Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2020 Part 2 (75-51): from AC/DC to The Blue Nile

This eclectic annual journey began with a long list of over 300 tracks, distilled to this Top 100.

In this Scots playlist of the most essential tunes of 2020, you will find everything from alternative rock, dance, electronica, hip-hop, rap, indie choral, punk, post-grunge, folk and... well see for yourself.

It is a mix of the known, little known and the unknown, leftfield and mainstream,  immediate pop anthems and challenging experimental projects.

The 100-or-so will be published over four days with the final 25 revealed on Boxing Day.

READ MORE: Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2020 Part 1 (100-76)

READ MORE: Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2020 Part 3 (50-26)​

READ MORE: Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2020 Part 4 (26-1): From Lewis Capaldi to The Blue Nile

This is...

Part 2 - 75-51

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75  McRoy - No Fronts​

Paisley's fastest rapper in Scotland spits out the R Rated rhymes while a cutting grime vs rock churn loop ala Death Grips gets under your skin.

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74 Casual Drag - Johnny

The Edinburgh garage-rock trio's third single is a ferociously fascinating fuzzbomb of a post-punk rant which Idles would be proud

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73 Colin MacLeod ft Sheryl Crow - Old Soul​

The Lewis crofter, previously highlighted on this annual list,  teams up with the nine-time Grammy award winner who has championed him in this bewitching slice of Americana about feeling you have been born in the wrong time.  From a new album Hold FAst due out on January 29.

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72 Inkfields - Elephas Maximus​

The brainchild of Edinburgh-based singer-songwriter Samuel James-Griffiths, this engaging cut has the kind of angular art-funk structures that Foals would kill for.

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71 Conscious Route & True Note - Cat's Out The Bag​

The marriage of Edinburgh-based emcee, Conscious Route and producer True Note is on point with the socially aware vision in the lyrics and underpinned by killing electronic hooks.

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70 Fiskur - Too Slow, Too Far​

Glasgow's Ross Clark with a cutting melange of indie-rock, funk and soul that creeps right under your skin and track two from his first album proper.

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69 Joell & Chlobocop- Holla​

Edinburgh rapper Joell teams up with has Glasgow's Chlobocop who was included in last year's list, in this engrossing trap cut.
 

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=68 AC/DC- Shot In The Dark​

A standout rock-out crowd-pleaser from Angus and co from their seventeenth studio album which was number one across most of the planet. 

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=68 Emily Burns - Press Pause​

Livingston-born singer-songwriter clocked up over 16m plays on Spotify of piano-led ballad Is It Just Me which featured in our Top 100 last year.  This one did not get as many clicks, but is equally irresistibly singalong with added electro, glitch and quirkiness.

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67 Kaddy Kay & Steve Beats ft Paix - No Limit​

Enigmatic hip hop collaboration featuring Glasgow-based rapper/producer and sound engineer Kaddy Kay who is making music inspired by some of the greatest names on the scene, including Method Man, Kendrick Lamar and  Jay-Z.

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66 James Godfrey ft Robbie Hutton - I Don't Wanna Know​

Central Scotland DJ and producer (Godfrey) with a hands-to-the-sky slice of house-soul  featuring the tasty vocals of a Stirling singer-songwriter.

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65 Everyone You Know - Let A Little Little Light In (Wuh Oh Remix)​

Glasgow-producer Wuh Oh aka Peter Ferguson (who made the top ten in last year's list) gives an okay tune a mesmerizing makeover to create a psychedelic freak-synth masterpiece.

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64 Gefahrgeist - Graceless​

Edinburgh electro-duo with a beautifully soulful immersive sparkler with jazz funk inflections ft the ice cream vox of Fiona Liddell.

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63 Tamzene - Unreachable​

The Cromarty singer-songwriter who featured on this list three years ago returned with this stunning, vulnerable soul-tinged piano-based ballad.
 

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62 Scarlett Randle - Lately ​​

The Glasgow-based singer-songwriter was introduced to the world of music at the age of seven when she started taking violin lessons. In 2020 she produced this shimmering electro-soul gem.

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=61 T-A -T-A

The Fife-based post-punk duo of Sean Sneddon and Ben Curling take Jesus and Mary Chain alt-rock brooding dark rock template, ups the blues content and splashes licks of harmonica all over this earworm cut.

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=61 twst - Are You Listening (Hudson Mohawke Remix)​

Scots maverick producer Hudson Mohawke puts a heavy duty acid-electro coating to transport the Welsh alt-pop auteur into a new stratosphere with this banger. "Are you listening?"

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60 The Blue Nile - Wasted​

Class abounds in what is one of four unreleased songs by one of Scotland's greatest bands used in a repackaged and re-released 2020 version of High, their fourth studio album from 2004.

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59 Snowgoose- Who Will You Choose​

Guitarist Jim McCulloch and singer Anna Sheard are supported by a who’s who of Scottish pop music, including members of Belle & Sebastian and Teenage Fanclub on their second album. Too many chefs? This luscious track is like a cunning 2020 reboot of 60s west coast psychedelia vs early ‘70s folk-rock that sounds like it is a lost The Mamas and the Papas classic with all the 'oohs' and 'aahs' that you might expect.

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58 LivMassive & Hessian Renegade - Seven Years​

The final track off this Glasgow-based marriage of classical and hip hop is the most tender and cinematic track off the Erocean EP featuring the minds of LivMassive aka Rachael Olivia Black with the rave-rap monsters Hessian Renegade.

57 Hugh Kelly -  Behind Us​

University of Glasgow music degree student managed to release this three minutes of intoxicating pop-soul in between studies.

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56 Fair Mothers - Magic Bullets For Dracula​​

Stonehaven's Keith Allan is behind this dreamy melancholic piano-led opener from the In Monochrome album.

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55 Christy - Remember Me Well​

This singer-songwriter is following in the forlorn footsteps of Lewis Capaldi having gone from busking in Glasgow to boyband life to playing the lead in a Disney series.

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54 The Grand Gestures ft Emma Pollock- A Certain Compulsion (White Label Remix)

An enchanting Portishead-like melancholic standout from a compilation of the best bits by Jan Burnett, the front man of John Peel lo-fi post punk favourites Spare Snare of Dundee.

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53 Taahliah- Forever (Remix)​

Inventively warped thumping dancefloor explosion from the first black trans DJ and producer to be nominated and and win in two categories in the Scottish Alternative Music Awards.

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52 Kinbote - (On A String)​

A ramshackle, glitching collage of broken Yamaha keyboard and sounds from a PO-33 pocket sampler that is an almighty, alluring aural throb featuring the deadpan vox of Scots synthetic found-sounds producer Matt Gibb with an air of disorientation that is a template for debut album Shifting Distance. "You're written word became a corridor of doubt". He says it is about being about “a specific period of time when I was doing a summer internship and didn’t know anyone and I spent a lot of time in my room watching Westworld. It was probably the hardest song to mix on the whole album because there’s so much going on.”

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51 Close Lobsters - Godless​

It has been nearly 35 years since Bob Burnett, Tom Donnelly, and Stewart McFayden formed this indie-pop combo in Paisley and came to prominence with a track on the NME’s C86 compilation. A seventh album landed in 2020 and the second single was this searing anthem that the Psychedelic Furs would be proud of.

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The full 'best of' is available on this Spotify playlist.  That is, those tracks which are on the platform.

This is the YouTube Top 100 playlist (minus those that aren't on the platform)

READ MORE: Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2020 Part 1 (100-76)

READ MORE: Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2020 Part 3 (50-26)​

READ MORE: Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2020 Part 4 (26-1): From Lewis Capaldi to The Blue Nile