this song about being a reckless and self-destructive flirt needs to work.
Buy it from Amazon.
“Inkwater” is in the same aesthetic ballpark as a lot of post-Mac DeMarco drowsy boy psychedelic indie rock, but the bass groove brings the song a bit closer to R&B slow jam territory. So, in other words – they leveled up. The vocals are sung in English, but they’re mostly murmured and purred into the mic, so it almost doesn’t matter. But the lyrics that do rise to the surface are intriguing – for example, “well, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” immediately followed by “never hate on no one” is an interesting progression of thoughts. The chorus hook starts with “I can show you on my melody” and in context I like that as the singer getting a little frustrated with his words and just asking you to pay more attention to the vibe because the sound of it is so much more nuanced than anything he can sing.
Buy it from Amazon.
On one hand I really appreciate Taylor Swift shifting gears and exploring character-based songwriting, but on the other my two favorite songs on Folklore, the two that are the most resonant for me by far, are “Invisible String” and “Peace,” which are both autobiographical. I love that they both engage with mundane realities of the sort of the sort of heightened romance she wrote about for so long, and in those details you see a deeper love than those older songs ever imagined.
“Peace” is slow and gentle but not quite serene. Aaron Dessner’s arrangement is pared down to just a pensive guitar part and a looped keyboard note that’s both uneasy and lulling, like an error alert receding into background noise. The ample negative space gives Swift room to sing some of the loveliest melodies she’s ever written. (It does not surprise me at all that this is one that Paul McCartney singled out as a favorite.) Even if you knew nothing about her, it’d be easy to intuit that this was a particularly personal song – there’s a nuanced vulnerability in her vocal that feels lived-in and relaxed, and not necessarily performative.
The specifics of “Peace” are not very relatable – she’s basically singing to her partner about the guilt she carries in forcing him to live with the unintended consequences of her immense celebrity. She worries that she’s getting a better deal in the relationship than he is, she’s afraid that the deep connection they have may be spoiled for him having to deal with the burden of dealing with things like paparazzi and tabloids. They can experience intimacy, but total privacy is off the table.
And while most of us will not ever have to contend with these concerns, Swift’s combination of insecurity and genuine appreciation of what she has with her partner is something almost anyone can see themselves in. It’s very easy to sub out the celebrity thing for dealing with mental illness, or any other lingering trouble in one’s life. When it comes down to it, this isn’t really a song about being a celebrity so much as just acknowledging that when people get into relationships they’re signing up to deal with the other person’s mess, and sometime’s someone has more of a mess on their hands than the other. But the point of a good relationship is getting through it together.
Buy it from Amazon.
“In Code” is the kind of gospel-based pop song where the tone of the piano chords are so bright that they seem to shine through the speakers. Loony’s voice swings gracefully from soul belting to Beyoncé-esque syncopation, all the while projecting as much warmth and generosity as the chords. It’s not all syrupy sentimentality, though. The verses put all of these kind vibes in the context of day-to-day turmoil bordering on crippling anxiety, so when she sings “coming home never made sense until I found you” in the chorus, the gratitude feels very genuine and hard-earned.
Buy it from Amazon.
This is a Christmas song, and while the holiday is mentioned prominently in the lyrics, it mostly just comes across as an R&B ballad – y’know, like, a normal song. But I like this as a Christmas song, in as much as that category surely could use a few more low-key melancholy but high-key sexy songs in the mix. Sabrina Claudio sings it like an inverted “Santa Baby,” making it more plaintive than sassy and far less consumerist. The expensive taste is still there, but there’s also an acknowledgment of grim fiscal realities. The entire gist of the song is “hey, budget is tight, so I got myself some nice lingerie and we can fuck later.” This is such a 2020 Christmas song – financially responsible, a little depressing, extremely horny.
Buy it from Amazon.
Some artists will zig when you expect them to zag, but Billy Corgan is a guy will zib or zir instead and leave you wondering what just happened. The new Smashing Pumpkins album CYR is a totally perplexing record – it feels slick and commercial, but it doesn’t quite sound pop or like anything that would fit in on radio right now. It’s the first full-length record Corgan has made since getting both Jimmy Chamberlain and James Iha back in the band, but the abundance of keyboards and crisp programmed percussion makes it sound like neither was actually involved at all. The aesthetic isn’t far off from that of Adore, but without the gothic atmosphere or delicate melodies. The Smashing Pumpkins is a band with a mastery of dynamics, but all 20 songs on CYR feel like they’re stuck in the same gear and share nearly identical tonal palettes. I don’t dislike any of the songs, but I also have trouble remembering any of them when they’re over. I suspect that if I was in a situation where I heard CYR front to back over and over I might come to really like a lot of these songs, but I also really would rather not do that.
