My Top 10 Favorite Albums of 2024
albumsssssssssss 2024
10. Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk
A lot of genres had banner years in 2024, but if any one genre defined the year for me, it was pop. Something that will stick with me from this year is having numerous conversations with people who don’t follow pop music about how particularly good it was this year. While every year of course has good and bad pop music, the good pop this year was not only really good, but it was recognized for that quality, whether it was topping the Billboard charts or the RateYourMusic and AlbumOfTheYear charts.
Magdalena Bay is a group that I’d been vaguely familiar with before 2024, but was fully sold on them this year through the singles leading up to this album. Their brand of catchy and colorful synthpop, as well as their willingness to explore within that sound, was very addicting throughout the year, and the full album obviously didn’t disappoint. It has some interesting and timely themes of our relationship with technology and what it means to be human in an increasingly digital world, but you don’t need to be caught up on the lore of the album to know that these songs are bops that rock.
Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin are great pop songwriters and producers, and the exploration of one pop genre after another, supported by Tenenbaum’s coos, allowed these songs to worm their way into my brain. The sleek straightforward pop of Image (with that AMAZING little synth line on the chorus, you know the one) and the guitar-heavy That’s My Floor are personal highlights for me, but the whole album works together to not just support the themes of love and human connection in a world where nearly every space is a digital space, but also to cement Magdalena Bay as an important part of the current pop landscape. This will be far from the last time I cover that landscape on this list.
9. Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven
From one acclaimed group that was barely on my radar before 2024 to another. While I at least knew the type of music Mag Bay made before fully diving into their work, Mannequin Pussy’s music was a total mystery to me. After stumbling upon I Got Heaven’s title track however, I was immediately blown away by Marisa Dabice’s intense vocals during the verses and the absolute powerhouse of a chorus.
Big hooks will get you VERY far when it comes to my personal music taste, and I Got Heaven has hooks for days. Throughout these songs of angst and yearning, it’s clear that Dabice has a firm grasp on rock songwriting, and the band is able to incorporate so many of the best elements of punk, indie rock and power pop into the tracklist. This album has screaming, in-your-face punk (OK? OK! OK? OK!, Of Her) and dreamy, fuzzy shoegaze (I Don’t Know You, my favorite on the album), and many of its best moments are when those two sounds are combined. The aforementioned title track as well as songs like Loud Bark switch between these two modes throughout their runtime and, alongside Dabice’s rage-filled vocals, makes for some of the most engaging rock music I heard all year.
8. Nia Archives - Silence Is Loud
British artists have always been at the forefront of popular music, innovating in every genre from pop to rock to dance. With Silence Is Loud, producer Nia Archives has managed to capture so much of that history and innovation in just one album. This album is an attempt to mash up Jungle and Britpop, two genres that defined the UK music industry in the 90s and proved very influential both within and outside of the country, and these two sounds work very well together. The combination of the strong songwriting and pounding breakbeats give these songs some of the most powerful hooks of the year.
Nia Archives wears her influences on her sleeve in this album. She pulls from the rich history of jungle music and combines it with the pop sensibilities (and great guitar playing, especially on highlight Cards On The Table) of acts like Blur and Oasis, and by proxy the 60s bands that inspired them like the Kinks and the Beatles, as well as anxious and vulnerable lyrics ala 2000s pop star Kate Nash. Even with all these inspirations from various points in UK pop history, Nia Archives is able to form a cohesive whole. The album feels like a big celebration of the Brits’ impact on popular music, further supported by the Union Jack grill she’s wearing on the cover art, and also makes the case that Nia Archives will be an important part of shaping the country’s pop music future.
7. Clairo - Charm
This album is nice. This album is just so so nice. Just makes me feel very happy and cozy and loved and it’s just very nice :)
The next step in Clairo’s artistic growth, this album pulls from the soft rock and quiet storm of the 70s to create a very intimate and warm album about how it feels to fall in love. While her roots in lo-fi and bedroom pop are still apparent on this album, the rich production from Clairo and Leon Michels takes that sound which is so closely tied to the late 2010s/early 2020s and makes it timeless. Combining that sonic growth with the emotional maturity of her previous album Sling, Charm is easily Clairo’s strongest work to date in my opinion.
Lead single Sexy To Someone perfectly represents this album: intimate, playful soft rock with hints of jazz influence which really elevate the compositions. Other highlights in a similar vein include Add Up My Love and the piano-led Thank You, which reminded me of Carole King’s Tapestry more than anything else. The biggest hit, and frankly Clairo’s best ever song, has to be Juna, a psychedelic swirl of a song about being open and vulnerable in a relationship with everything from a beautiful piano outro to catchy synths to a mouth trumpet that turns into an *actual* trumpet! Come on!! This album is so lighthearted and fun, making for one of the easiest listens and most instantly likable albums of 2024.
