And That's A Wrap! The Music, TV & Film That Defined 2020
2020 has been a year like no other and despite the entire world coming to a standstill, creativity across all mediums couldn't be stifled, as evident via the results our annual Writers' Poll. Here's what entertained us (and kept us sane) throughout the year.
Written by Jessica Dale
"When women choose to capitalize on our sexuality, to reclaim our own power, like I have, we are vilified and disrespected."
That's what Megan Thee Stallion wrote in her The New York Times piece, Why I Speak Up For Black Women, in October, and given the "controversy" that followed the Houston rapper and collaborator Cardi B after the release of their single WAP, it's not hard to understand why she felt the need to write it.
WAP - an acronym for Wet Ass Pussy - was an immediate success. It smashed YouTube's record for biggest debut and claimed the title of the largest opening streaming week ever. In Australia, lead artist Cardi B secured her first-ever Australian #1 single and the pair broke the record for most weeks at #1 on the ARIA Singles Chart for a female-led hip hop song - a title that was still held by Salt-N-Pepa's Let's Talk About Sex from their four weeks at #1 in 1992.
Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter
Of course, for every bit of celebration of the track, it felt like there were equal amounts of criticism. WAP challenges the canon that women are there to be sexualised, not to be sexual themselves - so it was no surprise see conservatives like America's Ben Shapiro chiming in about the track (and quickly being Twitter shamed for his comments). Even Snoop Dogg - a man famous for an album called Doggystyle and songs featuring lyrics like "I get this pussy everywhere that I go / Ask the bitches in your hood cause they know / Bitch please! Get down on your god damn knees / For this money, chronic, clothes and weed" [2007's Bitch Please feat. Nate Dogg and Xzibit] - weighed in saying, “Let’s have some, you know, privacy, some intimacy where he wants to find out as opposed to you telling him."
Women speaking explicitly about their sexuality through music isn't something new - see tracks like Khia's 2002 track My Neck, My Back (Lick It), and Lil Kim's 2000 hit How Many Licks? - but WAP's domination of pop culture has been faster than any before it, particularly on platforms like TikTok where the WAP dance challenge launched the track to a wider audience.
WAP might be the most controversial song of the year, but it will also be the most subversive of the decade.
----------------------------------------
Written by Dan Cribb
At a quick glance, it’s easy to underestimate Canadian comedy series Schitt’s Creek. Its name alone suggests it might just be another easy-going-yet-instantly-forgettable sitcom, but the show, headed by acting legend Eugene Levy and his now widely acclaimed son, Dan, has this year cemented itself as one of the all-time greats.
At the start of 2020, Schitt’s Creek, which was just about to enter its sixth and final season, had a cult following, but its notoriety was nothing compared to the global phenomenon that it is today.
In mid-May, when Australia was in the midst of lockdown, the sixth and final season of Schitt’s Creek hit Netflix and it delivered everything fans were hoping for in its ending, and then some.
For those unfamiliar with the show (we envy the fact you have six whole seasons to binge), it follows the wealthy Rose family (portrayed by Dan and Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara and Annie Murphy), who “suddenly find themselves broke” and are “forced to leave their pampered lives to regroup in Schitt's Creek”, the only remaining asset in their portfolio.
It’s somewhat of a slow-burner and a series that some fans will preface with ‘you have to get through the first season’ when recommending, but it doesn’t take long to fall in love with every aspect of the show, and it’s one of few that can elicit almost every human emotion from its viewer in only a 22-minute period. Seriously, there will be tears.
----------------------------------------
Written by Sam Wall
And that is two years running. With the number of awards and milestones Sampa The Great’s picked up or passed the last year or so it probably won’t even register, but this is a first for us. Nobody’s ever taken out the top local performance twice in a row.
The Violent Soho boys came close, winning in 2016 and ’14. If you’re not looking to split hairs so did Nick Cave (kind of), with The Bad Seeds coming in at #1 in 2013 and Grinderman doing the same in ’11. Two for two though? Never seen it.
Getting our writers to agree on anything is like herding opinionated cats. It’s why we enjoy these polls so much - the results are anybody’s guess. Getting the same name for a category back to back is like finding out those cats have learnt the Nutbush. It’s the kind of thing that could only happen when an artist is really, really fucking good. Great, even.
Nobody who had the chance to see Tembo perform in 2020 (or 2019) is likely to disagree with that verdict. Everything she does seems considered in every aspect - music, fashion, choreography, videography. Tembo’s art is a mosaic, all these pieces combined to proclaim her self and her message - freedom, diversity, equality, unity - and her live shows are a potent realisation of that vision. Plus, they go off. If Final Form doesn’t make you move you shouldn’t be at a show, you’re dead. Our condolences, sorry you had to find out like this.
----------------------------------------
Written by Jessica Dale
When Miiesha's Nyaaringu was released in May this year, The Music reviewer Cyclone said that it "has to be a contender for 2020's Australian Music Prize". It was an early call on the album but an entirely accurate one.
Why you ask? Well, for the first time ever on this list, an artist has beaten Tame Impala to the #1 spot for The Music writers' album of the year - such is the power of Miiesha Young and her stellar debut.
It's been a triumphant 18 months for the Pitjantjatjara and Torres Strait Islander woman from Woorabinda, Central Queensland. Last September she appeared at BIGSOUND and within weeks of the event, she signed a deal with EMI Music Australia.