“Anno Satana” is one of the best songs on the record, and feels like a cousin to “Stand Inside Your Love” from Machina. I’ve never particularly liked that song, so this one feels like an improvement – the melody pops a bit more, the late ’80s 120 Minutes aesthetics feel a bit more lived-in. While this and the rest of CYR seems like Corgan may be deliberately pushing himself and the band away from their core competencies in order to find some new moves, his voice is a major strength here. This melody flatters his natural tone and the icy textures of the track neatly frame the androgynous qualities of his voice. A lot of the lyrics sketch out an occult fantasy, but the bits that jump out – “young hearts will change,” “I never needed anyone” – resonate because he delivers them with a soft, feminine sigh.
Buy it from Amazon.
Linden Jay’s arrangement for “Got Me All Wrong” doesn’t include very many musical elements but it feels like it’s shifting around like a glob of liquid mercury. Even the apparent gender of the vocalist sounds like it’s in flux – the song starts off in vocalist Frida Touray’s natural range but gets pitched down to a tone that’s close enough to Sampha that I initially assumed he was on the track. It’s interesting that music that feels so amorphous is supporting lyrics that are quite clear-headed and decisive, as Touray sings to someone who’s misinterpreted their feelings – “you don’t know me at all, you like the way I make you feel.” It’s a very “letting them down easy” sentiment, but there’s a bit of exasperation in Touray’s voice and it makes the bass and keyboard parts seem like representations of shifting perceptions about them which don’t quite line up with reality.
Buy it from Amazon.
“Apathetic Boys” is perky electro-rock song by a duo of young women that roasts dull and condescending indie guys, and claims some power and agency by declaring these men entirely irrelevant. It reminds me quite a bit of another song by a female duo that I wrote up here 15 years ago called “Indie Boys (Don’t Deserve It)” by the Queens of Noize. They are both aggressive but tongue-in-cheek songs about the same sort of guys, but the differences between the songs say a lot about their respective eras.
The Queens of Noize track is extremely mid-00s – very rooted in the British landfill indie scene of the day, and borne of the self-consciously raunchy and bratty post-Vice aesthetic. They acknowledge the sexual impropriety of the indie boys but make a joke of it – “coppin’ a feel, now you got a record deal” – and the best they can do to shame them for it is to say a snarky line like “it’ll still take a sack of pills to get laid.”
Overcoats’ song is quite obviously the product of the late ‘10s – the humor is less bawdy but more trollish, full of little jabs meant to evoke a “U mad?” response. Whereas the Queens of Noize admit to some measure of lust for these dopey rock guys, Overcoats express a casual meme-ified misandry and seem fully repulsed by these guys’ apathy and lack of imagination. But they arrrive at a better place by the end – instead of shrugging these guys off and bitterly accepting “how things are,” “Apathetic Boys” suggests a path forward entirely free of this element.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to another one of these in 10-15 years. It’s not as though the apathetic indie boys are going to start deserving it any time soon.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
This post is a lightning round of mini-reviews of songs that are featured on my Disco 2020 playlist, which collects great disco and dance songs from this year.
Cinthie’s production on “Bassline” is so sharp and focused that it feels almost like a weapon, this thing programmed to override your mind and body until you’re dancing to her song. That the vocal is just a woman belting out the word BASSLINE over and over adds to the domination vibe – it’s like a command you must obey.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
You can tell just by hearing it that “Dancing Girl” is the work of a veteran DJ – it’s a little old fashioned in some ways, but the craft is expert, elegant, and highly effective in getting a physical response. The funk here is raw enough to feel sort of lewd, but it’s delivered very carefully, like Ouimet and Godin are pacing out the dosage of something that could be fatal if the concentration is too high.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
“Both of Us” shifts gracefully between two modes – a soft romantic elegance rooted in R&B and an overwhelming wave of euphoria that hits with the full force of house music. I can imagine the more gentle digressions killing a floor a bit, but in bringing the song down it just makes the impact of the beat hit harder when it returns.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Sonic Youth is one of the most important bands in my personal history but I’ve found it hard to get enthusiastic about Thurston Moore’s post-SY material. This isn’t to say I think it’s been bad but more that when I hear him on his own now it all feels too familiar, like I just know how he plays too well and I’m not surprised by anything he does from one chord to the next. This was a creeping problem in the later Sonic Youth records, but in that situation Lee Ranaldo, Kim Gordon, and Steve Shelley were bringing their own ideas and impulses to it so no song ever rested entirely on his guitar or his voice. A lot of Moore’s songs now feel less like songwriting and more like a meditative practice, and this is simply him engaging with his instrument in a way that feels most natural and unforced. I get it, but a lot of it doesn’t quite beg to be heard.
