The Top 10 Guitar Solos of the 2020s (So Far)

There’s no question about it: we’ve passed the golden age of the guitar solo. Lists of the best guitar solos of all time feature most — if not all — songs from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Those were the dominant decades for rock and roll, decades which immortalized the lead guitar as a second front man.

The 90s saw a sea change. It could be that the popular Grunge sub-genre mimicked the stripped-back punks of the 70s and 80s. It could be that Johnny Marr proved you can deliver legendary rock guitar while rarely taking a solo. It could be the rise of Hip Hop as the space most forward-looking musicians moved into. Hell, it could be that speed freak show-offs like Yngwie Malmsteen and Paul Gilbert siphoned guitar shred off into its own lame genre. Whatever it was, we’ve seen the elimination of solos from most popular songs.

But for guitar fans,  all hope is not lost. If you dig a little, you can find plenty of artists ripping fresh-sounding guitar solos. These are my personal top 10 guitar solos of the first half of the 2020s.

10. “Carousel” — Haken

Kicking us off is the Heavy Metal entry in the list. Though metal shredders — and especially progressive metal shredders — can get a little show-offy, the solo in Carousel by Haken shows restraint. It has all the sweep-picking virtuosity you’d expect from a dorky band that puts out 10-minute songs but mixes it up with well-timed bends and smart phrasing.

It should be noted that a lot of the best metal around nowadays doesn’t focus on solos. That doesn’t mean there isn’t fantastic guitar in the most guitar-based genre, though. Check out the work of Deafheaven for a mixture of gorgeous chords and brutality, and Chat Pile for some of the most punishing riffs of all time. Haken themselves are more noteworthy for some of the lines they play in and around the verses.

9.  “I Am The Cosmos” — Wednesday

Next on the list is Asheville-based folk-rock band Wednesday’s lo-fi cover of “I Am the Cosmos” by Chris Bell. The first track off the solo album of the underrated 70’s rock band’s one-time front man, “I Am the Cosmos” is the saddest classic rock ballad you’ve never heard. This cover features a more stripped-back production, with an electronic sounding plodding beat in the back. The vocals feel more like they’re in the glassy-eyed aftermath of a heartbreak, rather than the eye of it.

This cover features two weeping, David Gilmour-style solos from Wednesday’s lead guitarist, MJ Lenderman. This track is a treat for MJ fans, as he rarely takes solos on his songs. One of the innovations of the cover is that once the first solo starts, it never truly stops. The guitar keens over the second verse and chorus, adding to the tragedy of the lyrics while not taking up too much attention. MJ proves in his solos as well as his lyrics that sometimes, less is more.

8. “Satan’s Sister” — Classic Traffic

Classic Traffic is a tiny Jersey-based rock and roll band. They don’t have so much as a Wikipedia page, but they sure know how to lay it down. The rollicking sophomore track off their third album, Turn It Up, has a Thin Lizzy-style twin harmony solo in the middle, but I want to alert you to the one right at the start.

The track opens with a flurry of notes and enough blues licks and country-fried bends to make you heave. It might not be re-inventing the wheel, but boy, is it fun. This album is recommended to all fans of great guitar, with the opening track having its very own great solo.

7. “Rough on Rats (If You’re Asking)”  — Jack White

In the early 20th century, Jack White took over the world with a raw, in-yer-face, back-to-basics approach. Fast forward twenty-five years, and White shocked the world by returning to form when the world needed him the most.

The album is full of fantastic guitar, but the best solo is on the fantastic rocker “Rough on Rats”. The only thing keeping this solo from going up higher on this list is that the fantastic main riffs of the song, played masterfully on the slide guitar, outshine the solo, a common case for White.

6. “Kilby Girl” — The Backseat Lovers

Following the soft-loud dynamic of grunge but with the jangly guitars of indie rock, “Kilby Girl “is a summery rock banger that will have you singing along by the end. The song is so catchy (how catchy is it?) that you might forget it’s jam-packed with guitar.

At the end of the song, the two guitarists trade solos. The rhythm guitarist (also the singer) plays an improvised solo during an instrumental buildup, while the lead guitarist (whose distinct washed-out tone we’ve been hearing the whole song) creates tension in the background. Then the lead takes over with some pre-written repetitive arpeggios that sound fantastic in his unique tone. The trade-off is not just in guitarists, but in styles, recalling the approach of twin-guitar icons like Felder/Walsh.

5. “I Guess It’s Really Goodbye” — Nelward

I always laugh when “I Guess it’s Really Goodbye” starts. The artist, Nelward, a notorious video game nerd, and the opening guitar lick recall something out of Sonic Adventure. But as soon as the song kicks into a lovelorn frenzy, I remember the track’s brilliance in combining Sega and punk.

