Songs of the year, number 1: Balraj Singh Samrai. Pandit G. Gavsborg. Farah Ahmad Khan. Shanique Marie. Tunde Adekoya. Vikaash. - I should have hugged you tighter when we last met (Oh what a joy)

Created as part of Opera North's Resonance programme, which is supported by the PRS foundation's Talent Development Partnership and is aimed at supporting UK based BAME musicians, 'I should have hugged you tighter when we last met' is the product of online collaboration during lockdown by the artists Balraj Singh Samrai, Pandit G, Gavsborg, Farah Ahmad Khan, Shanique Marie, Tunde Adekoya and Vikaash. It was premiered on Maryanne Hobbs' 6Music show back in August, and received a very deep emotional reaction from her audience. 

The brief was to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on music makers but 'I should have hugged you tighter when we last met' goes further than that, providing an insight into the ways in which the pandemic and debates around institutional racism collide. There is reference here to everything from the high Covid mortality rate for BAME patients, to Brexit, to #ClapForCarers and its counterpoint campaign #YouClapForMeNow. Like an audio diary come collage, this incredibly moving piece packs a powerful punch, and it will leave you feeling both devastated and moved. It will stay with you for a very long time afterwards. 

Songs of the year, number 2: Overcoats - The Fight (Official Audio)

Overcoats early 2020 album The Fight proved eerily prescient in a number of ways, particularly the song 'Fire and Fury', with its references to the sky falling in. But it's the title track 'The Fight' that really gets to the heart of the matter. In a US where people were struggling and constantly fighting to get their voices heard in innumerable campaigns and battles even before Covid-19,  'The Fight' speaks of a sense of weariness and determination in equal measure. "Put the beer down" it begins, "talk to me now." It's a campaigning, fighting song for 2020 that gives hope and solidarity in equal measure but that never, ever pretends its ever anything but hard. "The only time to start is now" they maintain towards the end of the song, and you can't help but agree. 

Songs of the year, number 3: People Club - Lay Down Your Weapons

Something of a dark horse in the running, People Club only formed in 2018. They are based in Berlin but hail from the UK, Australia, US and New Zealand. They met via the modern day equivalent of the musicians seeking ad: Social media. Inasmuch as I can tell, I think 'Lay Down Your Weapons' is their third single. It has a brooding synth-y wonky undertone that is overlaid with pure garage rock assertiveness: MC5 meets The Normal via early Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Apparently they're really into Motown, which is interesting as you'd put your money on Nuggets instead really, but it just goes to show you can't always tell. Previous singles have already created a media buzz and its easy to see why. Expect to hear much more of them in 2021. 

Songs of the year, number 4: Harkin - Dial It In

Leeds finest Katie Harkin took time out from her duties in the Sleater-Kinney touring lineup to release her debut solo album in early 2020. An impeccable slice of indie rock as exemplified by the crisp, taut perfection of 'Dial It In' and the surging drama of lead single 'Nothing The Night Can't Change' (it was a very close choice between the two for this list...), she looked set for a great year... I think she did manage to get some solo dates in before the live music world closed, but it can't have been many. At least she's left us with the record though, and the quiet determination and shimmering steeliness of 'Dial It In'. 

Songs of the year, number 5: Kali Uchis – i want war (BUT I NEED PEACE) lyric video

Released as part of the To Feel Alive EP, 'i want war (BUT I NEED PEACE)' was recorded in lockdown and released in April. Its irresistible chorus and modern lovers rock sensibility made it the perfect bedroom pop anthem for lockdown, and its sentiments were probably widely shared both at the time, and since. "I got needs" she maintains, yearningly, while also adding, in timely fashion, "Tik Tok you got me fed up." Both timeless and very, very 2020. 

Songs of the year, number 6: Jorja Smith - Rose Rouge

Originally recorded and released as part of the Blue Note Reimagined project, which saw the current crop of young UK jazz artists re-working some of the labels earlier hits alongside jazz favourites from elsewhere, Smith's gloriously expansive and soaring version of St Germain's 'Rose Rouge' gathered a new significance after the death of George Floyd in the US at the end of May. In early July Smith unveiled a video to accompany the track in which she collaged footage of #BlackLivesMatter protests across the UK and US alongside historic footage of civil rights marches in the 1960s. She also announced that she would be donating all proceeds from sales of the track to Kwanda.

