Bad Bunny only waited about four years. El Conejo is, for the most part, done missing his ex jeva for now — instead he's dressing up as his female alter ego to call out creeps at the club, de-stigmatizing a particular romantic pursuit on a perreo-fueled symphony, and rocking out to his own success on an emo-trap anthem. I binged on Adès' rambunctious concerto, performed with extroverted virtuosity by Kirill Gerstein, for weeks. —Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, This extraordinary album, which features the Boston Symphony Orchestra in debut recordings of an effervescent piano concerto and a dark, massive work for voices and orchestra, represents for me, the joy and horror of its late February release date. On “Folklore” she is swathed in acoustic instruments and Minimalistic patterns within patterns. Or church. (Read the review. The international symbol for the year 2020 was the surprise emoji. (Read the review.). What follows, on “Folklore,” is a lyrical exploration of that culturally denigrated commodity that is young-girl wisdom, this time viewed through the artful distance of Swift’s adulthood. But even the emotional and aesthetic derring-do of her four previous albums could not prepare listeners for the shock of “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” an achievement of bracing intensity recorded over several years, mostly in the seclusion of her Los Angeles home. In a nutshell: You can describe 2020 in a number of ways, but the most appropriate word for the last 12 months is perhaps ... 2. ), The Nigerian songwriter Burna Boy calls his music Afro-fusion, not the more specifically Nigerian term Afrobeats, and “Twice as Tall” lives up to that broader mandate with a profusion of sleek, diverse, constantly inventive grooves that traverse Africa and its diaspora. Our top album of the year, Taylor Swift’s Folklore, reflected that feeling in its stark, elegant intimacy. Throughout, Punisher is a rich, roiling stunner. And apparently being inhabitants of such an insular, otherwise ignored scene prepared them well for this national lockdown. His full-length debut album nailed the transition — it’s mischievous, sinister and loose. Big Thief: U.F.O.F. But from the beginning, Bridgers' sensibility has been instantly identifiable: dark, swirling, interior, morbid but playful, unnervingly specific in its narrative details. The songs traffic in abundant imagination — words and syllables are deconstructed and restacked to form breathless cadences that explode across beats as funky as they are futuristic. "It don't matter how high," a singer reassures us in "Miracles," an album highlight. Isolation was unavoidable this year: Some albums embraced it, some raged against it, some tried to imagine a world without … ), The song titles on Waxahatchee’s “Saint Cloud” are stark, blunt, almost elemental: “War,” “Hell,” “Fire,” “Witches,” “Oxbow.” Katie Crutchfield is not interested in mincing words or couching ideas in superfluous metaphors — these songs are about rolling up your sleeves and getting down to the hard, direct work of personal introspection. Really cool combination of different musical genres. One of rap's most precise technicians, Uzi has been perfecting this craft since he began his career ascent in 2015, but Eternal Atake prompted us to hear the extraterrestrial — a world within worlds that's all his own. Intensely personal work swelled into large-scale statements this year, and women often led the way, revealing scars left by different kinds of emotional and political skirmishes, and reinforcing that their voices must be heard. Best Albums of 2020. “Heaven to a Tortured Mind,” the most straightforwardly tuneful album from the Knoxville, Tenn.-raised art-rocker, combines the glam sneer of Marc Bolan with the forward-thinking shape-shifting of Tricky, plus a bit of Yves Tumor’s own special sparkle. View Comments. (Read the feature. ), The third album by the English songwriter Lianne La Havas cycles through a failed romance — starting and ending with a break — in songs brimming with poised musicality. (Read the review. What if the guy who wrote great, smart party songs also excelled at devastating heartbreak anthems? Bad Bunny glances at the past on “YHLQMDLG.”. The ever cryptic, ever exploratory electronic duo Autechre greeted 2020 with something approaching moderation and introspection, releasing a single CD (as opposed to the marathon “NTS Sessions” from 2018) with 11 tracks that usually accept the regularity of a beat. (Read the review; hear the Popcast. ), Pop Smoke, who was killed in February, was moving away from drill music toward a sound that was melodic but still gruff, long the winning formula for New York rappers with big dreams. In fact, his intimate sharing about the warping of pivotal relationships in his life abounds in a thoroughly earthy kind of profundity. —Kiana Fitzgerald, NPR's 50 Best Albums Of 2020  50-41 | 40-31 | 30-21 | 20-11 | 10-1. The result is wistful, romantic and adorned with entrancing melodies. Now that it's mostly in our rear view, can a retrospective give a shape to that swarm of weeks and months? "After a while / You went quiet / And I got mean." This new release was all about