The best albums of 2024

There is no party playlist you could make that would be better than playing "Timeless" top to bottom. Across 21 songs, Kaytranada proves himself a top-notch curator of grooves, summoning the perfect cast of sidekicks for his mission — put simply, to make you dance dance dance dance — from Ravyn Lenae, Tinashe, and PinkPantheress to Channel Tres, Anderson .Paak, Childish Gambino, and Thundercat.

Best songs: "Drip Sweat," "Do 2 Me," "Witchy," "Wasted Words," "Snap My Finger"

Before Kendrick Lamar surprise-dropped "GNX," Vince Staples had hip-hop heads fully covered. The two rappers share an affinity for intellectual lyrics, an aptitude for tackling complex themes, and a history of critical acclaim — but where Lamar's music is at least somewhat motivated by commercial interests, Staples is unburdened by ego and expectations.

"No one's coming to me," he told Zane Lowe, "looking for a single or looking for a party record, or things of that nature. I don't feel those pressures."

Staples thrives in the album's brooding sonic landscape, which invites the listener to stay fully absorbed. Take 35 minutes to do nothing but listen.

Best songs: "Black&Blue," "Shame on the Devil," "Étouffée," "'Radio,'" "Little Homies"

The Last Dinner Party's much-hyped debut album, "Prelude to Ecstasy," over-delivers on the promise of excitement and novelty. Although several of its highlights were released ahead of time as singles, the album's in-between moments are the furthest thing from filler; each composition is lush and grandiose, never allowing for a dull moment. You may be tempted to accuse the British quintet of melodrama, but you get the feeling that's exactly what they were going for.

Best songs: "Burn Alive," "The Feminine Urge," "Beautiful Boy," "Portrait of a Dead Girl," "Nothing Matters"

"Wilson" is Ashe's third full-length album, completing the trilogy that spells out her real name (Ashlyn Rae Wilson), but it's her first as an independent artist.

After canceling her global tour in 2023, Ashe decamped to Nashville, where she'd planted the seeds of her songwriting career. After a period of tending to her burnout and building a life with her now-fiancé, she was able to be creative again for creativity's sake. "I painted the walls and renovated and gardened. I bought power tools and put up the wainscoting in the bathroom. I got dirt under my fingernails," she told Forbes. "That was a huge part of separating myself from what my entire identity was wrapped up in, which was my career."

Ashe has always made music that breaks with trends and conventions, but with "Wilson," her unfettered approach is more apparent than ever. Throughout the album, she sings quite literally about liberation, autonomy, and shedding her people-pleasing tendencies, backed by spacious, soaring production that sounds as free as she feels.

Best songs: "Please Don't Fall In Love With Me," "Running Out of Time," "Cherry Trees," "I Wanna Love You (But I Don't)," "Ashe"

The third studio album from New York-founded foursome Charly Bliss is the perfect musical sugar rush, packed with fizzy vocals and guitar riffs so candy-coated you'll mistake them for synths.

Charly Bliss has often been described as "bubblegrunge," earning high praise for their poppy takes on '90s indie-rock. "Forever" leans more bubble than grunge, echoing Taylor Swift's "The Archer" in the Jack Antonoff-approved standout "Nineteen" and often evoking Carly Rae Jepsen's beloved "Emotion."

But make no mistake: Even as Charly Bliss' soundscape has evolved, their songwriting hasn't lost its Warped Tour-adjacent angst. "I'm Not Dead" yearns for a life with more fuck-ups and fulfillment ("If I'm a rock star, I'm not doing it right") while "I Don't Know Anything" is explicit about the harrowing realities of the music industry ("You bet on yourself and you lose every day"). But it's the deceptively upbeat single "Back There Now" that contains the album's spikiest turn of phrase: "A boy like you would hang me if I gave you the rope."

Best songs: "Calling You Out," "Back There Now," "Nineteen," "I'm Not Dead," "I Don't Know Anything"

Chinouriri's disarming candor, empathy, and attentiveness come through loud and clear in her songwriting. Listening to her debut album, "What a Devastating Turn of Events," you get the feeling that she walks around with her arms outstretched, ready to engage anyone in conversation. Her best songs are personal but rarely self-serving; she'll narrate tales about a lonely month she spent in Los Angeles ("When you don't belong, the hills will know") or a cousin in Zimbabwe who committed suicide after getting pregnant ("Out of wedlock which her family despised / But if she lost it, it would still be a crime") that double as meditations on racism and reproductive healthcare.

