The Jenkins Family Top 25 of 2020
I usually sit down to write our quasi-Christmas card looking forward to reliving the joy and fun we had. This year, well, not so much. While we didn’t get to take a trip to a national Park or see the beach in the summer … or hang out with lots of friends in a brewery … or finish 1st grade in an actual classroom … we did get to spend a lot of unexpected time in Cambridge. Who knew we were actually buying a quarantine retreat last year? We made new friends and became closer to the friends we already had through all this mess.
Most importantly, we got to spend a lot of unexpected time with Etta. Time that we never would have had with her under normal circumstances. It wasn’t always fun trying to guide her through virtual school this spring or find ways to occupy her time while we tried to work. But it will be hard to forget spending time with her in the small blow up pool on a random Tuesday afternoon or getting on the bikes and running errands in town (with a stop for ice cream, obv). That was all precious time I never thought we’d all have together. In the search for a silver lining, that’s a pretty damn good one.
We learned how resilient and tough she can be. She’s really thriving in her small school environment. I never thought we’d do private school, but these are special circumstances and we’re lucky that we could make that work for her. While Amy and I constantly complain about how uncomfortable our masks are, Etta is wearing hers for 8 ours a day without even thinking about it. She’s tough, smart, funny, and creative.
Amy was insanely busy this year. Something about running a program called the “Pandemic Prevention Platform” in the middle of a pandemic. She got to learn the joys of teleworking, all while making a real difference in the pandemic and pushing forward ideas that resulted in vaccines in record time and therapeutics that are actually saving lives. She got to learn the joys of dealing with the press and ended up on CBS This Morning. At the end of the year, all that hard work ended up with her being named DARPA’s Program Manager of the Year. We couldn’t be prouder of her.
Neil’s year started with him and his trusty intern Maybelle getting used to each other, training and taking breaks from work for dog walking. Once we finally aligned out schedules and fell into a good rhythm, March hit and we had a new coworker and another intern in the home office. I missed the opportunity to travel and see old friends and make new ones. We still made good progress and did good work, but I’d be lying if I said it was fun this year.
Noah made the decision early in the pandemic to move in with his girlfriend’s family instead of trekking over to Cambridge with us. That decision was clearly good for him and has led to them getting their own place. He’s started working at FedEx and though the hours are awful, he is doing well. We’re proud of his hard work as he finds his own path.
So yeah. 2020 sucks and everyone hates it. Having made that obvious caveat, we made the best out of it that we could, finding joy in each other’s company. Lots of hours together also meant lots of hours listening to music together, and we hope our annual list of our Top 25 songs of the year brings you a little joy as well.
Here’s the link to the Spotify Playlist
Here’s the link to the YouTube Playlist
Intro: “6 Feet Away” by Chromeo
So Chromeo made a pandemic-themed EP this summer and it’s full of hilarious bangers. I always hoped that the video for “6 Feet Away” would include Dr. Fauci singing to Dr. Birx.
25. “All the Best” by John Prine
I wish I had known about John Prine before he passed away from complications due to COVID-19 this year. His death led me to check out his music, and then I started to learn more about him and his influence on all of these other artists I love.
24. “The Schuyler Sisters” by the Cast of Hamilton
More about “Hamilton” later, but this seemed to be one that Etta was drawn to. As we’d drive around this summer, she’d sing the girl parts and ask me to do the boy parts. I would do my best to keep up with Aaron Burr’s rapping and not have an emotional breakdown during the “look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now” parts.
23. “Fantastic Man” by William Onyeabor
Amy: “Is the gazoo song really going to make the list?”
Neil: “For the thousandth time, it’s ‘kazoo,’ not ‘gazoo.’ And it’s actually a synthesizer, not a kazoo. And of course it’s making the list. This song slaps. … I think that’s what the kids say, right? Etta! The kids say a song slaps if it’s good, right?”
Etta: [rolls eyes]
22. “Maestranza” by Fleet Foxes
21. “My Love and Music” by Ebo Taylor
20. “Starting Over” by Chris Stapleton
19. “Time (You and I)” by Khruangbin
PSA: It’s pronounced KRUNG-bin.
18. “Just Bummin’ Around” by Willie Nelson
This song popped up as a Spotify recommendation and I added it to our (now) 272 song “Coronavirus Quarantine” playlist that generally gets shuffled for living life in quarantine. It’s a Willie Nelson cover of a 1950s Dean Martin song. It started playing one night when Amy and I were playing a game, and she started laughing hysterically because her grandfather used to sing it all the time, but he would flip the words around to “I’m just roundin’ a bum” because that word play was just a thing he did while singing. The song stuck after that.
Much later that we realized it was a great aspirational post-quarantine song. I can’t wait to grab my coat, my ol’ slouch hat and hit the trail again. I can’t wait to just round a bum.
