The usual playlist for
bookherd of my favorite new songs from 2020, or 2019 but I only discovered them in 2020 because I am not hip at all.
Download from my GDrive here I didn't really listen to that much new music this year, and a lot of what was new to me was even older than that and thus not eligible, but here we go.
"The Last Great American Dynasty" by Taylor Swift has been hands down my favorite song of the year. It is just utterly brilliant storytelling about class and aspirations and growing into yourself, and it's also just hilariously petty and I love it so much. I also liked some other stuff on the two (2!) Swift albums we were gifted this year, especially "Exiles" and "No Body, No Crime", but "The Last Great American Dynasty" is a masterpiece.
"Keter Melucha" by Yishai Ribo is the best song I've listened to this year about coping with 2020. I already wrote a bit about it when I included it in a playlist for
lannamichaels, so I'll just steal the writeup. "He wrote and released this song a few months ago [back in April/May], as a way to grapple with the pandemic. It used the annual cycle of Torah readings as a way to measure time at a moment when we many of us were overcome trying to reckon a new way of understanding time. It seems to say that even as we seem to stand suspended and frozen by the pandemic, God's universe marches forward, hard as that can be to live with."
"Someday (Work in Progress)" by Josh Ritter. Released as part of an election fundraiser, I obviously used this song in my MCU vid, and I think it also captures in a different way than Ribo the 2020 sense of helplessness but also seeing a way forward beyond the helplessness.
"Roanoke" by Lisa Stein. Actually the whole album "Sonic Salve" was my favorite top to bottom new album this year, full of soaring vocal harmonies and meditative rhythms. It's one of those albums you inhabit more than you just listen to, it seeps into you.
"Puppy for Hanukkah" by Daveed Diggs. The most delightful Chanukah song we've had in ages.
Also at some point in 2021 I will probably listen to that Fiona Apple album everyone was talking about in the spring, because I am not hip at all. I did finally start listening to Phoebe Bridgers last month.
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