But not all of her songs are heavy. Chinouriri is a proud student of Britpop (Blur, Oasis) and noughties indie-rock (Phoenix, Kings of Leon), though she filters her research through a modern feminine lens (Olivia Rodrigo, Lily Allen circa "It's Not Me, It's You"). "What a Devastating Turn of Events" strikes a tricky balance between being substantial, at times intense, and being downright fun to listen to.

Best songs: "Garden of Eden," "The Hills," "Never Need Me," "All I Ever Asked," "What a Devastating Turn of Events"

Lorely Rodriguez, known professionally as Empress Of, has collaborated with an array of indie-pop geniuses, from Blood Orange to Caroline Polachek to MUNA and toured with Carly Rae Jepsen and Maggie Rogers.

If you like any of those artists — or, better yet, all of them — you'll love Rodriguez's magnum opus, "For Your Consideration." The compact 11-song tracklist sounds like someone put all the best experimental dance music and punchy synth-pop into a blender and sprinkled it with the essence of Rosalía's "Motomami." The result is a treat that's jam-packed with flavor, made to be slurped and savored.

Best songs: "Preciosa," "Femenine," "Sucia," "Baby Boy," "What's Love"

"Bright Future," the sixth solo album by Adrianne Lenker (also known as the frontwoman for Big Thief), is at once haunting and comforting.

Lenker's singular brand of songwriting honors the traditions of folk music while breaking new ground, unfurling scenes of unrequited queer love ("We could be friends / You could love me through and through / If I were him") and the desire for a gentle, patient life ("Do you wanna dance? / Sometimes I think I try too hard") in her signature one-take warble.

There's a palpable melancholy in her reveries — an awareness that nothing is quite so easy or so pure — but still undeniable beauty in the hope of it all. "I have so much nuance and complexity to what I need," Lenker told Crack Magazine, "and I do not feel by any means I've wrapped my mind around it."

Best songs: "Sadness As a Gift," "Fool," "No Machine," "Free Treasure," "Vampire Empire"

Clairo is doing her best Carole King on "Charm," and she could take this role to the bank.

Much like King's seminal work, "Tapestry," Clairo's third studio album is characterized by billowing warmth, a soundscape largely achieved with jazzy piano chords, woodwinds, and humble lyrics that capture basic truths of love, devotion, and heartache: "It's second nature," "You make me wanna go buy a new dress / You make me wanna slip off a new dress," "Honey, was it enough? Is it ever enough?"

Best songs: "Sexy to Someone," "Second Nature," "Terrapin," "Juna," "Add Up My Love"

Tems has already left her fingerprints across the pop landscape, whether listeners realize it or not. You may recognize her voice from Drake's "Fountains," Future's "Wait for U," Beyoncé's "Move," or, most likely, Wizkid's "Essence," which was nominated for a Grammy and became the first song by all Nigerian artists to reach the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.

But Tems was not destined to be a featured guest. Her first full-length album, "Born in the Wild," makes it clear that her fate is musical royalty. (Prophetically, her parents named her Temilade, which means "the crown is mine" in Yoruba.)

"Born in the Wild" pulls triple duty, showcasing Tems as a dynamic vocalist, producer, and, in the words of Boutayna Chokrane for Pitchfork, "author of her own lore." Although the album carries traces of her forebears, from Lauryn Hill, Destiny's Child, and SZA to the reggae-fusion legend Diana King, whose "L-L-Lies" is interpolated in "Gangsta," Tems is credited as the lead songwriter on all 18 tracks. Her voice and vision remain at the forefront.

Best songs: "Burning," "Love Me JeJe," "Ready," "Boy O Boy," "T-Unit"

Halsey has long been devoted to concept albums, whether it's the Shakespearean fever dream of 2017's "Hopeless Fountain Kingdom" or the pregnancy-induced body horror of 2021's "If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power."

Their latest album, "The Great Impersonator," both cements and subverts their legacy as a shapeshifter. Across the 18-song tracklist, Halsey adopts different genres, tones, and impressions, but she constantly oscillates between fantasy and sincerity. On the opening track, "Only Living Girl in LA," Halsey takes a cue from Simon & Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" — written as a tender farewell to the duo's partnership — while cracking dark jokes about the crowd at her funeral. The PJ Harvey-inspired scorcher "Dog Years" draws a parallel between suicidal ideation and putting down her pet. "Letter to God (1983)" is a convincing Bruce Springsteen pastiche, which nearly distracts from the desperate pleas for divine intervention.

