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The 50 Best Songs of 2020

Highlights from a hard year — featuring a disco revival, K-pop kings and queens, new hip-hop rockstars, and some country wisdom

Photographs used in Illustrstion by Getty Images; Youtube; Ryan McGinley for Rolling Stone

2020 saw rising artists fully come into their own, most notably Megan Thee Stallion, who tops our Best Songs list alongside Cardi B for the world-owning raunch of “WAP” and then appears again alongside Beyoncé. BTS and Bad Bunny got bigger than ever without any crossover compromise, and Harry Styles kept adding texture to his vintage-rock vision. It was also a great year for inspired reinventions, from Taylor Swift’s acoustic dream pop to Miley Cyrus’ glam karaoke and the Weeknd’s synth-pop splurge, as well as truth-telling country and indie rock, gritty rap realism and house music all night long — even if you were dancing on your own.

From Rolling Stone US

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20

Rina Sawayama, ‘STFU!’

One of the year’s most compelling rising stars, Rina Sawayama was born in Japan and raised in England, and her sound is equally influenced by Nineties R&B, TRL-era teen pop, and early 2000s nu-metal — making for music that evokes a Y2K high school party that suddenly gets crashed by Korn. And she really goes off on this highlight from her self-titled debut, telling some sucker, “Have you ever thought about taping your big mouth shut?” as the music explodes around her. —J.D.

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Sophie Muller*

19

Selena Gomez, ‘Cut You Off’

Selena unloads her emotional baggage in “Cut You Off,” a highlight from her comeback Rare. On one level, she sings about a break-up haircut, but that’s just her clever metaphor for finally letting go of the dead weight of a bad romance she’s been dragging around for years, or “1,460 days.” Her voice goes lower than ever, as she lays it out, all calm and collected, over a spare Seventies rock-drum thump. —R.S.

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18

Perfume Genius, ‘Describe’

It’s no easy task conjuring the void in music, turning that vast expanse of nothingness into sound. But that’s the feat Perfume Genius achieves on “Describe.” Anchoring the song is a trudge of sludgy guitars and drums that’s pure pitch-black mire. It’s enough to swallow a person whole, but Mike Hadreas’ voice is the guiding light, one that may be flickering, but refusing to go out as he sings, “Can you just find him for me?/Can you describe them for me?” —J. Blistein

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17

Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Kyoto’

2020’s breakout indie-rock singer-songwriter delivers a masterpiece of majestic indecision and bare-knuckled honesty from her album Punisher. Bridgers sings about traveling overseas, missing out on arcade trips with her band, visiting dull places of worship, and having unpleasant chats on pay phones with someone she’d rather forget. It was originally written as a ballad, but Bridgers sped it up and added the chaotic instrumentation, entering the biting line “I’m gonna kill you/If you don’t beat me to it” into the canon of great rock & roll kiss-offs. —A.M.

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16

Lady Gaga, ‘Stupid Love’

It’s been years since Lady Gaga largely gave up on big dumb splashy pop songs, as she wended her way through art-pop experiments, Tony Bennett loungeapaloozas, and star-is-born torch songs, so “Stupid Love” — from her album Chromatica — felt like something of a homecoming. From the stuttering vocal that opens the song to the “All I ever wanted was love” prechorus, she offers up one bright, candy-colored hook after another, and she sounds like she’s genuinely having fun again. Finally, a star is reborn. —K.G.

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15

Bad Bunny feat. Jowell & Randy x Ñengo Flow, ‘Safaera’

“Safaera” is a shape-shifting club wrecker from YHLQMDLG, a barrage of ferocious, pummeling textures — from the brassy, martial opening to the irresistible sample of Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” to the curt, headlong rapping of Bad Bunny’s collaborators, Jowell x Randy and Ñengo Flow. “There were a bunch of tracks that had that vibe when we were growing up,” the producer Tainy told Rolling Stone. “To people from home, from Puerto Rico, if you go to a house party over there, that’s what you’re gonna listen to.” —E.L.

