The Best Pop Collaborations of 2020

Sprinting away from his bad boy past and running to the altar like a track star, Justin Bieber christened a spiritual phase with the uplifting “Holy.” (His apology tour also included a stop on the new Shawn Mendes record Wonder for the equally contrite spoiled-superstar self-interrogation “Monster”). With Chance the Rapper along to ease Bieber into his new life walking in the light of His devotion (“The first step pleases the Father / Might be the hardest to take”), “Holy” approached religious salvation with the same innocent, youthful enthusiasm that was originally at the heart of the singer’s appeal. Their acoustic take on the song was also nice, and Bieber finished the year recording a version with the U.K.’s National Health Service choir that might end up netting the song a much-coveted Christmas Number One hit — truly a holy blessing indeed.  J.D.

By the time Miley Cyrus released Plastic Hearts, her fans were basically begging her to release an Eighties rock-inspired album. Thankfully, she had enlisted stars like Billy Idol and Joan Jett for the LP, and both add some throwback credibility to their respective tunes. Cyrus and Idol’s duet “Nightcrawling,” in particular, is a seductive duet, full of juicy synths and powerhouse drumming from none other than Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins. B.S.

It’s a strange feeling when a flat-out smash record simultaneously forces a smile on your face and tightens your throat with sadness. Juice WRLD and Marshmello’s “Come & Go” was released seven months after the tragic passing of the rapper, born Jarad Higgins. The fiercely creative and motivated artist, who’d already released three albums since bursting onto the scene in 2018, was freshly 21 and on the precipice of utter superstardom when he died at the end of 2019. If you don’t know the backstory and you aren’t paying attention to the lyrics, “Come & Go” is a dancefloor banger — thanks in large part to Marshmello, the highly sought-after electronic music producer and certified hitmaker. The song starts ethereal and slow, but soon builds into an anthem. Hip-hop beats come in as the words speed up around the 40-second mark. Then, 13 seconds later, alt-pop guitar plays and hand claps guide the listener to the hyper percussion that precedes a drop made excellent by crunchy guitar and rave-ready bass. Sonically, it feels like leaving a dream state by being jolted awake. It’s suddenly loud, proud, and fun as hell. But if you let this line sink in — “I pray to God that he make me a better man / Maybe one day I’ma stand for somethin’ ” — tears are only narrowly avoidable. “Come & Go” is a blast, but it’s also a jarring reminder of greatness cut short. S.H.

A highlight from Hayley Williams’s solo project Petals for Armor, “Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris” features harmonies from supergroup Boygenius (the emotive musicality of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus combined). This quartet thereby fulfills the fantasy of your indie sad-girl dreams. Williams sheds her cocoon of belting pop-punk melodies from Paramore fame and successfully flutters into a more delicate indie/alt expression of herself. Through the sonic change, her vocal strength and lyrical precision remains the same. Piercing and relatable lines like “I am in a garden / Tending to my own / So what do I care / And what do you care if I grow?” build on the hook’s floral wordplay to tell a story about maturing and evolving after a relationship ends. The support of Boygenius is heard throughout the song, and that feels very soothing — like a close circle of girlfriends bringing you comfort food in the middle of a hard day, or year. We needed that. R.C.

When a Canadian woman with a penchant for leopard print and pop hooks stormed the Nineties country scene with songs that glorified the strength and sensuality of womanhood, heads turned. Despite cautionary advice from label executives, who told her she was too controversial for country radio, Shania Twain soared and soon became the best-selling female artist in the genre’s history as well as an icon for straight women, straight men, and the LGBTQ community. In many ways, Orville Peck’s “Legends Never Die” is a tribute to Twain’s story. Both a legend and a survivor, her early career started with an eight-year-old Twain performing in bars to put food on the table for her struggling, sometimes-violent family members. Later, a highly publicized divorce would gut her before a long-undiagnosed case of Lyme disease left her thinking she might never sing again. Twain only reemerged from a 15-year hiatus three years ago, so her decision to co-sign one of modern country’s most aesthetically rebellious newcomers feels so obviously right it’s invigorating. Peck — who’s openly gay and known for ensembles that scream “rhinestone cowboy meets punk-rock renegade” — effortlessly infuses classic country structure and twang with emo, lo-fi sounds. “Legends Never Die” is his most straightforward hit to date, proving to any skeptics that he’s got real-deal chops — but the addition of Twain adds a smirk between the lines. Here, two larger-than-life underdogs beam with a combined confidence so cool, it perfectly reflects the genre’s still-evolving landscape. S.H.

