The coronavirus pandemic dictated everything in 2020.

Live gigs (remember them) were a no-go, but it allowed bands and artists to take stock and deliver one of the most exciting years for Scottish music that I have seen in the years of this annual 'best tracks' list.

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.

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

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

And we start with....

Part 1 - 100-76

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=100 Gallus - Eye to Eye

A searing razor-sharp riot of quirky post-punk mastery from the Glasgow quartet, who take their name from the pub at which they met. They say the lyrics are about "how polarised society was becoming in the run-up to the General Election, but then as we got closer to lockdown we saw how the pandemic was polarising people even further".

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=100 Letters From Mouse- Dunkin

A wilfully wobbly and floaty machine-pop with light beats that drifts into the subconscious from the underground electronic music producer from near Edinburgh. LFM also presents The Magic Window on madwaspradio.com, apparently.

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99 Steg G and the Freestyle Master - A Declaration

Steg G, the award-winning DJer, producer and mixer who has produced the beats for some of Scotland's earliest hip hop teams up with a long-time collaborator on cunningly crafted hip hop vs acoustic vs rap vs traditional Celtic drumming anthem which manages to avoid being too twee in celebrating the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath. The duo say, “pays homage to the spirit, ingenuity and heart of this beautiful land and all its inhabitants”.

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98 Zac Scott - Known/To Know/No

A beautifully soulful standout track from a masterfully fashioned,  lavish and honest debut album from the Glasgow based acoustic singer-songwriter who continues to work as a music teacher having trained at Lincoln Center Education, New York and having graduated from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he also won The Mary Stuart Prize for Public Speaking. 

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97 Popup - Panama​

This Glasgow four-piece indie-art-pop combo formed by old school friends 16 years ago and around long enough to remember MySpace,  have taken 12 years to follow-up their debut LP with their second Whimpers. This rollicking, wonky rockabilly standout makes me smile.

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96 Mima Merrow - Fire Song

Good Grief is the title of this Glasgow-based singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist's debut EP and the two words that can be used for this spine-tingling  alt-folk-ish standout track with its mix of confessional, wistful guitar, captivating harmonies and aching melody.

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95 Unify Separate (US) - Solitude & I​

It’s got drum and bass rhythms, prime Depeche Mode-style synths and fantastic vocals. "It’s a song that we’re very proud of and we hope you like it too," they said.  The Scots-Swedish duo led by ex-Geneva singer Andrew Montgomery produce one of their most seductive four minutes yet.

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94 Mike Vass - And In Light

The Scots multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer is best known for Scots traditional music so this enticingly five-and-a-half minute hypnotic electronic epic that went unheralded, it is fair to say, is a departure. And a glorious one.

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93 Snash - Pigs

"Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman..." Magnificent bark at the moon offering from Glasgow four-piece punk combo who have shifted from poppy new wave to find their fire and have more in common with nu-metallers Deftones. And that is no bad thing.

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92 Mogwai - Moon In Reverse

Atmospheric and elegant piano and guitar-led slice of class from one of Scotland's most important and most influential musical exports from a chilling soundtrack to the ZeroZeroZero series.

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91 Lizzie Reid - Seamless​

Sounding like a country classic with a definite Glasgow lilt.  "I listened to the demo on the train from London to Glasgow. I had tears streaming down my face. That was when I realised, I had written something deeply personal to me," she recalled.

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90 Bleed From Within - Ascend​

One of the most underrated rock bands in Scotland,  Glasgow's BFW hit the spot with a cunning mix of metalcore rage, pummelling riffola and melody from their fifth studio album.

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=89 I Solar - Bring Yer Army​

A rip-roaring queer-funk that distils the best of Talking Heads, Sparks, Lady Gaga and even Bauhaus from a new EP from the solo escapade of Glasgow's Samuel J Smith, of Casual Sex and Mother and the Addicts. Elsewhere, he is known as the mastering engineer and director of Green Door Studio in Glasgow, Scotland.

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=89 Helicon - Pure Filth​

Five-piece Glasgow-East Kilbride mash up psych-rock and shoegaze to create psych-gaze [I suppose] on this evil reverb-heavy four-minute wall-of-sound standout. This track, reminscent of early Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, from second album This Can Only Lead To Chaos bites and bites again.

