I’ve been making lists of my hundred favorite songs from each year for a decade. I don’t think I spent less time marinating in this year’s music than usual (it’s always been only one element in a soup of other interests), but when it came time to try to organize my enthusiasms and affections into a list, I couldn’t seem to push into the triple digits without outright lying about what had captured my long-term interest. So here’s a curtailed list for a curtailed year. Every one of these is a great song — and, because my primary method of consuming popular music remains YouTube, it’s nearly always an interesting video too.
This year I decided not to include any of the token North American songs that I have the past few years; I only caught a sliver of what was interesting in US (or UK) pop in 2020, and little of it moved me the way that African (including Afro-European), Latin, and Caribbean pop did. For a full accounting of where my head was at this past year, here is the YouTube playlist of 600+ songs that struck me as beautiful, striking, useful, important, or thrilling enough to keep returning to over the course of the year, arranged in order of date of video release. I dare say that just about anyone could find something to love in there, even if they don’t speak Spanish, Portuguese, French, Swahili, or Zulu (the most common non-English languages throughout the playlist).
But here is the YouTube playlist of the songs I’m writing about below. (And here it is on Spotify, for good measure.) I’m only sending out the first thirteen blurbs today, so the playlists are still only that long: as I add blurbs, I’ll be adding songs too. I sincerely hope that anyone who receives this enjoys any of it.
50. Lous and the Yakuza, “Amigo”
Congolese-Belgian art-pop performer Marie-Pierra Kakoma is probably on more international music nerds’ radar than the bulk of my list, thanks to smart marketing and a working relationship with tastemaker-beloved Spanish producer El Guincho. But while my tastes may generally run more plebian, I couldn’t resist the paranoid, skeletal reggaetón riddims of this song about the feelings that have consumed so many of us this year, as we drown in a tidal wave of negativity, longing for any connection (an amigo) anywhere.
49. Urias, “Racha”
Brazilian electro-pop performer Urias is probably more experimental (her abrasive singles often edge on industrial), but since she’s very much speaking to her own community in Brazil, I’m not sure how big her profile is in the outside world. Like many trans artists, she has adopted the sci-fi imagery of monsters and cyborgs as an expression of not just her social categorization but her inner truth, and in “Racha” (crash) she identifies with a speeding car that will smash into anyone attempting to visit violence upon the trans community, oppressed by civilian and state forces alike.
48. Yammy ft. Bulin47, “El Gallo”
I told you my tastes were plebian. Rural merengue meets a pounding dembow beat in this extended dick joke from Dominican vedette Yammy with dembow blusterer Bulin47. The accordion riffs and the several repeated refrains would get stuck in my head with startling frequency over the course of the year, maybe all the more because it sounded like the kind of trashy, exultant club music that would otherwise be entirely inaccessible to a responsible quarantiner.
47. Yasmine, “Quem É?”
Afro-Luso kizomba was, once upon a time, based on French Antillean zouk, but it is wholly its own R&B-inflected genre now, as this airy, very 90s R&B anthem of feminist self-determination shows. “Quem É?” means “who is she?” and Lisbon-based crooner Yasmine Carvalho paints a portrait of someone gossiped about by everyone but who lives entirely on her own terms — as the last line of the chorus puts it, a hurricane of a woman.
46. Kanis, “Tic Toc”
2020 was the year that global pop attempted to grapple with the newest way the youth audience their music was always aimed at was consuming it: this is only one of many songs of the year whose title gestures in some way to TikTok. Haitian rapper and singer Kanis merges reggae and trap in this virality-seeking single about hustling while the clock ticks. It did pretty well by Haitian pop standards — one of the reasons I largely ignore view counts is so that I don’t miss the output of smaller, poorer countries.
45. Ludmilla, “Rainha da Favela”
She calls herself the queen of the favela, and she’s not wrong: very few MCs can lay claim to a firmer grasp on the currents of baile funk than Ludmilla has demonstrated over the past five years. “Foca no meu bumbum,” goes the chorus, i.e. “focus on my [twerking] booty,” and the obvious pleasures of the body are, in the year of “WAP,” sufficient unto themselves. In the video, she celebrates other past and present funk queens in a Last Supper homage, but there’s never any doubt who is at the center.
44. Sofia Reyes, “Idiota”
It’s not just the pink cowboy hat that makes me link Mexican pop star Sofia Reyes in my head with country artists: she’s a born storyteller, and the cleverness of her co-writers and producers in merging reggaetón with cumbia with a beery shoutalong that even incorporates the standard “La Llorona” is very much a Mexican version of contemporary pop country. The lyrics too are very country: she knows she’s making a fool of herself over a guy (who is also an idiot) thanks to the liquor and smoke and music in the bar, but she’s not going to stop. Bad choices are equal opportunity.
43. Niniola, “Omo Rapala”
The dominance of Nigerian pop within African music is not something I’m immune to: Nigerian artists outnumber those from any other African country in this list. But when it’s as slick and cool as this Sarz-produced jam for Afrohouse queen Niniola, Naija pop is impossible to resist. “Omo Rapala” is both an homage to the trailblazing 1990s Islamic pop star Obesere, who appears in the video, and an assertion of who can claim to have taken his place in the current landscape.
42. Malía, “Mexe”
I’ll admit that I’ve mostly avoided engaging with the broad popularity of trap music over the last several years, but 2020’s experiments in blending trap beats with other, more varied kinds of rhythms were much more up my alley. Brazilian rapper Malía combines the authority of trap with the rushing urgency of baile funk in a song that urges you to “move move move move move” in the lyrics and compels you to in the music. “I made this sound for you to move to,” she declares. “It hits, and you move.”
41. Romy Rose x Hiro, “Molo”
Black pop in France takes cues both from the French Caribbean and from Francophone Africa, but has long since established itself as its own syncretic field. “Molo,” slang for “taking it easy,” sees the young French pop star Romy Rose join up with established rapper and singer Hiro, of Congolese descent; it’s a classic French breakup song between two people who are still very much attracted but are bad for each other: the loping rhythm is descended equally from reggaetón and zouk.
40. Ladipoe ft. Simi, “Know You”
By contrast, this duet between Nigerian superstars Ladipoe and Simi chronicles the hesitant beginning of a relationship, as the repeated refrain “but I don’t really know you that well” puts dampening brakes on the loverush that pop is so good at evoking. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a better song about the anxiety of technologically mediated connections and the recurrent worry that we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Do we really ever know anyone that well? Can we?
39. Elena Rose, “Coco”
Puerto Rican/Venezuelan pop pretender Elena Rose emerged in 2020 with a string of playful, attention-grabbing, and well-funded singles. Unlike many white Latinas trying to stake a claim in the ongoing goldrush (the less said about N*thy P*l*so the better), she has leaned into her pallor, with a platinum blonde hairstyle that recalls Marilyn Monroe, and even experiments with rhythms other than reggaetón. “Coco” is very nearly an electroclash revival, as she bites off come-ons that function equally well as threats (or vice versa), and leans into the absurdism of a trumpet call at the end of each verse.
38. Tokischa ft. Rochy RD, “El Rey de la Popola”
The thing about that ongoing goldrush is that it’s created room for all kinds of Latin pop weirdos to find an audience. Dominican alt-dembow performer Tokischa broke through toward the end of the year with this single featuring rapper Rochy RD. Her intentionally flat shouting of the chorus (tr. “you’re the king of this pussy”) is meant to be both funny and confrontational: the fact that she’s playing a newlywed in the video while her community celebrates, is a direct shot at Dominican airplay censors, for whom her crass genderbending polemics are far too radical.
Tomorrow: #37-25