There are still four weeks to go in this year to end all years, but for music accounting purposes you can, apparently, consider 2020 done. Judging by the flood of best-of-2020 lists that have poured out like aerosols and droplets in the past two days, we'll be viewing the music of 2020 specifically through the goggle- and shield-covered lens of 2020. How could we not? FIONA APPLE's FETCH THE BOLT CUTTERS (#1 in STEREOGUM), released in mid-April, "felt like a blessed cosmic gift from someone who had already figured this stuck-at-home s*** out." SAULT's UNTITLED (BLACK IS) (#1 per NPR MUSIC), which dropped on Juneteenth, "was intentionally made to uplift Black people during a calamitous period... and to unsettle anyone who's against their liberation." CHARLI XCX's HOW I'M FEELING NOW (#6 from the NEW YORK TIMES' LINDSAY ZOLADZ) features "timely allusions to stir-crazy anxiety and video chatting, but these circumstances have also made Charli extra attuned to her emotions, lending the depth of genuine introspection to many of these songs." And as for a certain watery summer single (#2 says the GUARDIAN), "The Republicans got it all wrong: the real transgressive delight of WAP was how CARDI and MEGAN revelled in bodily fluids during a year of (admittedly justified) paranoia about the minutiae of droplet transmission." As I pore through these annual exercises in imposing scientific order on an artform better suited to abstract and emotional order, I find myself taking that lens for granted—I co-sign all the albums and singles referenced above, and they all very much do speak to the moment in which they were born, sometimes directly, sometimes a little less so—but I also find myself appreciating the understanding that music can, and does, exist outside any given timeline, too. DELPHINE DORA's L'INATTINGIBLE, one of the QUIETUS' favorite French albums of 2020, is a "dreamlike environment where birdsong, rippling piano, chimes, strings, organ and wavering voices mingle and coalesce into beautiful, fleeting forms." Sometimes, oftentimes, that's more than enough. MusicSET: "Best Music of 2020: The Year in Lists"... ELLIE GOULDING has a few things to say about how the music industry itself recognizes music's best. The pop singer/songwriter doesn't mention the word "GRAMMY" in her MEDIUM essay "The Start of a Conversation...," but she wants to know when "factors such as industry relationships, internal politics, and magazine covers started being rewarded before the music itself" and why "People are being awarded—in the form of both nominations and category wins — for reasons that are hard to decipher." If I may gently check Goulding on her impression of how this works in fields other than music, I'm not sure I'd agree that, say, actors, directors and screenwriters are always "identified and praised for their notable bodies of work, not because their notable bodies or working relationships." For whatever that's worth... The first snippet of TAYLOR SWIFT's rerecording of her BIG MACHINE catalog has arrived via this amusing MATCH ad, for which Swift licensed the bridge and final chorus of her 2008 hit "LOVE STORY." And in case you or SCOOTER BRAUN or SHAMROCK CAPITOL were wondering how she plans to go about this project, be advised that it's damn near a note-by-note replica of the original. And it sounds good. Not that you thought she was, but she does not appear to be kidding around. The ad itself may throw a little shade on the matter... New York's JAZZ STANDARD is closing, a victim of the pandemic... RIP STEVEN TYSON.