2020: My Year in Music

Perhaps the best way to sum up my 2020 is to say that my world got smaller but more focused. When time is given back to you in a way you never expected it would be, figuring out the right ways to spend it and with whom are vitally important.  We're still holding our breath collectively as we wait for the vaccine to be more widely available. We're wondering about the untold long-range effects of this pandemic on our interior lives, our relationships, our governments, our economies, and many other aspects of our lives. But I will say that the pandemic sharpened my idea of what home is, helped me hone my concept of adventure, and brought immediacy and urgency to understanding the idea and necessary components of meaningful connection (like with my sweet new nephew and the rest of my immediate family, who now reside all in one geographic area.) 

2020 also allowed for a concentrated study on desire, both as a concept and an effort to inventory my own. Music proved once again a revelatory constant in that study. As I listened to others sing about what they want, or don't want, I mused on the same questions. In the midst of everything that happened this year, I was looking for constants. In my own soul, I feel increasingly untethered to things but I still want tethers. The real trick of it is to find the right ones. And we may need a lot more, or a lot less, than we think in certain areas.

The songs that reflect this year to me are listed below, grouped loosely by theme and not in any particular order. I'm so grateful to have you faithful friends to listen with. Here's to a new year and the speedy return of communal, live music experiences!

Listen to my 2020 playlist here:

THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR

Without Desire by The Wood Brothers

This song asks some good questions. Shout out to RW for taking me to see these guys in 2019 back when concerts were possible. I had decided that 2020 needed to be about figuring out what I want, and examining desire in my life, and I think the next morning this song came up randomly and it quickly became the theme song for the year. To me, desires get in the way, and are messy and convoluted. That's why I don't really want to deal with them. It's sometimes easier to just want the things that other people want for you instead of having to face what you really want and then be vulnerable enough to go after it. Desire, whether ours or someone else's, is certainly a powerful motivator and animator. And having a good handle on what drives us can help us understand where we're going, and if that's a place we actually want to get to.

Canyon Moon by Harry Styles

I've loved both of the albums he's put out since separating from One Direction and this one is better than the first, in my opinion. I enjoy the whole album but because 2020 began with a very ambitious outdoor adventure backpacking rim to rim (to rim) of the Grand Canyon in early January, I had to pick this one. The boundary-breaking adventure, deep wilderness, freezing cold nights, and drama of the entire adventure left a deep impression on me. My time under the canyon moon was unforgettable, just like Harry’s seems to have been.

Sunset at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, Jan 2020

Barbed Wire by Tom Grennan

A fantastic song with a robust brass arrangement and a distinctively talented lead vocalist. I love the lyrics: I meet people surrounded by figurative barbed wire all the time, it just sometimes takes a bit to figure out what it's wrapped around. And Tom here is right, don't touch it. But also, see if someone's willing to dismantle it too. That's always an option that I try, which is probably stupid but I can't help myself. And it likely has a lot to do with my own barbed wire defenses. Shout out to TB who introduced me to this song, and embodies it.

COVID SONGS

So Quiet in Here by Van Morrison

When COVID first set in, this is the song that I kept thinking of. I remember biking into DC one day and the downtown streets being deserted of cars and people on a sunny Saturday in early spring. And I thought how lovely and stately the city is, how devoid of stress without the traffic. It was so quiet. Van talks about the paradise of quiet he is experiencing, but in many ways the quiet of my normally bustling metropole life was deafening. It was a signal of everything that wasn't happening and why. Sort of like innocuous elevator music playing in a horror movie.

Loner by Dehd

Whether we liked it or not, we all were faced with the idea of being loners this year. Either in a house full of people or with no one else around, we all had to face the idea of being alone in new ways this year. I'm not sure how I feel about the repetitive almost-yodel of the lead singer's vocals.  It's certainly unique. But I love the guitar sound in the background, and the chorus of this song probably went through all our heads at some point or another:

Well I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine I'm fine
I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine
Won't stop, won't draw the line (I'm fine)
Won't stop, don't want to go outside (I'm fine)
Won't stop, won't draw the line (Loner)
Won't stop, no self-survive (Loner)
Won't stop won't draw the line (I'm fine)

Certainly sounds familiar to me.

SONGS ABOUT GOD

The Maker by Daniel Lanois

I’ve only ever come across Daniel Lanois as a producer, and while it’s maybe not the greatest song ever written, the concept and lyrics are beautiful. I love the melodic and harmonized bass line. It’s immediately clear the influence he had on U2’s sound when he produced for them. To me it sounds like his personal vision of what it would look like for him to meet God, and perhaps a dream he had. The imagery is vivid, biblically influenced, but also with his own personal elements (like Jean-Baptiste). Many, if not all, of us have probably thought about what it would look like to meet our Maker and I enjoyed Daniel Lanois’ sharing of his vision through this piece.

Morning Light by Josh Garrels

I gravitated toward songs that sounded like hope to me this year, for obvious reasons. I don’t think I ever lost hope about things getting better, but certainly there were dark times, and songs like this helped with that. So many of the songs in this playlist contain lines like “It’s going to be alright”. Words I think all of us needed to be true at some point.

