Greg Cameron’s Top 20 of 2020
This year was kind of a lot. A pandemic, employment getting thrown in a blender for a bit there and an election that to this very moment is still being debated by people who can’t quite come to grips with math and numbers. 2020 was a hell of a lot of things for all of us. How did I get through lots of it? I listened to a whole lot of music, especially considering the fact that I went to very few concerts. The space between my headphones was really where I consumed most new music. It was a year of surprise releases and new albums from old favorites getting back into the swing of things 2020 was a year that needed just a little more attention (in a lot of areas) musically. Thus, a top 20, instead of a top ten this year. Enjoy, stay home and stay safe!
20.) Ohms — Deftones
Twenty years ago, Deftones released what is probably their best album, and I was all in. Like all the way in on it, White Pony was so much different than most of the nu-metal schlock that was all the rage. That album was this weird art rock thing swimming in a sea of Limp Bizkit, Korn, and early Slipknot. Their latest record is similar to White Pony and is phenomenal. Also, check out the video. Seeing Stephen Carpenter playing a nine-string (9!) stringed guitar was a pretty good announcement as any that they were indeed back in form.
19.) A Boat to Drown In — METZ
The video for this song is absolutely bananas, and the song is even better. Admittedly, it had been awhile since I had listened to a lot of METZ, but this song was such a good re-introduction to them.
18.) Julien Baker — Faith Healer
Julien Baker is so good, she can just release singles as one-offs and they sound excellent, I love her guitar tone, It’s just so clean and pure, and I love her voice. This tune about addiction from her is just another in a long line of great tunes that she’s delivered. Hopefully this means that she’ll be dropping an album in 2021. Like most things in the next year, here’s hoping!
17.) Fox– Dogleg
The video to this tune takes me back to the days of seeing friends punk and emo bands in odd clubrooms or church basements or rickety-ass gymnasiums. And this song rips! One of the biggest things that I’m bummed that 2020 took from us was not getting a Dogleg tour in small rooms like Great Scott here in Boston (RIP, Hope your scene isn’t paying rent to nameless, faceless corporatist landlords. However, I digress.)
16.) Chapter 319 — clipping.
Need it be said yet again: Daveed Diggs is a renaissance man. He can act, rap, write, and so much more. His hip-hop side project, clipping., made one of my favorite political songs of the year. The chorus and George Floyd sample on this tune is so important and poignant. The movement that so many young people led this summer needs to continue. Putting out leaders’ feet to the fire is important and essential. Speaking of leaders, we had an election, right?…
15.) Can’t Put It In The Hands of Fate — Stevie Wonder feat. Rapsody, Cordae, Chika and Busta Rhymes
We did indeed have an election in the United States that was spurred mainly by young voters, people of color, and really people who were sick and damn tired of the rudderless ship that our country has been sailing on the last four years. Stevie Wonder was also pissed. So much so that he left Motown, started his own label, and released two awesome, very Stevie singles. This one that takes aim at the very absentee leadership that we’ve been living under is exactly the kind of song I didn’t know I needed.
14.) Mustang — Bartees Strange
Okay, so, Bartees Strange’s work is something I came to very late this year, and my god is he so refreshing for our time and the alternative scene at large. He’s such an awesome voice that I’m so glad we’re lucky enough to have experienced in such a weird year. He’s like part TV On The Radio, part emo wunderkind, part soul superstar. How I didn’t immediately gravitate to his stuff, I’ll never know, but my god, am I glad that he’s here. Hopefully we hear from him for a long time henceforth.
13.) Brakeless — The Wonder Years
So, I have to confess something: I’m a really big The Wonder Years fan. How big? Their acoustic album Burst and Decay Vol. II was arguably my top album spun this year. (Thanks, Spotify, for keeping tabs on that.) This tune, written in the style of old albums Suburbia, I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing and The Upsides just feels like the exact shout-it-out-loud anthem we need for a time that is filled to the brim with economic angst and uncertainty. But, then the chorus kicks in, and it’s just exactly the kick in the ass I needed during the tail end of a slog of a job search that I was on for much of the year. Just remember, no matter how tough the times are, the songs on the radio can try and help you feel less alone. Sometimes, that reminder alone can keep you going.
12.) Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit — Only Children
Jason Isbell does something that I just love; he writes songs like these sprawling landscapes of this truly American experience. Only Children feels to me like a song about growing up and how that experience is odd and is rooted in so many things that we read, write, and live through across the days and nights. I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be in the studio with he and Dave Cobb as he writes and records these songs. Is it just push play and here’s this majestic thing? I’m dying to know what the recording process for this one was like.
11.) Me & You Together Song — The 1975
The 1975 are a frustrating band to love. Their standout 2018 album A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is this big grandiose ode to tech gone wrong and love gone sideways, oh and addiction. Their follow-up, Notes on a Conditional Form is a scrambled self-indulgent mess of a album. But, then there’s Me & You Together Song, which is a quirky, very 1990’s brit-pop love song and you think they can be that kind of band. It’s the shiniest diamond in an otherwise disjointed and Be Here Now-esque album.