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88 Ardentjohn - Orange Nights​

A delightfully tender acoustic guitar strum is the glue that make this refreshing wide-eyed summer breeze of a  "sunshine man is here" love song from the folk-pop combo originally formed in Edinburgh, and who now hail from all over. They say: "Orange Nights is the song that brought the band together many moons ago. Its upbeat melody and optimism shine through in this eclectic mix of dancing, singing and home work-out eccentricity."

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87 Popcorn Fiend - Bear on Bear

The Glasgow multi-instrumentalist with a ferocious electro standout track from his debut album. The track features the drumming of Ross Rankin who “is one of the best and most fearsomely entertaining drummers I have had the pleasure of playing with,” comments Michael MacLennan, aka Popcorn Fiend.

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86 Deacon Blue - On Love

If you thought the sophistipop legends were a relic of the past, that they could never capture the emotional pull of a Dignity, then rethink. This beguiling seven-minute-long closer from album nine sees Ricky Ross narrate six intimate verses of childhood memories from his Dundee childhood and falling in love for the first time, while rousing choruses push the song skywards.  "Do I need to talk everything out,  I'm only two songs away from your house."

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85 Liam Robertson - Wrestling Halfbeak Fighting Taxa​

A spooky but captivating minimalist sonic tribal house journey from the debut Village of Killin EP by one half of the Perth producer duo Clouds influenced by photographs of Lawers Dam and the surrounding area.

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84 Wake Up! - Altruistic Love​

Inspired standout art-synth journey that ebbs and flows in unexpected ways from the Edinburgh-based artist aka Callum Govan's super debut EP, The Powers and the Ways of Altruistic Love.

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83 The Rotations - You're On Your Own Again​

The Glasgow combo's first of two 2020 albums Over and Over was a delightfully unconventional mash up of different styles from doo-wop, goth, rockabilly and even elements of hip-hop, which should be wrong but is so right. This exuberant blues groove complete with rampant harmonica could have been recorded live in a smokey pub.

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82 Faex Optim - The Alchemist​

Edinburgh melancholic post-electro whizz aka Wes McDonald has been quietly producing captivating downtempo Boards Of Canada-esque  instrumental symphonies for some five years and has previously been championed on this list. His newly dropped Let's Pretend LP continues down this path and this second track is prime time space-disco fare. With BoC out of sight, a gap is filled.

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81 Fantastic Twins & JD Twitch - Ha​

Glasgow producer JD Twitch teams up with Berlin-based counterpart to create a intoxicatingly unpredictable twist of synth drone with a house twist.

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80 Bikini Body - So Posh​

Provocative Edinburgh four-piece with a deliriously cataclysmic R Rated post-punk rant featuring Vicky Kavanagh's shouty snarl about snobs from their acerbic debut EP. "I'm so posh, Boris Johnson's my dad."

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=79 Luke La Volpe - Dead Man's Blues​

An irresistible ballad telling the true story of a young man who took his own life from the gothic voiced Scottish Music Award Breakthrough 2020 nominee who describes his subject as a "life of the party" character with so much to live for.

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=79 Shears - Ideas​

A glittering slice of modern pop but with a black edge straight from an Edinburgh living room with the help of Glaswegian producer Dunt and mixing by Matty Green, who previously worked with the likes of Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga. 

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78 George McFall - The Boyfriend​

Edinburgh bedroom pop fiend twists glam rock, indie and electro-pop for this pulsating musical swagger. It is the first single from a new album to be released in early 2021.

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77 Kusht - Glossolalia

This is a playful, hypnotic instrumental from the cunning wandering Glasgow producer which is the aural equivalent ofTalking Heads being force fed psychedelic electro and tribal music.

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76 Damn Dirty Duke - No Meaning Exists Here​

It started off three years ago as an art installation created by Colette Dryburgh and Detroit Law using synths and props against a backdrop of self-shot film footage and it turned into a Glasgow-based industrial trip hop duo.  This recorded-during quarantine warped track starts quietly and sometimes discordantly with synths that have shades of Gary Numan and Nine Inch Nails and builds into a big soaring sucker-punch anthemic monster of an ending. They say the tune "delves deep into the topical subject of our mortality and impermanence on this planet. These concepts are explicitly portrayed through expressions of ritual, violence, material success, with the shedding of one’s ego."

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

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

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

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