The Best Albums of 2020…So Far

It’s been a very long year—and we’re only at the halfway mark. So it seemed like a good time to take stock of the human experiment circa 2020 with our first-ever mid-year albums list. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed who we are at our cores, both good and bad, the best albums of the year so far—almost all of them created prior to the crisis—reflect the simmering tensions that have been roiling beneath the surface of American life for years, if not decades. These 20 albums reflect a reckoning with ourselves (Arca’s kinetic Kick I), the patriarchy (Fiona Apple’s prismatic Fetch the Bolt Cutters), systemic racism (Run the Jewels’s electrifying RTJ4), and our (dis)connection to the planet itself (Grimes’s boundless Miss Anthropocene). As we grapple with what it means to shut down and rise up, music can give us an outlet, a voice, or—in the case of Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia and Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure?—an escape. Sal Cinquemani

Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters

Like fellow singer-songwriter Scott Walker, Fiona Apple achieved fame at a young age by making music that was more sophisticated and adventurous than that of her peers. Now, with Fetch the Bolt Cutters, she’s made an album not unlike Walker’s The Drift—that is, unmistakably in the pop idiom but aggressively unconventional. But if Walker’s late-career music was alienating and difficult, Fetch the Bolt Cutters is compulsively listenable, full of catchy melodic hooks and turns of phrase that linger with you long after the album is over. Released in the midst of a global economic and health crisis that could have been largely prevented if not for the disastrous mismanagement of a ruling class for whom mediocrity is an unattainable level of functionality, the album is prismatic for all that it reflects. On a purely musical level, it’s a bold experiment in pop craft, a collection of songs on which Apple stretches her talents in adventurous new directions. It can be read biographically, as a self-conscious act of narrative-building that continues to define Apple’s legacy as an artist. Most importantly, Fetch the Bolt Cutters is a vituperative catalog of the failures and pointless cruelties of a society propped up by fragile, nihilistic, patriarchal ideology. Seth Wilson

Arca, Kick I

Where Arca’s past efforts sought to express states of dissociation, rendering a consciousness flitting in and out of reality, the songs on Kick I are noticeably present and tuned-in. Arca’s gender identity is infused in the playfulness of her lyrics and compositions. Despite the addition of actual pop hooks throughout the album, Arca’s beats continue to emphasize destabilization and change. Her songs are all bridge—stretches of evolution from one idea or mindset to the next. Just when you’ve grown accustomed to a sound or riff, the floor drops out, shifting to another mode and vibe altogether. The production oscillates wildly between harsh and smooth, as in the way the kinetic, abrasive “Riquiquí” segues into the graceful ballad “Calor”; strings and clanking percussion mix, squaring off in striking juxtaposition. By far the bounciest, most ecstatic song cycle of Arca’s career, Kick I is a celebration of actualization, whether that’s spurned by finding harmony internally or in communion with another. Charles Lyons-Burt

Bad Bunny, YHLQMDLG

With his inclination for pairing heartbroken lyrics with fiery dembow beats, Bad Bunny has finetuned the art of crying in the club. On his second solo album, YHLQMDLG, the Puerto Rican reggaeton star offers dance floor-ready sentimentality that feels familiar, but he breaks out of his reliable formula with the most blistering production of his career to date, courtesy of Tainy and Subelo NEO. The viral “Safaera” is the best example of this audacious streak: Over an episodic five minutes, the track pivots between eight exhilarating beat changes, simulating the head-spinning pyrotechnics of a DJ club mix. With collaborations from today’s hottest Latin-trap heavyweights and legendary reggaetoneros like Daddy Yankee, the album solidifies Bad Bunny’s rightful place in the Urbano canon. Sophia Ordaz

Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher

Throughout her sophomore effort, Punisher, Phoebe Bridgers is often transfixed by a feeling of stasis. Songs like “Chinese Satellite” and “I See You” evoke the sensation of being frozen, exacerbated by the perpetual anticipation of doom. “I’ve been running in circles trying to be myself,” she sings on the former. Again and again over the course of the album, the singer-songwriter laments her inability to find solid ground, her voice low but certain. These songs simmer beautifully and quietly, eventually boiling over in intermittent moments of sonic boisterousness, and the results are often stunning. Punisher’s closing track, “I Know the End,” is a travelogue at the end of the world, explicitly illustrating the cloud of uneasiness that hangs over the album. It ends with blood-curdling screams, until all the sound fades out and Bridgers’s voice is hoarse. The end of the world is a central detail on Punisher, an influence over the uncertainty that falls over these dark but gorgeous songs. Jordan Walsh

Dogleg, Melee

Dogleg’s Melee is a bristling, relentlessly cathartic collection of pop-punk. From the moment that the opening track, “Kawasaki Backflip,” bursts into its full-band glory, the album never slows down or backs off from the Detroit group’s loud, crunchy, anthemic style. Lead singer Alex Stoitsiadis shouts every word with dire conviction, his voice shredding and straining to deliver some of the best shout-along hooks of the year so far. “Any moment now, I will disintegrate,” he frantically yells at the explosive climax of “Fox.” Melee is the sound of a band pushing off self-destruction through sheer force of will. This isn’t to say that these songs aren’t complex, or that their loudness is a cover for a lack of imagination. The guitars on “Cannonball” splash loudly, creating violent ripples over the rest of the track, while “Ender” closes the album in a six-minute punk odyssey wherein Dogleg ups the stakes at every turn. Melee is exhausting in the best possible way, a cleansing release of tension in a howling, desperate rage. Walsh

Bob Dylan, Rough and Rowdy Ways

Sharp and precise in its references, descriptions, and personal confessions, Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways is thematically universal and powerfully prescient, in many ways acting as the culminating expression of the apocalyptic spirituality that’s preoccupied Dylan since his earliest recordings. It’s also a masterpiece of mood as much as lyrical poetry, and as stunningly and surprisingly atmospheric as many of the major musical achievements in a career more associated with monumental songwriting than sonic mastery. This is an album that showcases a similar comprehensive spectrum of ideas, attitudes, citations, perspectives, stories, and jokes as Dylan’s greatest recordings. True, many of these are grave, but the few hopeful spots—like “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You” and “Key West (Pirate Philosopher)”—are well-earned and, quite simply, beautiful. Latter-day Dylan is the man behind “To Make You Feel My Love” as well as “Not Dark Yet,” and along with dispensing fire and brimstone, Rough and Rowdy Ways keeps romantic and spiritual faith alive, through both the fervor of unshaken convictions concerning the high stakes of the soul as well a basic yearning for love, companionship, and peace. As with his best work, the album encompasses the infinite potential for grace and disaster that can be clearly discerned but rarely summarized in the most turbulent of ages. Michael Joshua Rowin

Grimes, Miss Anthropocene

Claire Boucher has said that the process of writing Miss Anthropocene was an isolating experience, and that much of the material came from a dark, personal place. Even the album’s most apparently apocalyptic lyrics, like the reverb-drenched “This is the sound of the end of the world” on “Before the Fever,” seem to do more to elucidate the kind of headspace Boucher was in at the time of writing than any grand message about the world’s climate woes. But while this overarching concept might seem flimsy, Boucher’s broad-strokes approach to lyricism and confident, cinematic production allows her to explore concerns that feel at once both deeply personal and fundamentally communal. The latter in particular is bolstered by the way she dissolves the limits of genre, splicing together ethereal electronics with nü-metal guitars on “So Heavy I Fell Through the Earth.” On “Darkseid,” deep bass and doom-laden beats grind beneath a brittle performance by Taiwanese rapper 潘PAN, and a Bollywood sample butts up against drum n’ bass on “4ÆM.” On an album as sonically diverse as Miss Anthropocene, the most significant thread that holds it all together is Boucher’s wild imagination and commitment to experimenting with her sound. And the result is a challenging exploration of the conflicting boundaries and boundlessness of personhood, technology, and society. Anna Richmond

