The Best Albums of 2024
Earlier this month, I finished writing my Best Songs of 2024, and now it’s out in the world in all its indulgently long glory. As you can tell by my uploading a year-end list at the beginning of March, that one took me a while. It’s mainly my fault; I started multiple projects at once while still working a full-time job, so the process was slower than usual. Still, now that it’s out and I promised myself I would actually post a Best Albums list this year, it left me at a bit of an impasse. I couldn’t make a fully written list again. Every time I’ve tried in previous years, I lose motivation, I’m unsatisfied with what I write, and I feel like they become less about the albums and more about mentioning the songs I didn’t mention on the songs list. So this year, I’m just gonna go for a “fuck it, let’s just do it” mentality and see how that goes.
So, albums in 2024! This was an outstanding year for songs, but I’m not quite as high about the albums from this year. It’s not that they were bad, far from it. I think it’s just that a lot of the most memorable parts of music in 2024 for me relied on the specific songs or moments that stood out to me rather than the albums they came with. Another factor, though, might be that the majority of the albums I listened to and loved this year came from acts I was already familiar with. This was an incredibly exciting year for my personal favorite artists, as we got new albums from Jamie xx, Marianas Trench, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Kacey Musgraves, Zach Bryan, Kendrick Lamar, Tyler The Creator, Billie Eilish, and Taylor Swift, all within a year! As such, I unfortunately didn’t listen to as many new artists this year. Granted, an artist I’d gotten into this year ended up surpassing all the previously mentioned artists in making my album of the year, but there still weren’t as many exciting discoveries as years prior.
Part of this is my fault. Because so many artists I knew and loved were releasing new music this year, I was hesitant to listen to too many albums at once at the risk of getting burned out again like I did in 2021. I already listen to 150-200 albums a year as is, and every time, things slip through the cracks in terms of albums I miss and albums I only listen to once that fade from my memory as I get to other albums. Something I aimed and failed to do this year was dive into albums of previous years to brush up on discographies or classics I had yet to get to. My annual MWE (Music Writer’s Exercise) in 2024 was dedicated to 80s albums, and I barely scratched the surface of that era, even with the full 29 days. I intended to follow up after February was over, but I didn’t do much of it at all, and most of those follow-up albums got reserved for this current year’s MWE instead (You can read my thread about it on Bluesky). I only explored one artist’s discography this year, which was Justin Timberlake. It was mainly in response to the release of this new album and recognizing that up until that point, the only Timberlake album I listened to in full was, uhh, Man Of The Woods. I owed it to a friend of mine to listen to his full discography and at least get a bigger picture if I decided to listen to his new album (Spoilers: I didn’t).
This all sounds a little bit negative, but I still really loved the albums we got this year. My list is admittedly predictable, but I’m no less passionate about these albums. All the artists I named earlier delivered, even if, for some, I’d place them among the lower end of their discography. But part of being a fan is recognizing your own biases, both in wanting your artists to do better and still loving the project you got anyway. I was especially happy to have loved Jamie xx’s long-awaited sophomore album, In Waves. For those who don’t know, In Colour is my favorite album of all time. It’s a deeply special album to me that came at a time when I really needed it. But with that emotional attachment and the increasing time since its release, I knew I had to temper my expectations should he ever follow it up. In Waves ended up very different from In Colour, more focused on dance grooves and jams for the club rather than the more careful, elaborate melancholy of In Colour. But it’s no less transcendent in how it finds its euphoria on the dance floor. It shows off Jamie xx’s incredible talent for arranging melodies, progressions, and rhythms to keep the song moving and keep the vibes lively and otherworldly. It lived up to the hype and was close to my favorite album of the year.
Other highlights include Kacey Musgraves slowing down to a folksy, soothing album about self-love and inner peace, Deeper Well. I’ve written about why I love the black sheep of Kacey’s discography, star-crossed, but it’s hard to deny that it’s easily her weakest album and doesn’t have enough of what made Golden Hour such a game-changer. Deeper Well doesn’t have that same level of emotional transcendence, but its gorgeous folk instrumentation and relaxed optimism still made it a comfort listen throughout the year for me. It’s nice to hear her truly understand and love herself and the people around her, being in touch with nature and the little things that make life worth living. I also want to shout out Billie Eilish’s HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, which I’m now fully comfortable calling her best album to date. A tight ten songs where Billie throws away all the expectations and burdens she carried through the past two albums and simply makes an album for herself. You can tell her mind is much clearer, and she’s in a much healthier state from how confident and fully formed these songs are. Maybe they’re at the expense of being less unique, but when you have standout songs like “LUNCH” and “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” backing them up, it’s hard to complain.
