Pandemic Playlists: My 2020 Thus Far

The cover art for Charli XCX’s “how i’m feeling now”

This is a playlist of something that began in January and wasn’t finished until July, and it holds pieces of everything that’s happened in between.

I wasn’t expecting this playlist to be an encapsulation of my phases of 2020, but that’s what it became. In January, I started a playlist for some romantic feelings I was having and enjoying. It was full of songs that made me feel warm and bubbly, pop songs with longing spilling over. I’d add songs here and there, not quite knowing how to shape them, simply listening to the skeleton. But then March happened, and these feelings, along with pretty much everything else, came to an abrupt halt, and I abandoned this playlist full of songs that were nursing affection that I no longer wanted to be feeling. 

In May, I started another playlist in honor of the 10-year anniversary of Sleigh Bells’ album Treats and the release of Charli XCX’s quarantine album how i’m feeling now. This playlist had some of my favorite loud, abrasive pop jams, and I spent a lot of time dancing around my room to this loose construction of songs in the stir crazy confines of isolation. But then June happened, and suddenly I didn’t want to dance at all, and so I abandoned this one, too. 

But now it’s July, and something is giving. About a week ago, my friend finished a playlist he had been working on, and it reminded me what a playlist can do: bridge the gaps. I went home newly determined to make something happen with these graveyards of wildly different eras of this same, cursed year. My solution was to find a way to combine them, gluing together the fragments to paint a picture of my year thus far. 

The playlist starts with “Caroline Shut Up” by Caroline Polachek, which was the first song on the playlist I started in January. The song begins, “Sometimes I wonder / Do I love you too much? / Then I tell myself, ‘Caroline, shut up,” and it’s a song about shutting down our own self-consciousness regarding our feelings. I followed this with Charli XCX’s “claws” which, instead, gives in entirely to feeling, singing “I like I like I like I like I like everything about you” over and over in the most adorable way. The next couple of songs don’t focus on romance, but musically they are upbeat and fun, some of the loud pop music I pulled from my May playlist. 

“Cheerleader” by Sir Babygirl and “Just Like Love (Jam City Remix)” by Perfume Genius is where the playlist slows and shifts a bit. “Just Like Love” is a more delicate song, and I followed it with Dua Saleh’s “hellbound,” which begins more delicately and halfway through starts using heavy, abrasive bass. I like to think of songs in a playlist as puzzle pieces, where one side connects to the previous song and the other side connects to the next. I followed “hellbound” with “A/B Machines” by Sleigh Bells, which is the loudest song on the playlist, prioritizing sound over lyrics entirely. The only lyrics in the song are, “Got my A machines on the table / Got my B machines in the drawer” repeated over and over for three and a half minutes, with guitar, drums, and synths orchestrating around them. “Hangerz” by Pussy Riot and “Motherfucker” by Weaves follow this in loud, angry solidarity. 

The beauty of combining these playlists was finding places to include songs I’ve discovered this year that have really moved me, but didn’t quite fit into either of these independently. “Some Kind of Cowgirl” by Slothrust is a much sadder song than many others on here, but its lyrics are self-reflective, self-conscious, and vulnerable in a way that bridged the cognitive dissonance I was feeling in trying to finish the previous playlists while the world was burning in all directions. I stayed on this beat with “How Many Disasters” by Angel Olsen, a very minimalist song where she sings, “How unfair to have a heart that’s still beating.” 

I didn’t want to end with sadness. I’m sad, but I’m not hopeless. “Slow Dance” by Evil matches the musical tone of “How Many Disasters,” but it’s romantic again, and it repeats “I just wanna slow dance with you” over and over. The playlist ends with “Must Be Fine” by Miel, which is more upbeat musically, and in the chorus she sings “I keep going, thinking every day / I’m awake, must mean I’m okay / I must be fine.”

I’m continuing to wake up, and I think that means I must be somewhat fine.