The solo to “I Guess It’s Really Goodbye “is a lesson in being concise. One can hear shades of Larry Carlton as Nelward deftly maneuvers the fretboard, recontextualizing the simple chord progression with perfectly placed chromatic lines. Add to it the video-gamey tone, and you have a perfect solo, dense with ideas. It could climb up higher on this list if it were just a little longer, but Nelward is still young and has time to give us much more.

4.“Afrique Victime” — Mdou Moctar

I’m not the biggest fan of extended shred solos. I like it when a solo makes use of melody, drama, structure and fits into a well-crafted pop song. This is why I find myself not listening to even the most skilled Jam Bands. “Afrique Victime,” by the Nigerian guitar hero Mdou Moctar, is the exception that proves the rule.

The tune is seven minutes of (mostly) guitar, but it’s the moment at 4:30 that I’d like to spill some ink about. The song’s desert blues rhythm increases in tempo, and Moctar clicks on an effects pedal to take it into turbo mode. What follows is dive bombs, arpeggios, and furious tremolo picking: a guitar apocalypse.

Though Moctar might not have the precise technique of, say, a Tosin Abasi, I find him a more interesting guitarist. Like another sloppy genius, Frank Zappa, Moctar puts every ounce of his blood and sweat into his solos, surprising you with nearly everything he does. The solo also reminds me of one of my favorite solos of all time, the gorgeous shred mess in the middle of Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality.”

3. “Noa Fence” — Origami Angel

When you think of a great guitar solo, you don’t usually think of wide-eyed puppy love. But that’s precisely what contemporary emo band Origami Angel serves up on nearly every song. ‘Gami delivers sweet, sentimental, borderline saccharine lyrics about watching cartoons and staying inside with your special one over sick riffs and guitar solos.

There’s a bunch of Origami Angel solos that could end up on this list, but for our money, the best is Noa Fence off of 2021’s “Gami Gang” (yes, almost all of their songs have cute pun names). In between the verses about telling off a Jehovah’s Witness, front man and lead guitarist Ryland Heagy plays a guitar solo that’s both positive and face-melting. What makes this extra impressive is that Heagy has no bassist or rhythm guitarist to back him up; he constructs the solo so that he can play the song chords in between the guitar-hero flourishes, effectively making the solo a call-and-response with himself. Imagine a guitarist with the patience of Keith Richards and the two-handed tapping skills of Van Halen. And put it over a song by Blink-182. Played by a guy in a Pokemon sweater.

A live video shows Heagy pulling off this solo. Even better than the solo might be the fact that he seemingly has no ego about it, going about his shredding like a workman at his craft. Before the solo even ends, he looks at his drummer mid-lick to sync up and is singing the next second. “Noa Fence” is a masterclass in modest guitar pyrotechnics… and multi-tasking.

2. “If You Hear Me Crying” — Cindy Lee

Pat Flegel, the enigmatic front man of indie rock legends Women, took a David Bowie-esque character to a new level with his persona “Cindy Lee.” As Lee, Flegel makes feminine, airy songs that sound both nostalgic and hyper contemporary. He takes this further by dressing in drag and using a pitch shifter to sound an uncanny amount like a woman singing.

In 2024, Lee released her magnum opus, Diamond Jubilee, a hypnagogic dreamscape of low-fi wonders. This is the best guitar album of the 2020s IMO, but public enemy number one is “If You Hear Me Crying.” Halfway through the solo, Lee clicks on distortion with both the volume and the gain set way too loud. The razor-sharp tone and abrasive volume meld with the gorgeous melody to create a beautiful and unsettling effect — a perfect metaphor for Lee’s sound.

Personally, it leaves me wishing more popular music would play with more volume, though I understand it’s hard. When you listen to recorded music, you can make it as loud or quiet as you want, making Forte’s and Piano’s effectively null. Lee subverts this by playing by picking her moments when she blasts the volume, surprising you whether you like it or not.

1.“Kiwi” — Quarters of Change

Taking the number one spot is the hyper-contemporary love ballad, “Kiwi “by Quarters of Change. Kiwi is built like guitar hero songs of old, like “Hotel California” and “Sultans of Swing”: great songs with great structures and melodies, but clearly building up to guitar, guitar, guitar. The vocals distinguish it from tunes of old, but the spiraling lick at the top shows you guitarist Jasper Harris isn’t playing around.

The “Kiwi” solo is all about set-ups and payoffs. Harris starts off by playing a reworked version of the song’s lead riff with a gorgeous repetitive pattern in between. He builds this up, repeating the pattern over again, but adding a tag to the repetitive lick that leads into virtuosic arpeggios, finishing off by hitting that repeated lick once more. In the last phase of the solo, he breaks out of the box and plays his own bluesy licks, but still finishes the phrase with the three-note repeated lick. The build of this solo dovetails with the use of repetitive structures to create a stunning work of art.

The masterful construction, the tone, and the touch of virtuosity make it easily the best guitar solo of the 2020s and my nomination for one of the best solos of all time.

-Christian Flynn

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