The 2020 Playlist
I listen to a couple of hours of music every day. I particularly enjoy searching for music I've never heard. When I hear a new song I like, I add it to one playlist, all year long. At the end of the year, I go through that playlist and choose one song for each artist and then cut out a bunch more so the playlist is at an even number. I started doing this five or six years ago when I really needed to find some new music for inspiration. Well, it has worked better than I ever could’ve imagined. I put out two albums and recorded a new one just this year!
While the majority of the tracks were released in the 2020 calendar year, this is not "A Year in Music" playlist but a playlist documenting the music I enjoyed and “discovered” in 2020, new or old.
2020 was a bizarre year for music and this playlist for multiple reasons. The year started off AMAZING with one major release after another. Then the Pandemic hit, record labels and artists began delaying or shelving releases altogether while other artists (*cough* Charli XCX *cough*) recorded an album the first month of quarantine. Shit was just wild. There were no rules or precedents so I took inspiration from Charli, checked out for a bit and spent most of the year in the studio working on my own stuff. Hopefully, next year will be more standard with me working and listening to music every day and hopefully there won’t be a raging pandemic.
As always, please use this list as a starting point. If you find an artist or song you like, go check them out! There are 200 artists with entire discographies just waiting for you to enjoy! Get saved like I did!
These are the first 100 tracks. Listen to the rest on Spotify!
Another great year thanks to Spotify
These were my Top Artists of 2020
My favorite NEW ARTISTS OF 2020
My most anticipated releases of 2020
My ReleaseS of 2020
I started making these playlists years ago to help get me inspired for my own music projects. It’s been more than helpful. Two years ago, empowered by all of the amazing electropop I had recently discovered, I finally put out my Vegas Baby Vegas album. Last year, I reconnected with my punk rock roots and put out my first Jump Scares record, “10/31” and followed that up with “10/32” this year. And with the release of our new film Rent-A-Pal, came the soundtrack I spent the better part of a year working on. That sucker is 38 tracks and has beefy runtime of nearly two hours. And not only that, I recorded another record for a totally different music project that will release in early 2021. So all-in-all it was a very busy year of making music and I credit these playlists for giving me all of that inspiration.
Favorite Albums of 2020
The Final Track List
CSV Download
The 2020 Playlist on a Spreadsheet
Just in case Spotify ever goes down, here is a downloadable CSV file. You can print it out and put it on your wall or something.
Thank you for taking the time to look through this page. While listening to thousands of hours of music is endlessly inspiring, working on this playlist and website can be a chore and feels like a waste of time. But my hope is someone out there will use this page and these playlists as a way to reignite his/her/their passion for music the way they have for me. See you in 2021!