MUMBAI: We all lost something in 2020, whether it was time, loved ones, or security. In music, we lost legendary artists, nightlife, and live shows – the very pillars of a beloved industry. Yet, as the music industry threatened to falter and fans stuck inside were too busy seeking solace to save it, musicians gave us art that helped us power through.
Scroll down to see our curation of the top ten songs that saved 2020.
Cardigan:
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Taylor Swift’s surprise quarantine drop, Cardigan in the album Folklore, felt like a deep breath. We’ve always seen Swift at her most meticulous — which has led to over a decade of killer country and pop music — but the non-biographical nature of this album, mixed with the unexpected added time afforded by quarantine, allowed the singer to take risks and experiment both sonically and vocally in ways we haven’t seen from her before. The album leaned almost indie, soothingly blurring the usual crisp edges of her voice and highlights her strongest asset — her illustrative storytelling.
Holy:
Justin Bieber didn’t have to give us more music this year. After all, by September he had already released his fifth No. 1 album, Changes, casually dropped a No. 1quarantine collab with Ariana Grande and returned to the Saturday Night Live stage for the first time in seven years. But instead of coasting through the rest of 2020 on those laurels, the Bieber kickstarted an entirely new era with Holy, a gospel-tinged love song that translates his romance with wife Hailey Bieber into a full-blown spiritual experience. With an endearingly corny guest verse by Chance the Rapper and a cinematic music video featuring Ryan Destiny and Wilmer Valderrama, the pop devotional proved to be exactly the feel-good balm Beliebers needed to ease their woes as the pandemic marched on through the fall.
Adore You:
Harry Styles’ Adore You is one of those perfect pop gems that only arrives so often, and has to be played on repeat until someone in the household complains. The flexible beat is consistent throughout, only falling into the background as Styles launches into falsetto chorus and proudly proclaims his adoration. It captures the kind of jubilance that was in short supply in the early days of the pandemic and keeps the feeling of going like it’s the only thing it’ll ever do.
Blinding Lights:
Canadian singer The Weeknd may have been snubbed at the Grammys, but that hasn’t dulled the shine of Blinding Lights, the second single off of his fourth EP, After Hours. The Weeknd in his moody, sultry R&B feels is one thing — but the singer grabbing you by the collar and taking you along his retro, vibey, high-adrenaline car ride? That’s worth cranking up the volume for.
The Box:
Released at the tail end of 2019, the Roddy Ricch’s debut megasmash kept us boxed in all year long. Roddy Ricch chirped and squeaked and squirked and squealed and stretched his vowels beyond the horizon and back again, like so much absurd surrealist Silly Putty, assuring us he wasn’t going to sell his soul before bothering to learn whether or not we gave a shit who he was. His big debut was a genuinely weird moment of chart-topping absurdism.
WAP:
In the darkest depths of Covid lockdown — at a moment in history when leaving your house could literally get you killed — Cardi B and Megan delivered the perfect instructions on how to beat the quarantine blues: “Gobble me, swallow me, drip down the side of me/Quick, jump out ‘fore you let it get inside of me.” WAP was just the escapist raunch America needed in 2020, the sound of two of the strongest women in music defiantly putting the pleasure principle front and centre in a moment when fun and joy seemed dead. Its NSFW video was brilliant since most people weren’t at work anyway (or at least weren’t in a traditional, buttoned-up office environment), and Cardi’s Bronx fire mixed with Megan’s bodacious flow to make for one of rap’s greatest mic-passing buddy comedies of all time. The result was a hot-girl summit for the ages.
Savage:
Megan Thee Stallion and Beyonce joined forces and the results were just as fabulous as expected. The Bey x Meg collaboration truly set the summer on fire.
Dynamite:
The bulletproof Bangtan Boys made a little more history with their first U.S. Number One — a new milestone for K-pop — as well as their first English-language hit. Yet it’s unmistakably the sound of BTS, tapping into the spirit of Eighties disco. They zoom through the stars in Dynamite. All seven of them show off, though Jungkook takes the spotlight when he yells, “Cup of milk, let’s rock and roll/King Kong, kick the drum/Rolling on like a Rolling Stone!”
Rain on Me:
Women are so often pitted against each other, and taught to believe that because it’s a man’s world, there isn’t much room for us at the top. But this year, somehow, as many distanced themselves from each other, women musicians came together. We saw it in rap (manifesting more women posse cuts in 2021), but also in pop, as Lady Gaga folded Ariana Grande into her delightfully unhinged, fantastical world of Chromatica (as well as B-side Sour Candy, featuring Korean powerhouse BLACKPINK). This summer’s dance-pop Rain On Me let us experience the full power of two divas playing to their strengths.
Mood:
It’s an archetypal 2020 success story: a rapper (24KGoldn), a singer (Iann Dior), and two producers (Omer and KBeaZy) are hanging out playing Call of Duty and decide to write a song; it turns out pretty great so they tease it on Instagram, promote it on TikTok, and pretty soon they’ve got the most-streamed song on the planet. Mood, their dreamy evocation of a hard-to-read girl, deserves its success, marinating in the sweet spot between emo and pop-rap, at once amiably whiny, undeniably breezy, and brain-breakingly catchy.