For billions of people, 2020 seemed like Armageddon was among us, and Bad Bunny’s surprise Thanksgiving Day album, El Último Tour del Mundo (or The Last Tour of the World), summons an eccentric going-out-with-a-bang spirit for the seemingly end of the world. Helmed by Puerto Rican-Dominican breakout producer MAG, the album is the first all-Spanish release to debut at Number One on the Billboard 200 in the 64-year history of the all-genres chart. The record experiments in Latin trap, post-punk and reggaeton rock madness, yet Rosalía adds romantic softness in “Noche de Anoche” with her raspy confessions of love and lust. “I know this will not happen again. But if it happened again, I know what would be your weakness,” she flirts in Spanish. Meanwhile, El Conejo Malo responds to her lockdown fantasies with equal desire and a determined will against the undulating bop of a dembow groove. Together, this duet portrays a vision of doomsday romance at its finest. I.R.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Ellie Goulding had nothing to do whatsoever with Four Tet’s “Baby,” one of several lush ambient house tunes off his 10th studio album, Sixteen Oceans. Her voice is, after all, diced up nearly beyond recognition, her lyrics — “It’s ’cause, baby, you’re all I have, you’re taking me on” — divided into strands and braided in with watery synths, which swim along a choppy yet buoyant groove. It sounds like an unlikely pairing at first, but the finished product is a perfect storm. E.B.

Machine Gun Kelly’s move from sad-mad rap guy to retro-pop-punk guy on this year’s fantastic Tickets to Down My Downfall was one of 2020’s more surprisingly bountiful personal transformations. The album’s obvious highpoint was the glorious “Forget Me Too,” a scream-along tag team with Halsey. It’s candy-coated acrimony at its finest, rivaling even the best pop-punk gems Downfall producer Travis Barker helped create as the drummer for Blink-182. Kelly and Halsey play a couple locked in a downward spiral of need and recrimination, shredding their vocal chords and having a blast as they exude the implosive chemistry of an screamo George Jones and Tammy Wynette. These two really ought to cut a duets album. J.D.

Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande are such a perfect match made in drama kid pop heaven that it almost feels dizzying that they never linked up before this year. For “Rain on Me,” the two battle belt over a sparkly house beat. The song was written and recorded before 2020 put everyone’s years into a tizzy but the message feels timely and uplifting: “I’d rather be dry but at least I’m alive,” they sing on the massive, stadium-primed chorus. The release of this collaboration and its space rave video felt like one of the first big pop moments in isolation and has us itching for the first night out in a safer world. B.S.

“Rockstar” is indisputably one of the biggest tracks of 2020 and represents DaBaby and Roddy Ricch at the height of their powers as two of hip-hop’s biggest stars. Its distinct guitar-driven beat is a refreshing stylistic changeup for DaBaby, who broke from his signature flow to expand on a sound that was verging on homogenous. Meanwhile Ricch’s melodic slippery vocals in the song’s latter half help put the song over the edge. Like so many other hits this year, the meteoric rise of “Rockstar” can be attributed to TikTok, where it got its own viral dance. Such a distinction almost guaranteed a hit this year, and it was only a matter of time before breaking through radio and streaming charts a few weeks later. Topping the RS 100 chart for seven weeks, “Rockstar” is by far DaBaby’s biggest hit and the second Number One Single for Ricch, whose 2019 single “The Box” is the only better-selling rap song of the year. Dababy didn’t seem to expect any less: “The second I made the song, I knew [it was a hit],” he told Rolling Stone in September. “I probably have that on camera — me saying what this song was going to be the second I made it.” E.M.