Just over a year later, she secured her first-ever ARIA, taking out Best Soul/R&B Release (beating the likes of Genesis Owusu, KIAN, Tash Sultana and Tkay Maidza in the category).
"I hadn’t quite found my sound yet and I didn’t know what was me and what I wanted to sound like," Miiesha told The Music on Nyaaringu's release.
"I guess that is something I’ll keep discovering. But I knew who I was as a person and where I came from, and so that’s what got me to write and sing about these things that led to Nyaaringu. Throughout the time I spent creating this piece with Steve [Miiesha's brother & manager] I really started piecing things together about who I am as an artist."
----------------------------------------
Written by Dan Cribb
The thought of being in a stadium full of people, rubbing shoulders and singing along to live music until you lose your voice seems like a distant memory and now a nail-biting activity.
Rock legends Queen, with vocalist Adam Lambert again in tow, made their return to Australia early this year, leaping from arenas to stadiums following their widely successful biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody, in 2018.
The seven-date run wrapped in late February on the Gold Coast and just two weeks later Australia went into lockdown, making it only one of a few major tours to take place Down Under in 2020.
Now, that’s not to say that Brian May, Roger Taylor and co topped our 2020 international performances list due to lack of competition - by all accounts – including our reviews – Queen + Adam Lambert would have certainly been a contender for the top spot regardless, especially given the upgrade applied to 2020’s The Rhapsody Tour compared to 2018’s effort.
Added to that, they also performed a headline set at the Fire Fight Australia benefit concert earlier this year, reprising their iconic 1985 set at Live Aid.
The Music noted that their Perth show at Optus Stadium was “nothing but quality AND quantity”, “the band wasting little time with banter and instead letting their respective abilities and the music do the talking, rolling through songs like I Want To Break Free and Who Wants To Live Forever back to back."
“One of the evening's highlights came when May was raised above the stage, producing ambient and haunting guitar tones backed by the endless abyss of space. He slowing brought things back to earth after a masterclass on rock guitar and slid into Tie Your Mother Down.
“Not that we needed any more convincing that Queen deliver one of the best shows out of any act past or present, the band offered up a show-stopping trio of The Show Must Go On, Radio Ga Ga and Bohemian Rhapsody to finish the set.
“The band's biopic put them back in stadiums where they belong and that couldn't have been highlighted better than it was during the encore hits We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions.”
----------------------------------------
Written by Jessica Dale
At times throughout this year, it's certainly felt like the apocalypse might actually, kinda, just about, be happening. Seeing Megan Thee Stallion and her Mad Max-esque BET Awards performance did manage to bring some hot girl shit to it though.
2020 could have been a year where artists retreated, locked themselves away and quietly worked on their next project. Instead, what we've seen are artists that have shown up, demanding equality and compassion (head over to our song of the year story here to find out more about that).
Megan Thee Stallion is one of these artists and it probably won't come as a surprise that the 25-year-old Texan lands at #1 on our artists of the year list. A key player in the year's most celebrated - and perhaps most controversial - track, WAP with Cardi B, Megan Pete has cemented herself as one of hip hop's most influential.
Then, of course, there's Savage: a track that saw Pete fly up the charts globally (including #4 in both the US and Australia), earned her a remix with none other than Beyonce and sparked another dance trend on TikTok. The year closed out the release of Pete's debut studio album, Good News, and triumphant single, Body.
----------------------------------------
Written by Andrew Mast
Not a lot of people got to the cinema this year. In fact, the theatre-going experience ground to a halt. Thanks to the pandemic, multiplex lights went out around the globe and film festivals went online. There was a revival for drive-in theatres and streaming… well, streaming just boomed.
That all means a very different top ten film list in 2020 - as voted by The Music editorial team and contributors. There is a lack of blockbusters and for the first time ever a direct-to-streaming film tops our poll.
i’m thinking of ending things is the most 2020 film of 2020. In previous years our film list has been topped by BIG releases made for iMax-like experiences: Black Panther in 2018, Blade Runner 2049 in 2017, Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015, Gravity in 2013 and so on. i’m thinking of ending things is the opposite of those movies: a small arthouse project based on a book only the most well-read of your friends know about, directed by a guy who once made a two-hour film about a warehouse that turned into a city.
It also launched many a “did anyone else see what I just saw or did I imagine that?” Twitter-conversation. A complex timeline-defiant psychological puzzle, i’m thinking of ending things (and yes, it is all lower case) is the kinda film we might not have had time for in the past. But in the luxury of our home, and all the lockdown time in the world to mull it over, we could soak this up, re-watch if we must and slowly untangle this tale of… well, to say anything more could be a spoiler.
Director Charlie Kaufman has previously befuddled us as writer of Being John Malkovich (oh hey, Spike Jonze again), Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (maybe finding his perfect match in director Michel Gondry) and his own directorial debut Synecdoche, New York (the aforementioned warehouse film). And amongst a strong cast that consists of Toni Collette, David Thewles, Jesse “Always Landry To Friday Night Lights Fans” Plemons, Kaufman was lucky enough to land actor-in-ascent Jessie Buckley (she already had our attention in this year’s Fargo outing and starred in our #2 TV show of 2019 Chernobyl). But most importantly for 2020, this film featured a dog that could be memed.
----------------------------------------
Check out a special end of year wrap episode of The Green Room podcast below!
More From Our Network