Only by trying on costumes, Halsey seems to suggest, can she feel safe enough to expose her most private fears and urges.

There's a sense of tragedy that pervades this practice, as well as the music itself. "The Great Impersonator" was written during a time of grave physical illness and familial upheaval, or, in Halsey's words, "the space between life and death."

Halsey confronts her catastrophes with emotions scaled to match. She is at turns furious, devastated, resentful, resigned, and wracked with guilt — both of the survivor's and mother's variety. "I don't ever wanna leave him," she sings of her young son, Ender, "but I don't think it's my choice."

More than anything, "The Great Impersonator" captures the never-enoughness of life itself. Halsey is doing everything, saying everything, feeling everything, because it might be their last chance — and isn't that the point?

Best songs: "Ego," "Panic Attack," "I Believe In Magic," "Lonely Is the Muse," "Arsonist"

Thanks to her rich timbre and multi-octave range, Brittany Howard's voice is immediately discernible, whatever style of rock 'n' roll she happens to be commanding that day.

As the frontwoman for Alabama Shakes, it was '60s-flavored Southern soul ("Boys & Girls") and psychedelia ("Sound & Color"). In her second solo album, Howard leans even deeper into her soul and funk instincts, swathed in fuzzy guitar licks and jazz-inflected brass arrangements. "What Now" reveals Howard at the peak of her powers, bending every instrument to her virtuosic will.

Best songs: "I Don't," "What Now," "Red Flags," "Prove It To You," "Power to Undo"

Sabrina Carpenter is a pop star with a capital P and a capital S. She knows exactly what she's doing, and this clarity of purpose and personality is what makes "Short n' Sweet" shine through 2024's deluge of pop albums.

These days, most of the top singer-songwriters follow the Taylor Swift Theory of Pop Music, believing they must be confessional and soul-bearing in order for their music to resonate with fans. Carpenter's sixth studio album (yes, sixth, though she considers it to be her second "big girl" album) offers a rebuttal.

That's not to say Carpenter isn't a skilled lyricist; Jack Antonoff, who produced much of "Short n' Sweet," confirmed that Carpenter wrote every word in "Sharpest Tool," the album's best song. She's just a different kind of lyricist, wielding humor, innuendo, and wordplay as many of her peers might wield their diaristic details.

Even the most generalized, nonspecific songs in the tracklist, like the smash hit "Espresso" or the sexy standout "Bed Chem," manage to feel sticky and memorable. Carpenter delivers each line with vocal flair and charisma, reshaping the broadest phrases to fit her specific persona. On paper, "That's that me espresso" could've been written by anyone, but now that we've heard the song, it could only make sense coming out of Carpenter's mouth.

Best songs: "Please Please Please," "Sharpest Tool," "Coincidence," "Bed Chem," "Espresso"

Magdalena Bay is the indie-pop band that every music critic and chronically-online-cool-girl is obsessed with right now.

If you're not familiar with their surrealist TikTok account or the album cover that inspired Rosalía's Halloween costume, the band is actually just two people: Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin, both Miami natives with Argentinian-Jewish roots, who met in high school. They're a couple now, though some people mistakenly believe they're related. Think of it like The White Stripes for the digital age — if Jack and Meg White were listening to a lot of early Grimes and doom-scrolling on their phones.

"Imaginal Disk" is the culmination of their 13-year partnership, the fruit of two true creatives who are perfectly in sync. The music is very much of the moment, full of distorted synths and anxious lyrics about "divine digits," warped mirrors, and TV-induced nightmares — but, miraculously, it never strays into the realm of pretentious, patronizing slush. Tenenbaum and Lewin may be preoccupied with the splendors and ills of the modern world, but they're not preaching or speaking down to us because they are us.

Best songs: "Killing Time," "Image," "Death & Romance," "Fear, Sex," "That's My Floor"

Tyla's self-titled is the most impressive debut album of the year, parading an assortment of moods and genres — namely Afrobeats, amapiano, pop, and R&B — with the poise of a seasoned superstar.

Listening to "Tyla," I can't help but remember how I felt listening to Rihanna's "Music of the Sun" in 2005, that flutter in my stomach when I knew something big was about to happen — or, more accurately, someone.