10.) The Night Game — A Postcard from The City of Angels
Speaking of The 1975, The Night Game’s like the American version of them. Martin Johnson, of Boys Like Girls fame, has been making some really great pop this year. This track is an ode to leaving Los Angeles and all the crap that probably comes with left coast excess. It’s time to leave the city and come back east. As the credits roll on a chapter like that, few songs would soundtrack that moment better.
9.) Blinding Lights — The Weeknd
From one kind of excess to another, The Weeknd’s album soaked in 80’s synth plays like a soundtrack to Uncut Gems and all-nighters that seem like another planet in 2020. Blinding Lights is paced by a desperate vocal and metronomic electric drums that gives you a similar feeling to the 2019 film that The Weeknd cameoed in. I’m willing to be convinced that the album art is proof that Sandler actually punched him too.
8.) I’ll See You In My Dreams — Bruce Springsteen
The real balance of 2020 (Y’know, the quarantine and pandemic part) started with saying goodbye to a friend and father-in-law of one of my best friends in March. The man was the kind of sunny, jovial Springsteen lifer that you hope anyone you care about comes across in this crazy road called life. Months later, listening to Springsteen talk to Zane Lowe about this album, I couldn’t help but think about this friend I’d lost. Springsteen was thinking about long lost friends too on his excellent album, Letter to You. You can really feel it when you listen to this album, and if I get a vote, my favorite Springsteen is the one that’s in his feelings for a minute and fishes out the good memories of good times. That’s what I’m choosing to as we walk away from such a hard year.
7.) Sunblind — Fleet Foxes
Finding the coziness of the autumn sun was something that was really difficult to do in a year that felt confining in terms of truly leaving the four walls you call home. Thankfully, Fleet Foxes created Shore, a sun-soaked album of Jackson Browne-esque songs that felt like they warmly hugged you back. Sunblind’s chorus felt like something from a happier and warmer time. Robin Pecknold’s a great songwriter who can create these dream-like worlds with his songs. In a year that needed escape, their new record was something that was desperately needed.
6.) Garden Song — Phoebe Bridgers
In my eyes, Phoebe Bridgers can do no wrong. Her debut album is a masterpiece, her collaboration with Conor Oberst was a standout for me in 2019, and Punisher is one of the best albums of 2020. I immediately gravitated to Garden Song when it was released. The song does something that all good Phoebe Bridgers songs should do, they sound like the perfect soundtrack to a late night drive where the only passenger is your thoughts on the nights. She’s so young and talented and just knows what kind of songwriter she is, which is incredibly impressive.
5.) walking in the snow — Run The Jewels
I don’t think a song or album in total knocked me on my ass more than walking in the snow off of Run the Jewels’s RTJ4. The dynamic duo is back at a time that the world needs them most. Just listen to Killer Mike’s verse, it will knock the wind right out of you. You’ll know the line when you hear it. Even crazier? He wrote it months before George Floyd’s death, even though the album was released weeks later. That versed stopped me dead in my tracks at a time that many things in our culture needed to help our country keep out eye on what’s really important.
4.) The 1– Taylor Swift
“I’m doing good, I’m on some new shit. Been saying yes instead of no.” I did not have Taylor Swift writing the best line on a track one side one for my musical year on my bingo card. I continue to be impressed with the kind of songwriter that she’s become in the years since fans have first seen here. Folklore is an incredible album that no one saw coming. I’m glad that Taylor Swift is one some new shit. As of writing this, evermore is about to release in minutes, and I hope so much that she continues to write like she did on this album. Even if she doesn’t, she’ll still write great songs with layers of metaphor.
3.) Caution — The Killers
Yes, The Killers’ last few albums have been bad to middling at best. Imploding the Mirage, breaks that cycle. Brandon Flowers is back as a great frontman and having a few different guitarists on this doesn’t hurt either. Sure, the verses are weird; they always are…but the choruses are 40 stories tall on Caution, which you want on a Killers track anyway. Having Lindsey Buckingham play an awesome solo on this tune just add to the power-pop majesty that the band seemed to recapture this year. I didn’t know I needed a Sam’s Town-style comeback from The Killers, but I’m glad I got one.
2.) The Steps — Haim
HAIM is one of those bands that I don’t think can really do any wrong. They write really awesome alt-pop tunes and The Steps is the next one in a long line of just straight bangers. Hell hath no fury like Danielle Haim scorned. God help whoever did that to the frontwoman of this trio, because he maybe influenced one of the best choruses of the year. It’s such a good organized bit of rage that I hope Chrissie Hynde was somewhere applauding like that gif of Meryl Streep cheering on Patricia Arquette at the Oscars. Not that Danielle Haim needs it, of course. She ans her sisters Este and Alanna are powerhouses of their own.
1.) Bad Decisions — The Strokes
Once upon a time, I thought that The Strokes were going to be the biggest band on planet Earth. Damn thing is, it almost happened. Like the aforementioned Killers, The Strokes have been working on side projects that seemed to overshadow The Strokes actual output. Julian Casablancas had The Voidz and Albert Hammond Jr., had a pretty comfortable solo career that was flourishing. Then, in support of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, they returned for a campaign stop where they debuted this track and even encored with New York City Cops. Their aptly title 2020 album, The New Abnormal, is a return to form that I didn’t really saw coming, but I’m glad we have. Next time, I hope it takes less time for the band to create something this great.