6. Joanna Wang - Hotel La Rut
It’s impossible to summarize Hotel La Rut in a single paragraph. Taiwanese-American singer-songwriter Joanna Wang may have started out making jazzy easy listening pop to major success in Southeast Asia, but she’s spent the last 15 years taking her sound further and further in as many different directions as possible. This has culminated in Hotel La Rut, a 23-track concept album about various characters staying at the titular hotel (inspired by an old Kids In The Hall sketch) which shifts wildly from one genre to another. Each song feels like its own self-contained world, and the often short lengths give the feeling of walking around this hotel, catching brief glimpses into each of these people’s lives.
I was recommended this album through comparisons with They Might Be Giants, and this album is full of the same creative spirit that embodies the work of bands like TMBG and Ween. Seriously, I got into Ween SUPER hard in 2024 and if there’s any song that can encapsulate that band’s sound it might be People Don’t Eat Dinner By Themselves. There’s signs of her sophistipop origins on this album like both parts of The Wish, You Lost Me At The Spanking Machine and Fell In Love With The Neighbor’s Boy, there’s singalong freakouts like Flies! and Drunken Song, and there’s tons of catchy pop and rock songs like She Had A Habit Of Meeting All Of The Artists Backstage and Tina’s Hausu. All throughout Wang fills each song with hilarious (as you can probably tell from the song titles) and sympathetic writing, a throughline that connects all of these weird, lovable vignettes together.
5. Kendrick Lamar - GNX
One problem with waiting until the year is over to write a best albums of 2024 list is what the hell am I supposed to say about Kendrick Lamar’s output at this point. He is the most beloved rapper alive at the moment and probably the single most talked about artist of the year. This album is a victory lap for a victory lap for a victory lap. It’s Kendrick having more fun than he’s had on any album up to that point, and after the year he spent beating down the (former) biggest name in his genre, let alone the decade plus of incredible music he put out before then, he’s more than earned the opportunity to have fun on the LA rap sound he loves so much. This is still Kendrick Lamar of course, and he still takes the time to examine the state of rap and street culture, his place within that culture, as well as his place in the larger history of Black American music, but he’s able to convey these ideas in a very mainstream, accessible way that I really enjoy.
Mind you, this is what he’s been doing all decade! The people who say this album is just a mixtape and not the “real album” I feel are too clouded by the intensity of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. Kendrick’s other music in the 2020s has been able to mix the larger thematic exploration that Kendrick is so famous for with songs and delivery that’s just plain fun and infectious, see his recent collabs with Baby Keem and Beyoncé. GNX to me is clearly where he’s wanted to go with his music, and on this album I think that decision to lean into his Compton roots and love of west coast rap paid off exceptionally well.
4. Tyler, The Creator - Chromakopia
While I’ve been a Tyler fan for many years now, it wasn’t until 2023 when I realized just how important his music is to me and how incredible it’s been to watch his growth as an artist over the past 15 years. With every album he’s dropped he’s evolved his sound, famously going from the dark and primitive alternative hip hop of his first two albums to lush, soulful and colorful projects where Tyler puts a great level of detail and care into his production and thematic elements of his work. Through this evolution, Tyler’s formed a very distinct, recognizable sound for himself, and on Chromakopia, he takes the time to further refine and cement that sound rather than push it forward.
I’ve seen complaints about this album say it sounds too similar to past albums, but I don’t mind retreading some past sonic areas he explored on Flower Boy or Cherry Bomb if the sounds are still good! If anything the production leaning more towards these earlier albums works in tandem with the themes of Chromakopia. Tyler uses this album to look back on his past and explore how different events in his life and relationships with his family shaped him as a person. That’s right gang, it’s His Most Personal Album To Date, and it’s an album that actually earns that title. Tracks like Judge Judy, which focuses on a woman Tyler had a fling with before she died of cancer, and Hey Jane, which focuses on Tyler and a woman reeling from the news of an unplanned pregnancy, go to much more personal and mature places than many of Tyler’s past songs on relationships. Hey Jane in particular explores the conflicting feelings Tyler has about parenting and potentially starting a family now that he’s in his 30s, which is a theme that comes up on this album again and again. The presence of Tyler’s parents can be felt in all of his work, but never more so than on Chromakopia, an album with narration from Tyler’s mother appearing on numerous tracks. These themes culminate on Like Him, a harrowing track that flips all the narratives that we and Tyler had about his absent father on their heads.
