What Your Favorite Album of 2020 Says About You

8 min readDec 5, 2020

Taylor Swift — Folklore: You wore a cardigan all year, even when you weren’t seeing anyone, even in the shower, even to sleep. You don’t know how your crush James identifies but you definitely like them. You want a cottagecore life, which your parents know as “the thing Cameron Diaz swaps with Kate Winslet for in The Holiday.”

Kidz Bop — KIDZ BOP 2020: You are already an agoraphobic child.

Halsey — Manic: You posted “i would have followed you all the way to the graveyard” on Facebook like it’s 2010; your grandma texted to make sure you’re okay even though it’s just song lyrics, grandma, don’t worry about it.

Sufjan Stevens — The Ascension: You played a corrupted copy of a Candy Land video game adaptation once and you still have nightmares about it. It made you question your faith in God, America, and Hasbro Interactive’s quality control. You still believe in one of those things, but won’t say which one.

Spanish Love Songs — Brave Faces Everyone: You’ve lost faith in your country, your future, and yourself, but not in the raw power of pop punk.

Machine Gun Kelly — Tickets To My Downfall: You spent 2020 upgrading from an edgelord to a himbo. You know nothing, like absolutely nothing, but the power of extremely polished pop punk. Even then, your knowledge is mostly limited to how great Travis Barker drum fills are.

Chloe X Halle — Ungodly Hour: You keep a spreadsheet with the birth charts of everyone you’ve ever spoken to and know to avoid Gemini and Virgo men at all costs. Your Instagram Stories are just videos of yourself lip-syncing to “Ungodly Hour” and “Forgive Me” with the caption “felt cute, might delete later,” but you never do. You leave it up for that one specific person to swipe up on, only to have everyone but them slide in your DMs.

Rina Sawayama — SAWAYAMA: Astrology is fake, the only chart that matters is your Backstreet Boys/Spice Girls/Britney Spears eras. You are Kevin sun, Posh moon, Blackout rising.

The 1975 — Notes on a Conditional Form: People liked you because you were insufferable yet so aware of it, then you became too aware of it, and now you’re just insufferable. (You probably think the same thing about these lists; they are much better on TIkTok anyway. “Medium is now an obsolete medium, kinda mad, innit?”, you have definitely said to impress someone regardless of accuracy.)

Meghan Trainor — Treat Myself: You saw Biden won the presidency and promptly scheduled maskless brunches with all your besties. It was going great until you got drunk and told your friend you’d smash her husband’s junk to smithereens.

Katy Perry — Smile: Some people missed human touch; some people missed parties and going out: you just missed that high note on “Daises” every time. (Don’t worry; so does Katy.) Your maskless brunches went great until your friend told you she’d smash your husband’s junk to smithereens.

Miley Cyrus — Plastic Hearts: You feel like the isolation of this year has brought out the real, most authentic side of you. “Yeah right,” your peers snidely remark at their maskless brunches, “She’ll change again as soon as she’s vaccinated.” But you mean it this time, give or take a surprisingly bland Dua Lipa collaboration.

Dua Lipa — Future Nostalgia: You complain under every Popjustice forum post that “Cruel Summer” should have been Taylor’s lead single, but you have the range to stand up for your fave and say “Stream ‘Levitating’” once in a while.

Car Seat Headrest — Making a Door Less Open: You’re not Will Toledo, but people sometimes mistake you for him. You even got a song on his album by impersonating Will Toledo impersonating Rivers Cuomo impersonating Beck.

Eminem — Music To Be Murdered By: You are definitely Eminem, because nobody else remembers this album existed.

BTS — Be: You saw BTS mentioned in a Twitter link to this post and dropped a fancam before clicking.

Blackpink — The Album: You saw the BTS fancam below a Twitter link to this post and replied with your own fancam. You slide into each other’s DMs and start a happy and fulfilling relationship based on mutual interests :)

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit — Reunions: You made one too many posts on Facebook demanding people vote for Joe Biden, and your significant other is getting worried. You wittily, warmly, candidly diagnosed yourself with ‘dadpression.’

