Man, what a year. It was dominated by Taylor Swift and I wrote one of my favorite pieces about attending two stops of The Eras Tour. I attended Furnace Fest for the third year in a row, but didn’t write about it this time. It’s been a tough year with a lot of loss. But music has really helped me through. It’s been the year of the EP, with some absolute juggernauts represented below including as my AOTY. Gonna share some of my favorite songs of the year interspersed with their albums. Definitely check them out if you haven’t. Happy New Year!

Well, we’re two years into a pandemic and art remains more important than ever in helping us cope with our daily lives. Earlier this year I got to attend Furnace Fest and it reminded me more than ever how much live music means to me and how much I used to love heavier music. In fact, as you can see by the top end of my list below, it drove me to really rekindle the fire. And with Underoath’s new album kicking off 2022 and my ticket for Furnace Fest 22 pre-ordered already, I don’t see that dying any time soon.

My big personal news this year is that I ran my first marathon after two major postponements, a minor leg injury, and over 1100 miles run. Through this training, I was able to read well over 100 audiobooks. I can’t recommend getting lost in a book while working out more to escape your brain and the world around you for a bit. I’ve already signed up for a 5K in January and a half-marathon in March, but after C19 and Delta postponed the first attempts, I’m eyeing Omicron with a bit of hesitation.

I didn’t do as much writing for Chorus this year as I wanted to. I had the chance to write a fifteen-year retrospective for Underoath’s Define The Great Line and about my Furnace Fest experience. I meant to also tackle a retrospective on Copeland’s massively important Eat, Sleep, Repeat and mewithoutYou’s Brother, Sister as well for the same year landmark, but time and my brain got away from me. I also wrote a review for Kali Masi’s new release, [laughs].

To no one’s surprise, the only other writing that I did this year for the site were our retrospective/reviews of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) alongside Craig and Anna and Happier Than Ever with Adam, Aaron, and Mary. In the interest of full disclosure, these are far and away the most listened to albums of mine this year, but I docked the two Taylor albums ranking points from being 1 and 2 on my list for the simple nature of the project. Only a few albums since 2012 have impacted me like Red has, and none of them were released in 2021.

So, without much more preamble, here are my favorite albums of the year. If an album has one of my favorite tracks of the year, I’ve included in below instead of creating a separate list.

I wanted to call this piece, “On The Surprise Joy of Raising Chickens and the Importance of the Small Things,” but that would really bury the lede that this is an End of the Year celebration list. Because, somehow, in the myriad of catastrophes, pandemics, elections, family feuds, break-ups, loss of friendships, and everything in between, 2020 still managed to deliver some immensely great music.