![]() In the wake of his many popular features and his collaborative album with J Balvin, Bad Bunny makes it clear that it is time for Balvin to share the throne of popular reggaeton. With each listen to “Starting Over” I find new lyrics to write down and remember, new sounds to love.īad Bunny. This one feels just right to sway around the kitchen to. In contrast with this energetic high, Stapleton goes deep into his blues side by finally releasing “You Should Probably Leave,” a song he has been sitting on for six years. The song is a Stapleton-sponsored judgment day reckoning, including the cacophonic sound of a crowd in panic and the shrieks of a gospel choir. He harnesses the energy of the Chicks as he angrily lambasts the perpetrators of the 2017 mass shooting at Route 91. “Maggie’s Song” takes on a very classic old-time country feel, as Stapleton weaves sweet and simple stories as he processes the loss of his pup. Stapleton’s typical outlaw-country brand is present in full with “Devil Always Made Me Think Twice,” “Arkansas,” and “Hillbilly Blood,” but other songs take him in a completely new stylistic direction. The title track sets a high bar for the rest of the record with a reflection on re-remembering what really matters, a message certainly relevant for this turbulent year. This record can’t be captured in any singular fashion, neither musically nor emotionally. In “Starting Over,” Stapleton yet again does what he does best: combines his unique whiskey-tinged growl with the best lyricism present in country music today. The work in these two albums is Swift’s strongest ever, and solidifies the fact that no modern artist can really reach her.įollowing a three-year hiatus, all lovers of southern rock deeply needed a Chris Stapleton album. She includes Bon Iver singing in his lower register in Folklore and then in his falsetto in Evermore: two sides of the same magic coin. Swift combines the soft folk sound of “willow” with some of her country and Americana roots in “no body, no crime,” drawing us in once again. Evermore cuts through the delicate ice of Folklore: it is the color to Folklore’s black and white. ![]() The setting matches the sound: they play in an album in the middle of the woods, cozy and hidden from the snow. This magical feeling was amplified by her release of The Long Pond Studio Sessions, a film in which Swift, Jack Antonoff, and Aaron Dessner finally play the album together for the first time after recording it entirely remotely. Swift tells winding stories of love, hardship, and mystery and tenderly walks us through the forest of her imagination. Listening to Folklore feels like visiting a cabin in the woods, with a fireplace well lit. She created the 2020 we all wish we experienced: soft, sweet, and gentle. She begins “the 1” by stating “I’m doin good, I’m on some new shit,” and that says a lot about the album as a whole. Taylor Swift… can even be said? Somehow, while we all sat on our couches in quarantine, this woman created not one but two musical masterpieces. No album touched my heart this year in the way that “Saturn Return” did. When I think of this album, I think of the cross-country drive I took at the beginning of the pandemic to make my way home and the happy moments that can be found in darkness. In reading more on the record, this seems to have been the point: they say, “this album is a reflection of us coming to terms with how to find our power in the face of an unfair world… our hope is that women can feel less alone in their journey through the modern world.” There is something in the caramel-thick sweetness of these sisters’ voices that makes a listener feel as though they’ve been bewitched into calm. The soft, soulful, lullaby of “Healer in the Sky” pulled me through the pain of the first month of quarantine and soothed me as the world was turned upside down. I made no mistake here: this record blew me away. In February, I was staying with a friend in Nashville and she mentioned them as a local favorite, and when I stopped at Grimey’s to shop for records I came upon a signed copy of “Saturn Return.” I had never heard the Secret Sisters before, but there is nobody I trust more to recommend music than this Nashville friend of mine, so I bought it. ![]() As soon as I saw “Water Witch, featuring Brandi Carlile” on this tracklist I knew that the Secret Sisters would be a favorite of 2020.
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