– Al Shipley, Ascendant Houston psych-funk trio Khruangbin finally spoke up on Mordechai, their most lyrically-driven LP yet. Five years later, naming his follow-up The Slow Rush couldn’t be anything but a cheeky wink. Mac Miller, Circles "Good news, good news, that's all they want to hear," Mac Miller laments on the centerpiece to his first posthumous album. Let’s just hope he doesn’t leave us waiting another five years for the next chapter. Dylan turns 80 next year, but he’s still raising the bar for American song. BBT Read the review. Pen & Pixel album art and a robust merch line accompanied the album narrated by Morgan Freeman (who, among other things, defines “savage”). This year was an exercise in being dressed up with nowhere to go, but Jessie Ware edged us toward the dance floor anyway with her mirrorball-blessed fourth album, What’s Your Pleasure? Lyrically, it’s steeped in imagery drawn from the present moment. From Selena Gomez's 'Rare' to The Weeknd's 'After Hours' to Phoebe Bridgers' 'Punisher,' these are 20 of the best albums released in 2020. – D.K. Bunny has surely lived up to the album title, particularly since he’s already released two more albums since YHLQMDLG. The anxiety of anticipation for Fiona Apple’s new album was relieved within its first three minutes and 58 seconds. But the ‘70s throwback suits her “queen of the club” style, with Italo disco, Nile Rodgers-y bass lines and grand Minnie Riperton-styled sweeps all used in the name of a shimmying good time. – D.C. When it does, it’s not to recalibrate the fractured relationships with helpless lovers and fathers, but in more fleeting escapes: the tender country hum of Graceland Too narrates a story taking MDMA, looking at the moon and driving to Graceland, finding salvation in the illusion. A year of cancelled tour dates allowed Swift to make an album without having to consider the nosebleed seats. 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. – R.R. If that means facing the apocalypse, as Bridgers does over the cacophonous apex of closing track “I Know the End,” rest assured that there’s no artist better suited to burn it down and start again. With more space for Frank Delgado’s shadowy synths and Sergio Vega’s melodic bass, the band’s dynamic shifts have never been more satisfying — like on “Pompeji,” where clean guitars and crooning give way to a flood of distortion. That balance of beauty and bleakness also anchors another centerpiece, the crunchy “Death Star” where Stevens unnervingly chants “Death star into space / What you call the human race / Expedite the judgment day.” Earlier in 2020, Stevens also collaborated with his stepfather Lowell Brams for the New Age album Aporia. –, The gushing minimalism of Steve Reich, the dreamy jazz-fusion of ’70s ECM artists, the ambient-adjacent pulse of the Field’s, — these seem like possible ingredients melted down and absorbed into the masterful new work from the Soft Pink Truth, a.k.a. Bad Bunny turns bossa-nova classic “The Girl From Ipanema” into ‘90s Nintendo trap; blasts eardrums with the rock ending of “Hablamos Mañana;” gets dirty with Jowell & Randy and Ñengo Flow on sonic mash-up “Safaera;” and dresses up in drag for women’s autonomy in the “Yo Perreo Sola” video. The Freshman 15: 2020's Best Debut Albums Published: December 14, 2020. Metacritic User Poll: Vote for the Best of 2020! Both sides combined gorgeously on Re-Wild, where frost seemed to sprawl forth from Owens’ voice as she recognised “the power in me”. But the record is also reliably playful. “Disco revival” is hardly a novel concept in pop music, but it takes a certain kind of star to make it feel fresh again. Alchemist supplies sparse, loop-driven suites that are alternately grimy and regal, the ominous score to the dope deals or the relaxed, elegant soundtrack to the champagne-stocked yacht cruises those transactions afforded. (Find our 100 Best Songs of 2020 list here.) Your support powers our independent journalism, Available for everyone, funded by readers. Making few references to the lockdown that brought about its existence, Folklore expands Swift’s focus from her personal relationships to imagined characters, widening the emotional and narrative range of her already considerable songwriting. Lanre Bakare Read more. BBT, The Atlanta rapper-producer power duo follow their hit 2016 tape with another trap masterclass. LS Read the full review. Across 23 tracks, the American R&B star builds a deep, rounded portrait of the highs and lows of a romantic relationship. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Like many of the band’s buzzy, globetrotting grooves, some new lines may come off as opaque — with bassist Laura Lee using multiple languages (including Turkish, Japanese and Portuguese) on the disco winner “Time (You and I)” or abstract spoken verses and a French-language chorus on the seductive “Connaissais de Face.” Other messages are simpler, as “You’re not crazy” is repeated no less than 14 times on the melty “If There Is No Question.” The spacious album, recorded in a barn in the band’s native city, draws from their celebrated melting pot of influences — like “Spanish disco” and “Israeli, Yemenite jams” — as much as indie-rock and soul. If you were forced to describe Rina Sawayama’s debut as succinctly as possible, you’d probably opt for a pop/R&B/nu-metal hybrid with a dose of stadium-rock bombast, which sounds like the most appalling generic fusion in musical history. The imaginative innocence of “Dinosaur on the Mountain” melds with the acid trip dreaminess of “Flowers of Neptune 6” and the Beatles-esque psych ballad “Mother Please Don’t Be Sad,” fitting together like the kind of Lips puzzle only they can assemble. 