Songs of 2020 Part 2: 50-21

 In today's episode, I'll give brief comments on why each of these 30 songs are deserving of a spot in my top 50. Tomorrow of course I'll countdown my top 20 songs of the year.

50) Good Life - Mozambo feat. Salena Mastroianni (Dance Pop)  

Odd one to kick off with, honestly, because this isn't a profound statement of music; just a good fun, dynamic bit of danceable pop that puts me in a good mood.

 

49) There Must Be More Than Blood - Car Seat Headrest (Experimental Rock) 

Car Seat Headrest's eagerly-anticipated follow-up to "Teens of Denial" (my #7 album of 2016) didn't quite land with me mainly because it was a lot more electronic, and its experimentation felt less authentic than what he achieved in 2016. This song was the biggest exception, exploring similarly fascinating progressions in his classic rock 'n' roll sound.

 

48) Laich mich ein - Knasterbart (German Tropical Pop) 

Sure, why the fuck not. Bouncy tropical pop, sung in German - the language of bouncy tropical fun. The album this comes off, bizarrely, has nothing in common with this song, either, it's a weird island of inexplicable vivacity in a medieval folk album. But man does it get stuck in my head.

 

47) Force Majeure - Slow Dakota (Experimental Folk) 

You'll have already seen a couple of Slow Dakota songs if you were paying attention to my 100-51 post, and you'll likely hear more about his strange album in my albums writeup (who knows, I haven’t finalised it yet). This song is a surprisingly moving bit of progressive folk narrating the moment when a tornado hits.

 

46) Catch Your Breath - Vlossom (Indie Pop) 

This one took me by surprise earlier in the year on an album I otherwise didn't particularly care for mainly because it was all a bit electronic and artificial, but this is a genuinely banging bit of electropop that I really enjoy, and it was worth hitting up that EP for this alone.

 

45) Every Crest - Seven Spires (Symphonic Metal) 

Seven Spires made my #16 album of 2017, and this was the best track from their follow-up this year. Their success is driven largely by the force of personality of their singer Adrienne Cowan, who has to my mind the best all-round metal voice going, and she's at full power here.

 

44) Fuck It (I Don't Like Love) - Butch Walker (Indie Pop Rock) 

Butch Walker's concept album "American Love Story" is an ambiguous but fascinating album about a bigot who learns the error of his ways, and despite the questionability of some of its lyrics it produced some genuine earworms, and this is the best of them.

 

43) It's All So Incredibly Loud - Glass Animals (Art Pop) 

This one grew on me very slowly across the year. Of course, if you've been reading my blog since the beginning (Hi, Mother!) you'll recall that I had a Glass Animals song ("Youth") at #8 in 2016, so their follow-up album this year felt like a long time coming. It wasn't disappointing, but it's also true that this is the only representative from that album on here, and it is a song that grows slowly through its length so it made sense that it took a while to grow on me, too. But it really hits the mark when it gets there.

 

42) Nice & Easy - Bassnectar feat. Rodney P (Bass Music) 

I always seem to have one track hovering around the 50-21 song that I like purely for how hard-hitting its beats are. This is that song, but it's also here because I love the no-fucks London rap attitude of MC Rodney P providing the vocals as well.

 

41) Outlaws - Dutty Moonshine Big Band feat. Hypeman Sage (Jazztronica) 

This band only came on my radar because they were supposed to do a gig this year with Funke and the Two Tone Baby - the maker of my #4 album and #4 song of 2018 - who plugged this album on his socials. It's a great blend of fun electrofunk and jazz that hits pretty hard, and this is my favourite track from a great many that didn't quite make the cut here.

 

40) Holy Mother - Starbenders (Glam Rock) 

This song feels like the sort of track that Janis Joplin might be making if she had lived past 27. Clever, well-made rock with a certain unhinged quality to the vocals and the way it's delivered. Lots of fun.

 

39) Chango Vudu - Five Alarm Funk (Funk) 

Five Alarm Funk have made my top 100 twice as you will have seen because you read my previous post very closely and memorised every part of it, and it's a testament to how steadily and skilfully they maintained the high energy funk that made their album "Big Smoke" such a remarkable part of the year's listening. This was my highlight track from it; just constant high energy brass 'cool'.

