Jark's 2020 in Music (soon-to-be-completed EOY countdown)

Most of one of my favorite artists Zomby’s tracks just abruptly end so I’m kind of used to it. I’m here for the ride down hill on hospital bed while it lasts.
xnSUesy.gif
 

70. Katy Perry - Only Love
one of several missed opportunities on Smile, Only Love is a warm, heartfelt midtempo about using your time on Earth smartly, letting go of resentments and telling people how much they mean to you. sounds cloying, but in reality it's a sweet sentiment, catchy and a little more grown-up, and could've done really well at UK radio if pushed instead of the title track. and who else could make the mathematical number salad of "86,400 seconds in a day" work as an opening line?


69. Sam Smith - Another One
after struggling to get an album out for over a year—most of LoveGoes was already ready to go when they released How Do You Sleep? last summer—Sam Smith finally managed it this autumn, and this delicately sparkly album track from pop songwriter extraordinaire Noonie Bao doubles as a plea to an ex to treat his new man better:

please treat him like he's someone
someone perfect, someone so divine
someone special, someone good inside
I don't want him to hurt like me
just please treat him like he's someone

but the kicker comes in the middle 8, when they stop singing to the ex and direct some advice to the new guy instead: "don't say I didn't warn ya/you'll never be enough".


68. Little Mix - Sweet Melody
Little Mix needed a song like this. after coasting for a couple of years on a run of pretty mundane singles, they got it together in 2020 with their most essential track in years. Sweet Melody twists and turns through different moods and soundscapes like early Girls Aloud, but with a more laser-driven focus to get to that big, explosive chorus that commands you to the (imaginary) dancefloor. each girl elevates her verse with her own distinct delivery, which is one of their great strengths as a group. it'll be interesting to see how the project goes on if Jesy doesn't return.


67. Jessy Lanza - Lick in Heaven
discovering Jessy Lanza and her immaculately glitchy alt-R&B record All the Time, which wears its heavy Janet influences with pride, was a musical highlight of the year for me. this tracks gets under the skin with its shimmery hook: once I'm spinning, can't stop spinning, can't stop spinning. me neither beb.


66. Halsey - Finally // beautiful stranger
I didn't much care for Halsey before her third album (sexy banger Strangers aside). Without You didn't really do it for me at the time. but then came you should be sad, and I found plenty to enjoy about Manic, which was a more stripped-back, ballad-heavy record than the first two. a lot of the artifice around early Halsey seemed to have been stripped away, and on tracks like Finally, her seriously-underrated vocals hit new heights. this is an easy-going guitar-driven ballad that could almost be a Harry Styles track, if not for Halsey's typically casual, intimate songwriting.

your voice is velvet through a telephone
you can come to mine but both my roommates are home
think I know a bar where they might leave us alone
and I wonder if you'd take it slow

so pretty.


65. Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Crying at the Discotheque
One gay icon takes on another with this perfectly-pitched cover of Crying at the Discotheque. Where the original was deliriously trashy, Sophie's incomparable drawl brings a touch of class, giving it an elegant makeover. The present situation makes crying at the discotheque seem like such a distant dream—at least we'd be at one!—that the notion actually becomes quite appealing, adding a new twist of melancholy that's immortalised by the striking Sophie Muller-directed video.


64. Grimes - Delete Forever
A simple guitar riff and orchestral strings combine to make Delete Forever an unexpectedly touching emotional high point of Grimes' fifth record Miss Anthropocene, its beauty mirrored in the sparse CGI landscape of its Akira-inspired music video. This one is a real slow burn from "c", already ageing like fine wine—which is just well, 'cos it might be a while before we hear from Grimes again if she falls down another rabbit hole exploring the potential impact of algorithms on the production of hamster food and forgets to make music again.


63. Tom Aspaul - Tender
is there a male popstar more criminally slept-on than Tom Aspaul? I would suggest not—he's been chucking out singles here and there for six years now, pop that hardly goes to new places sonically but is all tied together with an indelible knack for pretty melodies and his vocal, which has an appealing tendency to swoop into falsetto on the chorus. and so it goes with Tender, the third "single" from his finally-released debut album Black Country Disco. the first couple of plays, it didn't really hit. slowly and determinedly, though, it crept up to become one of my songs of early summer.