Songs of the year, number 7: Noga Erez - VIEWS - live at inDnegev festival

The first of a trio of singles released by Erez in 2020, 'VIEWS' shows that she has lost none of her instincts when it comes to skewering internet trends and social media mores. Delivered in her characteristic rapid fire style, the glitchy electro beats perfectly set off her scathing critique of influencer culture. The promo video for the track depicted Erez and her various rivals climbing a seemingly endless Escher style staircase, pushing past each other and stepping over the fallen bodies of their rivals. It's worth watching for the ending, just as this live clip is worth watching to see her bossing it on stage. 

Songs of the year, number 8: Jess Williamson - Smoke (Official Video)

There's something undefinably urban about the music of Jess Williamson that makes it hard to place her directly in the country music bracket. She certainly has a twang to her music, but her work has shown flashes of Patti Smith and Angel Olsen, not Linda Ronstadt and Neko Case. 'Smoke' is a good case in point: It begins like a country take on the eternal Saturday night but by the end of the song the guitars are surging and we're heading fast towards alt rock territory. The first single from the Sorceress album, it set the scene well for what was to follow. 

Songs of the year, number 9: Future Islands - For Sure

The perfect summer slice of synth pop, 'For Sure' slid into my heart as surely and subtly as it slid into the 6Music playlist. It was futile to resist its charms. What struck me the most about the song, or the band more generally, was Samuel T Herring's voice. That very lived quality in his voice. There's a creak there, a vulnerability there that provides another aspect to the song, that makes it something harder, less light, less summery somehow. That gives it an air of mystery and discord you wouldn't expect. 

Songs of the year, number 10: Arlo Parks - Black Dog (Official Video)

At the heart of the success of 'Black Dog' is its simplicity of message and the pared down musical backdrop created for that message. At a time when a lot of people are talking about teenage mental health, it's refreshing to have such a powerful advocate as the young London songwriter. Her hugely anticipated debut album will be released in January, and - assuming it's possible - she will be touring in 2021. 

Songs of the year, number 11: Zoe Graham - Sleep Talking (Official Video)

Taken from Graham's Gradual Move E.P, 'Sleep Talking' is a slice of finely crafted folk tinged indie pop from a young Scottish artist who is only just coming into her powers. With a great hook and chorus, it is stylish and complex, moody and introspective, building on her acoustic work. Great things are to be expected of her in the next couple of years. 

Songs of the year, number 12: Fiona Apple - Heavy Balloon (Official Audio)

Fiona Apple's Fetch The Bolt Cutters caused a definite ripple of delight when it was released earlier this year. It might have just been amongst the people I follow on Twitter, but it was definitely delight. Aside from the homemade instrumentation and overall sense of musical innovation, what felt most obvious was Apple's sense of rage. It seems wrong to describe her rage as 'tethered' on 'Heavy Balloon', but it would also be fair to say that it's not the most furious song on the album, and that it is one of the more understated pieces. This doesn't diminish the song, far from it, in fact the sense of seething rage barely contained is one of its strengths. It's a difficult piece, from a difficult album, but it certainly does stay with you. 

Songs of the year, number 13: Florence + The Machine, Light Of Love

Originally written and recorded as part of the sessions for the fourth Florence + The Machine album, High As Hope, 'Light of Love' was a previously unreleased track that Florence Welch chose to release in April 2020 as a fundraiser for the Intensive Care Society, donating 100% of her royalties. 

In-keeping with the themes of High As Hope, 'Light of Love' is an unflinchingly honest ugly-beautiful slice of self examination, the brutal lyrics contrasted by the delicate baroque pop and choir like harmonies of the musical arrangement and orchestration. An unusual choice for a charity fundraiser, but one that - weirdly - seems to work. 

Songs of the year, number 14: Laura Marling - Strange Girl (Official Audio)

A breezy two fingered salute of a song, 'Strange Girl' feels like a return to Marling's English folk roots. Both sing alongable to and anthemic, 'Strange Girl' rolls along nicely and has a comforting message at its heart: Just be yourself. 

