NPR Music’s Must-Read Articles Of 2020

Plus, remembering WFUV’s Rita Houston. by Marissa Lorusso and Lyndsey McKenna In this edition of the newsletter, we’re featuring the year’s very best interviews, profiles, playlists and essays from across NPR Music. But first, a note from our team’s senior director about the loss of our beloved colleague Rita Houston. On Tuesday, we learned that Rita Houston, program director and DJ at member station WFUV in New York, died after a six-year fight with cancer. Rita was a beloved member of the NPR Music family. In her 26 years at WFUV, she created a community of listeners who were devoted to her voice and curation, and she constantly championed new artists. [Brandi Carlile said on Instagram]( that Rita was the first person to play her music on the radio: “The only reason that matters is that it’s so important for a young person to know that someone they look up to believes in them. For me, she was that person.” Rita exuded passion about music, musicians and the power of public radio. She worked with NPR Music on many projects, including live broadcasts from Newport Folk Festival, [Turning the Tables]( and the Tiny Desk Contest. (She appeared on this summer’s [Tiny Desk Contest Top Shelf]( sharing her picks from this year’s Contest, and was even a Contest judge in 2017.) It was a joy to see live music with Rita. I stood with her at Newport in 2018 to watch Carlile deliver [a stunning set]( that included a beautiful version of Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You.” What I remember most was Rita’s reaction to the performance, and the way that she gathered friends and fans to experience it. She was full of life. A trailblazer herself, Rita championed women in public media – at the annual Non-Comm conference at WXPN, she brought women together for conversation and mentorship. Rita recorded a final episode of The Whole Wide World, her legendary Friday evening show, which aired last night on WFUV. [You can hear it here.]( Listening to her guide us through songs she loves is the best way to honor her memory. Our condolences to her wife, Laura Fedele, and her family. Sincerely, Lauren Onkey, senior director --------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter continues after sponsor message --------------------------------------------------------------- Our 2020 Must-Read Articles [ann photo]( Renee Klahr / NPR / Armon Dauphin / Getty Images - [John Prine's Songs Saw The Whole Of Us]( Ann Powers, April 7 When John Prine died from complications related to COVID-19 in April, Ann Powers offered a key to understanding why the masterful singer-songwriter would be so missed: “Storytelling itself, at least the kind involving guitars, feels a bit endangered without Prine's gimlet eye guiding it.” - [Hayley Williams Dives Into The Wreck]( Marissa Moss, May 6 Petals for Armor is the solo album Paramore’s Hayley Williams thought she'd never make: The result of personal and professional unraveling, reckoning and reconciling, it finds her singing about the versions of herself she'd created once she began thinking about treating femininity as a shield rather than a poison. - [All That Moby Needs Is To Be Good]( Grayson Haver Currin, May 22 Once an unlikely pop star, as of late, Moby has applied his zealotry to social and political causes. After decades of public scrutiny, as contributor Grayson Haver Currin found, Moby is maybe more perplexed than any of us about how to do the most good in the world. - [Clarinetist Anthony McGill Kneels, Pleads And Plays For Justice]( Tom Huizenga, June 4 In the wake of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police, Anthony McGill, the principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic, turned a performance of “America the Beautiful” into an act of protest against police violence. NPR Music’s Tom Huizenga had a deeply moving conversation with McGill about his rendition and the responses it inspired. - [Not-So-Lone Rangers: Out In The Country All Year Long]( Jewly Hight, June 11 The narrative of queerness in country music is often depicted as one of solitude, even in 2020. But, as Jewly Hight explores, the landscape of queer expression in the genre is broad, segmented and varied, and no one lone figure can adequately depict what it means to be openly out in country. - [We Insist: A Century Of Black Music Against State Violence]( Bobby Carter, Nate Chinen, Ann Powers, Shana Redmond, Oliver Wang, June 26 As protests took hold in cities across the country this summer, musicians responded with a new chapter in protest music. But the sentiments of 2020’s soundtrack characterize so much of Black American music. Compiled