For a few years now, I’ve thought of doing my own “favorites of 20XX” list, but once I started writing content, it always felt too contrived for my liking. I never felt like I had experienced enough of a year’s new releases to provide novel insight, and including items that didn’t release during that year didn’t quite encapsulate the year so much as provide glimpses into the past. As a result, my lists have stayed in my drafts, accumulating digital dust.

While going through my annual motions this year, I initially experienced these same feelings, but I still continued to catalogue some thoughts. And as I was doing that, I recognized that many of my favorites of 2020 were, in addition to being great pieces, representative of my general attitude at various points of this trek of a year. Thus, I’m doing my list as a timeline of sorts, explaining how each piece was situated in my 2020 experience.

Some small semantics of note - I’m only considering 2020 releases for this post. And by that, I mean pieces that had accessible releases in the US during 2020. In particular, there are some movies that premiered on the festival scene in 2019 but were not available in my local theaters or streaming services until 2020. The dates for each entry correspond to when I first experienced that piece.

If you instead wish to view all of my recommendations for 2020, you can find that here.

I Disagree - Poppy // January 10

It’s been one hell of a year for hyperpop, and I’m glad it was Poppy who heralded it in with a genre-shifting bang. I hadn’t listened to any of the singles to the album before it came out, but I already knew and loved Poppy’s sound in spite of the awful things that Titanic Sinclair had done in order to create that kind of sound. Thus, when the first nu-metal strums of Concrete burst through my headphones, I was utterly shocked, almost as shocked as I was when the song abruptly shifted to a more familiar bubblegum pop verse only a minute later.

The entire project masterfully swaps between these disparate styles both lyrically and melodically, navigating the identity shift and legacy Poppy is trying to pave for herself. Songs like Bloodmoney and Fill The Crown tell of apocalyptic scenarios, while tunes like Sick of the Sun sing of the burnout that comes with Youtube fame. The album almost plays out like a space opera, culminating in a collage of many songs at the end of the almost prescient Don’t Go Outside, with the final rendition of Concrete’s chorus sounding like something straight from a rock musical.

I Disagree turned into what I wanted Reputation to be - a masterful reinvention of a heavily cultivated identity full of novel ideas and clever self-awareness. If Poppy could turn herself from an electro-pop tool to a nu-metal queen at the start of the new year, I could certainly make some changes in my own life.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire - Celine Sciamma // February 11

Finally being able to see Portrait of a Lady on Fire in theaters brought a weird sense of closure. I’d been looking forward to the film since I’d first read all of the press from Cannes the year prior. I had been checking showtimes at every theater in San Francisco on a weekly basis for months, and when showtimes finally popped up in January, I was ecstatic. To add to that, the first showing at the Landmark also happened to have a director Q&A with director Celine Sciamma. In preparation for the viewing, I went back and watched most of the director’s previous work, a process which only further excited me. The Diamonds scene from Girlhood is absolutely masterful, and it shows how much talent Sciamma has in conveying the nuances of female yearning and the societal pressure surrounding it. In short, my expectations could not have been higher for Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

And those expectations were exceeded. The chemistry of the lead actresses. The visual tension in each and every scene. The incredibly overt but squeal-inducing callbacks of Vivaldi and Page 28. The film was the most compelling love story I’d seen in a long time. It also had many many layers of depth to peel back. I have essays about color, light, and omnipresent patriarchal pressure jotted away somewhere in my drafts, and I’ve seen video essays dissecting many other elements of the narrative, cinematography, and art direction. In hindsight, the film overdoes things sometimes, but I happily rewatched each and every moment several times throughout the year.

After watching the film, I had no more films to look forward to from the 2019 festival year, but I was left with a film that I’m sure I’ll rewatch for years to come. In the months after I first saw it, I dragged almost a dozen friends to see the film, an action that only intensified once the film came out on Hulu. It’s the perfect balance of heart-warming comfort and slow-burning craft, and it embodied a sense of positivity that would be mostly lacking throughout the rest of the year.