the beat: Like Joni Mitchell with Hejira or Kate Bush on The Dreaming, throughout Bolt Cutters Apple explored and refined her relationship to rhythm, bolstering her poetic expressiveness. These songs are fresh-air triumphs of the downtrodden. Pop Smoke’s posthumous “Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon” was a consistent hit this year. More … Pimienta's performance is often playful, and here, she is the emcee of her own quinceañera, a celebration she was never able to celebrate with her mother in her youth. Green Day - Father Of All Motherfuckers. SAULT, an enigmatic collective that shrouds itself in mystery, produced the year's most viscerally direct album at the exact moment it was needed. Her performance on the album is hale, unequivocally self-assured and she has an effortless hookup with her band, whether they're working in a horizon-scanning post-bop mode or hunkering down with dub rhythm. (Read the review. Kavtinaa (Shona Das) Yet moment to moment in Autechre’s algorithmic realm, anything can happen. Featuring winning collaborations with such avant-trash producers as A.G. Cook of PC Music and Dylan Brady of 100 gecs, “How I’m Feeling Now” is hyper-carbonated pop of the highest order — like a can of seltzer that’s so stingingly fizzy it makes you tear up a little on the way down. 1. In a year of distancing, anxiety, protests and polarization, musicians were separated from audiences and, often, each other. YHLQMDLG is an homage to the reggaeton bangers that raised Bunny, complete with collabs from some of the greatest vets in the game, including Daddy Yankee, Ñengo Flow and Jowell & Randy. She fronts Beach Bunny, a Chicago band that toys with flickers of garage rock, pop-punk and indie rock. These are Complex’s picks for the 50 best albums of 2020. Sometimes Hadreas and his producer Blake Mills seem to be updating the earthy rumbles of ’80s goth rock; at other times, their layered arrangements queer the Wall of Sound. “All these other [expletive] can bite me,” he concludes at the end of the record, “’cause you’re the only person that I wanted to like me.”, Mike Hadreas continues his decade-long hot streak on “Set My Heart on Fire Immediately,” a record that places baroque-pop frames around the sort of emotions, experiences and people not traditionally honored in baroque-pop songs. Graceful melodies, supple guitar syncopations, sophisticated harmonies and a voice that can sparkle with anticipation or cry out in pain capture all the hope and heartache of her narrative. ), That howl heard ’round quarantine was the return of Fiona Apple, making a righteous, rowdy rumble right when the world was holding its breath. Many voices, with many stories to tell. Through its 15 songs, Burna Boy is by turns exuberant, pensive, confessional and political. The beautiful album brought endless moments of quiet bliss during this relentlessly chaotic year. On “Mama, You Can Bet!,” she created the music by herself — playing or looping all the instruments, overdubbing her vocals in rich harmonies — yet somehow simulates the spontaneous interplay of a live jazz group. (Read the interview. Any time you try to lock her in to any one genre, narrative or state of being, you can already feel her eyeing her toolbox. Sometimes it’s been bigger than his songs, but on this, his fourth album, the thrill is back. Jersey makes, the world takes. (Read the review. “Folklore” isn’t a perfect album (though to be fair, neither was “Red”), nor is it Swift’s best (which is “Red”), but its focus on craft and emotional world-building feels like a perfect move for her right now — an eternally sharp songwriter returning to the whetstone. Best collaboration of the worst year! Until this year, rapper Dave was a singles artist – he managed 11 before his debut album was released – but Black marked a sea change: serious, reflective and grown-up. “It’s not a dream, it’s not a dream!” he hollers at himself with increasing ferocity on the title track, screaming guitars and unrelenting drumming providing the sonic equivalent of cold water to the face. If any of these albums make you think, sing-along, scream, laugh, or dance, this list will have done its job. Drew Anthony Smith for The New York Times. Created in the midst of a global reckoning, and released on Juneteenth, Untitled (Black Is) was intentionally made to uplift Black people during a calamitous period, one marked by jarring recurrences of police brutality, and the unveiling of deeply entrenched systemic racism. ), Haim’s playfully acronym-ed “WIMP III” feels like a trip through the radio dial during one of those fleeting years in the mid-90s when — by some sort of clerical error or rip in the space-time continuum — the airwaves were dominated by an eclectic variety of female musicians. Having delivered their latest bruising and brilliant portrait … What if the soft-focus blur preferred by the rest of the town didn’t make an album like this such a shock? —Jewly Hight (WNXP 91.ONE), Few make rapping sound as purely fun as Lil Uzi Vert. 3. At certain moments, 2020 felt like a year that might not ever come to an end. That it’s also his career capstone is enraging. 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