17. “One More Second” by Matt Berninger
16. “Hungry Eyes” by TOBACCO
Now to take a break from 2020…let’s enjoy a string of songs from the 80s! I don’t think we realized it until December, but we listened to a lot of 80s music and 80s covers this year. Partly because of shows we watched (“The Americans,” the “Chernobyl” miniseries on HBO) and partly because we must have subconsciously been looking back to a simpler time when our only concerns were Reagan, crack cocaine, the Cold War, and potential nuclear war.
This is a rocking and gnarly cover and we’ve decided that “Hungry Eyes” is Maybelle’s theme song.
15. “Time for Me to Fly” by REO Speedwagon
Thanks to Netflix’s “Ozark” for letting us know that dentists love REO Speedwagon.
14. “Tusk” by Fleetwood Mac
Tusk and the next two songs are our favorite three songs from our binge watch of “The Americans” on FX.
13. “Games Without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel
12. “Slippery People” by Talking Heads
2020 was the year I learned that David Byrne was the lead singer of Talking Heads. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
11. “Never Tear Us Apart” by The National
And we’ll end our 80’s song cycle with a wonderful cover of INXS by JenkFam favorite The National.
10. “exile” by Taylor Swift, featuring Bon Iver
And back to 2020. Add “Bon Iver and Taylor Swift team up for an awesome song” to the long list of things I didn’t think would happen in 2020.
9. “All the Pretty Colors” by Sturgill Simpson
After Sturgill came down with a bad case of the ‘Rona in March, he decided to re-record his entire back catalog in a bluegrass style to fulfill his requirements to his record label and get out from under a major label. And man is it really really good.
8. “Here They Come” by Hamilton Leithauser
It’s genuinely surprising what songs resonate with people. For example, one day Etta asks us to play the song that “talks about fools being blind.” We had no idea what she was talking about. A couple of days later, this pops on the playlist and she’s super excited. “This is the song! I want this on the list!”
Done.
7. “Somewhere” by Cold War Kids
6. “Lilacs” by Waxahatchee
5. “Dragonball Durag” by Thundercat
This song is so dang fun. It’s imminently danceable and singable. I love all the jokes. We always replace the word “cat” so that they lyric is “I may be covered dog hair, but I still smell good” since that’s just a fact at this point in our lives. And this is just pure poetry:
You don’t have to like my video games or my comic books
But baby girl, how do I look in my durag?
Did I tie it right?
Did you wear that dress just for me?
’Cause I’m tryna smash
On it’s own, this may be a top 2 song. Maybe even the song of the year. But we purposely moved it down a bit on the list to satisfy my own head canon. You may notice in the video above that Thundercat is going around town “tryna smash” some lovely ladies with little luck. Then he bumps into the HAIM sisters and seems to make a connection with Este Haim, the band’s bassist. Their joint love of the bass guitar is clearly a big connection for them. Este then signals for Thundercat to call her…
4. “3 AM” by HAIM
… and it seems like he did. But maybe too much. And maybe she’s tired of Thundercat calling her all the time in the middle of the night to see if she’s up and she doesn’t want to smash anymore. But … maybe just this one more time.
The HAIM album from this year is fantastic. This probably isn’t the best song from it, but it’s our favorite.
3. “Can I Believe You” by Fleet Foxes
When a Fleet Foxes album drops, it’s a special day in the Jenkins House. 2020 may have sucked, but we could see some light shine through the clouds whenever we put on “Shore.”
2. “Is It True” by Tame Impala
One of the easiest predictions of 2019 was that a Tame Impala song would make the 2020 list. Great song, great album, and he put on some awesome “live from home” shows that you can find on YouTube.
- “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)” by the Cast of Hamilton
So yeah, we’re several years behind on the whole Hamilton thing, but I think you can forgive us. I’ve never been a fan of musicals. I listened to the album when the cast recording came out and everyone was freaking out over it, but I didn’t “get it” because I couldn’t see what was happening or differentiate the characters. Then came 2020 and Disney+. We started watching it the day it released with Etta and it easily changed the course of our summer. We all loved it — especially Etta, who desperately wants to be a Eliza Schuyler — and basically listened to just this album from July to August and often had the movie on in the background. We got to explain A LOT of history and politics thanks to Etta because of Hamilton and I think it’s sticking.
Why “Yorktown” as the song of the year, though? We built a “vacation” around it by taking a day trip to Yorktown to see where Lafayette was waving from Chesapeake Bay and where Hamilton instructed his troops to “take the bullets out your guns.” Etta had a blast when she got to see the cannon that Lafayette recognized when he returned after the war. That day was a highlight of the summer, so thanks to the $10 Founding Father.
Outro: “Theme from Gargoyles”
Thanks to Disney+ we heard this theme a lot during the pandemic. Anything to get some work done.
[23 seconds of silence passes as you think the playlist is over, but then…]
Unlisted Bonus Track: “I Know the End” by Phoebe Bridgers
This song kind of perfectly encapsulates 2020 for me in a lot of ways. Lots of quiet, low key feelings and emotions followed by a couple of minutes of screaming to just get it all out. Hopefully the end really is near.
Happy Holidays, all!
