Bonus Post — Why These 2020 Names Felt Real, Not Manufactured

Mar 18 2020

By mid-March 2020, what united artists like Celeste, Joy Crookes, beabadoobee, Inhaler, Rina Sawayama, Arlo Parks, Greentea Peng, Deb Never, Rachel Chinouriri, and Joesef was not that they were all doing the same thing. Far from it. What they shared was a sense of actual artistic direction. Most had already been highlighted on major early-2020 tastemaker lists like BBC Sound of 2020 or NME’s 100, but more importantly, they had songs or projects out that justified the attention.

That is the difference I keep coming back to. Hype is cheap. Lists are cheap. “One to watch” language is often cheap too. But when an artist has a real voice, you can hear it long before the market consensus catches up. These ten all had that in different ways: Celeste with poise, Joy with perception, Bea with instinct, Inhaler with scale, Rina with vision, Arlo with empathy, Greentea with atmosphere, Deb with tension, Rachel with tenderness, and Joesef with emotional mess that actually feels lived rather than styled.

Early 2020 felt crowded with possibility, but these were the names that seemed to offer something sturdier than a moment. Not perfection. Not inevitability. Just substance.

And in music, substance still wins eventually.