Kelsea Ballerini took a major step into pop-star territory with this mesmerizing collab with Halsey. They performed it on CMT a few times, but it’s the original version, off the country singer’s Kelsea album, that ironically displayed the most chemistry between the two vocalists. Projecting all of the things the “other girl” probably does — from drinking her martinis dry to being promiscuous — it’s ethereal, haunting, and moody. J.F.

On paper, rising country star Gabby Barrett’s breakout hit doesn’t really lend itself to a duet: it’s a woman’s diatribe about her cheating ex, after all. But the pop singer Charlie Puth ably offers the guy’s point of view in this remix, essentially saying, hey, forgive and try to forget. No hard feelings? J.F.

After months of teasing a possible collaboration project, Future and Lil Uzi Vert finally delivered an outer-space classic with Pluto x Baby Pluto. “Baby Pluto,” the nickname and alter ego of Lil Uzi is a tribute to Future (also known as “Pluto,”) and the sound he has been crafting for almost half a decade. The chemistry between the two has been evident since collaborating on tracks like “Seven Million” in 2016 and this years “All Bad,” so it was to no one’s surprise that they could do it again for 16-tracks plus eight more for the deluxe edition. The Atlanta and Philly MCs take turns trading bars and melodies over eerie-yet-futuristic beats by producers such as Wheezy, Zaytoven, and DJ Esco. What could be better than joining the two rappers on another planet in 2020 — and come down when both their runs slow down? D.G.

Before 2020, Taylor Swift was a lot of things — country music gamechanger, hit songwriter, and stadium-commanding popstar — but indie-folk enchantress was not one of them. The always-busy Swift, who lived an album-promo-tour-repeat existence for some 13 years, has deserved a substantial break for a while now. But unplugging isn’t easy when you’ve spent the entirety of your adult life constantly reinventing yourself to remain relevant and please the public eye, and it took a global pandemic to get her to sink into stillness. By allowing her to do so without guilt or a fear of fading away, Swift was able to sit with her many emotions and leisurely stretch the songwriting muscles fans have ogled at since her emergence. With tours canceled, she didn’t need a “stadium song.” With people stuck at home, she didn’t need a “radio song.” All the creative shackles of making a mainstream record were suddenly gone. Instead, Folklore and Evermore — both of which were co-written and almost entirely produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner — sound like Swift plopped in front of a cabin’s fireplace with a glass of wine, pulled the top of her head open like a door, and just poured the contents out. Dessner, already a master of creating space around complex lyricism, was the ideal collaborator. Two decades with the National have resulted in a signature production style that’s remarkably airy without being minimalistic; it’s still multi-layered but he never takes away from the storytelling. With Dessner by her side, Swift is more experimental, alternative, and poetic — not to mention critically acclaimed — than ever before. S.H.

Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion come together on their first joint effort to give us exactly what we deserve from the duo of unapologetic rappers: “Wet-Ass Pussy”. The song wins on its audacity to craft a sample of the Nineties club classic “Whores in This House” into a twerk anthem filled with sex-positive bars. The power of “WAP” is evident from its ability to send entire households into kick splits for a TikTok challenge, while its unpopularity with a riled-up conservative right adds a notch on its belt for pop-cultural impact. The track tops the record for most streams in the first seven days in a year when its collaborating artists are vocal about social justice issues. Cardi regularly fired up Instagram Live to blast Trump and encourage her followers to vote, while Meg used her platform and October SNL performance to advocate for the protection of Black women. Sex is great and all, but in 2020, activism is the new female pleasure. R.C.