Sawayama - Rina Sawyama // April 21

Early quarantine for me was defined by an endless realm of possibilities. Sure, I could no longer meet up with folks for in person activities, but that meant more time for exploration of new hobbies and deeper dives into existing ones. Like many others, I began baking a ton, tried out countless new recipes, read books at an increasingly rapid pace, and much more. It was an eclectic way to spend the time, cemented by the slow death of timely routines, but one that kept me happily busy.

Rina Sawayama’s Sawayama codified that feeling in music for me. If Poppy was novel to me for its dedication for exploring the boundaries of nu-metal and pop, then Sawayama was exciting to me in its pure diversity - its unwillingness to be tethered to conventional composition from any genre. In addition to solid takes on nu-metal and pop, the album mixed in soothing R&B tones and ever-shifting production that made every chorus sound unique yet distinctly Sawayama. Furthermore, the album also tackled a huge variety of social issues in lyrics that cut to the core. XS helped me navigate the addiction to online shopping that came in with the stay at home order. Bad Friend aided me as I reflected on the friendships which I struggled to maintain in a new world of Zoom and Animal Crossing. Tokyo Love Hotel further highlighted the fetishized aesthetic view of Japan that has slowly become more and more present in today’s culture. Rina has a way of pumping you up in a smartly reflective manner that calls into question identity, societal roles, and the many successes and mistakes that accompany one’s life.

That energy was what I needed to power me through the early parts of what has turned out to be a very exhausting period. The well-crafted synth beats compelled me to introspect and examine my relationship with many facets of my life, from friendships to family to consumerism. Sawayama made my possibilities feel endless, and I the energy it provided helped me through the transition to an entirely new lifestyle that we’ve all become too accustomed to.

Normal People - Hulu; Adapted from Sally Rooney’s novel // April 26

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Rooney’s Normal People. I liked the concept, and Rooney has a great gift for writing modern day banter, but I never felt like the tension was quite there. In general, I felt that her overly blunt physical descriptions distracted from the intense moments that were supposedly happening, and this led to a disconnect from the characters and a sense of skepticism regarding the stakes of their story.

The Hulu adaptation alleviated many of those problems to me by concentrating on what I was looking for - the vibes. Mescal and Edgar-Jones are able to transform Rooney’s straightforward prose into beautiful romanticized images of awkward people trying to navigate their uncertain lives together. The series accomplished two new things for me - it made me emotionally care for the characters in a new way and it made me more palpably understand Connell and Marianne’s respective pains. It’s one of the few recent adaptations that actually elevates the source material in my opinion.

Having such a well crafted romantic narrative served as the perfect distraction from a world where such fantasies became increasingly impossible. Although my college days have passed, I can’t help but liken friendships within the world of Normal People to dear friends that are still in my life, and I’m left with curiosity as to the new relationships I can make once all these shenanigans are over.

Survivor: Winners at War - CBS // February - May

Before 2020, Survivor had only existed as a faint memory in my head - some recollections of random episodes I happened to watch as a child and more distinctive memories of Total Drama Island and its absurd scenarios. After seeing a mention of the 40th season featuring all winners on my Twitter feed though, I decided to give Winners at War a look. That look turned into a rabbit hole of hundreds of hours of viewing and a thought-consuming obsession with this absolutely brilliantly crafted reality TV series.

While Normal People provided purely externalized fantasies, watching Survivor is like an interactive game, where you’re simultaneously contrasting highly edited reality TV depictions - the human quality of Rob and Amber’s love and the wacky antics of Tony’s ladders and spy shacks - with the complex counting logic of who is most likely to flip in favor of one alliance or another - an exercise that leads to greater appreciation for masterful moves like the 4-3-2 Sophie boot. I am absolutely in love with the diverse and relatable personas displayed by each and every winner and incredibly intrigued by the social strategy that’s ever present. The combination of these elements leads to an incessant need to see what happens next and long trains of thought establishing hypothetical scenarios and outcomes. A perfect recipe for staying busy during quarantine.