“Calligraphy” is an outlier in that Moore’s guitar style is noticeably different in its textures and tones, even if the chord changes and lead parts are very obviously him. It feels more rough and rustic; something about the particular tone of the acoustic guitar reminds me of the smell of burning wood. You can hear peace in his voice but a bit of restlessness in his guitar, like he’s waiting for his body to catch up with his mind.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Beck and Damon Albarn are two of the most versatile artists of all time, both capable of working up to a high standard in a very wide range of styles. So what happens when you put these two clever chameleons together on a track? Well… you basically just get them both on autopilot and singing default-mode melodies over a track that sounds like it was made of spare parts from the Güero and Demon Days records. It’s a good but totally unsurprising song. I think what really happened here is their core styles overlap a bit too neatly, so it just becomes a composite of them both. Albarn’s more interesting collaborations tend to be with artists who he has much less in common with, so there’s a bit of tension in how they push and pull. This is more like two magnets snapping together.
Buy it from Amazon.
“Hetty O’Hara Confidential” is a cautionary tale of a gossip columnist who was once quite powerful but is now outmoded in a time when “everyone has a megaphone.” It’s a brutal portrait of someone who was exceptionally good at her job but a bit drunk on the power that went along with it, and progressively more indifferent to the havoc she could wreak in her subject’s lives by telling all their secrets. Elvis Costello seems a bit awed by her – it’s all written like he’s singing about a formidable opponent. The music, made entirely by Costello, is very playful in tone and a little abrasive in its beats and textures. It’s an outlier for him but the style works, particularly as it places more emphasis on his voice and words.
Buy it from Amazon.
“Break It Down Again” was released in 1993 and was a solid radio hit, which is sorta surprising in that the aesthetic of the song is extremely un-1993, the point at which post-Nirvana “alternative” sounds had become entirely dominant in the mainstream. It’s one of the last songs to make it out of that fascinating bubble of pop history that I explored in this playlist – the ‘80s mutating into a glossy, self-consciously classy new ‘90s sound that ends up entirely abandoned within a couple years as the major aesthetics of the era are defined by a cohort of artists who favored more raw styles of rock, pop, and hip-hop.
Tears for Fears, a defining band of the ‘80s, showed up a bit late to the ‘90s party partly because Roland Orzabol had become a studio perfectionist in the late ‘80s but mostly because the band was derailed by his acrimonious split with band co-founder Curt Smith. “Break It Down Again” and the rest of the Elemental album sounds like it would have fit right in with the zeitgeist of 1990 or 1991, but in 1993 it’s already a throwback in the midst of a rock scene centered on records like In Utero, Siamese Dream, Vs., and Pablo Honey. Some of Tears for Fears ‘80s contemporaries had at this point successfully reinvented themselves with very ‘90s palettes – U2, Depeche Mode, R.E.M., The Cure – but Orzabol made no such concessions. It’s not clear to me whether this was out of fidelity to a specific artistic vision or because the record was in the works for so long that there was no way to update the sound of it without starting from scratch. Probably a little of both.
“Break It Down Again” is maximalist and bombastic, and absolutely jammed full of ideas. Orzabol was no stranger to this approach – if anything, the band’s 1989 hit “Sowing the Seeds of Love” is twice as dense – but the relavitely compact structure of this composition makes the swerves from martial political fanfare to hyperbolic synthesized orchestral hits to smooth layered harmonies feel a bit dizzying. Orzabol gets away with his most highbrow notions and acrobatic feats of arrangement because he’s so gifted with melody, and “Break It Down Again” is so stacked with ear-catching hooks that it feels like it could tip over and crash like a Jenga tower at some points.
The lyrics are just as packed as the composition, to the point that each iteration of the chorus has a new set of lyrics attached to the melody. Orzabol approaches the idea of “breaking it down” from multiple angles: dissolution of both personal relationships and nation states, the deconstruction of masculinity, the erosion of emotional walls and the things that keep you from finding your inner truths, the eventual decay of all things. The song embraces the concept of entropy – not so much in the sense of awaiting oblivion, but in that the end of things allow for new beginnings. The lyrics convey an intriguing blend of cynicism and optimism, to the point that he seems to be begging for destruction as an impetus to change. I don’t know if Orazabol intended this song to espouse accelerationism, but it certainly comes off that way.
Buy it from Amazon.