Songs of the year, number 15: Lucky Iris - Get Ready with Me

Earlier this year, I made a playlist called Her which was inspired by a number of songs that had (mainly) been released throughout 2018, 2019 and 2020 that I felt were embodying the spirit of #MeToo in song. 'Get Ready with Me' was one of the songs I included in that playlist. 

If Robyn's 'Dancing on my own' is the definitive sad banger, 'Get Ready with Me' has a claim to the title of 'best song about gender politics you can dance to'. It has the feel of Sophie Ellis Bextor at her sophisticated post disco slinky best, but its quiet sense of assertiveness and observational lyrics put it more in the same lyrical camp as Gaptooth's 'Ladykillers'. There's an effortless ease about the piece that means it carries itself lightly while not being light in subject, and that's an incredibly difficult feat to pull off. They haven't quite hit these heights again yet, but I live in hope that they will again. 

Songs of the year, number 16: Patricia Lalor - 13th of January [Official Visualiser]

Irish teenage singer/songwriter Patricia Lalor has been having a good year in some ways. Still very much a bedroom artist, she adapted to the at home gig with very little problem and has continued to release new songs in an increasingly prodigious fashion throughout the year. '13th of January' was a slice of wistful folk pop that she released early in 2020, in which she sounds wise beyond her years, conveying a real sense of loss that will chime with many this year. 

Songs of the year, number 17: Christine and the Queens - People, I've been sad (Lyrics Video)

The release of the La Vita Nuova EP came as a welcome surprise in the early days of 2020, and its lead track, 'People, I've been sad' seemed to capture something of the moody melancholy of the day. Sad but sophisticated synth pop being very much the order of the day circa March. It's an elegantly understated piece of complex moody pop that feels both very of this year but also capable of enduring beyond 2020. 

Songs of the year, number 18: MENTRIX - WALK

Berlin based, Iranian born artist Mentrix released her debut album earlier this year. As the video made to accompany 'Walk' demonstrated, her art is about both the visual and the musical. Her music stems from Sufism and traditional middle eastern percussion as much as european industrial noise, and there's a kind of brooding intent that is shown best by 'Walk' and it's accompanying video. Had the pandemic not happened, she would undoubtably have toured and her album might have received wider recognition. It is to be hoped that we hear more from her in 2021.

Songs of the year, number 19: Nadine Shah - Kitchen Sink (Live at Moth Club)

The loping almost feline tension of this song sets the scene for the album of the same name. There's a definite tension between Shah, the artist returning to the area she grew up in, and the twitching curtains and small town gossip she sought to leave behind. It's very relatable, but it's by no way overdone, with the brooding tension of the music creating ballast and support for the highly observational lyrics. It feels more like a play or a short story than a song, the opposite of those kitchen sink dramas she namechecks in the early moments of the piece. Shah the performer is dialling it down in this song, but Shah the songwriter is at her sophisticated best. 

Songs of the year, number 20: Allie X - Susie Save Your Love ft. Mitski (Lyric Video)

The dreamy, blissful electro slink of 'Susie Save Your Love' is taken from my favourite album of the year, Cape God. It features Mitski and evokes fond memories of Prince and the Revolution as well as a time when we were allowed out to nightclubs and to have stupid drunken adventures afterwards. Those times will come again and, in the meantime, there's always Allie X, Mitski and Cape God. 

Songs of the year, number 21: Billie Eilish - No Time To Die

The unfortunately named 25th Bond film, No Time To Die, hasn't had much of a chance of a cinema life this year but its signature song has taken on a life of its own independent of the film. Which is something you could say of all the best Bond films but, given the kind of year 2020 has been, it's particularly impressive. Eilish provides a sophisticated slice of suitably brooding and atmospheric string infused minimalist pop that satisfies fans of her understated, slightly deadpan electro/acoustic pop as well as Bond song students. A perfect match. 

Songs of the year, number 22: Greentea Peng – Ghost Town

Released just before the first UK lockdown, this uncharacteristically political slice of brooding reggae and jazz infused anthemic pop has definite staying power. It was inspired by the continuing gentrification of London and depicts the demolishing of a community of high rise flats in Peng's neighbourhood. This isn't about progress she is saying, this is about homes and communities. And the destruction of those communities for the sake of profit. Like it's Specials namesake, it's a thought provoking piece that will endure long after the end of this year. As she says in the spoken word section of the piece, this isn't just about London. It's about all of us. 