Revival by Gregory Porter

One of my all-time favorite voices, and a repeat "Year in Review” offender. Given all the racial unrest this year and the continued fallout from that at so many levels, I love that Porter can sing of not being afraid, of an intrinsic value, and of a hope for salvation. “You give me meaning”. I appreciated songs this year that point at things outside of what we see because seeing only those things would generally lead us down a path of hopelessness.

Glacier National Park - Tune-Up Trip 2020

 

SONGS OF ADVENTURE

To the Great Unknown by Cloud Cult

Another tune-up trip theme song. When KG and I met up at the airport to depart for our trip and set off the chain reaction of ridiculous events that made up the trip, start to finish, we said to each other with defiance, joy, and mirth: let’s get lost. “You were made to sail on meteors”. “God gave us thirst and it’s a hunger for the universe.” Isn’t exploration written into us? There is a sentiment of gratitude in this song, as well as a calling forth into deeper adventure that we can’t know the depths of until we embark on it. “God gave you brains don’t go drowning in your own thinking.” “Let’s run away just know your troubles tend to follow. “ I’m still honing my adventurous spirit. It’s hard to adventure for the right reasons sometimes. It can feel a lot like running away and sometimes that’s okay, but it won’t make the trouble go away either. Especially if you’re planning to return home. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, adventure doesn’t make sense without home.

Pilgrim by John Mark McMillan

Perhaps my most-played song of 2020. So many moments I can associate with these notes. Most memorable among them was driving into Glacier National Park on the Going-to-the-Sun Road with the clouds lifting off the massive peaks all around me with KG on the tune-up trip in late August. I insisted on playing this song as I needed a song big enough to fill the cavernous glacial planes opening up all around us and something to call our hearts forth from our smaller, selfish worlds into one of bigger imagination, big skies, and the sense of this not being all there is. KG and I walked over 100 miles together in it. And I also appreciate the temporality of the “for a while” phrase that repeats because how do we know what walking and loving look like on the other side of this life? We can't make promises beyond that, but we can say "I'll walk with you for a while."

River by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Jason Isbell’s songwriting continues to improve as he shares his experience of being a dad and a husband and growing older. I am always drawn to songs about rivers (see previous playlists). I love the harmony of the guitars in the last few measures with the organ in the background. There's also a very clever little moment at the end of the second bridge right after he sings "last night I woke up screaming at my wife" where there's a beautiful high tremolo on the fiddle which is played by Jason's wife Amanda on the track. But as with most Jason Isbell songs, what really gets me is the lyrics. He personifies the river (all rivers?) as things that wash us clean, things that save us, that carry us, that must go on, are meant to go on, that started as something different (clouds, he sings) but are now changed, and still leave their indelible mark on souls and the land they inhabit.  Most of us are looking for something to receive everything that we are, including all of the bad things that we've done, all the secrets, and still carry us to rest within.  

Sailor’s Grave on the Prairie by Tinsley Ellis and the Heartfixers

This song caught my ears’ attention because it sounded very different than most other things I was listening to at the time. Also, the title caught my eye. I always pay a lot of attention to words and sometimes it's nice just to listen to good music and be taken into a soundscape rather than into my head or  someone else's. I like exploring different sounds and this was a fun sonic adventure in that respect. 

STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL

Kaputt by Destroyer

I was at the gym on an elliptical when I first heard this song and I lost time. It ended and a new song began and I was shocked back into reality. The steady, trippy rhythm drew me to imagine walking around in a strange landscape, very sparse but very spacious, like another planet. Then little saxophone and trumpet cadenzas float in and out at various times, it sounds like a good idea coming in the middle of a steady stream of concentration. I like how in the first lines of the songs he concedes that, okay, he was lying about chasing girls, he was really chasing cocaine.

Recuerdos by The Mavericks

I don’t speak Spanish but I’m trying to learn it. Other languages have ways of expressing ideas and sentiments that comes across with more force and poetry than English sometimes, even if I don’t really understand it and I’m using Google translate to try.  The Cuban and Mexican influences in this song come through immediately, the lyrics are almost as beautiful in English as they are in the original Spanish.  "Our paths will part / Our story has come to an end / Beautiful memories will remain in me... Your memories will accompany me".  

Nada by Lido Pimienta

Singing as one haunted by the ghost of a lover who left her with nothing, our heroine courageously claims her womanhood and her ability to carry pain.  She feels "no shame, no doubt" and with sincerity mourns her loss from a place of strength, even if she should die of heartbreak.  I love the instrumentation, especially the subtle saxophones in the back of the chorus, and the fact that the beat isn’t just the regular reggaeton or bachata beat that is so ubiquitous these days.  Long after the song is over I hear her voice stretching out certain words with beautiful cadences and quarter tones.  If you tune out the lyrics or just focus on Spanish and try not to translate, this is my pick for sexiest song of 2020.  

