While it feels like seven years have passed since New Year’s Day 2020, we’re actually only halfway through the year somehow. As the world around us feels like it has never been more chaotic, we’ve been lucky enough to have been blessed with some great music to help all of us get through the days. We’ve had incredible and epic albums from artists like Spanish Love Songs, Phoebe Bridgers, Hayley Williams and Jeff Rosenstock. Their music has got me through many days in quarantine and they’ve filled me with hope instead of feeling down about what’s going on outside.
Hopefully the second half of the year is filled with the albums that have been pushed back or have yet to have announced release dates (Looking at you, A Day To Remember, Foo Fighters and Weezer). Even if they aren’t, the first half of the year has given us all plenty of fuel to power through the next five months.
For now, here are my 30 best albums of the year so far (don’t be surprised if you see several of the records on this list appearing on the end of year list as well):
- Spanish Love Songs – Brave Faces Everyone
- Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
- Hayley Williams – Petals for Armor
- Jeff Rosenstock – No Sleep
- Dogleg – Melee
- Run the Jewels – RTJ4
- Jason Isbell – Reunions
- Silverstein – A Beautiful Place to Drown
- Brian Fallon – Local Honey
- Four Year Strong – Brain Pain
- Ratboys – Printer’s Devil
- Beach Bunny – Honeymoon
- Mac Miller – Circles
- Pearl Jam – Gigaton
- The Used – Heartwork
- Soccer Mommy – Color Theory
- Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia
- Enter Shikari – Nothing is True & Everything is Possible
- Hum – Inlet
- Lil Uzi Vert – Eternal Atake
- Anti-Flag – 20/20 Vision
- Violent Soho – Everything is A-Ok
- LAUV – How I’m Feeling
- The Weeknd – After Hours
- Thundercat – It Is What It Is
- Katie Pruitt – Expectations
- Hot Mulligan – You’ll Be Fine
- The Bombpops – Death in Venice Beach
- Gunna – Wunna
- New Found Glory – Forever + Ever x Infinity