 

38) Dark Hearts - Annie (Dreampop) 

Despite my consistent fandom of Aurora (maker of my #1 song of 2016, as well as my #18 song and #11 album of last year), I'd never heard of Annie whose tenure in the Norwegian dreampop scene (and what a scene it is) predates Aurora's by several years. This is a great example of hauntingly seductive vocals underwritten by a cool driving synthpop.

 

37) Barre - Songhoy Blues (Songhaï Blues) 

Songhaï Blues is a world music genre very close to my heart, with Bec and I having spent many hours (in the blissful child-free years) listening to Ali Farka Touré and his ilk in our lounge room. So these guys who take the classic guitar playing of Touré and completely electrify it, bringing in driving beats and a bigger, more electric sound, were quite the revelation. This song is a perfect meeting of old and new musical sensibilities.

 

36) You've Got My Number - Margaret Glaspy (Avant-Pop) 

Despite only getting my #3 song of the week it was released (and for the record, the two songs that beat it that week are still to come), this cool bit of avant-pop music really stuck around and grew on me as the year went on. It's weirdly heartfelt but delivers its message in an experimental, contemporary musical setting. It's weird, but very cool.

 

35) We'll Meet Again - TheFatRat & Laura Brehm (Dance Pop) 

Less 'interesting' or even respectable bit of music here, this track just happens to fulfill all of my desires for an enjoyable pop song - a good perky beat, some fun synth notes and a vocalist with lots of personality in her voice. Laura Brehm does a good line in what I'd call 'husky sweetness' that sets the cute tone this song requires without sounding overly kitschy.

 

34) Stereo - Hello Moth (Indie Pop) 

Hello Moth's journey to my top 100 is an interesting one. I didn't pay that much attention to their album on first listen, but then suddenly two of the tracks from it topped my week, and this was the best of them. It's driven mainly by their remarkably piercing voice, whose casual tone at first belies its underlying power. This is also just a really well made pop song that delivers both on a killer hook and some great composition of its elements.

 

33) Injah - Liraz (Israeli-Persian Electrofolk) 

I have to admit to being extremely white, so I tend to think of music like this as "kebab shop music" because I only ever tend to hear it in that context. This song - and indeed Liraz's whole album - really demonstrate the fascinating and haunting depths that middle-eastern folk music can get to, while simultaneously modernising it and putting a lot of catchy contemporary hooks into it.

 

32) In Vantablack - Kyros (Progressive Synthpop) 

I believe this is the longest song on my top 100 this year, clocking in at 14 minutes flat. That length may actually have cost it a higher spot, because the best moments of this certainly beat the best moments of some tracks still to come. It's a funny premise what Kyros do; they compose classic kind of prog rock anthems but deliver it with synthpop motifs. So essentially, combining prog rock and synthpop, it's obviously no wonder I love this. But it does feel its length for sure.

 

31) Signal in the Noise - GoGo Penguin (Contemporary Jazz) 

GoGo Penguin, makers of my #2 album of 2018, followed it up this year with another album of scintillating jazz. Their music has a deceptively simple premise: piano, bass and drums, but the trio work absolute wizardry in their individual milieux, and this track showcases the best of their talents and ability to handle the most byzantine and complex syncopation.

 

30) Supuki - Nihiloxica (Ugandan Drumtronica) 

Nihiloxica are apparently at the avant-garde of an emerging underground electronic movement in Uganda, so if this is the first you've heard about such a thing existing, try to remember me when Ugandan electronic music becomes the next big thing. If this track, and the whole album in fact, is anything to go by - it should be, because this song is just a remarkably poised bit of complex drumming with electronic interludes that conjure a remarkably dark and menacing atmosphere that I don't want to escape from.

 

29) Rhythm - Envy (Japanese Screamo) 

I'd never heard of the Ugandan underground electronic music scene, but nor had I ever heard of 'screamo', the subgenre of emo that does what its name suggests. This track really isn't true to the genre as a whole, although it does have a very melodramatic wonder as it builds and builds to its surprisingly symphonic climax. There's definitely something operatic about this song in particular.

