2024 Year in Review
featuring my favorite music of the year!
Woweee, well, we’re quickly nearing the end of the year which means it is end-of-year list season:
Best Albums of 2024: Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, NME, The New York Times, Pop Pantheon (podcast episode), Brooklyn Vegan
Best Songs of 2024: Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, NME, The New York Times, Vulture
As always, certain artists and albums show up on each (like Charli XCX, Waxahatchee, Magdalena Bay, Kendrick Lamar, and Fontaines DC making basically every list this year), but I love that there’s also plenty of variety. Music is subjective, and that’s half the fun of it!
With the caveat that I am not a critic, these are my lists! These are the albums, songs, and music moments from this year that I love and that I keep returning to. This is not indicative of what is “the best” and certainly is not all encompassing. Just my favorites from a big year in music!
brat [and the extended brat discography universe], Charli XCX: Was there any doubt? I’ve been a Charli fan for a long time and have always felt like she should be a much bigger artist, so it’s been fun (and a little bittersweet) to watch her blow up in 2024. I love the party moments on this album, I love the introspective moments on this album, I love the world Charli created around this album. brat year forever!
Forever, Charly Bliss: This album hits that sweet spot of pop sensibilities/hooks/melodies and huge guitars and drums that I loveee. I’m not even sure what else to say- I have had this on repeat and it is great every time.
Don’t Forget Me, Maggie Rogers: I did not love Maggie’s last album, 2022’s Surrender (it was a little too self-serious which, I get! I’ve also been in grad school when everything I did felt very self-serious!), but Don’t Forget Me is a poppy, warm, and sometimes funny album that I really love. A little 90’s, Lillith Fair-esque. I saw Maggie on the tour for this album (she is a great live performer) and it all really clicked for me.
Honorable Mentions: Short n’ Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter; The Past Is Still Alive, Hurray for the Riff Raff; Alligator Bites Never Heal, Doechii; Bingo!, Alex Winston; No Name, Jack White; Romance, Fontaines DC; Live at The Greek Theater in Los Angeles, MUNA
“360 featuring robyn and yung lean,” Charli XCX: “360” is basically a Perfect Pop Song, so adding Robyn, one of my all-time favorites and the artist behind several Perfect Pop Songs, to the remix only made things better.
“Good Luck, Babe!,” Chappell Roan: I love that a song about compulsory heteronormativity is a mainstream smash. “You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling,” is my favorite line of the whole year, and makes me choke up every single time.
“Slugger,” SASAMI: A hooky bop about being an emotional water sign? I’m in. The drums on this are - UGH - so good.
Honorable Mentions: Everything on this year-end roundup mix! Narrowed down to 50 songs, only one per artist, and in no particular order. Tracks from Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, Maren Morris, Katie Gavin, Indigo De Souza, Clairo, The Last Dinner Party, Jensen McRae, and many, many more!
Taylor Swift releasing an album almost entirely about Matty Healy and not Joe Alwyn. I largely do not care for The Tortured Poets Department (read more about that here; these are the handful of songs I do like), but I do think it is hilarious/dare I say ~iconic~ to release a breakup album about your rebound and not your boyfriend of nearly seven years. You know that they say: every bait and switch was a work of art!
Lil Jon performing at the DNC Roll Call. In retrospect even more cursed and weird than it felt at the time, this is less a “favorite” and more something I can’t seem to forget.
Jennifer Lopez releasing the absolutely nutso longform music video, This Is Me… Now, and the accompanying documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, both of which are about how much she loves Ben Affleck THEN GETTING DIVORCED from Ben Affleck later in the year. Friend of the pod, Julia, and I watched these over the summer and agree they were some of the most insane things we’ve ever seen (and we watched Cats together). A truly bizarre glimpse into the alternate reality that really rich, really famous people occupy made all the more unbelievable by the fact that Jen and Ben divorced within mere months of these releases.
Honorable Mentions: Any! Chappell! Roan! performance!; the Challengers score absolutely ramping up the drama; Hayley Williams dedicating “Decode” to Robert Pattinson; pop girls battling on the charts; Tracy Chapman performing at the Grammys; Rebecca Black’s Boiler Room set, specifically when she mixes “360” and “Friday” [while we’re here! Can my 2025 wish be that Rebecca Black gets to have her true comeback moment?! Her new album is out in January! I liked her 2023 album, Let Her Burn, so I’m hopeful!]
If you missed the last newsletter, friend of the pod, Rae, and I went head to head drafting the best pop music of 2024. It was a lot of fun, and you can see our choices (and vote on a winner!) here.
Thank you for being here, for reading, and for listening! It really means so, so much to me! If you like this week’s mix, please click the “heart” button at the top or bottom of this post - likes help this newsletter be seen by more people!
See you back here in 2025!