A Penny in the Well: 2020

OK. I really don’t know what happened last year. I couldn’t make a decision about my favorites to save my soul. Of course, a person’s mind can change daily on something like this. This year I’ve been much more decisive. Not only did I keep my favorite albums list to ten entries this year, but I put them in ascending order (first album listed is my number one, second is my number two, etc.) for the first time in I don’t know how long. In regard to my number one pick, I’m as shocked as you. I had heard amazing things about this album, but I really thought it was squarely in the pop category, which is rarely a genre I relate to, so I didn’t bother listening to it for quite some time. Then I saw her perform on SNL and I was an instant fan. Her “bad guy” performance was impressive, but that sad ballad “i love you” just had me falling in love with her music like I hadn’t any other music this year (except for maybe HAIM’s “Summer Girl” which we’ll come back to).

It will also be apparent to those paying attention that I have developed a clear affinity for female vocalists. The top four albums are solo female efforts, number five is a female singer, and number seven is also a female solo artist. The Lonely Island might be an affront to feminism, but they actually have quite a few female guests (including HAIM) on their oh so strange little album. Said album is actually one of Netflix’s new series of visual albums–think long form music videos. It really works as well as any of The Lonely Island’s albums do on its own though, and as one critic noted, they are much better pop/hip hop musicians than they have any right to be. This particular album is so uniquely The Lonely Island that it has stood out for me as their greatest accomplishment to date.

When putting these lists together the hardest thing to really adhere to is a consistent criterion for inclusion. I think the main reason I was able to consolidate my list so much better this year than last was that I kept the criterion fairly simple. I picked the albums that stuck with me, that stayed in my head, that I kept returning to. I didn’t try to determine which were the best musical efforts. This one is more me than I usually am with my too often analytical brain.

That’s not to say that I didn’t go overboard with my little task here. You might also notice that this list goes on for quite a bit. Surely, if you’re only interested in my favorite rock/pop albums of the year, you can just read the first list; but beyond that, I’ve made six others–although one is just a list of one band’s ridiculously prolific output for the year. For the first time ever, I made a Top Ten Songs of the year, which kicks off with HAIM, a band I’d written off as having gone too pop for my tastes until their little summer ditty came along, and now their new album is one of my most anticipated albums for 2020. My songs list is posted here as a handy dandy Spotify playlist.

There were an amazing amount of great live sets put out this year. That was the hardest list for me to cut down. This was also a great year for re-issues and lost tracks albums. I put those two together because the re-issues usually include a bunch of unreleased tracks. As usual I also put together a couple of film music lists–a short compilation soundtrack list, which includes a late 2019 release for a 2018 film; and a list of film and television scores, of which Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’s music for Watchmen so outpaced the rest of the pack, its top position was a no brainer. And Filmmaker is a band that was brought to my attention this year that seems to have based their entire music outlook on my favorite music genre–80’s electronic horror scores. What makes them truly remarkable, however, is how prolific they are. When I was pointed toward them they had five albums, this was only a few months into the year and only one album wasn’t from 2019. Five more albums found the light of day over the rest of the year. Two are actually EPs, but their running times are so similar to the LPs, I’m not sure what the difference is for the band. As a listener, the quality of the music doesn’t seem to be hurt by the extremely expedited output.

Albums