Of course, Tyler’s consistently confident and goofy personality is still all over this album. He injects every song with his distinct charm, especially on bangers like Rah Tah Tah, Thought I Was Dead and Balloon, all coming together to create a well-rounded culmination of Tyler’s career up to this point. I wonder if there will be another album by an artist in their early 30s that sounds like a culmination of their career up to this point and is also about parenting and is the most commercially successful album of their career so far and is green and
3. Billie Eilish - Hit Me Hard And Soft
As a zoomer who is absolutely obsessed with both modern pop music and pop music history, Billie Eilish and Finneas are godsends to me. More than any other pop star working today, I see so much growth and even more potential to make great music in the future when I look at the discography of Billie Eilish. For me, she’s the most exciting megastar working today, and this incredible album just further cements that. Hit Me Hard And Soft is full of strong lyricism, primarily centered around the conflicting feelings she feels in her relationships, from the jubilation with a hint of darkness that fills Birds of a Feather, to the defeat and hurt of The Greatest, to the sort of solidarity she feels with the ex-girlfriend of her partner in Wildflower. Lunch is also about gay sex. Pretty awesome.
What really struck me with this album was the production from Finneas and Billie’s ever-improving vocals. Their albums have always been famous for, well, hitting people hard and soft, and on this project they push their established dark bedroom pop sound to its extremes. While the whole album sounds cohesive, you have everything from cinematic rock freakouts on The Greatest to cascading synthlines on Chihiro to a full on dance breakdown halfway through L’Amour De Ma Vie. I never truly knew where this album would take me listening to it for the first time, and that uncertainty combined with the trust in Billie and Finneas to do well in whatever sound they’re exploring made this possibly my favorite first listen experience of the entire year. I also love how much of a showcase this is for Billie’s vocals. Over the past few years she’s clearly become a lot more confident in her abilities and even though she tends to stay in the soft voice she’s spent the past decade perfecting, she really lets herself belt on songs like Birds Of A Feather, The Greatest and L’Amour De Ma Vie, contributing to some incredible climactic outros. I love Billie Eilish, I love this album, I love her place in pop music history, and I can’t wait to see where she goes from here.
2. Remi Wolf - Big Ideas
When I’m right I’m right. When I put Chappell Roan’s debut album in my top 10 albums of 2023 list, I said that she was one viral hit from being the biggest name in pop music. This wasn’t a hard call to make, as we saw from her success in 2024 all the pieces were there for her to become a massive star, but it feels good when you’re right. With that being said: Remi Wolf is one viral hit away from being the biggest name in pop music. Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease make her the biggest name in pop music. I don’t want to tie all my love of Remi Wolf and this album back to Chappell, I feel like that does a disservice to both artists, but it’s a very easy comparison to make when both artists clearly have a deep love for energetic pop music, the theatrics of the genre, and hooks that force their way into your brain and take up permanent space in there.
What I love so much about Big Ideas is that it’s a textbook example of pop music operating at its best; using massive hooks and sheer force of personality as a means of catharsis. More than any album I heard in 2024, more than most albums I’ve heard all decade, the hooks on these songs hit and I’m filled with a sense of release. Remi Wolf brings this brash, cacophonous energy to each track, elevating the 80s synthpop of Soup and the funkier cuts Toro and Cinderella (which I have very fond memories of getting the most drunk I’ve ever been to) and being a big part of why those songs hit like freight trains every time I listen to them. This brash, forceful energy also plays really well on the more rock-oriented tracks like Wave, Frog Rock, and personal highlight Kangaroo, a pop rock track where the song sounds like it’s about to fall apart, being held together by Remi’s great performances and tight songwriting. The album reaches perfection for me on Pitiful, a song where she deals with jealousy by getting wine drunk, calling her ex, and writing one of the best pop songs I can think of. It’s songs, and albums, like this that remind me why I love and care about this genre so much. Massive hooks, heart on your sleeve lyrics, raucous synths and guitars flying everywhere, all held together by insanely tight and effective melodic songwriting, that’s my shit!! That’s why I love pop music! Remi Wolf takes Big Swings and uses her Big Voice to craft Big Hooks with Big Emotions and it all works together to make me a Big Fan of this album. Sorry
Honorable Mentions
Beyonce - Cowboy Carter: I had no idea what to expect from a country album by Beyonce, I had no idea what to expect from a “It’s not a country album, it’s a Beyonce album”, and what I got was Beyonce’s White Album. It’s sprawling and indulgent and messy but it’s held together by a great artist making all of that mess work with her talents. It’s at its best when it turns into Renaissance Two near the end, wasn’t expecting that pivot at all and it ends up reaching higher highs than most of the original album.
Conan Gray - Found Heaven: In a pop environment full of 80s pastiches that feel flat and hollow, I can tell Conan Gray is a real 80s scholar. I was impressed by how many of these songs are authentic to the era they’re pulling from. Helps that this album is also full of good writing and an energy I wasn’t used to hearing from Gray before. Surprisingly great!
