An Acute Case: 84 favourite albums of 2024

Number crunching, list dumping

You might think 84 is indulgent and I might agree. Especially compared to the 23 year-end lists I surveyed somewhat randomly (using this handy website—thanks Jeffrey) to contextualise my own.

Of those 23, the 15 that attempted a brand’s eye view of 2024 (Esquire, The Times, The Ringer, Billboard, Slant, The Guardian, NPR, Stereogum, Rolling Stone, Complex, Brooklyn Vegan, Albumism, Popmatters, Pitchfork, Quietus) had an average length of 52. Of the 8 written by individuals (Lindsey Zoladz in the New York Times, Amanda Petruish in the New Yorker, Mikael Wood in the LA Times, Jim DeRogatis in Sound Opinions, Carl Wilson in Slate, Anthony Fantano in The Needle Drop, Steve Hyden in Uproxx, Ann Powers in NPR), the average was 24.

But those lists were strictly for 2024 releases, while mine permits year of discovery/impact inclusions (so long as they were released relatively recently) plus comps/archival stuff (so long as they materialised in 2024 or, again, relatively recently). Break my list down and only 59 of the 84 albums were released in 2024. What’s more, 5 of those were comps/archival. So, really, we’re only talking about 54 favourite albums of the year. 54 is a respectable figure, right?

I also looked at those lists to get a bead on how much mine crosses over and found that 26 (of my 54 2024 picks) feature on at least one. If your kink is consensus, 48% crossover isn’t bad. If your kink is eccentricity, 52% randos may seem a poor showing.

Of the crossover albums, the clear favourite was Charli XCX’s pout party BRAT (50^th on my list), which made a whopping 83% of the 23. It featured on all but one of the publication lists and at number 1 on 10 out of 15 of them. Truly, she’s everywhere, she’s so Julia. Beyonce’s formidable throwdown COWBOY CARTER (7^th on mine), Waxahatchee’s bucolic Tigers Blood (48^th), and weird fish MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks (44^th) made 74%.

Of the others, Sabrina Carpenter’s frolicsome Short n’ Sweet (4^th) featured on 69%; Kendrick Lamar’s malevolent GNX (23^rd) on 65%; Vampire Weekend’s return to knottiness Only God Was Above Us (20^th) on 56%; Billie Eilish’s symphonic HIT ME HARD AND SOFT (8^th) on 52%; Adrianne Lenker’s ineluctable Bright Future (2^nd), Doechii’s ring grab Alligator Bites Never Heal (19^th), and Hurray for the Riff Raff’s tumbledown The Past is Still Alive (52^nd) on 43%; club loner Jamie xx’s In Waves (67^th) and street loner Vince Staples’s Dark Times (63^rd) on 30%; Zach Bryan’s studiously adventitious The Great American Bar Scene (70^th) on 21%; LL Cool J’s brand-new retro THE FORCE (30^th), Maggie Rogers’ refined Don’t Forget Me (50^th), and JPEGMAFIA’s thick slab of meathead I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU (75^th) on 17%.

Megan Moroney’s Am I Okay? (17^th), Amyl and the Sniffers’ Cartoon Darkness (29^th), Rosie Tucker’s UTOPIA NOW! (55^th), and Wussy’s Cincinnati Ohio (49^th) made two appearances apiece, while Sheer Mag’s Playing Favorites (65^th), illuminati hotties’ POWER (78^th), Hinds’ VIVA HINDS (61^st), Les Amazones d'Afrique’s Musow Danse (64^th), and Eminem’s The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace) (which I’m surprised featured at all, much less at 8^th on Complex’s list—it's 9^th on mine) made just one.

BRAT also triumphed when I looked at how those crossover albums ranked, with an average placement of 4.6—almost double that of next-best MJ Lenderman’s 8.7. What’s more, Lenderman’s average is skewed by finishing first on all three of the individual lists he features on. On just the publication lists, Lenderman averages 10.8, while Charli goes a decimal better with 4.5.