62. Ellie Goulding - Tides
Ellie has her own The Blaze moment with Tides, a very welcome injection of pace from the back half of Brightest Blue. Chopped, pitch-shifted vocal samples make up a post-chorus and drop that feels like going clubbing in a grimy basement somewhere in Brixton with a bunch of hipsters. A banger, imbued with just a hint of the explosive euphoria that made Anything Could Happen so special.


61. Tame Impala - Breathe Deeper
Kevin Parker considers this his "Mariah Carey-influenced song", and while I don't really hear that, it is a delightfully creamy, luxurious electronic pop number that, as with so many Tame Impala songs, feels like twenty different snatches and samples of forgotten classics from another period in time, thrown into a blender and somehow coming out the other side as a fully-realised dreamscape.
 

60. The 1975 - The Birthday Party
on the more rootsy/folk-inspired half of Notes on a Conditional Form sits The Birthday Party, in which Matty finds himself surrounded by the temptation of casual drugs at the titular social event, before getting confessional: I depend on my friends to stay clean / as sad as it seems. this is just a really pretty bop which borrows from the sonic influences of country and jazz to create a sound that is, ultimately, very 1975.


59. Gerle - Shadows
this gorgeous downtempo moodpiece is the first proper single from Gerle, and while I don't know who she is or where she came from, Shadows suggests she's worth keeping tabs on. everywhere I go, I see another ghost she laments on the chorus, losing herself in the shadows.


58. Groove Armada - Talk Talk
this late-album highlight from Groove Armada's sadly slept-on comeback Edge of the Horizon marries a chugging rhythm with a simple recurring synth pattern to exquisitely peak-80s effect, one of those songs that could perfectly soundtrack both a late night drive and a picnic at the park on a warm summer's day. in the grand tradition of dance music, the hook—"you wanna talk talk talk, yeah"—doesn't seem to mean anything at all, and it doesn't matter a bit. this one's all about the feeling. I know you're with me @funky.


57. Taylor Swift - the 1
Taylor's ability to paint vivid imagery with words that feeds into the storytelling of her world possibly surpasses even Lana Del Rey, and it's in full bloom on the opening track of folklore. with a charmingly relaxed, unhurried pace and a big chorus that subtly shifts its lyrical pov each time it comes around, the 1 really would've made a great single.

in my defence I have none
for diggin' up the grave another time
but it would've been fun
if you would've been the one

lovely stuff.


56. HAIM - I Know Alone
HAIM explore various sounds outside of their usual territory on (THE GRAMMY NOMINATED) Women in Music pt. III, and this foray into vaguely industrial, squelchy pop with slight electro and UK garage influences emerges as a high point. the song runs on its own stop-start energy, bursting into its final minute with an injection of pace and melancholy complemented by Danielle's deep vocal and her sisters' higher backing vox. a really lovely song that exists in its own little bubble.


55. Dagny - Please Look at Me
Norwegian chanteuse Dagny seemed to be on a mission this year, dropping a six-track EP and later expanding it into a full album, punctuated by several really catchy tracks best categorised as capital-P pop. the songwriting is breezy, the hooks strong, her vocal gliding on top like a champion skater on a victory lap. Please Look At Me has a slight latin-pop vibe which flips from airy and introspective in the verses to dark and urgent in the chorus, and proves to be a perfect sonic fit with the similarly hot summer night vibe of Kylie's I Love It.


54. Tame Impala - It Might Be Time
trying to figure out what a Tame Impala song is actually about is basically a fruitless endeavour, but It Might Be Time seems to pose the question of what happens when you're no longer cool and all of the confidence of youth has been usurped by self-doubt. I just wanna keep this dream alive for now / Don't they know, nothin' lasts forever?—maybe it's also meditation on his own place in a shallow industry, although I don't think he has much to worry about there. The sirens that splinter in during the last couple of minutes give It Might Be Time a nice surrealist quality that renders it my highlight of The Slow Rush.