 

28) Secret Door - Oozelles (Experimental Jazz Punk) 

Ooh what a weird song to land at #28 of the year. This song is just fucking whack. But what really compels me about it is that they take the elements of jazz that I love - the syncopation, improvisation, the unstructured nature of it - and take them to their most bizarre extremes. It's wacky psychojazz with incoherent gibberish, no discernible rhythm to speak of, completely off-kilter sax solos throughout, it's completely weird and completely wonderful stuff.

 

27) Y Cerrynt - Ani Glass (Welsh Dreampop) 

If there's one thing I love about dreampop as a genre (and it's a genre that's produced a handful of top five songs and albums of the last five years), it's how haunting and ethereal it can be. Ani Glass, singing in Welsh here and on most of her album, does a remarkable bit of otherworldly atmosphere. Really this song doesn't sound reminiscent of anything else that I know, and that uniqueness puts it in this position.

 

26) Pirate's Scorn - Alestorm (Pirate Metal) 

This seems like a weird joke pick to be at #26, but you'll be hearing more about Alestorm later in these posts. Yes, it is a remarkably silly premise - medieval folk metal with a pirate theme - but Alestorm really delivered some astoundingly enjoyable music, and this is one of the best examples - just good folk metal with a great hook and singalong-style charms throughout the chorus.

 

25) Crossbones - Dyble Longdon (Indie Folk) 

It was a bittersweet discovery to find ex Fairport Convention singer Judy Dyble's remarkable collaboration with David Longdon at the same time as I learned about Judy Dyble's death this year, meaning that the debut album and this followup single is all the music we'll get from this astonishingly good folk duo. This is just one of many examples of captivating folk that they produced in their limited time together, but its interweaving of vocals and adept instrumentation will stay with me for a long time.

 

24) Blinding Lights - The Weeknd (Pop RnB) 

This may be the biggest 'nod to mainstream popularity' of my entire list, but The Weeknd never seems to be far from my top 20 whenever he releases music (yet to crack the top tier though - get on that, extremely popular and extremely high-selling and universally acclaimed musician guy). He does such a great line in killer RnB hooks and doesn't shy away from blending in really perky pop and even touches of disco here to make a compelling bit of catchy, enjoyable music.

 

23) O Holy Night - Ben Caplan (Christmas Klezmer) 

Ha, what a bloody high ranking for this kind of silly song to be. Of course I don't need to tell you that "O Holy Night" is the best Christmas carol that exists, because that's objective fact. But this version that Caplan does using traditional Jewish instrumentation really emphasises and hits hard on the biggest moments of it. It does feel borderline blasphemous to have these traditional Klezmer instruments playing in a song about the birth of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ, but it also serves to remind me that Jewish art and music tends to be more dramatic and captivating than Christian art (in my secular opinion).

 

22) Visitor - Of Monsters and Men (Indie Pop Rock) 

Maybe another nod to mainstream popularity (except I haven't seen this song in memes and shit, the way I have with The Weeknd's song), this song really dispelled the false premise I had that Of Monsters and Men have that generic processed sound that I tend to steer clear of. It's a beautiful and haunting song that also manages to be catchy and memorable through some great pop songwriting. Probably don't need to convince the masses (so many masses who read my blog - hi, Mother) that they're worth listening to, but this song certainly is.

 

21) Avalanche - Aimee Mann (Folk Rock Cover) 

I have two rules when it comes to covers. Basically, for a cover to be worthy of Sam bothering with, it has to be transformative - i.e. not just copying the original - and it also has to be enjoyable on its own. However, the exception to this rule is Leonard Cohen covers, simply because Cohen was a remarkable songwriter, but as a musician and a singer he was... less so. So when you get a Cohen cover like this from a singer-songwriter of the stellar calibre of Aimee Mann, you know you're in for something special. And while this song probably isn't as transformative as some covers I love are, because it doesn't stray far from Cohen's original arrangement, Mann's delivery and tone are absolutely pitch-perfect, and she perfects this beautiful, moving song with her performance.