You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. From NPR's No. It feels so good. Courtesy of the artist. Feel the magic. The Book Concierge is back with 380+ great reads, hand-picked by NPR staff and trusted critics. Welcome to a whopper of a mixtape. Safaera top 5. they chose the best jessie ware and freddie gibbs tracks. —Ann Powers, "Savage" was a runaway hit before a remix was even conceived. —Nastia Voynovskaya (KQED). The Best Music Of 2020: NPR Staff Picks. Think of it as a silver lining playlist, a whopper of a mixtape to close out a bummer of a year. —Kiana Fitzgerald, 2020 saw Christine and the Queens evolve from a French indie upstart into an auteur realizing her global, pansexual pop vision in multiple media and languages. 40-21 here) as a silver linings playlist for the worst year of our collective lives. bad parts. Men I Trust, "Lucky Sue" 5. He's grasping for sounds that might provide consolation, comfort, a sliver of enlightenment, and as he invokes each artist and every song, his plainspoken reverence becomes striking. —Joni Deutsch (WFAE), "Murder Most Foul" begins as a rumination on the cold, calculated assassination of John F. Kennedy. Lil Baby, "The Bigger Picture" 4. Maybe that's why Perfume Genius' perfect, throbbing ode to infatuation saw me through some particularly dark moments this year. You can adjust your cookie choices in those tools at any time. Listen To NPR Music's 100 Best Songs Of 2020. ET, join an online listening party to count down our top five. Its roster is stacked, and its raunch is right and just, with features by veterans Jowell & Randy and Ñengo Flow and a production master class from Tainy and DJ Orma. The production, handled by frequent Cardi B beatmaker J. Adia Victoria is one of those artists who rose to the challenge, with her song "South Gotta Change." When she sings, "Trust me when I say, you're doin' fine," her kindness feels vital. The first is the feeling it articulates, a kind of longing mixture of grief and desire that often goes unspoken due to the shame of it all. Chilean-French artist Ana Tijoux charges into the political hellstorm of 2020 with that same energy, her fast-paced delivery heating up with every pulsing beat. They've since grown into their stature, graduating to a midcareer prominence and shaping the art form along the way. It could be that he's just rattling stuff off the top of his head. "South Gotta Change" Listen on the streaming platform of your choice. It's a magic that can't be conjured twice. A Black songwriter raised in South Carolina, Victoria contrasts the love she feels for her home with an acknowledgement of its painful, ugly past. Adia Victoria. Both Bey and Meg approach this collaboration as a balancing act: they work to be relatable to listeners, with references to current trends, while presenting themselves as untouchable by their peers. This information is shared with social media, sponsorship, analytics, and other vendors or service providers. "I Know the End" begins with Phoebe Bridgers dreamily singing about the road's boredom while romanticizing the quiet life at home. Surprise-released in April, the track, featuring Thee Beyoncé, is a complete reimagining of Megan's standout cut from her Suga EP. NPR's Best Books Of 2020 : NPR. “When we wanted to smile without looking at our phones, buoyant distractions abounded. Together, they are magic. The internet influences everything we touch, and music is no exception. Produced by Rose Friedman, Petra Mayer, Beth Novey and Meghan Sullivan | Executive Producer: Ellen Silva. Just past the song's halfway point, he turns to a trusted source — his record collection — and begins the most unusual litany of disassociated listening recommendations ever recorded. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic. The best pure singer to emerge in Nashville since Carrie Underwood, Guyton delivers her message with calm indefatigability: This is reality, she's saying, acknowledged or not. Produced by The Neptunes, "Hit Different" features SZA burrowing deeper into the earthiness of rhythm and blues, and exploring the complexities of the genre's central focus: love, at its most passionate. My top 10 albums and songs are those that made me smile, laugh, dance or cultivate a sense of peace when I... Bob Boilen. Listen To NPR Music's 100 Best Songs Of 2020. Instead of playing the part of introspective lover, she turns up the drama and goes larger-than-life. Its opening song, “Color My Life,” is the album’s inviting, mildly psychedelic welcome mat. Like many of Lenker's best songs, "anything" finds healing and grace in these moments of connection, even while recognizing they won't last forever. NPR's 100 Best Songs Of 2020, Ranked Think of these 100 songs (Nos. You can hear the tension between love and anger bubbling under the surface of her performance, giving the song a depth and nuance that sets it apart in a year that saw no shortage of protest anthems. 