[REPOST?] The 5 Best EPs of 2020

A new list from an old list??

Jan 21, 2025

Ah, 2020. The year of the pandemic and the world shutting down. Even five years later, it still leaves a searing impact on me, and it certainly affected my writing back then. While my original website for 2020 didn’t have a list of my top 5 EPs, I decided to accumulate the five highest ranked from my original list and write about them here.

Check out the original website here!

One of the more recognizable K-pop acts out there was in strong form with this 2020 EP. It’s pretty straightforward but super catchy, sliding between English and Korean vocals with ease. LISTEN

One of the more poignant synthpop acts of the early 2020’s was Christine and the Queens, and though that project seems to be dead and gone, its crowning achievement remains. La vita nuova is reflective and moody, quickly moving through its emotions but rich enough that you’ll want to return again and again. LISTEN

Orville Peck’s cowboy persona is a little too shallow to make a full length album interesting to me, but an EP? That’s where he shines. Show Pony creates some fantastic Western landscapes for Peck (and Shanian Twain!) to sing over, like the memorable trucker love anthem “Drive Me, Crazy”. It’s these short bursts that have turned Peck into a star. Now if only a full LP can be this good. LISTEN

What made WJSN one of the more exciting K-pop groups at the turn of the decade was their willingness to get weird. There’s wrinkles in each track on NEVERLAND that distinguish them from their peers, like the twisted synths on “Pantomime”. More traditional bangers like “HOLA” still hit too, and it comes together as one of the group’s stronger efforts. LISTEN

What 2020 needed was a fresh set of pop songs to break through the never ending black cloud that hung over it, so Michelle Zauner and Ryan Galloway delivered. Pop songs 2020 is jubilant in its isolation, melding elements of the two artist’s main bands with city pop and a bit of mainstream styles to make a supremely engaging EP. It was so hard not to have a pep in your step listening to these four tracks, even with nobody around you to share that pep. Zauner’s voice remains bright to this day, and I hope BUMPER returns in some shape or form, because even without a pandemic, joyous pop like this is always in short supply. LISTEN