The Best Music of 2024
As the end of the year approaches and those around me are focused on buying Christmas gifts and considering New Year's resolutions that will inevitably expire before that last carton of eggnog, my last month of every year is compulsively consumed with my annual endeavor to scour the various best of the year lists wondering what notable music I may have missed hoping to find something extraordinary, like a detective hoping to find the wayward clue that will help solve the big case, but will provide nothing more than a fleeting distraction from the impossible task of sorting out his own life.
As someone who has compiled such a list for the last fifty years of music, I notice my process gradually evolving from that of a journalist to the perspective of someone keeping a personal diary. Back when we existed as part of a monoculture, it was feasible to sum up the most culturally significant musical moments with some ubiquity; in 1984 including Purple Rain on a list of the best albums of the year wasn’t any more significant an editorial choice than dotting an ‘i’ or crossing a ‘t’. In the last decade or so when we’ve become more culturally diffuse, pop music seems a million miles away from the underground, so charted standouts like Taylor Swift and Charlie xcx’s Brat album exist in the same way that Marvel movies technically dominate cinema with movies that most people I know don’t really care about. Though it can also be said that the Cindy Lee album is almost certainly the best critically reviewed album of the year and was something I was happy to include in my own selection.
Like streaming TV and political news, rather than sharing the same information, most people just consume what is prescribed to them by their musical algorithm. Everybody has their own niche. While I attempted to consume the best rated music of every genre, the resulting selection is a decidedly personal take, offered less as a summary of a disagreeable year than a means with which to cope with it.
Track List
Fred Again - One
Nicolas Jaar - Archivos De Radio Pedras
Cindy Lee - Baby Blue
Jessica Pratt - Get Your Head Out
Fred Again feat. Emmylou Harris - Where Will I Be
Mount Eerie - The Gleam Part 3
Moin feat. Sophia Al Maria - Lift You
Double Virgo - Rent Boy
Fred Again - I Saw You
Mk.gee - DNM
Nourished By Time - Hell of a Ride
Mount Kimbie feat. King Krule - Empty and Silent
Bullion - Cinch
Loukeman - Baby You’re a Star
Discovery Zone - Test
Actress - Ray
FKA Twigs - Eusexua
Yaya Bey - Sir Princess Bad Bitch
Jeff Parker - Freakadelic
Yaya Bey feat. Grand Daddy I.U. - So Fantastic
Stefan Ringer - Body Know
Guerra - Big Time Sensuality 2
Fergus Jones - Can’t Touch
La Securite - K9 Freaks Mix (Freak Heat Waves Mix)
Seven Davis Jr. - Soul Music
Omar S - O MAARR
New Jackson - Si Si Si
Dummy - Intro-UB
cumgirl8 - ahhhh!hhhh! (i don't wanna go)
Curses - Like Porcelain
Fcukers - I Don’t Wanna
DORIS - Blue Dream
Tyler the Creator - Sticky
Burial – Dreamfear
Nightmares on Wax - Les Nuits (Carboot Jazz Edit)
Night Tapes - Easy Time to Believe
Sault - Act 9 (Pray For Me)
Shabaka - End of Innocence