HAIM, Women in Music Pt. III

While there’s plenty of genre-hopping on Women in Music Pt. III—hip-hop, reggae, folk, heartland rock, and dance—HAIM has created an album that’s defined not just by exploration, but by their strong sense of individuality. Unlike the sparkling, thoroughly modern production of 2017’s Something to Tell You, this album’s scratchy drums, murky vocals, and subtle blending of acoustic and electronic elements sound ripped straight from an old vinyl. It’s darker, heavier fare for HAIM, for sure—a summer party record for a troubled summer. HAIM’s instincts to veer a little more left of the dial result in an album that strikes a deft balance between the experimental and the commercial, the moody and the uplifting. You’re unlikely to hear these songs on Kroger’s in-store playlist—on which 2017’s “Little of Your Love” seems to have become a permanent staple alongside the likes of “Eye of the Tiger” and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”—but these songs are riskier, and ultimately that much more rewarding. Jeremy Winograd

Lilly Hiatt, Walking Proof

Lilly Hiatt’s songs are disarmingly personal and immensely endearing, even when she’s singing about fucking up—which is pretty often. There’s an almost parasocial element to Hiatt’s songwriting: Her voice is like that of an old friend who’s perpetually in various stages of getting her shit together. Hiatt’s fourth album, Walking Proof, forms something of a thematic trilogy with her last two albums: 2015’s Royal Blue, a portrait of a relationship in its death throes, and 2017’s harder, darker Trinity Lane, which depicted its immediate aftermath. Hiatt spent both albums seeking solace and guidance for her troubles everywhere she could, from family to her favorite records. On Walking Proof, she’s emerged wiser and more confident, ready even to dispense advice of her own. She also finds herself in full command of her broad stylistic palette, melding influences as disparate as backwoods country and garage punk into a cohesive signature sound. There are a couple of lingering references to Hiatt’s past relationship problems. But when, in the hauntingly stark closer “Scream,” she claims, “I swear to God I’m done with him,” it’s convincing this time. Winograd

Carly Rae Jepsen, Dedicated Side B

A defining feature of last year’s Dedicated was Carly Rae Jepsen’s embrace of her sexuality—a topic the singer had, for the most part, previously sidestepped in favor of more chaste subject matter. The dozen songs that comprise Dedicated Side B, all leftovers from the original recording sessions, double down on pillow talk, lending the album a uniformity that its predecessor lacked. That songs as strong as the sublime “Heartbeat” and the anthemic “Solo” were left off Dedicated speaks to not just the wealth of treasures she had to choose from, but her ability to craft a cohesive narrative. “I’m at a war with myself/We go back to my place/Take my makeup off/Show you my best disguise,” Jepsen offers wistfully on the meditative “Comeback,” demonstrating the tangled multi-dimensionality of both her own psyche and the act of sex itself. Alexa Camp

Lil Wayne, Funeral

Only a year and a half after an album that took the better portion of a decade to make good on its announced release, Lil Wayne’s Funeral arrived with little to no fanfare, casually staking its claim as one of the rapper’s best. Lower expectations could have something to do with it, as the return to form represented by 2018’s Tha Carter V was accompanied by a lot of handwringing. Funeral makes the case that Wayne doesn’t need that gestation period—just producers who can meet him on his level and inspire the kind of dazzlingly dizzy flows that once made his “best rapper alive” claims more than credible. The success of Mannie Fresh’s contribution is less throwback than understated innovation: Co-produced with Sarcastic Beats, “Mahogony” fuses together the smooth, New Orleans bounce of Wayne’s early sound with the rat-a-tat delivery of Weezy’s watershed “A Milli.” The early twofer of “Mahogany” and the squelching, PC Music-worthy “Mama Mia” may represent the album’s peak, but the 24-track Funeral is a party that never flatlines. Sam C. Mac