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. Aside from the wrecking ballad Lose You to Love Me, it’s confidently unruffled, taking the Talking Heads-aided oddness of her 2017 single Bad Liar as her template. “We’ll be safe and sound / When it all burns down.” Let’s assume she’s talking about the concept of genre. Still, nothing on Orion sounds like giving up. In collaboration with a supreme court of rap producers including The-Dream, the Alchemist, Hit-Boy and No ID (plus curveballs James Blake and Khruangbin), Jay’s production is astounding, with dial-scrolling samples from Vashti Bunyan, Robert Fripp and Brian Eno, John Williams’ Valley of the Dolls soundtrack and Louis Farrakhan. There is something profoundly restorative about Saint Cloud’s back-to-basics, largely analogue approach; its reliance on subtle, wending melodies and guitar licks that resound with dog-eared familiarity. Alexis Petridis Read more. That balance of beauty and bleakness also anchors another centerpiece, the crunchy “Death Star” where Stevens unnervingly chants “Death star into space / What you call the human race / Expedite the judgment day.” Earlier in 2020, Stevens also collaborated with his stepfather Lowell Brams for the New Age album, f the Oscar nominee has demonstrated anything in the last 20 years, it’s range. Sincerity and connection, he suggests, are the only tonic: it’s there in the album’s guileless evocations of American soft-rock 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. Where Moses Sumney’s debut, Aromanticism, was a forlorn testimony to vulnerability, Græ brings in the whole mess of living itself: from the playful oppositions of its track titles – Jill/Jack, Neither/Nor – to Sumney’s genre-splicing between R&B, folk, jazz and ambient electronics, Græ inhabits his swaying moods and transmutes his wranglings with identity into music without losing its sense of precarity. Recorded over a five-year spell in her California home, Fetch the Bolt Cutters encompasses every euphoric rush and hopeless roar as Fiona Apple telescopes between historic incidents that once diminished her to find their common thread. But his bandmates’ dynamism and energy, and his own quiet resilience, bears them all aloft. –, If there was ever a year to wade into an Alabama creek, stare at the sun and figure out how the hell you’re going to keep on keepin’ on, it was 2020. When the world needed something, anything, Run the Jewels came through with their blazing fourth album. Music reviews, ratings, news and more. The breeziness feels like a warm draft off the Pacific, the warmer, messier swirl of sound in the mix truer to life. Often, young women who sprang from kids’ entertainment have used sex to assert their outrageousness and maturity. 15. With, , he exceeded his lofty standards and made his best album yet. “It’s all one river crossing,” he sings, inviting you to stop resisting and step right in. expands its scope. More laid back than its predecessor (the more rock-focused Out in the Storm) Crutchfield’s best album yet reminds us to accept imperfection and find the joy in our search for whatever comes next. LS Read the full review. This list only includes new albums receiving at least 15 reviews from professional critics (though you'll find a quick list of the top albums with a smaller number of reviews at the end of the gallery.). The singer lands more sure-footed than ever with her fifth solo album, A jangly and pensive journey down old southern roads, it finds the recently-sober Crutchfield considering past mistakes and paths toward healing. The beautiful album brought endless moments of quiet bliss during this relentlessly chaotic year. And Crutchfield’s acceptance of the inevitable seems spookily prescient given that she made the album last year. But this complex art-pop style, exemplified by lead single “Simmer,” is an intriguing step in a new direction. Here are the 50 best albums of a year unlike any we can remember. The Soft Pink Truth – Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase? 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. – B.G. LS Read the full review. “But you don’t need solving — you’re just not what I want.” Allison showed a rare level of vulnerability and reflection on her 2018 debut, Clean, but color theory goes even deeper. After a deluge of canceled or delayed tours, drive-in experiments, Bandcamp Fridays and bedroom livestreams, we’re finally here. Those expecting another Paramore album were thrown for a loop — Petals for Armor isn’t Riot! Many songs were played at the protests, but none summed up that time (and 2020 as a whole) quite like. It references Olivia Newton-John, turn-of-the millennium Madonna, 1930s Lew Stone (and by extension, 90s White Town), 80s INXS, Lily Allen and the Who. Yet absolution prompts a tug of war, and the spectre of shame looms, although it’s now dressed in the rollicking chug of On the Floor, the poppiest Hadreas has ever sounded. Look Back at 2020 One Last Time: Our Podcasts on the Year’s Best Music Listen to our Rolling Stone Music Now podcasts on last year’s best songs, albums, and more But in execution, her fifth record seemed consumed by the spectre of another scapegoated woman: Boucher herself, following another year of high-drama headlines. The clenched fussiness of 2017’s Crack-Up abated for more subtly detailed, openhearted arrangements – padded and cottony on Featherweight, earnest and loving on Sunblind, a tribute to departed songwriters such as Richard Swift and Arthur Russell – as Pecknold resolved to accept the things he cannot change, to surrender to contentment and honour community in divided times: “We’ve only made it together, feel some change in the weather.” LS Read the full review. Reflective closer “One More Hour” perfectly caps the album, drifting listeners through various stages of Parker’s journey of time and love. Our pick of the best 2020 albums is only 20 long – which seemed an apt number – and therefore still omits plenty of LPs that we have enjoyed this year.