CMU Approved CMU Playlists

On The CMU Stereo 2020 – Summer

By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 15 December 2020

Hey, it’s summer playlist time, everybody. Although I’m not sure part three of our best of 2020 playlist is exactly what you’d call summery. It’s been a weird year though, hasn’t it? We’ve established that already. This wasn’t like other years. Remember summer, though? Eat Out To Help Out, superspreading, all of that. What fun.

Tracks 21 through 30 of the playlist kick off with the short and sweet opener from Illuminati Hotties’ short and sweet ‘Free IH’ album which is notable (aside from being great) for its reference to podcasts. Maybe we should have done an end-of-year podcast playlist instead of a music one.

After all, you weren’t a real music streaming service in 2020 if you didn’t have a big podcast section that you were pushing hard. Especially Spotify, which managed to scrape together several hundred million dollars to throw at podcasts and podcast companies. Sorry, I went of on a tangent there – that Illuminati Hotties album really is very good.

You also can’t talk about 2020 without talking about Taylor Swift, which is not the only reason she has a track on this playlist. Her first surprise album of the year, ‘Folklore’, was surprising for a number of reasons. It appeared out of nowhere, plus it was in large part a collaboration with The National’s Aaron Dessner, and it diverged completely from the pop track she’d been on for the last few years.

Also, it was really great. It’s too early to say if the prompt follow-up, ‘Evermore’, is as good, but ‘Folklore’ has been on heavy rotation in these parts this year.

An artist we sadly lost a year ago, Juice Wrld, is also represented. It can be difficult listening to his music, because so much of it foreshadows his death. Also, his posthumous album ‘Legends Never Die’ was fairly patchy – mainly when it came to the latterly cobbled together collaborations. But there is plenty on there to show his brilliance as an artist.

Elsewhere, there’s a good range of genres and approaches from Billie Eilish, Jarvis Cocker’s Jarv Is, Raven Bush, Ela Minus, I Like Trains, Vritra, and the ever brilliant Deftones.

Listen to all ten of these tracks, plus our ten winter and spring selections, in the Spotify playlist below. Stay tuned for our autumn playlist on Thursday.

Here’s the full summer playlist:

Illuminati Hotties – Will I Get Cancelled If I Write A Song Called, “If You Were A Man You’d Be So Cancelled”
Juice Wrld – Conversations
Jarv Is – House Music All Night Long
Raven Bush – Moonglades
Taylor Swift – The 1
I Like Trains – A Steady Hand
Billie Eilish – My Future
Ela Minus – Megapunk
Vritra – What’s That
Deftones – Ohms