Hello Milken! 2024 was a year of musical left-hooks: The return of recession-pop on a wave of pure camp, Beyoncè’s controversial country reinvention, and, of course, the unprecedented toppling of rap’s most inoffensive megastar. Music was also at a peak of cultural relevance, shaping everything from US politics (“Kamala IS brat!”) to the year’s best movies—Challengers and Babygirl in particular — both of which thrum with the hedonistic, four-on-the-floor indie energy that defined 2024: This was a year of unapologetic indulgence. Boundaries were pushed, norms were challenged, new eras and new contenders established.
It’s for these extenuating reasons that I have delayed and rewritten this list again and again, searching for the defining albums of a year that embraced heel-turns and brash experimentation even in the mainstream. But here we are, with a list that I hope addresses the best of the current zeitgeist and what’s most exciting on the horizon. Let’s get started.
- Two Star & The Dream Police – Mk.gee
No doubt the breakout indie-boy of the year, Mk.gee greeted 2024 with a lo-fi, refreshingly quiet rock album that saw a seasoned songwriter completely in his element: tight drums, cavernous vocals, detailed and unconventional mixing.
Much of this album’s success is owed to Dijon Duenas, a great musician in his own right who’s dry and plunderphonic production permeates this record, but it’s Mk.Gee’s approach to vocals that ties the whole thing together: The falsetto-breaks on highlight “Alesis” are no doubt the core of the tune, same with the sincere, nostalgic Peter Gabrielisms on “Dream Police”. If there’s any throughline to his vocal style, it’s immersion, wrapping me up in his loose narratives with only a few muttered reproofs or yelps for attention.
Highlights: New Low, Are You Looking Up, Alesis
Lowlight: DNM
- Flex Musix (FLXTRA) – OsamaSon
I’ve made peace with the fact that I will die having never heard the next Playboi Carti album, but at least his disciples are putting out some interesting stuff. FLXTRA is easily the best of the rest: vicious, sinister rap to do donuts to. Of course, like the best ragers, FLXTRA is hiding a certain complexity: the brazenly odd “Pop” has Osamason rapping about his Chrome Hearts jacket over a text-to-speech program, for instance. The album finds its stride in these little flourishes, like the hilariously nerdy harpsichord beat on opener “Blonde” or the suffocating stutter-step refrain on “All Star”.
Despite these eccentricities, the album goes undeniably hard. One insightful YouTube commenter writes that “it feels like the beat just beat me up”, and I agree. Go into FLXTRA ready to mosh even if that’s just you jumping around like an idiot in your room with your AirPods in.
Highlights: Blonde, Baghdad, Pop
Lowlight: Me When
- BRAT – Charli XCX
Nobody can escape BRAT. Nor should they! This is one of those rare, beautiful moments where brilliant and popular cross paths. Every single song on this album accomplishes whatever it is attempting, whenever it attempts it. I’m so glad that mainstream pop has finally left chilly Vermont (with all due respect to Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Lorde, etc. etc.) We’re back in Greenwich Village for a BRAT summer!
There’s a unique joy in pop music operating on this level of minimalist perfection: think Gaga’s “Poker Face” or even Pharrell’s hand in “Hollaback Girl” (a huge influence on the raucous BRAT deluxe track “Spring Breakers”). If pop has always been about trading in complexity for instant satisfaction, this is the zenith of the medium: There is nothing more in-your-face and ecstatically danceable than the single note of ear-splitting bass on ‘Guess’ or the effortless a cappella in the middle of “Club Classics”.
The more Charli’s sound takes over the mainstream, the more fondly I remember those first few breadcrumb singles of hers on the radio. I think we all regarded a song like Fancy from way back when with a little snooty disdain—but BRAT’s breakout success is clearly the excuse Earth needed to embrace its own epoch of party-girl solipsism. Think “trash the hotel; let’s…”
Highlights: 360, Talk talk, Guess
Lowlight: I might say something stupid
- Heavy Metal – Cameron Winter
Geese frontman Cameron Winter was never just going to be known for the groovy Zeppelin-worship of his last record, 3D Country: a record like Heavy Metal seemed only a matter of time. Lanky and perpetually stumbling with the live presence of an anxious scarecrow, Winter’s newest album is more an extension of himself than anything he has released up to this point, and strips back the irony-soaked machismo of Geese to reveal that Cameron Winter is actually just a really big Bob Dylan fan. I jest, but like The Freewheelin’, Winter leverages his awkwardness to its maximum emotional impact, leaving burning craters with a voice crack or lip-burble.
For all its gorgeous and winding interiors, Heavy Metal sounds surprisingly accidental, like these songs emerged from white noise, like his lyrics came from one of those infinite-monkey-typewriter situations.
That improvisational element makes the buildups and come-downs in these tunes extra satisfying. The piano touching down in the chorus of ‘Love Takes Miles’, the loopy proclamations of “God is real!” on “0$”, the very existence of “Nina + Field of Cops”. At its core, Heavy Metal is magical realism: themes of love, loss, and the pain of artistic creation are filtered through Winter’s whimsical, giddy instrumental lens.
Highlights: Love Takes Miles, Nina + Field of Cops, Can’t Keep Anything
Lowlight: $0
Honorable Mentions: SCRAPYARD – Quadeca, COLD VISIONS – Bladee, Diamond Jubilee – Cindy Lee, …My Decrepit Mountain – Tapir!, 2093 – Yeat
- The New Sound – Geordie Greep
Of all the albums on this list, I would recommend this one the least. While most of these albums are products of creativity first and musicianship second, The New Sound pushes boundaries in terms of technical virtuosity rather than emotional heft.
This seeming sterility and focus on form is alienating at first. Opener ‘Blues’ especially so, a tempest of picked arpeggios, splashy jazz drums, and repressed dread that will probably turn off a good 60 percent of listeners on its own. But for those willing to stick it out, The New Sound contains multitudes. The interlocking harpsichord-violin-guitar crescendo on “As If Waltz”, the macabre shrieks coloring “Motorbike”—you are not hearing this stuff anywhere else, straight-up. And of course, there is “The Magician”, the 12 minute crown jewel at the center of an album seemingly made entirely of crown jewels. It’s a far cry from the rest of the album’s detached absurdism, a startlingly bitter song on the agony of late-in-life divorce. The tune is all the more potent for that contrast.
Indeed, this is an album that will always keep you guessing, whether through its technical depth, theatrical flair, or the occasional moment of rapturous beauty. The New Sound is an exuberant, richly realized procession of bafflingly well-executed concepts.
Highlights: Terra, Through a War, The Magician
Lowlight: Bongo Season