Songs of the year, number 23: Phoebe Bridgers - Kyoto (Official Video)

Another slice of slightly scuffed indie rock, Phoebe Bridgers 'Kyoto' was another catchy tune that was much playlisted by BBC Radio 6Music in summer 2020. As an artist on a publicity trail that was curtailed by Covid-19, Bridgers had to get creative when it came to making the video for 'Kyoto' which is why there's so much green screen and landscape footage here. The song itself details the hectic mash up of touring life and personal life, something she'll certainly have been having an enforced break from this year. 

Songs of the year, number 24: JW Francis - New York (Official Music Video)

A big playlist favourite on BBC Radio 6Music this year, 'New York' was written by musician and New York tour guide JW Francis as an ode to his city. The resulting song is an all too brief slightly woozy slice of lo fi guitar rock that calls to mind both early Badly Drawn Boy and 'Cut Your Hair' era Pavement only with the underlying melancholy of Simon and Garfunkel. His debut album was released in October and he's apparently written shedloads of songs in lockdown so we can expect to hear from him in 2021. 

Songs of the year, number 25: Sarah Roston - Eu Incomodo (I Bother)

The title track from Roston's debut EP, 'Eu Incomodo (I Bother)' is good, fun, hedonistic Brazilian pop. Although this was her debut E.P, Roston is a seasoned performer, performing as part of an African dance company and as part of a pop big band orchestra too. As inspired by Beyoncé as she is by Brazilian pop, you can find out more about her here. 

The video to 'Eu Incomodo' caught the eye of Clash, who liked its mix of energy, musical styles and contrasting cultural and geographical faces of Brazil. This is not Bolsonaro's Brazil, this is something much more free, open minded and exuberant. 

And it's a damn good bop it has to be said. 

The big end of year roundup post

Hello and welcome to this years end of year roundup post! 

It goes without saying that 2020 has been a very weird and frequently upsetting year, and it is because of Covid that there's no gigs category in this years lists. When I looked back at last years list I realised that I didn't include a gigs list last year either,  but that this was due to the opposite problem: An abundance of riches rather than the desert of live there's been this year. 

I'd have to be more than optimistic to be thinking about what might or might not happen to live music in 2021, so I won't make any promises about a best gigs list for next year either. We will have to see. 

Hopefully you'll find some interesting things to listen to and read amongst what follows. As has been the case over the past couple of years, I will be running my songs of the year as individual blog posts counting down over the next few weeks, starting from tomorrow.

Albums of the year 

12) Half Waif, The Caretaker

11) Katy J Pearson, Return

10) Nadine Shah, Kitchen Sink

9) Emmy The Great, April / 月音

8) Laura Marling, Song For Our Daughter

7) North Americans, Roped In

6) Fiona Apple, Fetch The Bolt Cutters

5) Kelly Lee Owens, Inner Song

4) Jess Williamson, Sorceress

3) Overcoats, The Fight

2) Harkin, Harkin

1) Allie X, Cape God

12 books I've read and loved this year

Pierce, Tamora, Tortall and other lands

Hillis, Marjorie, Orchids on your budget

Ben Moor, More Trees To Climb

Davis, Caitlin, Bad Girls: a history of rebels and renegades

Collins, Bridget, The Binding

Fisher, Carrie, The Princess Diarist

Shafak, Elif, Black milk: on motherhood and writing

Rubenhold, Hallie, The Five: the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper

Peters, Ellis, Dead Man's Ransom

Haynes, Natalie, A Thousand Ships

Ribchester, Lucy, The Hourglass Factory

Banine, Days in the Caucasus

12 classic podcast serials and episodes from 2020

Podcasts have really come into their own this year, with audio production seemingly proving easier to finesse in a lockdown environment than audio-visual productions. As such, it goes without saying that there's been some really good podcasts this year, and that many of them have some kind of Covid related link. The BBC World Service's, Coronavirus Global Update was established in March 2020 with the specific intention of processing and distributing information about the pandemic, and while rarely included in lists of Covid podcasts, has been quietly punching above its weight ever since.