53. Blossoms - If You Think This is Real Life
another new discovery for me in 2020, Stockport five-piece Blossoms seem to have stepped into the gap left behind by the death of the indie-pop boy band in the UK, giving that genre's slavishly po-faced devotion to guitars and serious artistry a tongue-in-cheek update with synths and lyrics purposely designed to feel throwaway. I almost went with first single Your Girlfriend, but follow-up If You Think This is Real Life is a frothy confection that immediately imprints itself on the brain with a big, 80s-inflected chorus that radiates energy and joy.


52. Annie - The Streets Where I Belong
Annie took us on a hardcore nostalgia trip on her first full-length album in over a decade, preceding it with this beautifully wistful track about a young love which ended when her boyfriend died at 23. two decades have passed since, and Annie frames the tragedy through a fictional lens of hazy Americana. it's a sad song, but it's not entirely hopeless. I particularly love the way she introduces "Johnny Johnny, playing guitar" in the second verse, and then asks him to "take it away" for the song's climactic guitar solo, overlaid with distant echoes of "Annie, Annie". meta storytelling queen.


51. Roisin Murphy - Shellfish Mademoiselle
you wouldn't be in my kitchen if you didn't like the heat, Roisin hypothesises on Shellfish Mademoiselle, one of the many highlights of her retro disco record Roisin Machine. I don't really know what this song is about, other than Roisin being a bit of a nightmare but also quite fabulous. she takes particular umbrage to her man's actions in the song's best line:

how dare you sentence me
to a lifetime...
without dancing?
:disco:

by the outro she's had enough, already "long gone", but you can't help wishing the song would stick around and wrap you in its flirty caress a little longer.
 

50. Kiesza - Run Renegade
many unforeseen things happened in the 2020 pop landscape, and Kiesza discovering a second wind six years after Hideaway has to be right up there—but sure enough, the (mini-)album Crave is absolutely loaded with 80s synthpop bangers that recall Carli, Cyndi Lauper, hair-rock and a whole host of decade-defining one-hit wonders. It carved out a place for Kiesza once again and proved that pop is inately in her, something opening track Run Renegade demonstrates best with an explosive chorus about loving with wild abandon. it's not subtle, but then again subtlety is not in Kiesza's playbook.


49. RAYE - Natalie Don't
RAYE rehashes Jolene through a disco/electro-pop filter. but, like, better than that sounds. on Natalie Don't, tongue lodged firmly in cheek, she pleads with the titular temptress to "feel bad, don't text back!"—romantic insecurity, 2020-style. it's a blast. can RAYE please blow up already?


48. Disclosure - Expressing What Matters
Disclosure's third album ultimately turned out to be a massive disappointment (maybe the only real disappointment of the year for me, in album terms), but this single, relegated to bonus track, is a big ball of fun and energy which bops along relentlessly—yet another instalment in the "songs made to dance to" canon that ironically defined 2020.


47. NIKI - Switchblade
Under the industrial clatter of percussion that sounds like cutlery, Switchblade's big, grimy bassline carries NIKI on a wave into the song's sweet chorus, which feels like the sun coming out of hiding to chase off the storm. The winds of change have nothing on this switchblade faith, she sings—and if anyone knows what that could mean, please do share. A super-pretty synthpop track.


46. Joji - Your Man
YouTuber turned alt-popstar Joji saved the best for last on his third album Nectar, closing it with this gorgeously rhythmic synth-driven track that puts a simple proposition to the person in his sights: Did you ever love? Would you go again? I'll be your man. If anybody put that to me in a song, I'd be on my knees quicker than this breezy 2:43 number reaches its vocoder'd climax.


45. Kylie Minogue - I Love It
Kylie gave us a sort of sequel/grown-up sister song to Please Stay with this Disco highlight, perfectly positioned on the album to calm the pace from the frenzied bangers that precede it for an elegant moment of respite. I Love It sounds like cocktails and stolen glances on a terrace bar at sunset, and it hits a gloriously celebratory climax when the brass comes in for the final chorus. A real shame we'll never get a video for this, but the Infinite Disco performance was pure star power.