Following Charli and Meej (yeah, this doesn’t work as well as it does for PJ Harvey) are Beyonce (8.6 publication average; 10 individual average), Billie (12.9; 10), Waxahatchee (13; 12.6), Kendrick (16.5; 15.2), Sabrina (22.8; 19.8—interestingly, she shows up on the same number of lists as Lenderman but her average is more than double), Hurray for the Riff Raff (30; 20.8), Vampire Weekend (31.4; 26.5—like Sabrina, they show up a lot but not very high), LL Cool J (36; 29), and Vince Staples (46.5; 43).

Of course, those are all fundamentally critic’s lists, which aren’t great for gauging what everyone else in the world has been listening to. But what is?

By my reckoning, 19 of the UK Official Charts’ top 40 albums of 2024 are either best-ofs (13) or Taylor Swift albums (6), and only 8 of the 40 were actual albums actually released in 2024 (in fairness, the number 1 is the Swift album that was released this year). Of those 8 legitimate 2024 albums, 4 feature on my list: HIT ME HARD AND SOFT (3^rd on their list), BRAT (8^th), Short n’ Sweet (14^th), and The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace) (32^nd—this time delighting the public rather than dismaying critics). On the other hand, my number one pick—Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess (whose delayed rise still needs unpacking femininomenologically)—features at 6^th, which is nice. Sadly, there’s no room on my list for Nursery Rhymes by Cocomelon (39^th).

Elsewhere, Variety reports that Spotify’s data shows the most-streamed albums globally were HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, Short n’ Sweet, Karol G’s Mañana Será Bonito (don’t think I’ve ever knowingly listened to this or her), Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine, SZA’s SOS, Benson Boone’s Fireworks & Rollerblades (or this/him), The Weeknd’s Starboy, and Taylor triplets THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY, 1989 (Taylor’s Version), and Lover. When you consider how many albums must be streamed every year, the most telling thing about that list is that it only reports the top ten. Then again, Time Out only gives a top five for the most streamed albums of 2024 in the UK (the normal roll call of Taylors, Sabrinas, and Billies, plus Noah Kahan’s Stick Season, which had its own rise and fall in my estimation).

Is that an indication of how much people care about albums? I hope not. Though when I googled “how many albums were released in 2024”, I didn’t even get a result pretending to have an accurate figure. Just filtering my spreadsheet (a big sample in terms of individual listening but meaningless in terms of global listening) for albums that were released in 2024 (where I remembered to record that data, which is sporadic), Excel counted 376. All of which is to say that reporting on what the world is listening to is scant and uninformative.

So what about my list? I’ve already written about every album on it bar three (reviews of Bad Moves’ Wearing Out The Refrain and GNX will come, as will a re-review of Alligator Bites Never Heal, which I originally gave an honourable mention—my biggest howler of the year) and won’t rehash them. Though I will comment on how much I love the gathering of women at the top. The too muchness of Chappell’s queer pop next to the frothiness of Sabrina’s normie pop. The classic rock choogaloo of Elizabeth Nelson’s The Paranoid Style next to the brittle melodies of Adrianne Lenker. There’s exhibitionism and preciousness, bare-knuckle combat and butter-wouldn’t-melt kiss offs. And but for a brief interruption by a Louis Armstrong concert from 60 years ago and an 83-year-old folkie lured out of seclusion by Adrianne Lenker, Beyonce’s seminar series and Billie Eilish’s mumble suite extends the line of women in my top ten.

A great year for female-fronted music then? Definitely. Though I don’t want to mislead you. Gender-wise, the make-up of my list (adjusting for artists with multiple appearances) is 46% male, 36% female, 16% mixed, and 2% non-binary. And while we’re at it, why don’t we crunch the rest of the numbers and get to the list itself? Here goes. The average age of the artists on my list is 43. Their average number of career releases is 11.9. 62% are white, 32% Black, 4% mixed, 2% Asian. 60 are American, 5 British, 2 Australian, 2 Congolese, 2 Malian, 1 American-Haitian, 1 American-Indian, 1 Canadian, 1 Indonesian, 1 Nigerian, 1 Nigerien, 1 Sao Tomean, 1 South African, 1 Spanish.

Oh, and I’ve listened to the albums below 1,146 times and haven’t tired of any yet.

Now hit it like rom-pom-pom-pom.