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14

DaBaby feat. Roddy Rich, ‘Rockstar’

This opens as a rags-to-riches flex from two of rap’s hottest young stars, with a guitar-heavy track to heighten the “rock” in “Rockstar.” Then the song becomes a poignantly moody reflection on the up-from-the-bottom pain that drives their success: “PTSD, I’m always waking up in cold sweats like I got the flu/My daughter a G, she saw me kill a nigga in front of her before the age of two,” DaBaby raps. The theme hit home even harder after the song got a BLM remix. —J.D.

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13

Blackpink feat. Selena Gomez, ‘Ice Cream’

The Korean girl-group queens make their power move on the American airwaves, with a big assist from Selena Gomez and co-writer Ariana Grande. It’s a libidinal boombox boast built to jump like a playground chant, rolling out an ice cream truck’s worth of sexually charged dessert metaphors. It’s in the grand tradition of “I Want Candy” or “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” with the ladies bragging, “Coldest with the kiss so he call me ice cream!” —R.S.

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Lauren Dunn*

12

Megan Thee Stallion feat. Beyoncé, ‘Savage Remix’

“Savage” was already a standout from Megan Thee Stallion’s gate-crashing early-2020 mixtape Suga. The remix with Beyoncé takes it to a dominating new level. “Talkin’ to myself in the mirror like/’Bitch, you my boo,’” Bey notes resplendently, making this a true torch-passing moment with her fellow Houston native. They turn celebrating their “classy, bougie, ratchet” greatness into an unstoppable empowerment anthem. —J.D.

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11

Miley Cyrus, ‘Midnight Sky’

At just 28 years old, Cyrus has gone through a career worth of reinventions. With the release of Plastic Hearts, her latest bad-self may be her best. “Midnight Sky” basks in an Eighties stadium-pop glory the singer is more than at home in, paying loving homage to Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” as she sings about being born to run and not belonging to anyone, making that vintage glitz her own. And Nicks honored Cyrus’ debt when she hopped on the excellent remix “Edge of Midnight.” —J.D.

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10

The Chicks, ‘Gaslighter’

The Chicks blasted back this year with the best jerk-torching anthem they’ve given us since the glory days of “Goodbye Earl,” back in the late-Nineties. The target this time around was at once scathingly personal and vividly universal, as Natlie Maines turned the wreckage of her  D-I-V-O-R-C-E into the launchpad for a glorious evisceration of gaslighting fools everywhere — including the one who just got booted out of the White House. —J.D.

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9

Harry Styles, ‘Adore You’

Harry Styles released his wildly imaginative Fine Line in the last couple weeks of 2019 — yet it became one of this year’s defining pop blockbusters, giving up hit after hit. “Adore You” became a long-running radio soundtrack — it stayed on the charts for every week of 2020. (The only other hit to manage that feat: the Weekend’s “Blinding Lights.”) “Adore You” is a sleek sliver of psychedelic soul, where Styles dreams up a “strawberry lipstick state of mind,” and then offers you an irresistible invitation to join him there. —R.S.

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Fiona Apple

8

Fiona Apple, ‘Ladies’

Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters was a career triumph in many ways, and nowhere is that more apparent than on “Ladies,” an imaginary love letter to an ex’s “revolving door” of new girlfriends. It’s a heart-to-heart that is as sincere as it is wryly funny: Apple has never sounded more sure of herself than when she lists off all the leftover baggage, literally and figuratively, that she’s left behind for her old flame’s new love. —C.S.

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7

BTS, ‘Dynamite’

The Bulletproof Boy Scouts make a little more history with their first U.S. Number One — a new milestone for K-pop — as well as their first English-language hit. Yet it’s unmistakably the sound of BTS, tapping into the spirit of Eighties disco. They zoom through the stars in “Dynamite.” All seven of them show off, though Jungkook takes the spotlight when he yells, “Cup of milk, let’s rock and roll/King Kong, kick the drum/Rolling on like a Rolling Stone!” —R.S.