Similarly, the existing US design podcast 99% Invisible made some great pandemic related content this year, including their episode about China and East Asia's relationship with face masks ('Masking for a friend') and a delightfully quirky episode about the history of toilet paper in the form of their 'Wipe Out' episode.

Page 94: The Private Eye Podcast did a good summary of their print Covid coverage in their 'COVID-19' episode, while work podcast Is This Working? looked at redundancy and unemployment in their episode  'At risk: Our job loss stories'. Ideas podcast Reasons To Be Cheerful looked at a number of pandemic related issues throughout the year but their episode on the current parlous state of the music industry, 'Sweet streams aren't made of this', was particularly strong. 

Tech podcast Reply All devoted an episode to the QAnon conspiracy in 'Country of liars' [If you'd like to pair this with another good podcast covering a related story, you could do worse than listen to Page 94's episode 'US Election Fake News Special'] and the BBC ran a series, Two Minutes Past Nine, that looked at the long shadow of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The BBC also gave us the highly compelling investigative podcast series Girl Taken, which revisited a well reported case that emerged during the 2015 refugee crisis and revealed a very different picture to what was originally thought.  

At the more quirky end of history, new podcast We Are History gave us an episode on 'The British Invasion of Iceland 1940', which is well worth a listen. I can also heartily recommend the episode on the Suez Crisis, if only for the opportunity to hear one of the key political players being described as "Off his tits on amphetamines". I think that tells you what kind of history podcast you're dealing with. 

Film wise, there's been nothing to touch Best Pick this year, even on the episodes they had to record over Zoom from three different locations. Their episodes on  'The Apartment' and 'Tom Jones' were particularly fine. 

12 articles I've enjoyed this year [Non-Covid stories]

The Invisible Boy Who Became Mr Invincible (Aram Balakjian, Narratively)

The tragedy of the climate dildos (Emily Atkin, Heated)

The children with no voice, the women who spoke up for them and those in power who wouldn't listen (Jennifer Williams, Manchester Evening News)

My secret life tracking down debtors (Angela Lundberg, Narratively)

The pied piper is a victim of the gig economy (Sentimental Garbage)

The infinite heartbreak of loving Hong Kong (Wilfred Chan, The Nation)

Good Teens With Guns (Hengtee Lim (Snippets), Medium)

We Need To Rethink Our 'Pics Or It Didn't Happen' Approach To Activism (Yomi Adegoke, Vogue)

What Happened In Bethel, Ohio? (Anne Helen Petersen, Buzzfeed News)

Taiwanese laundry-modelling grandparents are surprise Instagram hit (Cindy Sui, BBC News)

Food for thought: Change, The Clash and clootie dumplings as Murray focuses on a reboot (Murray Chalmers, The Courier)

The Writers Who Want to Get Americans to Talk to Each Other Again (Julia Métraux, Narratively)

12 articles I've enjoyed this year [Covid stories]

Coronavirus: Miss England returning to her job as an NHS junior doctor (BBC News)

The coronavirus cruise: onboard the Diamond Princess (Joshua Hunt, 1843)

The last days of school (Charlotte Lastoweckyi, Charlottes World)

Where you're out of work makes all the difference in the world (Clio Chang, Vice)

'The way we get through this is together' The rise of mutual aid under coronavirus (Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian)

The Quarantined Hippies Trapped in a Jungle Paradise (Alden Wicker, Narratively)

The inside story of Britain's fight against covid-19 (Simon Akam, 1843)

How to be punk in a pandemic (Dawson Barrett, Waging Non Violence)

Tune in, drop out (Ann Babe, Rest Of World)

Stolen bodies, a conspiracy theory and riots that gripped Liverpool in the time of cholera (The Mill)

'By May I'd made over £1,000': teen entrepreneurs defy the Covid slump (Lily Canter, The Guardian)

The inside story of how students took on the University of Manchester - and won (Mollie Simpson, The Mill)