Dua Lipa, Future Nostalgia

When Dua Lipa decided to name her sophomore effort Future Nostalgia, she couldn’t have fathomed that the album would be released in the midst of a socially and economically devastating global pandemic. It’s unlikely that future generations will look back on 2020 with wistful nostalgia. Fortunately for us, Future Nostalgia leans into the latter half of its oxymoronic title, offering a well-timed escape hatch to pop music’s past. The album’s mix of past and present is best captured on two tracks that draw overtly from their sources: “Love Again” is a dizzying dance-floor filler that pairs lush orchestral swells with a sample of the canned strings from White Town’s 1997 single “Your Woman,” while the guitar hook from INXS’s “Need You Tonight” provides the melodic basis for “Break My Heart.” Both songs demonstrate Lipa’s knack for wringing pathos from everyday dating woes and pouring it into sublime dance-pop. It’s a role that once squarely belonged to Robyn, whose long sabbaticals Lipa seems more than willing to fill with kiss-offs like the nu-disco slow burner “Don’t Start Now.” At just 37 minutes, Future Nostalgia seems to understand that the best diversions are as fleeting as they are exhilarating, so we should enjoy them while we can. Cinquemani

Nnamdï, Brat

As expansive as the album’s musical range is—from the confessional, acoustic “Flowers to My Demons,” to the bombastic math rock of “Perfect in My Mind,” to the woozy electro hip-hop of “Gimme Gimme”—Nnamdï’s Brat is equally eclectic in its emotional expression. Songs like “Glass Casket” float in a ruminative space as Nnamdï delivers a list of wishes and fantasies that are loaded with yearning: ”I wish I was a farmer/I wish I was an astronaut/So I could feed my family/And then take them somewhere very far away.” On the other side of the spectrum, “Semantics” builds up to an explosive release of frustration, with Nnamdï stretching his voice to be heard over a collapse of swirling synthesizers. But it’s the thoughtful and mystically sad closing track, “Salut,” that leaves possibly the biggest impression, as Nnamdï attempts to speak to a higher power he’s not sure is even there as the song blooms into a state of acceptance accompanied by a litany of chirping guitars. Walsh

Perfume Genius, Set My Heart On Fire Immediately

The hushed and quivering first moments of Perfume Genius’s Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, as Mike Hadreas emotes great sorrow over minimal instrumentation, sound all too familiar in the world of diaristic indie music. “Half of my whole life is gone,” goes the refrain of “Whole Life,” which itself seems to slink away from us as he chokes on the words. But then, about a minute in, things open up—a reminder that half gone also means half left. A waltz-time rhythm, swooning strings, and gorgeous tremolo guitar filigrees situate Hadreas in a long lineage of tuneful, lovelorn balladeers, drawing a straight line to the likes of Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers, artists who knew how to locate universality and shared pathos in their musical expressions. Which isn’t to say that the album is merely content channeling the past. Lead single “Describe” couldn’t sound more different from the opener, all grunge-griminess, distorted harmonies, and clattering, imperfect percussion, while “On the Floor” fully embraces ebullient, strutting indie pop. The dynamics of the drama here are different from what we’re used to from Hadreas, reveling in the flames of both ecstasy and pain, and drawing on a stunningly eclectic palette to describe them. Mac

Run the Jewels, RTJ4

With their fourth album, Run the Jewels achieves a synergy and cohesion that heightens the moral clarity of their work as it fiercely meets the chaos of our current moment. Addressing racist social structures and the exploitative nature of late capitalism on “Walking in the Snow,” Killer Mike raps, “All of us serve the same masters, all of us nothin’ but slaves.” What does a nation owe its citizens, and what does it say about America that the bulk of what we’re provided by our power structures is either the warehousing of bodies in schools and prisons or their destruction? On RTJ4, Killer Mike and El-P pose such thorny questions, advancing the thesis that the nature of modern life is inherently carceral. Structurally inventive, lyrically deft, passionate and heartbroken, the album positions Run the Jewels as the laureates of our collapsing era. Wilson

Rina Sawayama, Sawayama

On her impressive debut, Rina Sawayama calls upon the glitz and glamor of early-aughts pop and subverts its sweetness and superficiality with heavy-metal flourishes (“Dynasty”) and thought-provoking cultural commentary (“XS”). The artist’s bid to meld the flair of pop music and the abrasion of hard rock might have resulted in a cacophonous wreck, but Sawayama succeeds thanks in large part to her sense of theatricality and Clarence Clarity’s inventive production. The album evokes the drama of glam rock and diva pop, as on the runway-ready “Commes Des Garcons,” the arena-worthy “Who’s Gonna Save U Now?,” and the frenzied “STFU!,” in which Sawayama shows off her dexterous vocal chops, transforming her impassioned belts into crazed laughter, all in the same breath. This last song exhibits her ability to channel a vast range of emotions and sound over the span of mere seconds. Ordaz