Since watching Survivor 40, I’ve binged upwards of 20 seasons, and each one has remarkably displayed a new facet of the fascinating social experiment. Although Survivor is very concretely treated as a game nowadays, it still functions as an excellent lens into how people around the country see the world and how there really are a ton of things that we can unite around.

How I’m Feeling Now - Charli XCX // May 15

Altogether, early quarantine felt like a time of possibilities - there was simply so much time to accomplish things and a weirdly unifying collective energy around trying new things that it seemed like quarantine would almost turn out to be a maybe positive experience for those of us fortunate enough to have the time and energy. I remember thinking I was going to finish War and Peace, write a screenplay, and learn a new instrument. The epitome of this possibility was the quarantine album. While this concept is quite overdone now, with many many artists having completed an album from conceptualization to release in the past nine months, in May, it was a relatively novel idea.

Charli XCX was perhaps the perfect person to take this idea and blast it out of the water. Over a period of two months, a slow drip of quarantine diaries and exciting singles built up hype for her project, and I voraciously consumed all of this content. In particular, I remember when the music video for Forever dropped. I was treated to a heartful supercut of thousands of fan submitted clips of mundane actions ranging from hugging to skating, from bobbing on a see-saw to launching fireworks. And over these clips, beautiful vocals describing devotion and love despite the inevitable rocky moments. The video truly made me feel a sense of solidarity - an appreciation for the shitty situation we are all in but also how much there is to look forward to on the other side.

The complete album How I’m Feeling Now was just as brilliant. Detonate is the epitome of chime-jingle-pop, c2.0 somehow got me to put three copies of the same song on my rotating playlist, and Visions instantly recalled all of the sublime imagery that I’ve collected from my experiences over the years. The most powerful memory for me though still remains the hours I spent watching Forever over and over, relishing in the little details and experiences of life that we’ll one day be able to return to.

Punisher - Phoebe Bridgers // June 18

Arguably no artist has had a bigger year than Phoebe Bridgers. While her prior output with groups such as Boygenius and Better Oblivion Community Center as well as her debut album Stranger in the Alps were all incredible, all of them were still distinctly indie - well received in specific circles but lacking hugely widespread recognition. In contrast, in the months since the release of Punisher, Bridgers has become a Grammy nominee, a queer icon, an ASMR superstar, and a fashion influencer among many other cultural roles she now occupies.

Punisher was definitely one of my more anticipated albums coming into 2020, and it’s release coincided with a swarm of personal and societal events. The most recent wave of police brutality protests left everyone in a daze, forced to reckon with a society that recklessly under-serves wide swaths of its constituents, to put it lightly. The original Juneteenth release date of the album and the early drop only highlighted the importance of the moment. At the same time, I was finally starting to experience COVID burnout, no longer having the mindset of endless possibilities that defined early quarantine for me.

Punisher captured that general feeling of powerless ennui perfectly. Although the lyrical content itself bounces on abstract heavy subjects such as longing, faith, burnout, and escapism, the soothing melodies of songs like Garden Song and Punisher generally left me in a morosely contemplative state. How could we reconcile the mythical American life with the shitty lived experiences of POC, gig employees, and the rest of the underbelly that keeps the country afloat? And without resorting to unfounded faith in silver bullet solutions provided by Chinese satellites, what could we do but scream into the void? Of course there are real approaches to these problems, but for much of June, Bridgers embodied the helpless angst that so many of us felt.

Transcendent Kingdom - Yaa Gyasi // September 17

Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom couldn’t have differed more tonally from her debut work Homegoing. While both books tackle the nuances of generational trauma in different ways, Transcendent Kingdom takes a more solitary and individualistic approach. Gifty, an addiction researcher, spends much of the present-day sections of the novel in her lab alone, experimenting on the mice. The menial actions of her day to day work are mirrored by flashbacks to her childhood that navigate her complicated relationship with her addict brother.