Like most great pop albums, "Tyla" is accessible and versatile with a song for every mood. "Water" may be her "Pon de Replay," but she's also got her independent-girl anthem ("No.1"), her timeless love song ("Butterflies"), her heartbreak memento ("To Last"), and, of course, her party-starters ("Jump," "On My Body"). Through it all, Tyla never sacrifices her signature sound for the sake of mass appeal.

Best songs: "Truth Or Dare," "Butterflies," "On and On," "Jump," "To Last"

Taylor Swift as a concept looms large over her 11th studio album — so much so that it was summarily dismissed by people who've grown tired of "her whole thing." As Swiftian history shows us, this fatigue happens cyclically every few years.

But as Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield wrote in "Heartbreak is the National Anthem," his new book about Swift's place in music history, "Many people often find Taylor infuriating and exhausting. So does Taylor Swift."

That may as well be the thesis for "The Tortured Poets Department." At 31 songs, the album is instantly overwhelming. It's self-effacing and self-aware to a truly comical degree. (I will never forget where I was when I first heard Swift sing, "I'm having his baby. No, I'm not! But you should see your faces.") It's full of heel turns, hallucinations, and contradictions. She pledges, "I can fix him," then ends the same song with, "Woah! Maybe I can't." Later, she swears she'll forget him — in a song that also swears he's a swindler who deserves jail time. She begs God to send her a soulmate, but three tracks later, she compares the sensation of leaving a man to emerging from a frozen lake. In the album's lead single, she literally casts herself as an asylum patient.

As Sheffield notes, "There's something scary about all her try-try-try energy, but that's the only possible way she could write songs like these." Swift is always erupting, never walking it back, and never playing it cool. It's annoying. It's relatable. It's annoyingly relatable. But for her fellow triers, it's sheer magic. It's a crucial part of her allure as an artist, and it's also what makes the "The Tortured Poets Department" — yes, even the extra 15 songs — such a damned, accursed thrill.

Best songs: "But Daddy I Love Him," "Guilty as Sin?," "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?," "Loml," "The Black Dog," "How Did It End?," "The Prophecy"

One year after The Marías released their debut album, 2021's "Cinema," the band reached a watershed moment: They were featured on Bad Bunny's 2022 blockbuster "Un Verano Sin Ti." Their duet, "Otro Atardecer," has over 481 million streams on Spotify to date.

Bad Bunny's cosign promised more ears and a much bigger platform; a well-executed sophomore album could change their trajectory forever. It seemed the stars had aligned.

In reality, their path forward wasn't promised. Lead singer María Zardoya and drummer and producer Josh Conway, the duo that founded the band and cowrote the songs, broke up. They'd begun dating shortly after meeting, drawn together by their artistic chemistry. Dousing that spark could've spelled the end of The Marías.

To avoid this fate, the bandmates had the wisdom to impose a six-week sabbatical — the longest they'd been apart in their eight years of knowing each other, Zardoya told Elle. They both took the time to travel. "We were in our 'Eat, Pray, Love' era for sure," she said. "The isolation was necessary for us to heal, then come together and make this project. We overcame a lot to make it happen."

"Submarine" may be the best album written by actively splitting lovers since Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours," though The Marías' version is markedly more serene. Zardoya swaps the righteous fury of Stevie Nicks for soothing melodies and abiding tenderness, sounding more like Selena mixed with Sade. Conway compliments his ex's hushed vocals with glinting synths and waves of reverb.

The effect is all-encompassing, fluid, almost reverent — quite like sitting at the bottom of a pool, watching the sunlight glitter on the surface, as Zardoya does in the cover art. There isn't a single dissonant moment or skippable song to pull you out of its depths.

Best songs: "Echo," "Run Your Mouth," "Blur," "No One Noticed," "Vicious Sensitive Robot"

"Hit Me Hard and Soft" is Billie Eilish's third studio album and her best yet by far. Compared to the lonely visions of 2019's "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" or the self-indulgent soliloquies of 2021's "Happier Than Ever," this world feels richer, more curious and expansive.

Although the tracklist only has 10 songs, every chord, every ad-lib, and every transition has been carefully considered as part of a whole. String motifs and key lyrics resurface across the album, and the eerie and reflective closing track, "Blue," fuses two scrapped songs from Eilish's past into something new.