Otta sings positive affirmations in this song with a slightly exasperated tone, like she’s addressing someone who seems incapable of seeing their own value. This is the tip off to me that she’s singing to herself – there’s a familiarity and frustration in her tone that suggests she’s confronting her most stubborn insecurities rather than talking about someone else’s hang ups. “Just Like the Rain” has a smooth and soothing groove, but Otta’s vocal brings a little bit of neurotic energy to the track – even when she’s aiming for gentle and sweet, she can’t quite project a chill vibe. But that works for the song, as the bass is there to provide the feeling of comfort, warmth, and stability.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Norah Jones is famous for the raw loveliness of her voice and the subtle nuances of her phrasing – she’s the kind of singer who can convey a lot of emotional information in slight inflections. But she’s also quite remarkable on the piano, and that gift for graceful articulation carries over to her style on that instrument. “Hurts To Be Alone,” a song she composed herself, showcases both ends of her skill set. The chords are sophisticated but understated, carrying the melodic weight of the music so her vocal can drift along behind it like a leaf in the breeze. There’s great details in the arrangement too – the way the standup bass will occasionally pluck out a couple notes to punctuate a pause, the sound of a Hammond B3 gently streaking through the mix as an accent. Everything about this recording is very thoughtful but played with a loose and gentle touch, that perfect sweet spot between calculation and improvisation.
Buy it from Amazon.
It’s rather commonplace for songs to be put together in remote sessions now, even before it was fully necessitated by quarantine lockdowns, but even still knowing this particular song was made this way makes it feel a little more poignant. It’s a disco song for a world without discotheques, elaborately produced with an imaginary string section and a thumping bass line that will mostly just be heard on tinny laptop speakers and earbuds. It’s far from the only song robbed of its deserved context in 2020, but because it was made under these circumstances the song itself seems to know that it’s thwarted, and even as Kylie Minogue sings it like any other pop song her emphasis on moving quickly as not to miss anything suggests she was very much thinking about time running out for all sorts of ordinary joys. It’s basically a very “carpe diem” sort of song, but with a very acute sense of the clock running down on that diem.
Buy it from Amazon.
I’m happy to announce Fluxpod, my major new ongoing project that is launching today. I will be hosting the podcast and talking to a wide range of guests – writers, musicians, music industry people, miscellaneous interesting people – about music from many different angles. The goal is for the episodes to be entertaining and thought-provoking, and as the episodes accumulate over time, to offer a lot of perspectives on music and all the ways it fits into people’s lives.
The show will come out twice a week, with free episodes on Wednesdays and premium episodes for Patreon subscribers on Saturdays. The first three episodes will be free, and I think they’ll give you a good idea of what to expect. The basic Patreon subscription will be $5 per month for 4-5 paywalled episodes as well as other exclusives such as “liner notes” for my various playlist projects. FYI, there is not going to be any real difference between free and premium episodes, it’s just that every other episode is a premium.
The first episode features Rob Sheffield, and is largely be about how his experience of music has been warped by the pandemic and will include some great tangents about Kate Bush, Fairport Convention, Stephen Malkmus, and Taylor Swift. The second episode will feature Brittany Spanos and will mostly be about how legacy artists can stay relevant to younger generations. The third episode will feature Ryan Broderick and will be focused on 100 Gecs and internet music subcultures. Other episodes I’ve recorded that will be out in the coming weeks will touch on current R&B music, the question of how to pass down music to children, the way arts grants from the Canadian government has been a huge help to Canadian musicians, and an explanation of how A&R works today from someone who works in that field.
I’m extremely excited about doing this show! I’ve been a big radio and podcast fan all my life, and I wouldn’t want to do this unless I felt like I could do it well and I’m pretty happy with how it’s coming along so far. I want this show to be excellent, for the episodes to be somewhat evergreen, and for this to be something you can listen to when you want to escape from bleak news.
Here are the important links:
Fluxpod on Patreon
Fluxpod on Apple Podcasts
Fluxpod on Spotify
Fluxpod on Soundcloud
The podcast will be available on other platforms soon.
Activity’s debut album Unmask Whoever was made in 2019 but matches the tone of 2020 very well – cold and claustrophobic and paranoid, desperate emotions deadened by a cynicism that’s beaten into you from a near total lack of positive news. The record mostly feels like being trapped in a depressive haze, with songs that move on a tension that shifts but never really lifts. “Violent and Vivisect,” the penultimate track on the record, is the only song that allows for a true catharsis. It starts off very tightly wound but in context it nevertheless feels like a gasp of air after so much heavy atmosphere. The eventual climax is a blast of traditional alt-rock on a record in which this rock band otherwise avoids obvious alt-rock dynamics, as though the entire concept of the record was to start from the most harshly electronic that was possible for them and to very gradually allow themselves the permission to cut loose. And even after letting it all out in the final third of this song, it still ends on an unresolved feeling. It’s like getting all riled up and then losing all energy, collapsing into a defeated sigh.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