by scholars, critics and historians, our survey of music from 1927 to the present reflects the commitment of Black musicians to telling the truth of how Black people have been wronged, and survived, and fought back. Our look at protest music continued into the fall with [We Insist: A Timeline Of Protest Music In 2020]( a real-time tracking of the ways artists responded to the destructiveness of white supremacy and the year’s uprisings against it. - [Phil Elverum Returns To A Refuge As The Microphones]( Lars Gotrich, Aug. 6 Early in his career, Phil Elverum released music as The Microphones. Disorienting and ragtag, it was Big Music for Big Ideas. In 2003 he began recording and touring under a different name, Mount Eerie, but 17 years later Elverum has revived the moniker with Microphones in 2020, a single 45-minute track. But the name doesn’t matter, he explained to Lars Gotrich. - [The Sweet Escape Of 'Sayonara Wild Hearts,' Where Pop Music Is Recovery]( Daoud Tyler-Ameen, Sept. 14 We all found different strategies for coping with being stuck inside this year — for editor Daoud Tyler-Ameen, some solace came in the form of video game Sayonara Wild Hearts, whose soundtrack is full of an LP's worth of sparkling synth-pop songs. Daoud wrote about the transportive magic of playing the game — and listening to its sweet soundtrack — while stuck indoors. - [What Bruce Springsteen Lost And Found]( Steve Inskeep, Oct. 22 NPR’s newsmagazine shows feature interviews with tons of beloved musicians, but there’s only so much conversation they can fit on the air. Luckily, when Bruce Springsteen spoke to Morning Edition this fall, we were able to share The Boss’ full conversation with host Steve Inskeep about finding hope, revisiting older material and making his new album, Letter To You. - [Sade Saves]( Danyel Smith, Nov. 11 During an uncertain year, it was nice to be reminded that there’s always a Sade song for how you feel. As part of [NPR Music’s 20|20]( writer Danyel Smith traced her lifetime practice of finding clarity and comfort in the singer-songwriter’s music. - [Diary Of A Fugue Year]( Ann Powers, Dec. 16 Every December, your newsletter editors look forward to critic Ann Powers’ reflective take on the year in music. At the end of a year when nearly everything about loving music was turned upside down, we were especially grateful for Ann’s essay about how she found ways to listen closely and carefully despite the chaos. - [Turning the Tables]( This year, Turning the Tables, the lens through which we focus on recentering and redefining the popular music canon, shared a series of essays about foundational women artists and their lasting legacies — including a deep dive into the virtuosic genius of [Roberta Flack]( an oral history of [The Go-Gos]( and an exploration of a lifetime of loving the [Indigo Girls](. - [The South Got Something to Say]( Southern rappers' contributions to the genre have long been underestimated in favor of coastal hegemony – but the region has long steered the sound of hip-hop and deserves its story told in full. [Our Southern hip-hop canon]( The South Got Something To Say, is a celebration that recenters the South as a creative center of hip-hop and [honors the region]( for all that it has given to us. As part of the project, we also put together a playlist of [the best Southern rap Tiny Desk concerts]( plus shared essays about [how the region discovered its voice]( and how [dancing shapes the sound of Southern rap](. - [Louder Than A Riot]( Rhyme and punishment go hand in hand in America. On our podcast Louder Than A Riot, which launched this fall, hosts Rodney Carmichael and Sidney Madden trace the [interconnected rise of hip-hop and mass incarceration](. The podcast showed how [rap lyrics are used]( — often unjustly — against artists in court, how [conspiracy charges took down the mixtape game]( how a [rising rapper’s street cred]( was used to market his music and paint him as a criminal in the eyes of the law, how the trauma of incarceration impacts [women and families]( and how the [trap of gang affiliation]( impacts communities. [Listen to all 11 episodes now.]( --------------------------------------------------------------- P.S. On this week’s It’s Been A Minute with Sam Sanders, [hear a conversation with Phoebe Bridgers]( about her love/hate relationship with touring and her hopes for music — and everyone — in 2021. --------------------------------------------------------------- Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. --------------------------------------------------------------- What do you think of today's email? 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