First picture by Denise Karis on Unsplash

Second picture by Fallon Michael on Unsplash

Third picture by Mehrnegar Dolatmand on Unsplash

Fourth photo by Florian Wehde on Unsplash

Fifth photo by Pavel Nekoranec on Unsplash

Lockdown reads: Great journalism and writing you might have missed, part 12 (November 2020)

Good morning and welcome to this months roundup of interesting news stories. I began this particular blogging project at the start of lockdown one as it became increasingly apparent that the floodgates had opened on rampant conspiracy theories, disinformation and all sorts of other related crap that was making it increasingly difficult to distinguish reliable news sources from partisan ones. I don't think I've been able to help rectify this problem in any way as it's clearly much, much bigger than me, and all I could really hope for is to create a small pocket of sanity on the internet. Let's hope media literacy gets added to the national curriculum sometime soon and that changes are made in the wild west of the internet to make it easier to find out who owns and controls websites, news publishers, newspapers and broadcasters. And what their various business and news agendas might be. With this in mind, please do read The Guardian's  account of an incident involving press photographers and London's Metropolitan Police in November. Journalists, including photographers, are classed as essential workers during Covid. Something that is regularly forgotten. 

There's been a lot of news about vaccines over the past month, and you might have been finding some of the information confusing, or just have felt a bit overwhelmed. There's also been an uptick in vaccination related conspiracy theories and misinformation too, which means Full Fact have had a busy month. I've tried to select a mixture of vaccine related stories that will help with all of this, so strap in and select those that pique your interest. 

Firstly, Full Fact can confirm that A Covid-19 vaccine is not being administered via Covid-19 nasal swab tests. Similarly, that the UK government is not proposing to make Covid-19 vaccines mandatory. You can read their assessment of government plans to monitor Covid-19 vaccines for side effects here. You can read about Full Fact, and other stories they've fact checked, here. If you're not sure about how vaccines work, New Scientist's Sam Wong in his Science With Sam series does a good primer on YouTube. Perhaps the most quirky vaccine story this month though was the news that Dolly Parton had provided funding for the Moderna Covid-19 trial. 

In other Covid news, New Scientist provided an analysis of concerns about a new strain of the virus found in farmed mink in Denmark. Delayed Gratification published one of their longform slow journalism reports about the impact of India's first lockdown earlier this year and Wired have published a great, tech orientated analysis of how well Taiwan have handled Covid-19. City Monitor, the New Statesman's new urban site, published a great piece of data journalism last week which took a microscope to unemployment figures across the UK, and revealed some surprises. In New Mexico, the challenges of arranging school for children in remote and tech starved communities is given thoughtful treatment by The Independent. 

Another data orientated story, in some ways, is the exit of Dominic Cummings from Downing Street, which The Bureau of Investigative Journalism wrote about here. 

Following the spotlight on Manchester, and Andy Burnham, in October, Helen Pidd wrote a thoughtful profile of Greater Manchester's Metro Mayor for The Guardian. The Manchester Evening News did a thoughtful piece about the human cost of Covid via stories of local unemployment. In a similar Mancunian unemployment zone, The Meteor wrote about a retraining scheme that is helping unemployed theatre staff find work retrofitting homes to tackle the climate crisis. In other Greater Manchester news, there's to be a second phase of consultation, in the wake of Covid-19, as regards the fate of local buses. 

Despite the increasingly bleak midwinter economic outlook, there have been some good business stories recently, including the launch of a new online bookshop to rival Amazon, designed to help local independent bookshops. It sounds a bit like the Rough Trade cartel, only with bookshops. The Manchester Evening News wrote about the venture here. There's also a new UK start up making oat milk, and an ongoing scheme to recycle crisp packets into sleeping equipment for rough sleepers. 

The BBC provided a good longform look back at disability rights activism in the UK here. 1843 have some lessons in losing, CJR wrote about the Substackeri, Wired wrote of the broken dreams, and broken bodies, of would be e-sport stars, City Monitor wrote about an interesting housing campaign in Berlin, The Guardian reported that police are investigating claims that TV's I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here my have released non native species of insect into the Welsh countryside. Sticking with insects, there are some Very Hangry Caterpillars out there, and The Verge have a gently hilarious tale of an AI camera that fell in love with a football referees bald head after mistaking it for the ball at a football match. 

All images by me