One of my favorite surprises of the year comes in the form of Pinball by MIKE & Tony Seltzer. It’s incredibly short and full of bite-sized songs, but Tony Seltzer’s vintage production compliments MIKE’s husky bars so perfectly that every song is just as memorable and mesmerizing as the last. Rap had a tremendous year thanks to hit parades like Kendrick Lamar’s gnx and CHROMOKOPIA being one of Tyler The Creator’s most engaging and perfectly fleshed-out concepts to date. But the tightness and endless replayability of Pinball kept it above those albums for me. Twenty-one minutes of nonstop excellence. Speaking of gnx and Chromakopia, those two dominated the last quarter of my year. gnx is an album I wanted Kendrick Lamar to make after Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. Lower stakes, more focused on bangers and punchy bars, a West Coast influence that gives his music more bounce, and more room for Kendrick to let out his goofy, comedic side that I consider one of his greatest hidden weapons. It was wild waking up late that day and seeing everyone freak out over a surprise Kendrick album before I even had a chance to get out of bed. The album is fully worth it, I’m bumping it even today. But I have to give the slight edge to Tyler’s Chromakopia, an album with just as many bangers and nuggets of comedic gold, but delve into themes of turning 30 and reckoning with where he wants to be in life, especially concerning settling down and becoming a father. You get to see all sorts of facets about Tyler, from his newfound love of polyamory to how he masks his insecurities and eventually has to shed that mask to move on. To even a huge revelation about his father that’s built up through his mother’s narration throughout the album, and what it could mean for the day Tyler does decide to become a father himself. I’ve seen a few people feel like Chromakopia doesn’t innovate the same way albums like Flower Boy and IGOR did, but to me, its strength lies in how it depicts Tyler’s growth. Both as a person and even as an artist.
I started listening to a lot of music in the latter half of the summer, and I partially attribute that to Lucky Daye and his album Algorithm. I’ve been aware of Lucky Daye for a while now, but he clicked with me this year when I heard the singles for this album and was flabbergasted by how incredible of a performer he is. He has the smooth passion of Usher coupled with the slick charisma of Bruno Mars (the latter who, coincidentally, has a writing credit on this album). These songs are clean. Groovy as hell jams, incredible hooks, high notes, and vocal runs that leave you breathless. It’s the kind of insane talent that makes you wonder how the hell this guy hasn’t had a rhythmic radio breakout hit yet. “HERicane” and “That’s You” should have dominated those airwaves all summer! I also want to shout out Remi Wolf’s Big Ideas. 2024 was a banner year for “pop girlie” music, aka pop music coming from beloved young pop star girlies with big personalities. Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, etc. And while those girls had some big moments this year, I think Remi Wolf deserves to be in the same conversation, despite not having any mainstream hits (for now). She’s an incredible performer, singing her songs with so much exuberance and joy that you can tell she believes in every single song she makes. And her producers do a bang-up job delivering the bright, poppy, trashy bangers that accentuate her buoyant personality and crass sense of humor. “Pitiful”, “Alone In Miami”, “Toro”, “Cinderella”, and “Soup”- this album is full of 10/10 stellar pop songs. If you loved Sabrina and Charli this year but haven’t gotten to Remi Wolf, I beg you to fix that.
Speaking of Charli, her impact on my year was a little unorthodox. I’ve had a bit of a weird history with Charli. My friends have adored and worshiped her for years, but I never quite found myself on the train back then. Every time I listen to one of her albums, I’d always like it in parts but am lost by the rest of it. I think part of it is cuz I could never tell if her calling was in making the abrasive, cunty hyperpop bangers that would have scared pop fans in the late 2010s, or the more traditional, bubblegum pop music she still liked to indulge in even during her experimental years. I don’t think she found the proper marriage of both until Brat this year, which ended up being the first Charli XCX album I was instantly a fan of. It never felt too indulgent or obnoxious. It played into the “brat” persona enough to be a fun time, but kept the curtain pulled back just enough for Charli to explore her inner crisis as she grows older and reckons with where her life currently is and where it could go. I can jam out to “Von dutch” one minute and shed a tear to “So I” the next, and it never feels too jarring. But as good as the album was, it was the way Charli built on the album afterward that kept me hooked. The subsequent remix album reimagined these songs into something new but still quintessentially Brat. It was such a delight to listen to throughout the summer. Not all of them were upgrades; I’d argue the fact that most of them are sidegrades to be to the album’s benefit. They don’t usurp the original, they just take a new form. “So I” is the perfect example of this, with the contrast of Charli mourning the death of her friend and collaborator SOPHIE, dwelling on the regrets and pain of knowing your relationship probably wasn’t as close as it could have been, to the remix with A.G. Cook where she instead reminisces on the good times and celebrates the life rather than mourn it. I love these different interpretations and it made Brat and its remix album one of the year's most memorable albums for me.
