Songs Most Listened to in 2020
By: Tim Shapiro
Tags: Music, Songs, Racism, Feelings, 2020

Not released in 2020, the ones I listened to the most

Thanks to the magic (it is magical) of the musical app I use, I can track what songs I listened to the most in 2020. These aren’t songs released in 2020. These are songs that spoke to me during this turbulent year.

What songs led you through 2020?

Yes, music has its own intrinsic value. You can listen. You can listen and simply enjoy the sound of the drums, the warm expression of the piano, the rhyme scheme that is wonderfully matched with the song’s meter.

Then again, music also has extrinsic value. The sounds travel beyond the sound itself. Something inside you is brought out for you to hold and see. “Oh, that is exactly how I feel right now!.” Or a song makes that which is difficult somehow manageable; expressed in the chords, arrangements and vocals.r.

Again, what songs led you through 2020?

Number one. The song I listened to most in 2020 was Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? Released in 1971, the music represents today’s social sins as well; racism is abysmal as always.

Mother, mother

There’s too many of you crying

Brother, brother, brother

There’s far too many of you dying

You know we’ve got to find a way

To bring some lovin’ here today, yeah

My second most listened to song carried solace. Remember My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music. Well, you haven’t really heard the song until you listen to John Coltrane’s take, made complete by McCoy Tyner’s piano that drives the meter while following Coltrane’s saxophone. How did Coltrane get such a clear, uncluttered tone? The version I listen to lasts 13 minutes. I could take an hour.

More solace: Carole King’s Been to Canaan. She’s known for her album Tapestry. That album is great. But it is not her best. Her best album is the 1972 release Rhymes and Reason (okay, listen to 1976’s Thoroughbred too). Anyway, Been to Canaan’s lyrics describe a promised land, the place you felt most like yourself, and you want to return. Listen to the song with headphones, earbuds, or whatever they are called. The piano is double-tracked. She’s playing two different arrangements, one on the left and another on the right. Been so long, I can’t remember when.

Now back to real life. I’m listening right now to U2’s song Walk On from All That You Can’t Leave Behind. The lyrics at the fade-out are the words of a spiritual leader. Drop it. Let go. Surrender. You don’t need it. A litany of 17 things to hand over. All you create. All that you wreck. All that you hate. Okay, again, try again, leave it all behind, all that you hate.

Let’s keep going at number 5. Yes, A Change is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke was on replay over and over again. Released in 1964, written soon after he was turned down at a Louisiana motel. It comes so intimately from his experience; it is one song that very few should cover. This is Sam Cooke’s experience. Let him own it posthumously. It was his life. Too much of it was stolen, including a night’s sleep at that Louisiana motel. At least allow his voice to be his own, always his own through this song. Things got to change.

If you like solo piano, if you want jazz piano, check out Stefano Bollani. The song I’m thinking of is the solo rendition of the ballad Everything’s Alright from Jesus Christ Superstar. The piano sound is richly warm. Superstar has aged better than its same era counterpart Godspell. Bollani has an entire album dedicated to solo piano interpretations of Superstar songs. In a year when almost nothing was all right, this rendition offered at least the possibility of one calm, quiet night.

photo by Shapiro

Another Jesus Christ Superstar song (remember I’m a minister), Could We Start Again Please? sung by Sarah Bareilles and John Legend, portraying Mary and Jesus respectively. All during Advent, I listened to this Holy Week opera. Go figure.

Up to number 8. Charles Lloyd is an extraordinarily gifted saxophone player. At 82, he is still releasing albums faster than Lewis Hamilton turning a lap at Monza. Oh, did I say he plays saxophone (tenor)? I forgot to mention he also plays the flute. The album is Lift Every Voice from 2002, the song Lift Every Voice and Sing. Can we just change this to the whole nation’s national anthem and be done with the war storied one we have now?

Have you heard of Glen Phillips? He was and still is the lead singer of the 1980’s alternative rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket (think of a less edgy REM, though Toad will surprise you with a revealing hard edge). The Phillips’ song that I listened to often in 2020 is titled Duck and Cover. It has a great hook of a melody. The song structure isn’t the typical AABA of popular songs. If it were 1976, the song would have been all over the radio. Oh, try to find the version on the bootleg Tornillo.

Seems like life is a palindrome

Cry when you die, cry when you’re born

In between it’s all about the ups and downs

Add them all together, they’ll cancel each other out

We are getting close to the end now. One more. Listen to Jason Moran who may be the best contemporary jazz pianist (though, not a contest). The song is RFK in the Land of Apartheid from the album Ten. Robert Kennedy was a bit slow to the anti-racism, social justice, stance against poverty positions (too busy fighting the mafia). Yet, when he did, he was all in. Have you listened to his South Africa speech in the land of Apartheid? He stands at the podium in Cape Town. Folks are worried he was going to, like a full force gale, go after racism in South Africa; as a guest. Well, he did, but not without a paradoxical first three minutes that turned the audience upside down. Such rhetoric doesn’t much happen these days. Nor are there jazz pieces as innovative and accessible as Jason Moran’s song about this moment in history.

There you go. The data on my playlist app calculates these are the songs I listened to the most the past 12 months. There is a reason these songs showed up. They challenged and comforted me.

What songs got you through 2020?