44. Melanie C - Blame It On Me
Melanie C's creation of a new musical identity more relevant to contemporary pop over the last three albums has been gradual, but it became fully-realised with her self-titled effort this year. Blame It On Me is the song that had me paying real attention—I couldn't and still can't quite believe that mesmering Menly made a song like this in 2020. the breathless throwback house vibes, that grimy bass, those chopped vocal samples—it's so delicious. quite a recovery from the clutches of MOR hell for the one-time Carolyna chanteuse.


43. Jessie Ware - Ooh La La
I really didn't get this song when it came out, a few weeks before the album. I think I may have called it bad. I must have been suffering a chemical imbalance, 'cos this shit is hot. Ooh La La is right up there with the cheekiest, flirtiest Jessie Ware material to date, all playful innuendo over crashing cymbals and distorted guitars. cigarettes on the dash, we can have a sweet time. what a proposition. :disco:


42. Selena Gomez - Rare
Although I do have a playlist containing 31 Selena Gomez songs, my expectations from pop's high empress of whisper vox are basically always rock-bottom, which is nice because I'm rarely disappointed by her but often pleasantly surprised. Rare, the album, had plenty of mileage for me, and the song that fared best was the title track, a sunny, joyful gesture of self-love which sings the virtues of putting yourself first. It's a good fit for someone who has often seemed to be defined by her TV characters, high-profile exes and label puppetmasters.

I'm not gonna beg for you,
I'm not gonna let you make me cry
Not getting enough from you,
Didn't you know I'm hard to find?

still, the less said about that "burning toast in my toaster" lyric, the better.


41. GRANT - Hell Yes, I'm Betting On You
GRANT (as suggested to me by @Lockhart) is another of my discoveries of the year. I'm completely obsessed with Hell Yes, a kind of grand, dizzy proclamation of love with hopelessly romantic lyrics like If I'm used to your kiss, will it stop making wonders? At about the 2 minute mark, under the floating-on-a-cloud chorus, the production begins to switch from ethereal and organic to electronic, and the final minute suddenly shifts into electro floorfiller territory, to the beat of a wild siren that seems to say: alright, get your ass to the club, hurry up. Yes, ma'am.
 
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40. Calvin Harris ft. The Weeknd - Over Now
I've basically been a hardcore Calvin Harris stan for the best part of a decade now, and have become used to him churning out at least one of my favourite songs of the year, every year—so I was kind of underwhelmed by Over Now on first listen. it's much more of a slow burn than we're used to from Calvin and even from The Weeknd, but at some point it clicked and it hasn't got old since. such a smooth vibe, and the high falsetto "post-chorus" part is seriously fucking dreamy. I just want to wallow in this song's soundscape, and I want more of it from Calvin. we're overdue an album at this point.


39. Katy Perry - Daisies
OK, not a popular choice on Moopy, but I really got my life to Daisies for a good few months this year, and contrary to popular opinion I found it a good fit for her at this moment in her career—no, it's not a #1 smash, but the narrative about staying the course even when things get rough felt self-referential and personal (she was clearly burned by the Witness saga) and the song, timed with the pregnancy, felt triumphant. this bitch has more than earned her moment in the sun.


38. Snakehips ft. Jess Glynne - Lie For You
I had entirely forgotten about both Snakehips and Jess Glynne when this song hit mid-summer, and for a few weeks both were resuscitated in my affections—despite her sub-sexy fish personality, I have always liked the Glynne's THROATY VOX, and she sounds fantastic on Lie For You, providing first verse and chorus along with some fabulous adlibs near the end. Snakehips know their way around a casual bop, and this one, with its nonsensical story of lying for you, dying for you and doing time for you really hits the spot.


37. KAYTRANADA ft. Charlotte Day Wilson - What You Need
another @funky fave, What You Need is a right slinky warm disco number which stands out on KAYTRANADA's largely frosty record, full of bleep-bloops that transport me to another plane and a gorgeous, low-key diva vocal from the very talented Canadian chanteuse Charlotte Day Wilson (whose stunning track Work is a great place to start exploring her).


