Read the original 2020s favorite music post here.
Welcome to OPE!, the newsletter by writer and music journalist Brady Gerber (me). This essay, originally published in my weekly newsletter, is free for all subscribers. Paying subscribers also gain access to an exclusive weekly curation of my favorite songs and links. All typos are intentional.
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Well, hello there. How are you?
Continuing the theme of last week’s newsletter, I’d like to focus more on the specific songs and albums that still stand out to me in the 2020s so far.
But first, a few “corrections” and additions.
Even though I said that my 2020s list would change depending on the day I wrote it, I’m embarrassed that I blanked on adding Adam Curtis’s six-part 2021 BBC documentary Can’t Get You Out of My Head. I thought it came out in 2019; I now remember that it came out in 2021. I love this ambitious, flawed, borderline batshit-crazy documentary more than most things I experienced in the 2020s so far. With respect to Oppenheimer or Waxahatchee, I would have replaced one of them with this. You can watch the first episode, and I believe every episode, in full on YouTube.
Thinking about my list more, I would also have tried to sneak in Joachim Trier’s 2021 film The Worst Person in the World, a movie I greatly enjoyed upon its release and which now feels like the most “This is what it feels like to live in this decade as a young-ish person” pick. It doesn’t quite reach Annie Hall levels of quality—it gets close—but it scratches that same itch of a melancholy romantic comedy about city love and indecision. Put another way: It feels like the classic films of past decades, yet I can’t picture it making sense in the 2010s. What an ending, too.
OK, back to music.
Again, the criteria: What albums and songs made me feel happy to be alive?
Ask me tomorrow, and this list will change.
And again, “favorite” is not “best.”
Also, I try not to repeat any artists or include any songs that are already on my albums list. I’m allowed to break this rule once.
Listed in alphabetical order by artist.
Let’s do it.
Honorable Mention
The Kentucky Route Zero soundtrack is probably my favorite overall album on this list, but there’s a catch. This is a Ben Babbitt soundtrack for a video game initially released in volumes from 2011 until … January 2020. Part of me wanted to include it on the technicality of “Well, the album was finished and released in its entirety in the first month of the decade.” I decided against it, especially since the game and its music just scream “2010s!!” and feel more at home in the last decade. It’s still a masterpiece.
Songs
The 1975 – “About You”
It’s now obvious that the female duet in the song’s bridge was written for and about Taylor Swift. That still doesn’t ruin for me what I argue, along with Pitchfork naming Loveless the top album of the ‘90s, helped kick start our recent mini shoegaze revival.
Chappell Roan – “HOT TO GO!”
The rare time I felt in sync with the zeitgeist. What a fun song.
Daryl Johns – “I’m So Serious”
I miss when bands were influenced by The Replacements and not the Goo Goo Dolls.
DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ – “Will My Love”
I’m quite fond of Sabrina’s 2023 album Destiny, but “Will My Love” feels like that entire album condensed into seven minutes.
MJ Lenderman – “She’s Leaving You”
It was either this or Lenderman’s Waxahatchee collaboration on “Right Back to It” as my vote for this decade’s “We’re still not allowed to talk about Whiskeytown anymore and Jason Isbell and Wilco are too washed to function, so this fills the y’alternative void” award. Not to take away from Lenderman’s craft, of course.
Rosa Walton – “I Really Want to Stay At Your House”
A return entry from last week’s newsletter. This is anime bliss of the highest order. The kind of song I wish Grimes wrote.
Vampire Weekend – “Classical”
Only God Was Above Us was my #8 album, so I had to sneak something in.
Albums
The 1975 – Notes On A Conditional Form
The COVID shrug as an album. Not the most compelling or successful The 1975 album—it’s correctly accused of being bloated. Yet it feels the most of its time, which feels right for a list like this. It still captures all my messy, scattered feelings of lockdown.
Alvvays – Blue Rev
A return entry from last week’s newsletter. Because yes, it’s everything I want in an indie guitar album. It’s perfect.
Gang Of Youths – angel in realtime.
The best post-“Beautiful Day” U2 album not made by U2.
Geese – 3D Country
I reviewed this album for Pitchfork upon its release and, though I stand by my review, its bombast and silliness have aged very, very well. Remember when bands didn’t take themsleves so fucking seriously?
TIE: Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher & boygenius – the record
I’m cheating, yes, but these two albums feel too connected to each other to fairly separate: one bookends the other in this decade’s explosion of “lol so sad” core, which I can’t stand anymore but understand to be the most influential “sound” of this decade so far. The original text still sounds great, too.
Pottery – Welcome to Bobby’s Motel
The most underrated band of the decade.
Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud
A return entry from last week’s newsletter. Still the ultimate COVID balm.
Excited to see what new music we get in the next five years.
With love and all the other good things,
-b
Original OPE! logo by Claire Kuang. Words and cartoons by yours truly. My views don’t reflect my clients or the publications and brands I work with. All typos are intentional.