While the stakes of my own life are significantly less dramatic, I still found the depiction of Gifty’s working process to be quite representative of the slog that is work at home. When I read the book, I had just started a new job, and the experience of trying to get to know new coworkers in a remote setting while in reality staying in my room 90% of the time was a weird disconnect to navigate. There is a real sense of loneliness that has set in more and more as quarantine has dragged on, and no matter how collaborative work is supposed to be nowadays, ultimately, work has aired on the side of more individualistic projects to accommodate for communication friction.

The time for personal contemplation also mirrors Gifty’s experience. I’ve found myself looking at more fragments of my past, writing, photos, and memories, trying to construct a more concrete narrative of how I arrived to my current life. I don’t think I’ve had as exhaustive of a exercise in personal narrative construction since college essays, but the time has ultimately been rather fruitful, and I do hope to retain a focus on increased self examination even after society reverts back to its hectic norm.

Cyberpunk 2077 - CD Projekt Red // December 9

The two narrative video games I dove deep into over the year were The Last of Us: Part 2 and Cyberpunk 2077. Both games came with their fair share of bad press, a result of exceedingly high expectations set by the community, but both I think are underrated in how much escapism they’re able to provide. Not in the sense of creating an immersive world filled with strong character writing (though my somewhat hot take is that both do provide that), but rather through providing solid gameplay loops which enabled me to just focus on clear cut problems for a few hours. And ultimately, that’s what I needed from escapism this year - a simple people-clicking simulator.

I think Cyberpunk exemplified the power trip fantasy that such gameplay creates. If I wanted some fast paced firefighting where I effectively employed fancy button mashing, I had the option to just go in and shoot people. If I wanted to have a puzzle-like adventure, I could save-scum my way to a stealthy solution akin to a Superhot replay. And if I just wanted to watch my enemies burn, I could unleash a deadly contagion and witness the destruction from a block away. Cyberpunk not only provided me with something to escape to at the end of the day, but also gave me robust options in how I wanted to play that evening given my mood and energy level.

I think for me that’s what video games have provided during quarantine. They are able to give this artificial world where all your problems can be solved the way you want them. They imply the notion that a solution to a problem with very clearly defined goals is relatively easily within reach, or at least reachable within the timespan of a few hours. The feedback loops are rapid, and if something goes wrong, you can just revert to a more idealistic time. And in a year where it seems like nothing has had clear answers, certainty, even artificial certainty, is a welcome experience.

To the Ends of the Earth - Kiyoshi Kurosawa // December 13

A lot of films I had been looking forward to watching were victims of 2020. Dune, Last Night in Soho, The French Dispatch, and many more, all delayed. So when the Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s To The Ends of the Earth finally popped up on Metrograph, I was eager to enjoy some fresh material from a well-established auteur. After two hours of beautiful landscapes and another half hour of a director interview, I couldn’t help but feel like the film was meant to be watched in 2020.

To the Ends of the Earth is a weird amalgamation of a tourism ad for Uzbekistan and an examination of the frightening experience that travel can entail. The protagonist Yoko is the host of a travel program, but she yearns to be a singer. While on camera, she’s forced to display an artificial enthusiasm for Uzbek culture, when in reality, she finds the food disgusting, faces microaggressions from locals, and effectively tortures herself to do her job well. Yet in the end, she find the natural beauty of Uzbekistan invigorating and inspirational.

The film is a welcome reminder of why we travel. It’s easy to forget about how exhausting it is to plan itineraries, find interesting spots, and navigate cultural differences. This is exemplified by the film’s first half, which almost resembles some of Kiyoshi’s prior work in horror with regards to how much psychological stress Yoko experiences. However, when you find that sublime spot that feels like it’s calling out to you or meet that local who provides you insight into the problems you’re facing back home, it all is worth it. I cannot wait for the day where I can once again step out of my comfort zone and meet new people, navigate new places, and explore something completely foreign to me.