36. The 1975 - If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)
the greatest high school movie closing credits soundtrack there never was, If You're Too Shy is everything joyous about the 1975 distilled into four minutes—a chorus capable of shaking a stadium and getting 40 thousand people singing along, juxtaposed against a slightly ridiculous, quintessentially Matty Healy lyric about webcam relationship anxiety: i need to get back, i've gotta see the girl on the screen. this song sweeps you up in its magic, and it's kind of a shame it wasn't the inescapable smash it was clearly designed to be.
 
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I'm not continuing this until I get some meaningful INTERACTION.

honestly. you guys BEG me to see something through but when I do I'm paid DUST.
 
@Jark The Herald Angels Sing Just had some time to kill between meetings so picked an artist from above at random (KC Lights). Again - thank you! You have great taste. Where do you find all these artists and remember them?

(feelling like I was in JarkFM in the middle of work was cool too :altaf:)
 
Jark The Herald Angels Sing said:
I'm not continuing this until I get some meaningful INTERACTION.

honestly. you guys BEG me to see something through but when I do I'm paid DUST.
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Well I like the Tame Impala song seeing as I’ve saved it on Spotify. Haven’t really revisited the album but there were a few highlights. Might be time to go back to it.

I know the Grimes song is highly regarded but it’s not one of my faves from the album although EVERYTHING on it is good. Her folklore/evermore moment which I have to be in the mood for to really enjoy.

Will you continue with this now? :)
 

35. The Weeknd - In Your Eyes
wildly eclipsed (just like every other song this year) by Blinding Lights, second single In Your Eyes peaked outside the top 15 in the UK and US but could easily have been a classic lead single in a parallel world—a super-sparkly synth-pop track with a sense of forward motion that somehow makes a meditation on a doomed-to-fail relationship sound romantic. By the time the second part of the long chorus ("you always try to hide the pain, you always know just what to say") comes along, throwing hooks on top of hooks, it's swimming in the kinds of breezy melodies The Weeknd and Max Martin are so good at conjuring up. the outro sax solo is obviously a treat, with the Kenny G remix taking it all the way over the top and into pure cheesefest territory. and why not!


34. Tom Aspaul - W.M.
all of Tom Aspaul's singles in the last year and a bit have kind of been "gentle West Midlands disco", a sound the gays never knew we needed, and W.M. (as the acronym suggests) is the prototypical entry of the genre—a celebratory ode to all the things you love and hate about going home, from driving down the M6 solo to breathing in the city smog and taking in the concrete. as a songwriter he's not just talented but wry and witty ("we're gonna take a ride on the Midland metro, line one 'cos there's only one line") with a taste for mundane imagery that sets him apart from the other girls doing disco.

by far the highlight of the song is the bridge into the chorus, which in truly :disco: fashion achieves the lofty feat of paying homage to QUEEN VICTORIA BECKHAM—twice!—with the line: Are you out of your mind if you let your head go? And that's how you get the gays to buy your limited run vinyl. Tune.


33. Cut Copy - Like Breaking Glass
this major summer obsession from a group I haven't really paid much attention to prior to this year shimmers and dazzles with some of the most gorgeously glassy (for want of a better adjective) synths you'll find anywhere in pop or dance music. a real feel-good track—best consumed with a fruity liqueur on a warm mid-summer's evening. I think @Christmas Tisches might like this one, if you haven't tried it already.


32. Jessie Ware - Soul Control
built over a looped video game riff that sounds like it was recorded in mono, Soul Control is the catchiest track on What's Your Pleasure?, a missed single opportunity that slightly deceives with its immediacy—there are actually a lot of cool details in James Ford's production. the electric guitar that comes in at the end adds a little touch of grime borrowed from Ooh La La, and the supremely funky bassline lends the staccato verses a huge dollop of suggestive sex appeal. certified banger.