The Full Stop by Matt Pond PA

Stand-alone beauty on this track even though the whole album is good. I’m not sure how it came up in my musical wanderings but the album came out in 2017 and even though I’ve been a Matt Pond PA fan for years, I just never listened to it. It’s a beautiful summer love song. “Way up in heaven, Stars streak over the Hudson” and the harmony he sings with Caroline Reese when they repeat those lines over and over…nostalgia for whatever summer loves we all had washes over us with every refrain.

In Between Houses by The Paper Kites

I took so many walks this year and sometimes listened to entire albums during them. I really loved getting to know this band better through listening to their albums. “All you want is a little truth” is a line that rang in every part of me every time I heard this song. In a world of fake news and conflicting viewpoints, all my other cravings pale in comparison to my craving for truth. I don’t want fake rain while I’m sleeping.  

The glowing emerald waters of the Colorado River

RELATIONSHIPS ARE HARD

You're the One by Paul Simon 

This song describes the crumbling foundation of a relationship due to doubt, misunderstanding, and blame. There are problems with control and expectations, but it's clear that both sides really love each other too. And the subtle genius of these lyrics is woven into incredible African-influenced rhythm guitar and percussion.  So many layers to enjoy in this song.  

Better off Without a Wife by Tom Waits

This song makes me laugh and shake my head.  "All my friends are married...you must be strong if you're to go it alone." Yes, Tom. You must.  It's a little bit tongue and cheek about being single and also just sort of not being fit for marriage, or enjoying the bachelor life too much to want to change.  I've encountered this attitude in myself, and in many people on the other side of the table from me on dates.  There seem to be fewer and fewer enticements toward marriage, although during this pandemic the statistics about dating and especially marriage reveal the opposite.  So who is lying? Science to us? Or are we lying to ourselves about being happier alone? I know what I think.  

Can't Fight by Lianne La Havas

I love the smooth rhythms and Lianne's beautiful vocals throughout this song.  I identify with feeling trapped by strong feelings for a thing that you also feel like you should be fighting against.  "It seems that I won't be warned..."  This is where this whole quest about desires comes in again, because what do we do when we want the wrong things? Do we fight against them, or do we give in and then come what may? Should the heart rule? It's not a hard and fast yes all the time.  Which is why the struggle here, for me and for Lianne, is very much real.  

Secret Lake in the High Sierra Mountains

Options Open by Kathleen Edwards

It's really just the chorus of this song that gets to me, "For 39 years, I've been keeping my options open." It sounds like she's exhausted and regrets having done that.  I can't help but wonder, is that what me and other people in my same age and stage of life are also doing? Are we fighting to keep our options open because that's what feels the most like freedom but we're actually being subtly destroyed by that very practice? In many ways, keeping our options open just makes sure that we never arrive or land anywhere.  And even the best adventurers are only seen as accomplished because they actually did make landfall and find a PLACE.  It doesn't have to be that we land on a person, but we need commitments in our lives, we need things that hold us because I think we all have a deep need to be held.  How can we find that if we're always hedging and non-committal? 

I'm Just Your Man by Graham Parker

A sweet, simple song, reminiscent of Dire Straits or just Mark Knopfler.  I discovered it when I was reading a book by a music nerd about songs that shaped his life.  I just enjoy the humble offering of one person to another. If we could simply do that for one another as humans, I think we'd have a lot fewer problems.  He's not apologetic, he's just explaining some of his faults but he's also being confident in his assertion of what he definitely is.  And I think that's what makes this such a good love song.  

WRAPPING UP

Mama Tried by Merle Haggard 

I think of this song every time I get in the car and my mom is like "is that what you're wearing?".  She really did try. Some of it stuck, I promise.  And, in my defense, I did not turn 21 in prison.  But not wearing lipstick might have a mandatory minimum of 10-15 years according to my mom's penal code.  It's cool.  She still loves me. 

Stupid Love by Lady Gaga

I'm not the biggest Lady Gaga fan, but I'll be damned if she isn't one of the best pop songwriters and performers in the biz.  This song never fails to get me pumped up and car dancing, a spot of unadulterated pop joy the middle of a tough year.  

Next Year by Two Door Cinema Club (RAC Mix) 

This mix is far superior to the original in my opinion. There is something hopeful and something going somewhere in the sound of this version.  This quickly became my anthem for 2020 because by about May 1 we all basically wrote off 2020 as a wash.  Who each of us became this year isn't necessarily who we really are, and this year didn't really happen.  But we'll come back to ourselves, somehow. This song gets at that sentiment a little bit. 

Maybe someday

You'll be somewhere

Talking to me

As if you knew me

Saying I'll be home for next year, darling

I'll be home for next year

Humpback Rocks Sunset, July in the Blue Ridge Mtns

See you next year, friends.  Thanks for listening with me! 

Albums of 2020

Reunions by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Notes on a Conditional Form by The 1975

Folklore by Taylor Swift 

Women in Music, Pt. III by Haim

The Slow Rush by Tame Impala

Ever Since I Lost My Mind by Susto

22 Dreams by Paul Weller

Still Summer by Matt Pond PA

On the Train Ride Home by The Paper Kites

Nephew and I in our matching outfits