10 Best Songs in 2020 (So Far)

Music hasn’t gone away.

Musicians are currently bringing their art directly to their fans through live streams, surprise releases, and digital concerts. And we need it now, perhaps more than we have in a long time, for comfort and escape, and to make sense of the world around us.

Clubs are closed. So are bars and arenas and coffee shops and theaters. But while live music has come to a terrifying halt, artists have been anything but silent during the coronavirus crisis.

Acts like Waxahatchee and Fiona Apple have released albums that are—in hindsight—prescient snapshots of our current time, whether they offer beacons of hope or solitary musings on individuality and the human spirit. Others, like Jamie xx, have gifted surprise releases as a welcome distraction from the world around us; tracks that are primed for quarantine dance parties and nightly releases of pent up energy. It’s cliche to say let the music heal us, but at the very least, let the music keep our spirits buoyant until we get through this.

Here are a few of the year’s best songs so far. Follow along as we update this list and our own Spotify playlist throughout the rest of the year. Apply liberally to the affected area.

1. Jensen McRae — “White Boy”: Over a lush, Mazzy Star-esque groove, 22-year-old Los Angeles singer-songwriter McRae takes us to a college party where an African-American woman finds herself code-switching for a charming white guy: “Twirl my hair, watch my voice jump the octave/I don't like who I am for you, white boy.” She’s described her sound as “Tracy Chapman writing music for Adele while studying for the vocab section of the SAT,” and with an equally frank and stunning second single “ Wolves” just out, we think she is poised to be massive.

2. Jay Electronica — "A.P.I.D.T.A.": Though the basket great is never mentioned by name in the song, Jay Electronica wrote A.P.I.D.T.A. the night Kobe Bryant died. A somber and lucid meditation on death, Electronica is open about his own grief and the loss of his mother. “The day my momma died, I scrolled her texts all day long,” he raps on the track. It’s pure, knowing poetry.

3. Fiona Apple — “Under the Table”: It’s worth spending time with Fiona Apple’s entire 2020 LP, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, which dropped in April to near universal praise. But even in a sea (um, 13 songs) of true gems, “Under the Table” still stands out .

4. Waxahatchee — "Lilacs" : she sings in the opening lines of the song. In hindsight, they read like an artist’s social distancing diary. But buried beneath the subject matter, the song has an easygoing complexion and an innate sense of hope. “When I wrote that chorus, I was like, ‘All right, we’re going to make this a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel.

5. Tame Impala — “Breathe Deeper”: I’ll be honest, I wasn’t immediately excited for a new Tame Impala album. I’ve loved every previous album and seen each tour, but over the years, my excitement, undeservedly, faded. Kevin Parker’s crowds had grown more bro-y with each passing year, as his shows embraced a more pulsing club mentality. It’s unfair, I know, but I was worried about what Parker had coming next. It turns out, on The Slow Rush, the musical mastermind at once embraced the future and the past, all at once. “Breathe Deeper” is a perfect example

6. Grimes — “Delete Forever”: I’m constantly astonished by the range and scope of Grimes’s music. Often, it can be alien—an otherworldly creation all her own. Her latest album further establishes her as a pop star of the future. There are dystopian club bangers, near-ambient techno, and soaring sci-fi synth ballads. But the most surprising song on a set full of pure creative energy stuns in its normality.

7. Jamie xx — “Idontknow”: After five years, the wait for new music from the producer-DJ-xx band member has officially ended. And it's not just that the 31-year-old is releasing music under his own name again that feels so vital—it’s also what he’s releasing. His five-and-a-half minute return bangs with skittish baselines, chopped up vocals, frenetic tempo changes, and trancey interludes that, while occasionally hard to follow, feel right in line with the chaotic world they release into.

8. Bad Bunny — “Safaera”: Alongside features from Jowell & Randy and Ñengo Flow, Bad Bunny and producers DJ Orma and Tainy flip the dial on nostalgia, spinning it into an irresistible, inventive, and frenzied reggaetón club banger. The genre is among the most influential sounds in global hip-hop and Bad Bunny continues to be a lead innovator in the space.

9. Jason Isbell — “Be Afraid”: “Be afraid, be very afraid, but do it anyway”: The exact right message at the exact right moment. With the first single from his upcoming Reunions album, the alt-country firebrand makes the case for speaking your mind, especially if your voice is shaking. “We don’t take requests, we won’t shut up and sing/Tell the truth enough, you’ll find it rhymes with everything.”

10. J Hus — “Big Conspiracy”: “They wanna judge me from what they heard I do / It’s a big conspiracy,” J Hus sings on the title track of his sophomore album. It comes two years after he served a brief sentence for carrying a knife in a shopping center in East London. (He was stopped because a police officer said he smelled of cannabis.) The track, with references to Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs and a system that’s set up to explicitly work against him, is an introspective look at a world that is conspiring to bring the rapper down.

Thanks for viewing. Have a nice day ahead.