Weird year, huh? There’s this push and pull: Never before has this stuff felt less meaningful, and yet never before has it felt so crucial to keeping me sane. Regardless, our mandated isolation has meant I’ve been keeping track of new music and movies more than I normally do, so I have enough recommendations to publish my first-ever mid-year review of stuff.
Below, in no particular order, are my favorite songs released in the first half of the strangest year of my life. Here’s a playlist for the Spotify folks.
Mustafa—“Stay Alive”
Occasionally I’ll have the luxury of discovering an artist when they’re brand new. There’s nothing better than hearing something just once and knowing you’re going to love it forever. The first time I heard Mustafa’s “Stay Alive” reminded me of the first time I heard Frank Ocean.
I make these dumb lists every year. I don’t know that I’ve ever been able to predict my favorite song of the year this far out, but “Stay Alive” is the future #1, barring an incredible effort from somewhere else.
The song came out nearly simultaneously with our world being turned upside-down by a pandemic, and just months before our country’s largest civil rights movement in 50 years. 2020 only makes Mustafa’s intimate plea for humanity and survival more relevant and affecting.
Maxwell Stern—“Water Tower”
I’ve been a fan of Maxwell Stern’s band Signals Midwest since I first happened across them while watching a friend’s band play a New Year’s show at Cleveland’s inimitable Grog Shop in 2015.
As Signals Midwest has matured (their 2019 album was a favorite) Stern seems to have put more focus towards his solo career. His 2017 EP is great, and this year’s live album has been holding me over until the release of his forthcoming solo debut.
What I love most about Stern sans-Signals is that it’s allowed him to find a new register to play in. I count some of Signals Midwest’s work among my favorite of all time, yet “Water Tower”—more than a decade after Stern started releasing music—seems like a new wheelhouse. It’s jangly and joyful, a welcome corner of solace amidst a trying summer. Sonically, it’s not quite something Signals Midwest would attempt, but it suits solo Stern perfectly.
Dominic Fike—“Chicken Tenders”
Much like Mustafa, Dominic Fike is someone I caught early and immediately clicked with. I’ve been frantically buying stock ever since. This year it seems like it will pay off as he readies to release his debut. “Chicken Fingers” is the long-awaited first single.
Fike oozes talent and marketability. He can nail the summer smash and the intimate ballad. In “Chicken Tenders,” I’m thrilled he hasn’t strayed too far from the winning formula he found on 2018’s Don’t Forget About Me, but I’m dying to hear how the album inevitably expands on this and fleshes out some of his more nuanced side.
Freddie Gibbs—“God Is Perfect”
“God Is Perfect” is the type of song that immediately activates the stank face. I’m an avowed Freddie Gibbs supporter, and “God Is Perfect” is the exact type of song I come to him for (and frankly the type of song I feel like he’s been avoiding a bit too much recently).
Alchemist laced him up with a menacing low rumble and Gibbs is just slithering all over it. He even breaks into Arabic on the chorus. I am a fan of this at all times.
“God Is Perfect” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but the greats don’t have to. Both Gibbs and Alchemist are effortlessly great, throwbacks to an earlier era of hip-hop.
Jay Electronica— “Ghost of Soulja Slim” (ft. Jay-Z)
I can’t believe the world finally got the Jay Electronica album we’ve been waiting for since 2007, especially just months after new music from Jai Paul. My high school self is back and flourishing.
While Jay Electronica’s A Written Testimony didn’t totally blow me away (it’s impossible to deliver on 13 years worth of hype), “Ghost of Soulja Slim” is a brilliant opener that places Jay-Z and Electronica in opposite corners in a dueling mic scenario and deftly lets Jay-Z go first. We’ve waited for 13 years and now Jay Electronica is forcing us to sit tight for another two minutes. Hilarious. Perfect.
It feels dumb to hyperbolize an album I didn’t love, but the first bar of verse two—Jay Elec’s grand return—is an earth-shattering musical moment. “If it come from me and Hov, consider it Qur'an.”
I do love A Written Testimony, if only for the fact that it brought Jay Electronica back to us.
Zach Bryan—“Heading South”
I’m bending the rules a bit here, as “Heading South” was released as a single in 2019. But the album it’s featured on, Elisabeth, came out in May.
I have a weird relationship with country music. I spent seven years of my childhood living in Nashville, so I sometimes joke that country music seeped into my blood. I wouldn’t call myself a country fan, and I can’t name a country album I love, yet occasionally a song or two breaks through. I have a lot of respect for the genre, and songs like “Heading South” are why.
While I prefer Bryan’s acoustic YouTube version, the song in all its forms succeeds on the back of the kind of heart and imagery I love from country. It’s a song about dirt, blood, and freedom. I just can’t quit it.
Megan Thee Stallion— “Savage (Remix)” ft. Beyoncé
It’s hard to have a song that can really “break the internet” in 2020, but Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé pulled it off with the “Savage” remix.
I think most of the song’s success, at least in the immediately viral sense, can be attributed to Beyoncé’s swaggering rap verse, which captures the zeitgeist in a way that is just begging to blow up. There’s just no way Beyoncé rapping about TikTok wasn’t gonna be a hit—much like Jay-Z referencing “Damn Daniel” was so funny and exciting.
Beyoncé rapping reminds me a lot of Frank Ocean rapping. Neither do it very much, yet are kind of unfairly good at it. I need more of it.
Remi Wolf—“Woo!”
