Our Favorite Music from 2020

12/15/2020

Hello friends,

Kathryn here. Pre-Covid, I would listen to music every day on my way to work, in the office, and on my way home or to dinner with friends at a restaurant (remember when that was a thing?!). I would hear it in the halls at work (San Francisco Opera), go see concerts, or catch some live jazz. In March when everything shut down in San Francisco, I started working from home and my commute became non-existent. Concerts were cancelled. I wasn’t surrounded by music in the halls of the opera house. Instead, I went from Zoom meeting to Zoom meeting with no time in between and by the time I stopped working, all I wanted to do was eat and go to bed. So music left my daily routine for a while.

It came back to me when I decided one night in July to watch a recording from NY Phil of YoYo Ma performing Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in 1995. The music swelled up inside of me, and, however corny this sounds, I recognized that I was missing the healing power of music in my life.

Since that evening music, especially pop music, has come back into my daily life, and I’ve been catching up on some of the incredible albums that have come out this year from Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher and Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Boltcutters to Taylor Swift’s folklore and Sarah Dooley’s Is This Heartbreak? I’m still digging into new albums from Sufjan Stevens, Perfume Genius, Lianne La Havas, HAIM, Jyoti, and Moses Sumney, along with all of the other albums the larger TIA community has been listening to.

What music have you been listening to this year? What has brought you joy or to tears? Or made you want to dance? Let me know, I’m ready to dance.

And looking towards 2021, I hope to experience some live music!

Happy listening!
Kathryn

The TIA Community's Favorite Songs of 2020

Ali Dineen - Hold On
The Chicks - Gaslighter
Willie Nelson - Vote 'Em Out
Jack Garratt - Time
Fiona Apple - Relay
Adam Blotner - I Love This Clinic (feat. Jenny Pinzari)
Indigo Girls - Closer to Fine
Our Native Daughters - Black Myself
Taylor Swift - I Forgot That You Existed
Nathan Leigh - All Our Racist Uncles
Zenobia Powell Perry - Tawawa House Suite (Arr. J. Gandolfi for Piano 4 Hands): Jumping Over the Broom
Jessica Vosk - Help / Being Alive
Daft Punk - Lose Yourself to Dance (feat. Pharrell Williams)
Daft Punk - Touch (feat. Paul Williams)
Cher - Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe
Taylor Swift - We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
Taylor Swift - Mean
Kesha - Praying
Beyoncé - Run the World (Girls)
Green Day - American Idiot
Resistance Revival Chorus - All You Fascists Bound To Lose
Melanie De Biasio - Sweet Darling Pain
John Prine - No Ordinary Blue
John Prine - Lonesome Friends of Science
Beyoncé - BLACK PARADE
Rufus Wainwright - Peaceful Afternoon