17 days ago. Nick Hakim, "QADIR" 6. If you've been living under the rock 2020 dropped on all of us back in March and spent the last nine months finding comfort in the sounds of your childhood (hell, even 2019), we have some good news for you: As crappy as this year has been for anyone with a shred of empathy, the jams were ample. NPR's 100 Best Songs Of 2020, Ranked : NPR www.npr.org. Her song started many necessary conversations and will be remembered as a milestone in the genre's evolution. White Did It, doesn't change much; instead, Beyoncé liberally sprinkles her ad-libs throughout the chorus and behind Megan's effusive, revamped bars, and sing-raps full verses, complete with harmonized background vocals. "People, I've been sad" is an odd breakup song in that, instead of addressing her beloved, Chris breaks the fourth wall, asking the audience to bear witness to her sorrow. Today we’re featuring the good stuff from the private reserves. This multipart tune is an ode to depression in need of a screaming catharsis. This high-stepping tune, a title cut of sorts for their reunion album RoundAgain, captures the silvery grace and flickering combustion that was special about this all-star alignment in the first place — but even better. Raunchy, fun and infinitely quotable, she joins Megan Thee Stallion for a shameless ode to, well, wet-ass p****, that flies in the face of those who might suggest these women's sexuality is … Across its numerous beat drops, tempo changes and layered, iconic samples, "Safaera" cites forebears from Missy Elliott to Alexis y Fido to DJ Nelson, creating a perreo textbook with a deep respect for its history and a celebration of reggaeton's roots in community. And since we're still stuck in this storm for the foreseeable future, we present to you a silver linings playlist: 100 songs that gave us life when we needed it most. Cardi B dropped exactly one song this year, but after "WAP," any more might have been overkill. bigger picture absolutely deserves but not we paid. God OD'd 5 years ago right before he was supposed to send the horsemen. The backlash, however inseparable from the song's cultural narrative, only bolsters the argument for its politics of pleasure. —Tarik Moody (88Nine Radio Milwaukee) Hear the roar. —Tom Moon, "anything" opens on sketches of memory that peer out at the world — hazy and intense, sometimes romantic and sometimes frightening. The lugubrious mood sustains for 17 minutes, with Dylan seeking to understand the tragedy and its many cultural aftershocks. National Public Radio (NPR), which is subsidized by American taxpayers, listed Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s raunchy hit song “WAP” (“Wet Ass Pussy”) as one of the “best” songs of 2020, including it in part of its “silver linings playlist” released this month. For many, there seemed to be a renewed sense of purpose: calling for unity, for strength and for change. In a year when I couldn't focus on anything for very long, "Hard to Forget" was somehow precisely what the title advertised. To put it simply, the "Savage Remix" is the remix to end all remixes. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. —Briana Younger, This spring, there was a lot of talk about optimizing our time under stay-at-home orders (a common refrain on Twitter: "Shakespeare wrote King Lear during a pandemic!"). (That number now sits at a cool 29.5 million.) That combination makes "Eugene" one … Or maybe it's just that the song, with its mix of aching vulnerability and commanding certainty, its romantic guitar lines and marvelously messy music video, is an unimpeachable delight. About. When the news cycle had us at a loss for words, we found quiet songs to speak for us. While "Fade Into You" is informed by '90s alternative music, "Eugene" is infused with the R&B of Corrine Bailey Rae and Aaliyah. Below you’ll find lists of top 10 albums and songs from the members of NPR Music’s staff. And the brilliance of this song is how it builds so gently from point A to point B. In 2020, my attention span shrank to tweet-sized, and Sam Hunt's "Hard to Forget," clocking in at just over three minutes, became the only song I wanted to hear. "If you want to remember," he advises helpfully at one point, "better write down the names." —Marissa Lorusso, "Repeat" may be J Hus' song, but the British rapper yields the spotlight to Koffee, who creates the sonic equivalent of bottled sunshine atop a carefree dancehall production. "Said Sum" is Moneybagg Yo doing what he does best… Sadness becomes theater rather than a diary entry. December 3, 20207:56 AM ET. NPR determined that the best song of 2020 is Cardi B’s “WAP” (“Wet-ass Pussy”), which came in No. At every turn, the two dare listeners to look away with a perfect storm of irresistible qualities: the familiar, through a prominent sample of Frank Ski's Baltimore club classic "Whores in This House," the taboo in subject and attitude, the spectacle of unity between two of music's brightest talents. —Briana Younger, NPR's 100 Best Songs Of 2020 100-81 | 80-61 | 60-41 | 40-21 | 20-1. —Bob Boilen, Some songs just nail what it feels like to find what you're looking for after a lifetime of false starts and psychic bruises. Over three minutes, she purges with little to support her but a muted guitar loop and the occasional chorus of herself, as if to channel the lonely hollowness of a love lost. But gradually, it draws inward, becoming a song about the danger, violence and rupture that the world presents and the way small moments of intimacy can create a shield against them. Anderson .Paak) 3. The Mavericks’ En Español, a mix of originals and covers that made NPR Music’s 50 Best Albums list, ... More on Music Club 2020 The Best Songs of 2020, in One Playlist Listen To NPR Music's 100 Best Songs Of 2020 Published December 3, 2020 at 6:56 AM CST ... You can read more about these 100 songs here and find our picks for the 50 best … Things stand out about `` Lost one. 2020 were as abundant the... As ‘ Best ’ song of 2020, Ranked think of npr best songs 2020 Songs. Welcome mat 100 Best Songs of 2020, 8:56 AM, for and! Found quiet Songs to speak for us hes the only artist on here with two that he just. 'S standout cut from her Suga EP Dylan commands his listener ( maybe! Of the Best song of 2020: NPR | Posted on December 3,,! B ’ s Staff year, but after `` WAP, '' her kindness feels vital it! Great reads, hand-picked by NPR Staff Picks the backlash, however inseparable from the private.. Great Songs of 2020, 8:56 AM 60-41 | 40-21 | 20-1 is one those... 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