I find Spotify’s algorithm works best for assembling endless playlists of artists I already like. Occasionally, however, it’ll manage to snag a new hit like it did with this new Remi Wolf EP.
The future of indie pop is littered with similarly exciting artists. Remi Wolf slots in beautifully with acts like Dominic Fike, Still Woozy, and Roy Blair. It’s an explosion of sound and energy—home on the perfect shower playlist. (A waterproof Bluetooth speaker was a long-overdue addition to my shower this year.)
It’s the type of song that shows up on a few algorithm-driven playlists and before long you find yourself humming lines about dentists and hunting it down to play it again. I also recommend Remi Wolf’s “Hello Hello Hello.” I think she’s bound for big things.
Boldy James—“Scrape The Bowl” (ft. Benny The Butcher)
One of the surest signs I’m getting older is that my taste in hip-hop has largely flatlined and I find myself reaching for stuff that reminds me of 2010.
I first discovered Boldy James from 2011’s “JIMBO,” a mixtape single riding a Chuck Inglish beat that’s so volatile I think it might damage your car stereo if you don’t handle it with care. James is still at work in Detroit and his newest Alchemist-powered album has a few hits—namely “Scrape The Bowl,” which leans on fellow Rust Belt artist Benny The Butcher.
Muddy bass and ominous pianos are still my thing a decade later.
Kanye West—“Wash Us In The Blood” (ft. Travis Scott)
After a total misfire (2018’s Ye) and a total snooze fest (2019’s Jesus Is King), I hesitate to say that Kanye is onto something with “Wash Us In The Blood,” the first single from forthcoming God’s Country. Even as much as the last two entries have disappointed me, it’s a testament to the strength of his career that I continue to follow his moves through the music world.
“Wash Us In The Blood” feels like a mosh pit begging for sanctification, a frenetic palette ripped out of the pages of Yeezus, and what the ‘Kanye Goes Gospel’ experience should’ve been in the first place.
Do I miss the old Kanye? Sure. But “Wash Us In The Blood” is the first single in years that has me curious about the artist’s future rather than dreading it.
2nd Grade—“Velodrome”
2nd Grade’s sophomore album Hit to Hit is remarkable in its construction, spanning 24 tracks yet just 41 minutes. It’s like three Joyce Manor albums in one. There are three songs shorter than one minute and just two songs longer than 2.5 minutes. The instant each track has a chance to latch onto a full idea, it’s on to the next one—like you’re flipping through channels.
The double-single (“Velodrome” + “My Bike”) is what caught my attention, primarily the former, a jaunty piece of guitar pop that feels lived-in sonically but fresh lyrically—very classic at first blush but unmistakably 2020:
“Well I saw you looking into a window. There’s a cool breeze at the top of my cage. I check my radar, it’s all so exciting. I’m losing contact but can’t disengage.”
Brian Fallon—“Hard Feelings”
See my note on Zach Bryan for my thoughts on music that exists at the crossroads of country, folk, and heartland rock. I am an absolute sucker for this junk. I have to be the only person in America who got into Bruce Springsteen in the last 10ish years and yet and earnestly enjoys him.
“Hard Feelings” is at the downtempo end of the spectrum. It’s wistful and nostalgic, there is somebody calling you “baby,” and there’s music playing from an old Mercedes. I don’t need anything else from summer evening music.
(I worry I’ve just made this sound like a pastiche. Listen to Local Honey. I really enjoy it.)
Dogleg—“Kawasaki Backflip”
I’ve been in on Dogleg for a while. “Fox” made the list of my favorite songs of 2019, and it seemed like overnight they got stuck with the “future of punk/DIY” label. I liked Dogleg, but I’ve gotta admit I didn’t see transcendence at first.
It wasn’t until the re-release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was announced in May and people started spitballing a new soundtrack headlined by Dogleg that it finally clicked. “Kawasaki Backflip” is absolutely a THPS song. I understand it now, and I love it.
I resent that I will not be able to scream this song at a sweaty bar show this summer. COVID-19 has ruined my life in numerous ways.
Jeff Rosenstock—“Nikes (Alt)”
I kinda feel bad for Jeff Rosenstock, because it’s become impossible to talk about his music divorced from the current political climate. He’s brought it upon himself, though. 2016’s WORRY. was one of the first major releases to arrive after the election, and it slowly became one of my favorite albums of the past decade. POST- landed on New Year’s Day 2018 to soundtrack a new era of chaos.
NO DREAM arrived in May—in the midst of a pandemic and casually early for one of the most tumultuous months of our lives in June. The second verse of “Nikes (Alt)” opens with Rosenstock wailing, “Looking for a dream that won't morph to a nightmare.”
Rosenstock’s music is cynical on its face, but there’s therapy in communal anxiety. This pent-up frustration never feels heavy. I expect he’ll have an album on my year-end favorites list for the third time in four years.
The 1975—“Frail State of Mind”
The 1975 released an 80-minute album with an obtuse title that opens with a spoken word piece by climate-change activist Greta Thunberg. Across its 22 songs, Notes on a Conditional Form traverses a handful of sonic spaces, somehow managing to find success at each stop. I could name a favorite from each genre, some of which are among the album’s seven singles. Picking one song for this list was difficult because the album essentially contains an EP of singles within itself. I’m confident I could make a really exciting 30-minute cut.
The 1975 is great, and music is better with bands like this shooting from the hip and garnering tons of attention. The only cost of admission is that you surrender to their unwieldy scope and ambition.