1. Chappell Roan: The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (’23)

2. Adrianne Lenker: Bright Future

3. The Paranoid Style: The Interrogator

4. Sabrina Carpenter: Short n' Sweet

5. Tucker Zimmerman: Dance Of Love

6. Louis Armstrong: Live In London (Live at the BBC)

7. Beyonce: COWBOY CARTER

8. Billie Eilish: HIT ME HARD AND SOFT

9. Eminem: The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace)

10. Buck 65 / Jel / Doseone: North American Adonis (’23)

11. Kim Deal: Nobody Loves You More

12. Carly Pearce: hummingbird

13. Various: Kampire Presents: A Dancefloor in Ndola

14. Hamell on Trial: Bring The Kids (’23)

15. Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens: Music Inferno: The Indestructible Tour 1988-89 (’23)

16. Tyvek: Overground (’23)

17. Megan Moroney: Am I Okay?

18. Rosie Tucker: Sucker Supreme (’21)

19. Doechii: Alligator Bites Never Heal

20. Vampire Weekend: Only God Was Above Us

21. Ren: Sick Boi (’23)

22. Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers: I Love You (’23)

23. Kendrick Lamar: GNX

24. Yard Act: Where's My Utopia?

25. Various: Congo Funk! - Sound Madness From The Shores Of The Mighty Congo River (Kinshasa​/​Brazzaville 1969​-​1982)

26. Robert Finley: Black Bayou (’23)

27. Chris Smither: All About the Bones

28. The Feelies: Some Kinda Love: Performing The Music Of The Velvet Underground (’23)

    

29. Amyl and the Sniffers: Cartoon Darkness

30. LL Cool J: THE FORCE

31. Jamila Woods: Water Made Us (’23)

32. Bad Moves: Wearing Out The Refrain

33. Wimps: City Lights (’23)

34. Tierra Whack: WORLD WIDE WHACK

35. Carsie Blanton: After the Revolution

36. Fox Green: Light Over Darkness

37. Bailey Zimmerman: Religiously: The Album (’23)

38. Dolly Parton: Rockstar (’23)

39. Kathryn Williams / Withered Hand: Willson Williams

40. Heems: LAFANDAR

41. Morgan Wade: Obsessed

42. Rail Band: Rail Band

43. MJ Lenderman: Manning Fireworks

44. Africa Negra: Antologia Vol. 2

45. Serengeti: KDIV

46. Swamp Dogg: Blackgrass: From West Virginia to 125th St

47. Miranda Lambert: Postcards From Texas

48. Waxahatchee: Tigers Blood

49. Wussy: Cinccinnati Ohio

50. Charli XCX: BRAT

51. Maggie Rogers: Don't Forget Me

52. Body Count: Merciless

53. Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Past Is Still Alive

54. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: Live from the Ryman, Vol. 2

55. Nicki Minaj: Pink Friday 2 (’23)

56. Rosie Tucker: UTOPIA NOW!

    

57. Elle King: Come Get Your Wife (’23)

58. Grrrl Gang: Spunky! (’23)

59. Low Cut Connie: ART DEALERS (’23)

60. Azuka Moweta & Aniome Brothers Band: Nwanne Bu Ife (’23)

61. Hinds: VIVA HINDS

62. X: Smoke & Fiction

63. Vince Staples: Dark Times

64. Les Amazones d'Afrique: Musow Danse

65. Sheer Mag: Playing Favorites

66. DJ Shadow: Action Adventure (’23)

67. Mickey Guyton: House On Fire

68. Willie Nelson: The Border

69. Jamie xx: In Waves

70. Thomas Anderson: Hello, I'm From The Future

71. Zach Bryan: Boys Of Faith (’23)

72. Zach Bryan: The Great American Bar Scene

73. Old 97s: American Primitive

74. Bombino: Sahel (’23)

75. Gurf Morlix: Caveman (’23)

76. Les Savy Fav: OUI, LSF

77. JPEGMAFIA: I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU

78. Katie Pruitt: Mantras

79. Rosie Tucker: Never Not Never Not (’19)

80. illuminati hotties: Power

81. Ngwaka Son Systéme: Iboto Ngenge

    

82. Chase Rice: I Hate Cowboys and All Dogs Go to Hell (’23)

83. Leyla McCalla: Sun Without Heat

84. hemlocke springs: going…going…GONE! (’23)