Bob Dylan — Rough and Rowdy Ways: You’re either so old you lived through classic Dylan or so young that you’re just getting into Dylan. Regardless of whether you’re a father, you receive JFK biographies as Father’s Day gifts.

IDLES — Ultra Mono: You have unironically said “if you get ratioed, it means you’re doing something right.” None of your offline friends understand what ratioing is, and none of your online friends understand why you have a rose emoji in your bio but retweet videos from those centrist grifters at The Lincoln Project.

Fontaines DC — A Hero’s Death: You don’t know who the Lincoln Project is or what a rose emoji signifies, you just like this whole post post-punk revival-revival that’s been going on and think these Dublin blokes did a particularly good job at it.

Jessie Ware — What’s Your Pleasure?: Every night, you dream of the dance floor, pulled along by a mysterious stranger veiled in darkness. You always wake up not remembering what happened, only the murmur of a twinkling disco light and the aftertaste of a sweet cherry cocktail.

Matt Berninger — Serpentine Prison: You tried to reconnect with your past self, but the memories are gone in a haze of weed and Rombauer, not that you could ever tell the difference between bottles of wine. You recall the faint silhouette of a childhood crush: you barely remember their name (John? Jane?), but you know how empty you feel now without them. The thing you really can’t get over, though, is that Taylor Swift made a better National album than the lead singer of the National.

Dogleg — Melee: You smashed into things in your room to simulate a mosh pit when concerts closed down.

Protomartyr — Ultimate Success Today: You smashed into things in your room because you’ve been seething after spending all day in a poorly ventilated office.

Grimes — Miss Anthropocene: You came back to the office because your boyfriend injected you with a DIY vaccine. Then you looked up tentacle porn on your work computer out of habit and got fired anyway.

Run The Jewels — RTJ4: You never know whether Killer Mike is pro-revolution or revolution-hesitant, but the music slaps anyway so you don’t have to think about that.

Fleet Foxes — Shore: Your friends were so bored during lockdown they finally got around to The Crack-Up. You’ll have to wait another 100 years for the next life-altering pandemic before they get around to Shore, even though you swear it’s more accessible and “there are ACTUAL DRUMS.”

Bartees Strange — Live Forever: You broke Spotify’s algorithm. In all your social groups, you make esoteric references nearly no one gets but everyone in your other groups would.

Shamir — Shamir: You’re the one person who always gets those references, no matter how esoteric.

Sad13 — Haunted Painting: You share an apartment with nine other creative types and together you’re just able to afford rent and groceries. You used to have nightly cuddle puddles; none of you have hugged each other since March. But you all invested in weighted blankets so you’re good.

Illuminati Hotties — Free I.H.: This Is Not The One You’ve Been Waiting For: You live in that same apartment. Since starting Zoloft you’re able to deal with 2020 a little easier, but nothing turns you on anymore except the theme music for The Daily. (You ideologically lean more left, but Michael Barbaro’s centrism and over-enunciation Does It for you.)

The Chicks — Gaslighter: Someone made a call-out post for you about your “surface-level activism”, but they don’t know you’ve been organizing and attending protests since before they were born, they should cut you a little bit of slack. Just don’t pull a Sia or anything, you know?

Phoebe Bridgers — Punisher: You said to your significant other that the pandemic was easier for you because you kinda always feel like the world is ending? Oh no, that too real? Did you fuck things up again? Is it just your anxiety talking? You diffused things with a pop culture reference and posted something uncomfortable on Twitter.

Samia — The Baby: You’re a rehabilitated theater kid who liked the “I’m Baby” meme too much. You infantilize yourself to distract from how sad you feel. Remember when you cried listening to the Fun Home cast recording in high school? Yeah.

Ariana Grande — Positions: You’ve secretly smashed all your friend’s husband’s junks to smithereens.

What Your Favorite Album of 2020 Says About You

Written by rolex