31. Roosevelt - Echoes
post-mortem on a relationship robbed of its earlier sparkle has never sounded as hopeful as on Echoes, which looks back with confusion at where things went wrong before hitting a note of optimism on the chorus ("maybe tonight, we can leave the past behind"). just past the halfway mark, the dark disco of Echoes' thumping bassline gradually emerges into the sun, and finally erupts into the most glittery explosion of ecstatic bliss since the middle 8 of All the Lovers. eventually the vocals give way to wordless falsetto adlibs that mirror the melody, as if words can only go so far in expressing the gigantic swell of love in the narrator's heart. 'cos in these golden lights, we'll come alive.

one of those songs that's so casually brilliant, I'm almost glad nobody else seems to know or care about it. :eyes: almost.
 
I didn't get on with Tom Aspaul's album. I should like that genre but that kind of male, explicity queer music just doesn't speak to me and I don't really know WHY because I really love and appreciate that it's out there. :D

I will give Cut Copy a go. Definitely heard of them before. From a JarkFM maybe? Are they from days of yore? I might know them from my indie-lite days.

I'm interested to see where the other Jessie Ware songs have landed if Soul Control's at #32!
 
Great choices so far! Everyone knows how great Jessie Ware is, and I love the Roosevelt song (see, someone listened to it). A lot of songs I don't know by artists I do (Cut Copy, kaytranada, Snakehips)

I need to listen to Tom Aspaul. I'm sure I will listen to the rest I don't know eventually (between this and @funky's list, there's so much new music to listen to)
 
Christmas Tisches said:
I didn't get on with Tom Aspaul's album. I should like that genre but that kind of male, explicity queer music just doesn't speak to me and I don't really know WHY because I really love and appreciate that it's out there. :D

I will give Cut Copy a go. Definitely heard of them before. From a JarkFM maybe? Are they from days of yore? I might know them from my indie-lite days.
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I can't remember if they've had a cheeky Jark.FM feature or not, but they're one of those groups who have been around forever. their latest album is CLIMATE CHANGE themed and was slightly mauled by Pitchfork, but this track is the tits.

I actually didn't go back to Tom's album at all - it's a STRICTLY TAKE THE SINGLES AND RUN kind of affair. how very 2003 pop girl!
 

30. Dagny - Bye Bye Baby
this short, sharp blast of energetic electropop from Norway's finest export since crude oil (arguably a little less profitable, mind) delivered me a debut top 10 finish in ASFM last month, which maybe illustrates the easy likability of Dagny's brand of pop music—one listen and you're bopping. or maybe it's best not to take ASFM as a litmus test for anything. either way, Bye Bye Baby is the most urgent/uptempo moment on the Strangers/Lovers album, and there's a fairly relentless rhythm to it that would've made it a killer single choice, in Jark's humble expert opinion. *flops in at #103 on the Scandinavian Heatseekers Chart*


29. Melanie C - Overload
what a year for Menly—BACK into the UK top 10 (for one week only), and making comfortably the best music she's put out this side of 2007 (at least). there are several great, immediate tracks on the self-titled including some proper bangers, but perhaps my favourite is this more chilled-out disco number which is all hooks, all the time, and springboards from the vaguely threatening "you don't wanna see me GO..." into a smooth, inviting chorus, with George Reid of AlunaGeorge doing a killer job on knob-twiddling duties. sadly the only single/push track not to get a video, Overload feels like a big, warm hug, a boogie at a cocktail bar on a Thursday night after three G&Ts, and exactly the kind of music Melanie C should be making at this moment in her career.


28. The Killers - Caution (Dave Audé remix)
less a remix and more a gentle radio edit which throws a sprinkling of stardust on top of the original, the Dave Audé mix of Caution just pips the album version for me—and the stadium-shaking impact of the chorus remains mercifully in tact. what a comeback from Brandon and co—to be making music this free and creatively energised in their third decade feels like a real achievement. as ever, the lyrics ("tonight the winds of change are blowing wild and free" :disco:) don't seem to mean anything at all, but they do sound ever so pretty. allegedly a new album is already done and coming in 2021. yes please!

also check out: the utterly ridiculous BOP O'CLOCK Clean Bandit remix.


