The 2020 Countdown After Dark: Five things you might have missed late night on Thursday

This year, XPN’s countdown is going full-on, unrelenting, 24/7 until we listen back to all 2,020 songs you voted for and reach number one. All of our specialty shows and features have been pre-empted. And quite a lot of music is happening in the overnights; on day one, we heard 82 songs between midnight and 6:00 a.m. If you’re not a night owl, here are five highlights you missed.

1. Hearing The War on Drugs’ “Up All Night” in the middle of the night

The spellbinding opening track from A Deeper Understanding aired, appropriately, at 12:40 a.m.

2. LCD Soundsystem’s “Home” dovetailing into Maggie Rogers’ “Light On”

Aside from the synth-pop connections, it’s almost like these songs were finishing one another’s sentences at 1:45 a.m. The only thing that could have made it more complete was Field Report hopping in with “Home (Leave The Lights On).”

3. Mellowing out to Brazilian bossa nova from Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66, and Antônio Carlos Jobim

The featherweight feels of South American jazz / pop brought some beauty to our late-late nights, most recently with the buoyant “Mais Que Nada” by Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66 kicking off the 3:00 a.m. hour, but earlier as well when the classic Jobim number “The Girl From Ipanema” blew in like the breeze at 1:26 a.m.

4. Pumping your fist to “Free Nelson Mandela”

The righteous energy of this anti-apartheid song and tribute to the then-imprisoned South African political leader by The Special AKA aired at 3:34 a.m.

5. Yodeling along to Hocus Pocus’ “Focus.”

If you’re one of those folks who always got a kick out of hearing this idiosyncratic 70s rocker from Dutch band Focus, I’m sorry to say you missed your chance at joining in the vocal mayhem; it aired at 4:17 a.m.