Kind of a similar thing happened with Future and Metro Boomin’s duology albums, We Don’t Trust You and We Still Don’t Trust You. The first album came out and, in some ways, exceeded expectations. Not only was Metro Boomin more on his game than the past few years on his own, but Future seemed more focused and sober in delivering some hard-hitting bangers and asserting his dominance over trap music. On top of that, the revelation that the opps being alluded to in this album might be Drake and how his betrayal motivated Future to step up and prove himself to be better than him makes the album even more engaging and Future’s hunger even more exciting. “Like That” may have been Kendrick’s first shot that sparked the beef of the year, but Future didn’t let people forget it was his song and this was still his moment. Made even more apparent by the follow-up album, We Still Don’t Trust You. It’s longer, more R&B than hip-hop, but it was just as good, if not better, with some well-placed samples and killer hooks that kept them in my rotation throughout the Spring. Future ended up as my most listened to artist of the year on Spotify, and he got there solely through pumping out song after song and somehow never losing that fire and spark he’s always had in him. He spaced it out just well enough for him to never leave my mind, but never too much to make me burnt out or too little to have me missing him.
A couple other miscellaneous albums I really loved this year include Fat Dog’s “WOOF.”, a band I only learned about this year who make the exact kind of apocalyptic dance punk that makes me lose my shit and move like crazy. Probably my favorite cover art of the year, too! Father John Misty delivered another homerun of an album with “Mahashmashana”, where its best songs are the ones that go for over six and a half minutes, and the huge band behind him goes absolutely nuts in making this album sound huge and awe-inspiring. One of my rookies of the year last year, Wyatt Flores, released his debut album, Welcome To The Plains, and it’s spectacular. A terrific showcase of his great instincts as a Southern rocker and a charming Oklahoman personality with songs just as good, maybe better than what he showed off in 2023’s Life Lessons. Rema delivers a fast and deadly banger of an Afrobeats album that takes influences from Nigerian street music and Afrorave on HEIS. Maniacally creative. Zach Bryan continues his streak with me as one of the greatest artists of my lifetime with his very own Nerbraska, making a contemplative, rough, and tough album about close relationships, perseverance, and drinking with The Great American Bar Scene. Rapsody made one of the most underrated hip-hop albums of the year with the cinematic and deeply sincere Please Don’t Cry. Taylor Swift made a polarizing yet enthralling album where she breaks free of expectations and embraces her cringiest, most pretentious, obnoxious parts of herself (positive!) in The Tortured Poets Department. Marianas Trench and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds deliver lesser albums in their discography, but still impress with the former’s Haven building itself around the hero’s journey and making huge, theatrical songs built to soundtrack the greatest adventure movie you’ve ever seen, and the latter’s Wild God breaking through its sorrow to find joy and bliss in the tragedies Nick Cave has endured his whole life.
But all of those don’t compare to my album of the year, Joey Valence & Brae’s NO HANDS. New names to me this year, one whose buzz I’ve been aware of early in the year, and an album that I knew after the very first listen would persist as the album of 2024. And why is that?
It’s fun.
