NPR Music's 25 Favorite Songs Of 2020 (So Far)
Songs don't necessarily mean something different now than they did before this roller coaster of a year started clicking down its one-way track, but you'll forgive us if we act like they do. Perhaps it's just that our needs over the first six months of 2020 have been more intense, but the songs to which we've turned have met them. These rallying cries, these tiny vacations, these serotonin infusions, these distillations of pain and strength and comfort, confirm the power and flexibility of this form. Our examples here, from voices across spectrums of generation and genre, include everything from a one-minute reorientation of collective priorities to an epic historical framing of our nation's response to horrific acts.
These 25 picks, in alphabetical order below, belong to all of us, but each one is the favorite of a single member of our team. You can listen to a playlist of them at Apple Music or Spotify, and find our favorite albums of the first half of 2020 here.
Bad Bunny
"Safaera" (feat. Jowell & Randy x Ñengo Flow)
Bad Bunny dropped YHLQMDLG on the eve of a global pandemic, as if to presage the coming months of isolation and its side effect of looking to nostalgia for comfort. Produced by genre veteran Tainy and mixed by DJ Orma in the style of live DJ megamixes at early aughts marquesina parties, and with assists from foundational artists like Ñengo Flow and provocateur kings Jowell & Randy, "Safaera" is quite simply a horny masterpiece (whose raunchiest lyric has terrorized and delighted Latinx parents all over TikTok).
"Safaera" is the holy relic in Bad Bunny's pilgrimage to the heart of reggaetón — to the golden era before its mass adoption, whitewashing, and sanitization. (He obliquely referred to discrimination against the genre in his belated response in support of the movement for Black lives, but neglected to recognize the roots of this discrimination in anti-Blackness against a genre pioneered by Black artists, and widely criminalized along racial and socioeconomic lines.) In a concentrated five minutes, "Safaera" supercuts beat and tempo changes with samples of throwbacks like Alexis & Fido's "El Tiburón," the tumbi riff from Missy Elliott's "Get Ur Freak On," and more in its recreation of a sweaty, sacred space of uninhibited perreo. —Stefanie Fernández
