Favorite Albums from 2020-2024

Four Writers With Very Different Styles Pick Our Faves

You know what’s great about music? It’s subjective and, like all art, is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. For several years now, some of my music writer pals and I have compiled our list of year-end faves. Our taste in music doesn’t overlap much, which always makes for an eclectic mix.

We’ll be compiling our favorites from 2025 soon but, in the meantime, we thought it might be fun to reflect on the first half of a decade that began with a life-altering pandemic.

Is this a “Best Of” List? Not exactly. I don’t need that kind of drama in my life. It’s more of tip of the cap to the music that helped us survive the past four years of this wacky, diabolical world we live in.

Meet the Cohort:

Kevin Alexander - Author of On Repeat Records, making music personal and personable again.

Kevin’s List:

• Maggie Rogers — Don’t Forget Me (2024)

• Wussy — Cincinnati, Ohio (2024)

• Sweeping Promises — Good Living Is Coming For You (2023)

• Chemical Brothers — For That Beautiful Feeling (2023)

• New Pornographers — Continue as Guest (2023)

• Spoon — Lucifer on the Sofa (2022)

• Nada Surf — Moon Mirror (2024)

• Destroyer — Have We Met (2020)

• Alvvays — Blue Rev (2022)

• Working Men’s Club — S/T (2020)

Sam Colt—Recovering copywriter and author of This Is A Newsletter!—a consistently hilarious, biting chronicle of modern life and its indignities.

Sam’s List:

• Alfredo — Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist (2020)

• Promises — Floating Points, Pharaoh Sanders & the London Symphony Orchestra (2021)

• Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You — Big Thief (2022)

• Blue Rev — Alvvays (2022)

• Cave World — Viagra Boys (2022)

• SCARING THE HOES — Danny Brown & JPEGMAFIA (2023)

• 3D Country — Geese (2023)

• “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD” — Godspeed You! Black Emperor (2024)

• No Name — Jack White (2024)

• Imaginal Disk — Magdalena Bay (2024)

Steve Goldberg—Writes Earworms and Songloops, weaving personal essays with the songs that lodge themselves in your brain.

Steve’s Picks:

• Bonny Light Horseman — Bonny Light Horseman (2020)

• Fantastic Negrito — Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? (2020)

• Silk Sonic — An Evening with Silk Sonic (2021)

• Arooj Aftab — Vulture Prince (2021)

• Sloan — Steady (2022)

• Weyes Blood — And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow (2022)

• Corey Hanson — Western Cum (2023)

• King Gizzard — Petrodragonic Apocalypse (2023)

• Cowboy Sadness — Selected Jambient Works Vol. 1 (2024)

• Storefront Church — Ink and Oil (2024)

My List:

• Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia (2020)

• Run the Jewels - RTJ4 (2020)

• Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg (2021)

• St. Vincent - Pay Your Way in Pain (2021)

• Cimafunk - El Alimento (2021)

• Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It Down (2022)

• Beyonce - Renaissance (2022)

• Janelle Monáe - Age of Pleasure (2023)

• Brittany Howard - What Now (2024)

• Doechii - Alligator Bites Never Heal (2024)

2020:

Ah yes, the year we all faced our collective mortality and learned how to make sourdough. Admittedly, the pandemic had me operating in two modes and two modes only: Fight or Dance. This is where my picks of Run the Jewels and Dua Lipa bubbled to the top like the rising yeast of that new bread I was attempting. Rolling Stone may have picked Taylor Swift’s Folklore as the best offering of the year, but if time, space, and normal social graces are now irrelevant and I’m stuck inside four walls until the end of the world takes me, I’d rather gas myself up for an ass whoopin’ or at least dance my way towards the apocalypse.

2021:

Girl, we’re still in lockdown mode and arguing with family members about why COVID vaccines aren’t a government hoax so yeah, St. Vincent’s Pay Your Way in Pain felt like an apt title for the moment. Plus, it’s a banger album that references a few of my favorite icons like Prince, Bowie, and Warhol’s Superstars. The track “Candy Darling” is still on constant rotation on my radio show three years after this album’s release. And speaking of Warhol’s gang, I also fell in love with Dry Cleaning’s debut album because lead singer Florence Shaw’s deadpan vocal delivery sounds like Lou Reed if he actually had a sense of humor. Cimafunk’s El Alimento was also a pick for nostalgia’s sake because he partnered with P-Funk Grandaddy George Clinton and Lupe Fiasco on this album, making it a funky salve for whatever bullshit 2021 was on.

2022:

If I could only pick one album from 2022 to listen to forever, it would be Beyonce’s Renaissance. Admittedly, I’m not an obsessive Bey fan but I joined the hive after she released Lemonade in 2016. And as a queer music history writer, Renaissance felt like a master class in honoring the ancestors. Written as a love letter to her late uncle Johnny and to her queer fans, Beyonce reminded those who needed to hear it that House music was born in Black, queer spaces. I also chose the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Cool It Down because I was just so thrilled that they were back together after a nine year hiatus and the track “Spitting Off the Edge of the World” alone was worth the wait.

2023:

If I’m being honest, my love for Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess took some time to marinate. I had a real “what’s the big deal” moment when I was first introduced to the album in 2023. Two years later, I’d throat-punch anyone who speaks ill of her in my presence. Some people are Swifties. I am a lesbian. And Chappell Roan can get it. The album I did not half-step on was Age of Pleasure by Janelle Monáe. Her 2018 album Dirty Computer is one of my favorite albums of all-time but this list can’t go back that far and Age of Pleasure is an incredible follow up for an artist finally standing ten toes down and embracing her fluid gender identity and sexuality. This is what it sounds like when someone stands in their truth and speaks their joy and I was here for every second of that journey.

2024:

I realize my bias is showing as my favorite album picks continue along the queer spectrum but don’t let that distract from the fact that Brittany Howard and Doechii had the best albums of 2024 outside of Kendrick Lamar’s massive contribution. We already know about Kendrick so I’m using this moment to fight for Brittany and Doechii. Brittany Howard seems to strike gold every time she opens her mouth whether she’s with Alabama Shakes or doing her own thing and I just don’t see how she’s going to top the sonic beauty of What Now. And Doechii is only the third female artist in history to win a GRAMMY for Best Rap Album next to Lauryn Hill and Cardi B. That is some great company and Doechii’s only getting started as an artist.

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What were your soul saving albums from the first half of the decade? I am standing by, waiting to add fresh picks to my playlists.