That’s really about it. From the opening seconds of “BUSSIT” where Joey and Brae trade words back and forth into a banging guitar beat, to the fake out ending on “OMNITRIX”, NO HANDS is a perfect album of front to back 10/10 bangers. Joey Valence and Brae are such ridiculously funny but legitimately skilled rappers who throw out punchline after punchline. It’s an album full of quotable moments from song to song, even when they’re just nerdy references that only I would get as a dumb nerd myself. On top of that, they have such great beat-making skills, as well as a great ear for sampling, and a love of old school hip-hop that takes inspiration from acts like The Beastie Boys and Run DMC. They also got some pretty great cosigns who themselves deliver standout performances like Danny Brown’s mania on “PACKAPUNCH”, Z-Trip’s record scratches on “NO HANDS”, Ayesha Erotica’s unhinged verse on the remix of “THE BADDEST”, and Terror Reid’s awesome verse on the super underrated “DOUGHBOY”. You can tell these are two guys who love music and love making music. When you have so many stellar songs in one album, coming from guys I’d only known off of randomly finding “PUNK TACTICS” on Youtube one day, that kind of exciting future and instant classic is what makes it shine above artists who already proved themselves to me and are merely showing they can do it again. Always gotta make way for the future new favorites when they deliver so expertly. If you’re not convinced yet, they also have a cover of Charli XCX’s “365” on the deluxe album. And it rules.
Here’s my complete list of the Top 50 Albums of 2024, along with my favorite song on each. And afterwards, a small “honorable mentions” list of albums with superlatives that they all have in common. Thanks for reading, and I’ll catch you next time.
Top 50 Albums of 2024
Joey Valence & Brae - NO HANDS
Best Song: “NO HANDS” ft. Z-TripTyler, The Creator - CHROMOKOPIA
Best Song: “Sticky” ft. GloRilla, Sexyy Red, & Lil WayneFather John Misty - Mahashmashana
Best Song: “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools Of Us All”Charli XCX - Brat/Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat
Best Song: “Von dutch” (original), “Guess” ft. Billie Eilish (remix)Zach Bryan - The Great American Bar Scene
Best Song: “Pink Skies”Future & Metro Boomin - We Still Don’t Trust You
Best Song: “We Still Don’t Trust You” ft. The WeekndRapsody - Please Don’t Cry
Best Song: “DND (It’s Not Personal)” ft. Bee-BOrville Peck - Stampede
Best Song: “Rhinestone Cowboy” ft. TJ Osborne, Waylon Payne, & Fancy HagoodEverything Everything - Mountainhead
Best Song: “End Of The Contender”Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department
Best Song: “Guilty As Sin?” (original), “The Manuscript” (The Anthology)Chromeo - Adult Contemporary
Best Song: “Replacements” ft. La RouxKaitlin Butts - Roadrunner!
Best Song: “People Will Say We’re In Love” ft. Cleto CordeoAdrianne Lenker - Bright Future
Best Song: “Sadness Is A Gift”Karen Jonas - The Rise & Fall of American Kitsch
Best Song: “Gold In The SandAlice Wallace - Here I Am
Best Song: “Dancin’ To The Beat Of My Heartbreak”Future & Metro Boomin - We Don’t Trust You
Best Song: “Like That” ft. Kendrick LamarAmerican Aquarium - The Fear of Standing Still
Best Song: “Southern Roots” ft. Katie PruittHurray For The Riff Raff - The Past Is Still Alive
Best Song: “Alibi”
Biggest Surprises
Chase Rice - Go Down Swingin’
Lil Tecca - PLAN A
Clairo - Charm
Sabrina Carpenter - Short n Sweet
Best EP
Aidan Canfield - Rivertown
Coleman Jennings - Wildflowers & Tears
Nourished By Time - Catching Chickens
Kenya Grace - The After Taste
Challenging Albums (aka albums that made me reflect and dwell on their themes)
JPEGMAFIA - I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU
Porter Robinson - SMILE! :D
Halsey - The Great Impersonator
Other Rap Albums That Were A Lot of Fun
NLE Choppa - SLUT SZN
Doechii - Alligator Bites Never Heal
Ehhthang Ehhthang/Glorious - GloRilla
BigXThaPlug - Take Care
Other Country Albums (All By Women) That Deserve Love
Beyoncé - COWBOY CARTER
Sierra Ferrell - Trail Of Flowers
Noeline Hoffman - Purple Gas
Megan Moroney - Am I Okay?
Best Albums of Not 2024
Anri - Timely!!
Iron Maiden - Powerslave
De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising
Manuel Gottsching - E2-E4
Biggest Disappointments of 2024
Lil Uzi Vert - Eternal Atake 2
Ice Spice - Y2K!
Rauw Alejandro - Cosa Nuestra
girl in red - I’M DOING IT AGAIN BABY!