27. Mabel - Boyfriend
might I lose my credibility for putting Boyfriend by Mabel in my EOY top thirty? don't be silly—I never had any, and nobody's reading this anyway! now I have BUMPED N' GRINDED to this ridiculous DESPERADO ANTHEM on many an occasion this year (often IN THE SHOWER). teasing it before it came out, her label head said he thought it would be bigger than Don't Call Me Up. yeah, that worked out well. it did give her a first of three well-deserved top 10s this year, though, and I think it's held up remarkably well for what is ultimately just a SILLY MINDLESS BOP. the melody of that "all my girls around the world" bridge is huge!

IWANNABOYFRIEND. YUH.


26. KAYTRANADA ft. Kali Uchis - 10%
technically a cheat inclusion as it was released last December, but what are you gonna do? 10%, easily the best song of the year about a money-grabbing manager ("run my money to me, don't act like you didn't know / where's my residuals?"), finds alt-R&B queen Kali Uchis (her album Isolation is utterly essential) gliding atop Kaytra's typically frosty beats, which sound beamed in from a disco on a distant planet in the year 2500. it's fucking catchy, and bonus points for the exquisite humblebrag of the verse:
I wake up, it's so good to be me
in the mirror, it's good to see me
:disco:
 
resurrecting this because it had fallen calamitously to the second page :eyes:


25. The Japanese House ft. Justin Vernon - Dionne
The Japanese House was responsible for one of my top 5 tracks of last year with Maybe You're the Reason, and in 2020 followed-up a short four-track EP, the best of which was Dionne with Bon Iver, the current go-to for indie pop girls looking to add some melancholy heft to a duet. that's exactly what he does his here, providing a heavily distorted, vocoder'd chorus which crashes in almost randomly to create a kind of beautiful chaos.

I've been thinking about our storyline
and how your past becomes your present if it's always on your mind
we played Dionne Warwick - Walk On By

I love that lyric. despite getting lots of acclaim in Pitchfork-y circles, The Japanese House is really underappreciated by pop fans. get into her, girls!


24. Lady Gaga ft. Ariana Grande - Rain On Me
thank god for this song - imagine the year the Instagram influencer and former pop chanteuse L. Gaga would've had without it. her first major global pop smash since 2013, Rain On Me was immediately seized by the gays as an anthem for us, and it totally fits the bill—a big, beautiful, joyous ode to dancing through the pain, imbued with a clever double meaning (I'd rather be dry, but at least I'm alive) which references Gaga's relationship with alcohol and other drugs. only in 2020 could a song about being alive—the absolute bare minimum, in other words—be considered so triumphant, but here we are. time will tell if this is a future classic in the Gaga cannon, but the signs are good.


23. Victoria Monet ft. Khalid - Experience
plenty has been said already about what a sparkling year this has been for disco music, and many artists from across the pop and r&B spectrum have put out sparkly bops which sound like a glamorous afternoon at the roller disco circa 1977. Victoria Monet made it literal in the visualiser for Experience, her slinky collab with SG Lewis and Khalid, whose voice melts across the second verse like butter on toasted brioche. simultaneously a tune for the moment and a timeless groove of some sophistication, Experience goes down as one of many tracks this year which will need to be experienced in a social setting when life starts to get back to normal. until then, we bop.


22. Ava Max - Who's Laughing Now
Europe has always enjoyed the kind of uncool, straight-up pop music that America turns its nose up at, and perhaps sensing that this would be her biggest market, Ava delivered a tailor-made fun-for-Europe banger this summer with Who's Laughing Now, a song in the grand tradition of ripping off Ace of Base for a cheap hit. those laid-back, borderline tropical Casio beats have always catnip for northern Europeans looking for escapism, and Who's Laughing Now merrily throws All That She Wants and Alejandro (of course) into a blender. the result is arguably her finest song to date, with a maddeningly catchy ha, ha-ha-ha! hook that might as well be saying: fuck you, America! :disco:


21. Kylie Minogue - Say Something
I've been on a bit of a journey with Say Something. when it premiered, I was really into the guitar riff and the vibe, but felt the lack of a chorus hurt its replay factor a bit. I wasn't obsessing, unusually for new Kylie. when Magic came out, I felt it eclipsed Say Something. but then, in the context of Disco, Say Something began to make so much more sense—both blueprint for the record's sound and a sonic outlier, it adds some real emotional gravity to an otherwise lightweight collection of songs, and its beefy production is built to make it sound better with every spin. and then, of course, THE PERF - a rendition at Infinite Disco with the House Gospel Choir that radiated hope, light and joy, and cemented Say Something as a true Kylie classic for the new decade. with this song queued, gays will be ended en masse when the gay clubs reopen next year.
 
Experience was such a nice surprise this year :disco: And I'm really liking Dionne on first listen
 
I quite like that Mabel song. She’s as basic as they come but I’ve been bopping to Tick Tock this year. Is that still coming up?
 
my top 80 was originally a top 100 and Tick Tock made that, but no, it's absolutely not one of the best 20 tracks of 2020 :D
 
I like Boyfriend a LOT. I know she's lost all her coolness or whatever, but who cares when she's making FUN music.
 
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20. Empress Of - I'm Your Empress Of
this third record from the brilliantly talented Empress Of dropped out of nowhere in April, written entirely alone in a blitz of creativity at the beginning of the year. whereas 2018's Us felt like she was living out her primary colours pop fantasy, I'm Your Empress Of is short, casual and loose, with a sketchbook feel enhanced by each track bleeding into the next. while nothing hits the heights of her MAJESTIC '10s classic When I'm With Him, almost everything hits the spot—the addictively hooky Bit of Rain is "the banger", and the later run of What's the Point/Maybe This Time/Not the One brings the requisite melancholy feels. only Should've should've got the chop. I'm Your Empress Of leaves its titular chanteuse, who occupies an unusual but intriguing space within critic-friendly pop, perfectly poised to continue making splashes and waves.

max tracks—Bit of Rain, What's the Point, Not the One
joanne score—72


19. Tensnake - LA
I was introduced to Tensnake only over summer by our resident sophisticated house enthusiast @funky and I'm not sure anything or anyone else discovered in 2020 brought me so much joy. as late summer cooled into autumn and then the long covid. winter snatched our freedoms away, a lot of this German DJ's rich back cat of remixes has kept me bopping, gunny-popping and grooving, even if alone. his first "proper" full length album under his own name is hit and miss, but the best moments—the effortless disco groove of Antibodies, the slinky Strange Without You, and poppers o' clock theoretical floorfiller Make You Mine—are the kinds of treats and thrills that make you yearn for a good party. check them out, plus his own cover/remix of the Pointer Sisters' disco-turned-house classic Automatic, which bleeps and bloops and EDGES and TEASES for five minutes straight in the naughtiest way.

best single—Antibodies
also bangers—Strange Without You, Make You Mine, Automatic (Tensnake remix)
joanne score—72


18. Halsey - Manic
it seems almost absurd to think that this album is less than a year old. god, 2020 has CRAWLED! it's taken me a while with Halsey—I just really didn't pay her any attention for ages, aside from the brilliant Strangers with Lauren from Fifth Harmony, which weirdly did not become the biggest song of 2017 or all time. it all changed with you should be sad, which for a good while was my favourite song of 2020, a brilliant country-pop track with a ridiculously catchy hook and a ludicrous Shania-homaging video—just a great package. Manic is a pretty ballad-heavy record, but her voice has never been stronger and the melodies here are superb. numerous tracks, like clementine and finally//beautiful stranger (check out the excellent SNL perf of the latter), reference her childhood and "real life" persona of Ashley in a way that feels like major artistic development from her early tumblr-pop stylings.

best single—you should be sad
also bangers—finally//beautiful stranger, clementine, 929, Without Me
joanne score—73
 
Love this! Tensnake is amaze. Have you also checked out Crazy P's catalogue now too?
 
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