Moses Sumney, Græ

On his sophomore effort, Græ, soul singer Moses Sumney presides over a broad spectrum of sound, not once drowning in its grandiosity nor overpowering its delicacy. His sonic palette plays with proportion and space like an M.C. Escher drawing—at times symphonic and majestic (“Virile”), at others minimal and fragile (“Polly”). Throughout the lengthy double album, Sumney merges acoustic and synthetic instrumentals, blurring their boundaries as on the ethereal “Coloulour.” On the transcendent “also also also and and and,” he interpolates a monologue from Nigerian-Ghanaian author Taiye Selasi: “I really do insist that others recognize my inherent multiplicity/What I no longer do is take pains to explain it or defend it.” Assisted by collaborators such as James Blake, Thundercat, and Jill Scott, he disregards the definitions of any one genre and rejoices in the multiplicity of his sound and identity. Ordaz

Jessie Ware, What’s Your Pleasure?

More than just a dance album, Jessie Ware’s beat-driven What’s Your Pleasure? is a truly immersive experience, transporting listeners not just to pre-COVID days, but to a time and place much further back. Lyrically, the songs stick to common, if not completely frivolous, tropes like love, lust, and longing. “Tell me when I’ll get more than a dream of you,” Ware implores on “Spotlight.” But these themes take on even deeper meaning in a time where physical connection and communal experiences are few and far between. Depending on your level of caution fatigue, the album’s explicit invitation to indulge might seem sadistic. The thought of bumping up against a stranger on a dance floor these days feels forbidden, even dangerous. But when Ware croons, “Last night we danced and I thought you were saving my life,” on the rapturous “Mirage (Don’t Stop),” it’s a reminder that music and dancing remain universal forms of salvation. What’s Your Pleasure? is an album that, just a few months ago, might have felt like a nostalgia trip or a guilty pleasure, but now feels like manna for the soul.
Cinquemani

Waxahatchee, Saint Cloud

Katie Crutchfield’s songs are personal, openhearted, and earnest, displaying keen pop sensibilities that starkly contrast the lo-fi sound of her work as Waxahatchee. With Saint Cloud, Crutchfield has at last formulated an approach that provides the ideal outlet for both her poetically confessional lyrics and her billowing, marbly voice. Crutchfield covers typical singer-songwriter territory like relationship strife and the mistakes of the past—she reportedly wrote the album after getting sober—but rarely succumbs to cliché. On “Lilacs,” she sings, “And the lilacs drank the water/And the lilacs died,” which is some kind of zen poetry. The album is full of similarly aesthetic lines that feel almost subversive in the context of usually more plainspoken country and folk songs. Adopting a free and easy Americana style marked by both twangy guitars and dreamy keys, the songs here are at once deeply intimate and broadly accessible, like selections from an alternative universe where modern mainstream country radio isn’t all pandering, homogenized slop. Winograd

The Weeknd, After Hours

The Weeknd’s fourth album, After Hours, is reportedly a chronicle of Abel Tesfaye’s on-again, off-again relationship with model Bella Hadid, and he straight-facedly embraces vulnerability like never before, resulting is his most personal album to date. The first Weeknd album to feature no guest vocalists, After Hours isn’t completely divorced from Tesfaye’s usual themes, as he turns to substances to assuage his feelings. Lead single “Heartless” is a dark fantasy about driving too fast and engaging in joyless sex while experiencing amphetamine-driven nausea, while the chilling “Faith” chronicles a codependent relationship that leads to a drug-fueled emotional collapse. The song’s centerpiece is a ghoulish fantasy of two people enabling their worst impulses: “If I O.D., I want you to O.D. right beside me.” Tesfaye sings the line in a tone that can best be described as disastrously triumphant, which is also a fitting description for the album as a whole. Wilson