A Cultured Christmas: 10 pop picks for your music collection
Denise Chaila, in rehearsals for a live-streaming show at the National Concert Hall, Dublin. Pic: Mark Stedman
2020 belonged to rapper, singer, spoken-word artist and academic Denise Chaila. From self-monikered single ‘Chaila’, daring listeners to put respect on her name, to lockdown gigs in the National Library of Ireland and the National Concert Hall, and appearing twice on The Late Late Show alongside collaborators GodKnows and MurLi: years of hard work have paid off, and Chaila looks set to bring her poise, articulacy and confidence into 2021.
In a year where legacy acts played their cards conservatively and leaned into a wider hankering for the comfort of familiarity, it’s reassuring that Dylan, entering his ninth decade on this mortal coil, should be even more obstinate than usual on his 39th (!) album. Who else would lead off a major-label album in 2020 with a sixteen-minute single about the assassination of JFK? No-one, that’s who. Glorious.
You wouldn’t dare label singer-songwriter Roisín Murphy a legacy act by any means, though: she’s been a presence in music for over two decades, but she’s kept things moving forward in idiosyncratic style. Roisín Machine, an album over a decade in the making, set out to ‘solidify (her) legacy’, a towering disco slab delivered in with a panoramic vision matched only by the online visual event that accompanied its release.
A long-established pop property, there’s a feeling of cutting loose to The Weeknd’s fourth album, of a singer laying into ideas with a procession of familiar collaborators, exploring existential emptiness and the bottomless self-indulgence of celebrity. Such is the nature of the beast, the singles are obviously the standouts, including ‘Blinding Lights’, a seemingly inescapable synth-pop callback that held up radio playlists and streaming charts enroute to world domination as Spotify’s most popular song of 2020.
Cut from a similar cloth of pop music stretching its bounds, Taylor Swift's surprise eighth album saw the former country-lite darling further assert her independence within the major-label system, informed by a years-long struggle with management mogul Scooter Braun for the rights to the masters of her back catalogue. The involvement of US indie staple Aaron Dessner (The National/Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival) on production came out of leftfield, as did an appearance on duet Exile from Bon Iver man Justin Vernon.
American emo-folk sensation Phoebe Bridgers has had an incredible year in her solo singer-songwriter body of work, with second album Punisher coming in for critical acclaim and streaming/sales success. On the cusp of a mainstream breakthrough, she’s recently made headlines for the appearance of friend Paul Mescal in the video for single ‘Savior Complex’.
The premature passing of emo-rap phenom Juice WRLD in late 2019 left a void among fans, and the rising star's planned third album was put on hold in place of a tribute record assembled by management and family. Mining a vault of over two thousand unreleased songs, the resulting LP, Legends Never Die, features guest appearances from collaborators The Weeknd, Trippie Redd, and Halsey, among others. Reviews took the record for what it was, a mixed bag of ideas that provides a poignant overview of the rapper's modus operandi.
From pop accessibility to retrofuturist tropes, the music of her parents' generation was apparently never far from the mind of Dua Lipa when fashioning her second LP from 60 demos recorded over the course of two years in studios the world over. The result is akin to other collections of wistful movers, no surprise given the influences cited, including Roisín Murphy, Blondie and Madonna.
Dublin punk four-piece Pillow Queens’ debut long-player is the sound of a gang of friends bringing their influences together, having grown together, in the practice space, on stage, on the road. But it’s so much more than the sum total of experiences and feelings. It’s a paean to love, longing, lust, discovery, identity, and in the band’s own words, ‘owning it’. What more could you want?
Following up the mainstream hype of debut LP Dogrel was going to be difficult, but love them or hate them, Dublin five-piece Fontaines D.C. have taken the measure of the world with expansionary second album 'A Hero's Death'. Taking a wider spectrum of influences onboard has reaped critical and commercial dividends, including a Grammy nomination in the States for Best Rock Album.
