Music Monday: 2020
It’s time for my top music of 2020 post! I’m going to keep up with the format from last year for this years list. I have spent much more time focused on music than anything else, and it really truly is what has been getting me through a lot of this year so putting a spotlight on the songs and artists that really helped just makes sense. I am pretty varied in what I listen to - both in genre and country - and don’t always keep up with talking about them. Hopefully this post will give you more of a sense of my music tastes and helps you find some new music and artists to keep up with for 2021.
Just like last year and the year before that, I have a list of my favorite songs of the year. These are just the ones I connected with the most. Here’s the list in order that they were released:
Vincit ‘I Don’t Wanna Die’
Dreamcatcher ‘Break the Wall’
Aimer ‘春はゆく’
DAY6 ‘Afraid’
Sekai no Owari ‘Umbrella’
Jun. K ‘This is Not a Song, 1929’
N.Flying ‘Flower Fantasy’
Solji ‘Rains Again’
Lee Hi ‘Holo’
Pentagon ‘Daisy’
All though they are all great, one stood out the most and if you know me at all you know that was ‘Afraid’. It was an instant favorite off the album when I first listened to it, and I knew that it was going to be hard to beat. Sungjin really outdid himself on this one. Unlike a lot of their other more emotional tracks it’s stays closer in it’s rock roots and uses the guitar to drive a lot of the emotion along with the raw and gritty vocals. I played this one probably a little too much. And then a lot more when they released Sungjin’s guide version. Listen. It’s just a good song and deserves to be repeated fourteen times in one sitting, okay?
I listened to a lot more new music this year, and lot of my time was spent listening to their discography instead of spending a lot of time repeating the same few. I’m not saying I didn’t spend time listening to the same music over and over, just that it resulted in not a lot of pool for songs that I just went to a lot (which is one of my top factors for picking my top lists) and in the end my top songs were limited to a few. It was also a strange year for music, as a lot of the albums were pushed back or my favorites only put out singles. I did make a top 25 list to give you more of a sense of some of the songs that I liked that you can listen to here:
Just like with the songs list, this list is in order of when the album was released. There were a couple of albums that I thought could have made the list, but a lot of the songs that I liked from the album were released in 2019 and it kind of felt weird to have them on this list when they were already on last years top songs. Other than that, these are the albums that I listened to the most in full and just generally really liked the album as a whole unit.
2 Day Old Sneakers Shoe Cabinet
Tricot 真っ黒
Dreamcatcher Dystopia: The Tree of Language
The Oral Cigarettes Suck My World
DAY6 Book of Us: Demon
Yorushika Plagirism
Eric Nam The Other Side
Even of Day The Book of Us: Gluon
Billy Carter Don’t Push Me
Jun. K 20 Mins
This year I’m doing things a little different and adding an additional list of favorites. I’ve been focusing a lot more of my time in indie side of Korean music, and wanted to highlight the top albums/EPs of this year. Since I already have some in my main list, I won’t be repeating them in this one to make room for others to be spotlighted. Again, in release order:
Se So Neon Nonadaption
The Poles We Get, The Same
COREMAGAZINE titbit
We Are the Night Midnight Fantasy
Cotoba Name of the Seasons
Soumbalgwang Fuze
moonsomoon Red Eyes
Lacuna Hello, Wonderland
Various Artists We, Do It Together
H a lot We Are
I had time to spend with lots of great artists being stuck home and not wanting to devote a lot more energy other than listening to music, but there were three that stood out much more than all the rest. I will continue following these artists more closely in the coming year. I owe them a lot, as I spent a lot of time focused on finding their content and enjoying it. It really helped on the bad days to have something to focus on.
-VINCIT
VINCIT and I were fated together when I randomly checked out their official debut, ‘I Don’t Wanna Die’ and when I say it was instantanious love, I’m not joking. Since then they’ve made a comeback with an EP and I have watched pretty much every concert recording/music stage I have been able to get my hands on. It can be hard to find a lot of accessible rock out of Korea, and they are one of the first that I’ve been able to get constant content from (they have a YouTube channel that they are pretty good with subbing, if curious). ‘I Don’t Wanna Die’ has got some really great classic rock vibes with a great vocalist. As a lover of Halestorm, they were the perfect group to come into my life.
-2 Day Old Sneakers
I found 2 Day Old Sneakers half way through the year. I don’t really remember how I got to them, but am so glad I did. If you are a fan of garage rock (which is me - very very much), they are going to be a group that you really need to focus on. They’re relatively new, but their first full album, Shoe Cabinet, is incredible as a whole (easily my top 3 album) and their live shows are equally as great. I’m hoping to hear a lot more from them in this coming year.
-COREMAGAZINE
What can I say, I’m a sucker for female driven lead vocals and COREMAGAZINE has that in the most perfect way. I’m a little late to the game with COREMAGAZINE, I actually found them via a random free online concert and fell hard for them pretty quickly. If you are into synth-based rock music that leans more into an 80’s feel they will be perfect for you. The group has been around for a bit (with some different members) but really anything you can get your hands on is worth a listen to.
As I was re-reading my post from last year I realized I had promised to talk more about some of my favorite groups that I just never ended up getting around to for this year. It’s been hard to keep up with wanting to write posts even though I have so much time to do so, but I have tried to keep up with music posts the most as it really has been the constant help over the year. Hopefully next year I can move to writing more about the groups I promised to last year, and the ones I mentioned here. They deserve more attention than this brief list, so look forward to that.
What were some of your favorites of the year?
+++