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6

Dua Lipa, ‘Don’t Start Now’

It’s not the first sound you hear, but the impossibly plump and agile bass on “Don’t Start Now” is the one that sticks around longest. Crashing Studio 54 into 2020, “Don’t Stop Now” encapsulates the sonic and metaphysical essence of Future Nostalgia — pure, uncut timelessness. It’s perfect for any era, even this one: A song that yearns to be bumped in a packed club, that still boasts a hook that actually made for a perfect Covid quarantine meme: “Don’t show up/Don’t come out.” —J. Blistein

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Beth Garrabrant*

5

Taylor Swift, ‘August’

It’s hard to pick the greatest lines from this Folklore highlight: “August sipped away/Like a bottle of wine” or “Cancel plans just in case you’d call/And say, ‘Meet me behind the mall.’” Either way, “August” depicts a beachy summer fling gone wrong. It’s part of the teenage love triangle trilogy at the heart of Folklore that includes “Betty” and “Cardigan,” each told from different perspectives, sort of like St. Elmo’s Fire without the cheesy saxophone. Swift’s lithely vocals soar across string instrumentation as she tells the story from the side of the “other” woman. One thing is for certain: Don’t trust Inez. —A.M.

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4

The Weeknd, ‘Blinding Lights’

With its fuzzy synths and hopscotching drum-machine line, “Blinding Lights” is the best New Wave song this side of Duran Duran. In just three minutes, the Weeknd checks off any number of Eighties pop-song signposts — unanswered phone calls, driving fast just to feel something, lights representing loneliness — but the real magic is how his voice and the song’s chiming keyboard line lingers in your head well after he injects new life into the greatest Eighties-steeped lyrical cliché of them all: “I can’t sleep until I feel your touch.” —K.G.

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3

Christine and the Queens, ‘People, I’ve Been Sad’

Between lockdowns and mandatory quarantines, 2020 has been a year of unprecedented loneliness, and “People, I’ve Been Sad” is its anthem. With sparse synths and a voice on the verge of tears, Christine and the Queens captured the universal moment with words in English and French about missing out, disappearing, and falling apart. But when Chris sings, “You know the feeling,” she brilliantly breaks the fourth wall. Indeed, we all know the feeling, and we can all feel lonely and sad together — and maybe a little better, too, with a song this good to help pull us through. —K.G.

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William Claxton*

2

Bob Dylan, ‘Key West (Philosopher Pirate)’

A brand-new classic Dylan ballad — not the only one on Rough and Rowdy Ways, but the one that casts the deepest, darkest spell. In the nine-minute “Key West (Philosophical Pirate),” he’s adrift in Florida, murmuring the Sunshine State blues over a ghostly accordion, as he growls, “Key West is the place to be if you’re looking for immortality.” But even in this palm-tree paradise, he’s got Desolation Row in his heart, and this outlaw still keeps his eye out, looking for the next chance to make his getaway. —R.S.

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1

Cardi B feat. Megan Thee Stallion, ‘WAP’

In the darkest depths of Covid lockdown — at a moment in history when leaving your house could literally get you killed — Cardi B and Megan delivered the perfect instructions on how to beat the quarantine blues: “Gobble me, swallow me, drip down the side of me/Quick, jump out ‘fore you let it get inside of me.” “WAP” was just the escapist raunch America needed in 2020, the sound of two of the strongest women in music defiantly putting the pleasure principle front and center in a moment when fun and joy seemed dead. Its NSFW video was brilliant since most people weren’t at work anyway (or at least weren’t in a traditional, buttoned-up office environment), and Cardi’s Bronx fire mixed with Megan’s bodacious flow to make for one of rap’s greatest mic-passing buddy comedies of all time. The result was a hot-girl summit for the ages. —J.D.