# Musical Musings: Top 10 Albums of the 2020s (First Half)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-zealand-net-radio-7869194/musical-musings-top-10-albums-of-the-2020s-first-half
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-zealand-net-radio-7869194/musical-musings-top-10-albums-of-the-2020s-first-half.md
Podcast: [New Zealand Net Radio](https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-zealand-net-radio-7869194)
Published: 2026-09-23T02:52:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.nznetradio.net.nz/podcast/#ep-116
Audio file: https://www.nznetradio.net.nz/podcast-audio/Musical-Musings-Top-10-Albums-of-the-2020s-First-Half-2026-09-23-1452-licensed.m4a
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-zealand-net-radio-7869194/episodes/musical-musings-top-10-albums-of-the-2020s-first-half
Duration seconds: 4621

## Resource

Jarrett McCall is fast becoming a Musical Musings regular. He's brought us an alphabet of American 70s bands, twice; he's brought us Stereolab; and he's brought us the best albums of 2026 so far, twice. This week, on his sixth visit, he arrives with half a decade. Jarrett has picked his ten favourite albums of the first half of the twenties — 2020 through to the end of 2024 — and we're counting them down, one song from each, from ten to one. Anyone who only knows him from the #USAtoZ shows should brace themselves: only four of his ten are American, eight are fronted by women, and not one of them has come within shouting distance of a Top 40. We open at number ten with Blanco White, the Londoner Josh Edwards, who learned flamenco guitar in Cádiz and the charango in Bolivia and folded both into English folk — his song "Olalla" is a lament for the emptying villages of southern Europe. Then it's Brooklyn's Say She She, three-part "discodelic soul" with a name that nods to Chic and a Nile Rodgers seal of approval, and "Forget Me Not," their protest song for the Guerrilla Girls with a hook borrowed from a French opera. Montreal's TOPS follow with the closing track from I Feel Alive, the record that made the Guardian call them "masters of modern soft rock," and then Loma — Emily Cross, Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater and Dan Duszynski — with "Arrhythmia," from an album made in a Dorset stone house and a chapel while the three of them lived on three different continents. Number six is the strangest thing Jarrett has ever brought us: Tirzah and Mica Levi's trip9love…???, a whole album built from one drum-machine loop, and a song whose title, "2 D I C U V," nobody has ever explained. The top five starts with a cat. The Orielles' "Bobbi's Second World," from Halifax in West Yorksh…

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