The end of the year in near us already. What was a difficult year for many of us, music was good medicine. For this thread, what were some of you favorite releases in 2020.

Here are mine

Best albums (in no particular order)

- Fiona Apple (Fetch the Bolt Cutters)

- Taylor Swift (Folklore)

- Haim (Women in Music Part III)

- Kathleen Edwards (Total Freedom) - Ranking includes sentimental reasons

- Sara Bareilles (More Love)

Now I feeling fully feminized, I feel a pull to put something on the list like Drive By Truckers!

Best Comback albums

-Jayhawks (Xs and Os) - So glad to hear these guys again after decades.

-Dixie Chicks (Gaslighter) - Not their best but still a welcome return.

-Kathleen Edwards (Total Freedom)

Best Dance Pop ablum by a mile.

-Dua Lipa (Future Nostalgia)

Best Country Album

-Tenille Townes (The Lemonade Stand) - too comercial but she has lots of potential

Best overall Release

-Prince (Sign O' Times Superdeluxe)

Best R & B Album

Still looking - Would love to have some good references

AC/DC - PWR UP

Dizzee Rascal - E3 AF

Bruce Springsteen - Letter To You

Bob Dylan - Rough And Rowdy Ways

Right off the top of my head, Jessie Ware's "What's Your Pleasure?" It's an album that I keep going back to over and over

Raphael Saadiq "Jimmy Lee" but I just read that it was realeased in 2019....I'm still listening to it now

Only four so far. Sadly i haven't listened to many full albums this year. it's been mostly playlists.

Prince, The Quart of Blood Technique(great f*****g album !), Armored Saint, and Henrik Palm(former member of the band Ghost).

benjaminira said:

No love for the [Sault] album releases?

City Noir - Nebula Black

Tiny Missing Fragments - Diorama

Diamonds - The Birthday Massacre

Behind the Wall - Jennifer Touch

Neyslutrans - Hatari

KiCk I - Arca

Mydata - Katy Dey

Hazy Paradise - Yota

Kiss Me in the Rain - Jessie Frye

La Vita Nuova - Christine and the Queens (obsessively replaying "Je disparais dans tes bras")

Deep Wave Data Dark Web Daemons - Trevor Something

Monsters - The Midnight

Roisin Machine - Roisin Murphy

SYNTHIAN - Nina

Introduction, Presence - Nation of Language

Nostalgia - Spectres

Womb - Purity Ring

[Edited 12/8/20 17:59pm]

spacedolphin said:

City Noir - Nebula Black

Tiny Missing Fragments - Diorama

Diamonds - The Birthday Massacre

Behind the Wall - Jennifer Touch

Neyslutrans - Hatari

KiCk I - Arca

Mydata - Katy Dey

Hazy Paradise - Yota

Kiss Me in the Rain - Jessie Frye

La Vita Nuova - Christine and the Queens (obsessively replaying "Je disparais dans tes bras")

Deep Wave Data Dark Web Daemons - Trevor Something

Monsters - The Midnight

Roisin Machine - Roisin Murphy

SYNTHIAN - Nina

Introduction, Presence - Nation of Language

Nostalgia - Spectres

Womb - Purity Ring

[Edited 12/8/20 17:59pm]

Do most of these releases come from Europe? I am only familiar with Chrtistine and the Queens.

gandorb said:

Do most of these releases come from Europe? I am only familiar with Chrtistine and the Queens.

Arca, Yota, Diorama, Hatari are EU;

Roisin Murphy is Irish;

Birthday Massacre, Spectres are Canadian

1) Sault - Untitled (Black Is) & Untitled (Rise) (two sperate albums but I consider them two parts of the sane whole)

2) The Weeknd -After Hours

3) Little Dragon - New Me, Same Us

4) Roisin Murphy - Roisin Machine

5) Sam Sparro - Boombox Eternal

6) Dornik - Limboland

7) Jacob Collier - Djesse Volume 3

8) Childish Gambino - 3.15.20

9) RPG - Kintsugi

10) Disclosure - Energy

funkypixie said:

1) Sault - Untitled (Black Is) & Untitled (Rise) (two sperate albums but I consider them two parts of the sane whole)

2) The Weeknd -After Hours

3) Little Dragon - New Me, Same Us

4) Roisin Murphy - Roisin Machine

5) Sam Sparro - Boombox Eternal

6) Dornik - Limboland

7) Jacob Collier - Djesse Volume 3

8) Childish Gambino - 3.15.20

9) RPG - Kintsugi

10) Disclosure - Energy

YES!!

Childish Gambino - 3.15.20
Grimes - Miss Anthropocene
Victoria Monet - Jaguar
Sault - Untitled [Black Is] + Untitled [Rise]
Taylor Swift - Folklore

Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension
Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher
Haim - Women In Music
Jay Electronica - Act II: The Patents Of Nobility

LILpoundCAKE said:

Childish Gambino - 3.15.20
Grimes - Miss Anthropocene
Victoria Monet - Jaguar
Sault - Untitled [Black Is] + Untitled [Rise]
Taylor Swift - Folklore

Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension
Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher
Haim - Women In Music
Jay Electronica - Act II: The Patents Of Nobility

I almost included Sufjan and Phoebe on my list. Sufjan is always so good, but I feel like I need to start an antidepressant after listening to the entire album .