Eilish's brother and collaborator Finneas O'Connell once described this album as containing "real ghosts" because they resurrected old material. This may explain why its centerpiece, "Chihiro," shares a name with the protagonist of "Spirited Away," a movie about stumbling through a portal to an alternate dimension that's full of strange monsters and spirits. Chihiro is thrust into a great adventure at an extremely young age — much like Eilish when she shot to fame as a teenager. His only options are escape or immersion.

Eilish's previous albums ooze with the itch to escape. In "Hit Me Hard and Soft," Eilish finally chooses the latter.

Best songs: "Chihiro," "Birds of a Feather," "The Greatest," "The Diner," "Blue"

The "best" album of the year is always debatable, but one thing is for sure: "Brat" will go down in history as the main character in 2024's cultural discourse.

The artwork's acid green seeped into every corner of observable life, from statue gardens and brand campaigns to Times Square and the White House. Even NASA hopped on the trend, using "Brat" lyrics in an Instagram caption to describe the lingering glow of a supernova. "Buried at the center is the star's tell-tale heart," the agency wrote, "which beats with rhythmic precision." How very fitting.

After many years of languishing in pop's middle class (justice for "How I'm Feeling Now"), Charli XCX broke into the mainstream with her most idiosyncratic work to date. Ironically, it was her previous effort, 2022's "Crash," that was created with the intention of showing off her pop-star chops — both as a cynical stunt and an earnest bid for attention.

At the time, the experiment seemed to fail. "Crash" was well received by critics but failed to lift Charli into pop's upper echelon.

And yet, it was precisely this kind of failure — or, at least, the perception of failure in the competitive world of "stan Twitter" — that made the existence of "Brat" possible. Throughout the tracklist, Charli is haunted by her own legacy. She frets constantly about being compared to other women in the industry. Do they even notice when she's fixing her hair or snagging her tights? Do they see her standing in the background? Do they also wish they could rewind to simpler times, before they cared about Billboard charts and sales numbers? She even wonders whether her music career is worth putting her personal life on hold for.

Even when Charli is playing her familiar role, the "365 party girl," her brags are still legacy-oriented. "I'm your favorite reference, baby," she insists in the opening track, "360." In the standout single "Von Dutch," she teases, "It's OK to just admit that you're jealous of me." Put in conversation with the album's deep cuts, these lyrics seem more defensive than they do at first brush. Charli is ready to call herself an icon, but she wants you to say it back.

"Brat" is a uniquely Charli album, but as NASA accidentally noted, it's also a tale as old as time: Buried at the center, beneath the neon lights and pulsing synths, Charli's tell-tale heart is beating, keeping her alive, begging to be heard.

Best songs: "Sympathy Is a Knife," "Von Dutch," "So I," "Girl, So Confusing," "365"

"Brat Summer" may have taken over the online lexicon in 2024, but once again, it was Beyoncé who made the most technically impressive and thematically effective album of the year.

Following the footsteps of "Renaissance," the best album of 2022, "Cowboy Carter" is part of an ongoing trilogy that probes the limits of genre — and, crucially, the roles that race and gender play in imposing those limits. Beyoncé is the perfect and perhaps only musician alive who could stage such an experiment with this level of mastery, foresight, and cultural impact.

You could pinpoint pretty much any three-track run on "Cowboy Carter," and you'd find proof why it's the album of the year. Take "Ameriican Reqiuem," a mini-dissertation on prejudice in the music industry, then "Blackbiird," an illuminating blend of young Black voices in country music with a classic-rock song that was inspired by the Little Rock Nine, topped by "16 Carriages," a soulful ballad that draws from Beyoncé's outlaw-esque roots, and you've still only covered the first 11-ish minutes.

Beyoncé has many musical gifts, including (but not limited to) identifying fresh talent, reinventing samples, fine-tuning even the tiniest details, and synthesizing many themes and perspectives to form one coherent narrative. Her range is already well established, but on "Cowboy Carter," each of these skills is deployed to its fullest extent.

The album opens with a pointed set of questions: "Can you hear me? Or do you fear me?" But Beyoncé knows the breadth of her power, so she already knows what the answer will be. She closes the album by asking again, but this time, it's tinted by the shadow of a smirk: "Tell me, can you hear me now?"

Best songs: "Ameriican Reqiuem," "Bodyguard," "Daughter," "Alliigator Tears," "II Most Wanted," "Ya Ya," "II Hands II Heaven," "Sweet Honey Buckiin'"