(Nobody comes out of “4 American Dollars” unscathed - the track’s wry hook of “You can do a lot with 4 American dollars!” obliquely tipping the hat to its label, 4AD.) The lyrics are universal for a reason: these injustices, and thousands more, are intertwined, and can only be stopped at the root. (“You’ve gotta have boots if you wanna lift those bootstraps”) and skewers the myth of the American Dream, invokes the dollars taken liberally from workers, and alludes to the increasing indie label/major label royalty gap created by the streaming economy. Across the song’s blistering six minutes, Remy interpolates Martin Luther King, Jr. Listen to “4 American Dollars” on repeat, and you’re likely to hear a new line of commentary in Remy’s vocals, now more reminiscent of Kylie Minogue than they’ve ever been, each time. “4 American Dollars,” the funky, irresistible opening track of her seventh (and best) album Heavy Light, perfects that form, scrutinizing the rotting wreckage of American society circa 2020 with wit and economy. Girls’ Meg Remy has proven herself a shrewd and ruthless critic of late capitalism, one with the ability to concisely take to task not just the symptoms of a sick society, but the cause, too. Since the release of her debut album Introducing over a decade ago, U.S. It’s a satisfying twist on a theme that Swift has been drawn to her whole career and, although far from autobiographical, is a neat vision of where she is now: empathetic, comfortable in her fame, and, as a storyteller, more vivid and generous than ever. Where the narrator of “The Lucky One” spoke with wisdom, the person addressing “dorothea” can’t help but come off as foolhardy - Tupelo “is the same as it ever was,” and Dorothea is satisfied, grown-up, in the big city. “ The stars in your eyes shined brighter in Tupelo / And if you're ever tired of bеing known for who you know / You know you'll always know me, Dorothea,” Swift sings, the lilting, run-on melody undoubtedly evermore’s most beautiful. Over a bed of amiable piano and acoustic guitar that owes more than a little to The Replacements’ “Androgynous,” the song’s narrator can’t help but wonder if Dorothea was better off before she hit it big.
The Dorothea of the song’s title is “a queen sellin' dreams, sellin' makeup and magazines” who, years before, was beguiling the song’s unnamed narrator with those same charms.
“dorothea,” the classic-in-waiting at the centre of Swift’s ninth album evermore, like Red’s “The Lucky One,” takes the form of a letter written to a young star. Alex Robert Ross, Editorial DirectorĪlthough her surprise summer record folklore might have put the skill front-and-centre, rich, realist storytelling has been a significant part of Taylor Swift’s oeuvre since her earliest records. We’ll be back next year, when, with luck, we can listen to this music together and share the songs we love face to face. If you missed our favorite albums of 2020, dig into those now.
That dizziness is reflected in our structure: scroll down the list and the write-ups will get longer, starting with the hooks that got stuck in our heads and spreading out from there. Some of them make better sense tucked into the middle of full-length projects but plenty are standalones that made an immediate impression. The 100 songs here, then, work as a bizarre playlist. Some days called for the summery escape of Popcaan’s “Chill,” some for the anthemic pop of Tinashe’s “Save Room For Us,” some for the bliss of Mary Lattimore’s “Til A Mermaid Drags You Under.” No mood, structure, or sound took precedence. Even setting aside the anomaly of Phil Elverum’s album-length “Microphones in 2020,” you’re still left with a 14-minute difference between 15-year-old pop songwriter glaive’s “Astrid” and 79-year-old Bob Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul.” The tissue connecting our favorite songs this year was about as thin as that which held together our favorite albums. There’s a 42-minute difference between the longest and shortest songs on our year-end list.