[Edited 12/11/20 16:37pm]

gandorb said:

LILpoundCAKE said:

Childish Gambino - 3.15.20
Grimes - Miss Anthropocene
Victoria Monet - Jaguar
Sault - Untitled [Black Is] + Untitled [Rise]
Taylor Swift - Folklore

Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension
Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher
Haim - Women In Music
Jay Electronica - Act II: The Patents Of Nobility

I almost included Sufjan and Phoebe on my list. Sufjan is always so good, but I feel like I need to start an antidepressant after listening to the entire album .

[Edited 12/11/20 16:37pm]

I'm with you on that! Love most of the individual tracks and listen to them in pairs of two or three all the time but as a whole the album feels somewhat heavy. Still because I like most of the tracks so much it's included on my best albums of 2020.

OH MY GOD! I forgot to include the SDE SIGN O THE TIMES but perhaps that is not truly a 2020 album anyway? But I love the SHIT out of that release. BIG TALL WALL #1

[Edited 12/12/20 14:55pm]

Posthumous release: Grey Daze - Amends

Linkin Park had THE best rock voice of all time. His normal voice is beautiful and clear instead of the high-pitched nasalness we hear in pop all the time, see "Breaking the Habit". But his rock voice is this hard, young sounding serious intensity, see "Faint" and "Lying from You".

The minute he debuted in 2000, he reset the standard for rock. He made every frontman before him sound dated, they sound like dying cats or beer drinking cowboys which isn't my vibe at all. Linkin Park trained his high pitched voice to a rock voice you CANNOT find anywhere.

So when his old band remade old songs he sang in the 90's, you'd expect a voice that's not ready yet. That still has a long way to go to getting to that recordbreaking sales, Grammy-level.

NOT. THE. CASE.

What his rock voice does on "Sometimes" and "The Syndrome" is intense perfection. But then you have "Shouting Out" where he sounds like a fairy-tale. He insisted on achieving such a wide range long before he became diamond.


Now if you have such a perfect voice, you can pretty much sing anything you want and it'll fly. And the 90's was full of deranged messages which sold a lot. I would understand if he looked up to that and attempted to do the same.

Again NOT. THE. CASE.

None of the songs in any way romanticize foul behaviour like so much rock does all the time. He doesn't sing about enjoying drugs on "Just Like Heroin" he sending a very obvious warning to anyone wanting to do it ("It's my time to fade, dying on the floor"). He doesn't target women on "Sickness" he targets himself. He's looking for commitment on "She Shines" which is surprising to me since he's just a kid. I'd think his focus would've been "having fun" at that age.

Lyrically Amends gives a message that's meaningful, insightful with great melodies.



So, yeah.....Linkin Park.......Chester Bennington................actually a rockstar worth learning about, discovering and DEFINITELY see as a role model. Cause you'd always be focused on being the best singing poet there ever was.

I mentioned in my OP that I was having difficulty finding my favorite R&B album of the year. I like Alicia and The Weeknd releases, but they just didn't quite meet a "favorites" label. Well, I finally listened to Jhene Aiko's Chilombo. I love her voice, which reminds me a bit of Corrine Bailey Rae. There is a total of 20 songs, so obviously there is blend of good and average songs. However, Jhene's voice is so special she elevates even the average songs.

"The Wild Card" - Ledisi

"Blackbirds" - Bettye Lavette

"Rarities" - Mariah Carey

"Letter to You" - Bruce Springstein

Prince - Sign O The Times Deluxe

JayCrawford said:

Wait... Good album's still exist? Anyways my favourite album releases are anything from the golden age (60s-80s)

They are out there but you have to search for them. That's why they recently put that little gadget on Mars to roam around and search. They will eventually find some but it's going to take some time.

The albums by:

Fiona Apple
Roisín Murphy

Pillow Queens
Illuminati Hotties
Perfume Genius
Kate NV
Throwing Muses
Summer Camp
Aoife Nessa Frances
Lovely Eggs

How many is that? 10? Cool. That'll do it. I also liked the Grimes album and most of the interchangable albums by the sad but horny girls like Phoebe Bridgers and Soccer Mommy. I wasn't into the Dua Lipa album like other people were. Same with the Sault albums, and I actively disliked the Taylor Swift albums but that's just personal taste and not a slight on her.

[Edited 12/21/20 8:54am]

jaawwnn said:

gandorb said:

jaawwnn said:

The albums by:

Fiona Apple
Roisín Murphy

Pillow Queens
Illuminati Hotties
Perfume Genius
Kate NV
Throwing Muses
Summer Camp
Aoife Nessa Frances
Lovely Eggs

How many is that? 10? Cool. That'll do it. I also liked the Grimes album and most of the interchangable albums by the sad but horny girls like Phoebe Bridgers and Soccer Mommy. I wasn't into the Dua Lipa album like other people were. Same with the Sault albums, and I actively disliked the Taylor Swift albums but that's just personal taste and not a slight on her.

[Edited 12/21/20 8:54am]

Glad you weighed in here Jawaan, as you seem to stay more current than some of us old folks around here .

Not from 2020 but close enough but I've been playing out Caroline Polachek Pang all year.

love the the Kate Bush and 80s vibe from this one:

https://www.youtube.com/w...n3cHUtNZKo