Doechii - Alligator Bites Never Heal: My last cut from the main list. I’ll have to go back to the full album more often before I feel comfortable placing this in my top 10, but the hits are truly something special. Doechii combines her unique personality and talents with short, immediately catchy songs inspired by everyone from Slick Rick to MF DOOM. She clearly has a real love for rapping and hip hop music and I can tell she’s going to do a lot to push rap forward in the years to come. I’m so glad the ENTIRETY OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY agrees with me!
English Teacher - This Could Be Texas: Maybe a weird takeaway from this album but holy FUCK do English Teacher know how to end a song. This is a consistently great record overall but I found myself so excited by nearly every outro on the whole album. Great musicianship all around.
Geordie Greep - The New Sound: I was never able to connect with Black Midi all that much, and it turns out all that was missing was absurd lyrics about the shittiest womanizers you’ll ever hear about in your life and a shit ton of Latin Rock influence.
Jessica Pratt - Here In The Pitch: A beautiful little folk album. Love the use of space on this thing, it’s a pretty sparse album and the echoes and reverb make everything sound like it was all recorded at once in one big room and I love that effect.
Joey Valence & Brae - No Hands: It makes me so happy that the biggest act in years to come out of State College, Pennsylvania, a town very dear to me and one that I’ve spent so much of my life in, is a duo of Beastie Boys fanboys who know that all you need to do to make an awesome rap album is call people a “sucka!”
The Lemon Twigs - A Dream Is All We Know: I love when an artist has seemingly the exact same taste in music as I do. Just like The Lemon Twigs I worship the ground that The Beatles and the Zombies and Brian Wilson walk on and I love that there are bands around still making music with (and improving upon!) their sounds.
Vince Staples - Dark Times: Vince Staples is simultaneously a beloved figure in modern rap and one of the most underrated people working in the mainstream today. I’m so glad he’s started getting the recognition he deserves because of this album, it’s a really well made dark and vulnerable project, while still having all of the charisma and energy that makes Staples such a great performer.
Zach Bryan - The Great American Bar Scene: Musically very close to his breakthrough self titled album from 2023, but that album is emotional, earnest, revealing and full of some awesome country and rock instrumentation and I can’t complain when we get more of that from Zach Bryan. Love that we got an album just weeks after I turned 21 as well. Shoutout bars.
As I was moving what I’d written for this blog post from Google Docs to Substack I learned that this platform doesn’t let you change text colors, which is unfortunate since I wanted to make the text green for just a second because my favorite album of 2024 is
1. Charli XCX - Brat
Last year I gave my #1 to an obvious Kayla Fave having an unexpected commercial breakthrough, and this year I have to do the same. It’s hard to find anything to even say about Brat at this point after it seemingly seeped into every aspect of popular culture in 2024 (for better or worse). What the hell do you say about the most talked about album of the year? Here’s what I will say: Brat will prevail. I’ve noticed this album has started to garner an unfair reputation as just a zeitgeisty meme that will be lost to the sands of time, a relic occupying the same space in our minds as like, Moo Deng or the shitty Willy Wonka event. People seem to forget that before Brat was a shirt you could find at any remotely-hip retailer or a small factor in the dumbest election cycle of all time, it was an album making waves for being really fucking good. Because it’s really fucking good.
Brat’s music will prevail because it’s an expertly crafted, deeply vulnerable and extremely fun experience. Yes it’s about partying and doing a shit ton of coke. And it’s about one of our most interesting pop stars, with one of the most interesting career arcs in modern music, grappling with her strange, singular place in the music industry (ironically on the album that would catapult her to a different level entirely). And it’s about wondering if anything she’s doing is worth it because now she’s 30 and her friends are having kids and she has no idea how much longer she even has the option to start a family. And about all the people she’s met and loved and lost through her career. It’s about all that, AND being so Julia! It’s beautiful!
Brat especially hits as a long time Charli XCX fan, somebody who’s been closely following her career since middle school, as it really feels like the album she’s been building towards her entire discography. One of the reasons Charli is such an interesting pop star is that she’s spent much of her career being pulled in so many different directions, whether they be the club and rave scenes she was brought up in, the commercial radio pop space she thrived in during the mid 2010s (and had been on the outskirts of ever since), or the massive online cult following she garnered in her pivot to bubblegum bass and hyperpop. Brat is the first time that all of those different elements of her musical identity have fully clicked into place, all working together to make a truly exceptional pop album that’s taken Charli to new heights in every possible way. I love Charli, her music and her unique position in the pop landscape have been important to me for so many years. Seeing her find the level of success she did in 2024 was a surreal and incredible experience, and Brat still would’ve been one of my favorite musical moments of the year if the album hadn’t been THAT good. But really it never would’ve been able to have that impact, it wouldn’t have been able to resonate with people at the level it did, if it wasn’t THAT good. Brat is the best album of 2024.
And yes, she was right. I DID go crazy when the Lorde collab dropped