All right, dear friends and music lovers, here we go again, Nancy and I's favorite songs and albums of 2024.
And 2024 was a heck of a year—my favorite of this decade so far.
Not because of any significant shift in present trends, but the overall quality level of 2024's top efforts just seemed a touch higher. As such, 2024 contains the most Highest and Strong album recommends I've given out in quite some time.
Female artists led the way once again as seems to be the norm in this era, with a number of strong efforts especially in the indie-country, post-punk, and contemporary pop niches, but top-tier thrills from artists of all backgrounds could be found in just about every genre, expect maybe electronic music, which after Charli xcx's generational classic Brat had a very shallow year.
Three more quick points.
First, in addition to providing our own recommend status for each album discussed, I have also included, when applicable, each album's final ranking in critical aggregator Album of the Year's 2024 year-end poll.
Second, Kendrick Lamar and Drake's spring/summer 2024 rap battle was, along with Charli xcx's Brat, the popular music story of the year, but you will find none of those rap battle tracks on Volume 1 here.
Instead, they have all been collected and arranged in sequential order to form the backbone of our 2024 hip-hop-and-contemporary-funk-themed mix Volume 3 - Battling.
Finally, there was one album I and many others absolutely loved that won't be represented on our 2024 mixes because it's only available on Youtube or Apple Music, and that is Canadian Cindy Lee's self-released Diamond Jubilee (Highest Recommend, #7 in the year-end critical rankings), for my money the best true lo-fi rock recording in more than a decade.
Over two-hours long and buried in reverb so heavy the music often sounds as if it's playing from your neighbor's stereo across the street, it's a bizarre, out-of-time-and-place, fever dream of an album, but so many of its tracks make a strong impression, so before we dive into this first mix, I'll share two of Jubilee's standout tracks here.
First, the mesmerizing, slow-burning title track that opens the album.
And then the grooving mid-album highlight Dracula.
And now, let's get to this year's first mix, our annual Best Of The Best, 37 of Nancy and I's favorite songs and albums of 2024. Music we are thrilled share. Enjoy. (Click here for access to the full Spotify mix)
And if you want more music to jump into after finishing Volume 1, click here to check out the other eight volumes of our 2024 mix collection.
ABOUT THE SONGS, ALBUMS, AND ARTISTS ON THIS MIX:
1. She's Leaving You - MJ Lenderman: Starting things out with my favorite song of 2024—Waxahatchee/Wednesday guitarist MJ Lenderman's old-school slice of Crazy Horse/Dinosaur Jr. fuzz-rock perfection, She's Leaving You, from his celebrated fourth solo outing Manning Fireworks (Solid Recommend here, #4 in 2024 on AOTY's year-end aggregate).
2. Even Light - Nadine Shah: Pakistani-Brit Nadine Shah's fifth album Filthy Underneath (Strong Recommend) just barely edge's out Chelsea Wolfe's She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She for McQ's favorite gothy art-rock outing of 2024. An unsparing exploration of Shah's recent battles with addiction, rehab, and suicidal ideation, the album is as nakedly personal as her onetime close friend Amy Winehouse's Back To Black was in confronting similar subject matter, but also like Back To Black, Filthy is often musically thrilling, especially over its fantastic opening three-song stretch of Even Light featured here, Topless Mother, and Food For Fuel.
3. I Guess Time Just Makes Fools Of Us All - Father John Misty: Love, love, love this song—an eight-minute, Bob-Dylan-discovers-70s-bar-band-funk-like ramble anchored around 2024's best lyrical catchphrase—from Father John Misty's fantastic sixth release Mahashmashana (Strong Recommend, #28 AOTY), for our money the second-best album in his discography after his 2015 classic I Love You, Honeybear.
4. Denial Is A River - Doechii: Our favorite hip-hop track of 2024 from our favorite female-fronted hip-hop album of 2024, the Grammy-winning, genre-hopping Alligator Bites Never Heal (Solid Recommend, #22 AOTY), which delivers both rap and R&B thrills with a ton of personality.
5. Dog Days - Dehd: A lot of younger bands returned to garage-rock/jangle-pop textures in 2024, but few made the intentionally simple sound as irresistible as Chicago trio Dehd did on their latest release Poetry (Strong Recommend). While the band's special sauce is hard to define, a good chunk of Poetry's infectioius charm has to be attributed to the engagingly ramshackle vocal interplay of tandem lead singers Jason Balla and Emily Kempf, which powers the album's many earworms like Mood Ring, Alien, Pure Gold, Light On and Dog Days featured here.
6. Sinner - The Last Dinner Party: My first album crush of 2024, London-based, all-female art-rock quintet The Last Dinner Party's Prelude to Ecstasy (Highest Recommend, #21 AOTY) is the most fully formed debut I've heard in some time and an absolute blast of a listen. A ceaselessly engaging blend of feminist ire, Bowie-esque glitter, Victorian pretentions, and theatrical choral sensibilities, it is arguably, from a pure songwriting standpoint, the best album of the year; only the band's perfectly serviceable but ultimately unremarkable instrumental chops (especially on the percussion end - the band has no permanent drummer) prevents Prelude to Ecstasy from taking McQ's 2024 top spot overall. Funky second lead single Sinner represents the album here, but trust me, this is a record you want to hear in full - no 2024 album makes a better first impression.
7. Classical - Vampire Weekend: Only God Was Above Us (Strong Recommend, #23 AOTY) may not be Vampire Weekend's best album (I still favor the spunky charm of their 2008 self-titled debut), but it is without doubt their most accomplished and creative from a production/ arrangement perspective. Case in point: Classical here, which seems to mix every individual instrument with a different level of reverb to help anchor the song's theme of cultural opinions shifting over time.
8. Imouhar - Mdou Moctar: Overall, I didn't like Niger desert bluesman Mdou Moctar's Funeral for Justice (Mild Recommend, #32 AOTY) as much as his previous effort Afrique Victime; the vocals weren't nearly as engaging. But the jaw-dropping guitar work, when brought to the fore, still amazes—as on the frenzied jam Imouhar featured here.
9. Bodyguard - Beyonce: Beyonce's COWBOY CARTER (Highest Recommend, #5 AOTY) is probably too White Album-uneven to claim the title of her best record (Beyonce, Lemonade, and RENAISSANCE are all more consistent), but it is my personal favorite. Much has been made of the album's thematic dive into country music's black roots, which is certainly a defining feature, as is its mind-blowingly great, crystal-clear production. But after multiple listens, the impression that resonates most is its artistic fearlessness—COWBOY CARTER overtly refuses to be confined by genre. It's this anything-goes sensibility and willingness to explore that makes it such an exciting and unpredictable entry in Beyonce's discography.
10. Holy, Holy - Geordie Greep: Hold onto your hats! Holy, Holy, from Black Midi frontman Geordie Greep's solo debut The New Sound (Solid Recommend), is the zaniest song on this year's Best Of The Best mix. Like most of the first-person, creepy-dude character portraits that make up The New Sound, Holy, Holy takes the jazzed-up, coked-up, one-night-stand vibe of Steeley Dan and pushes everything - the volume, the instrumental/stylistic dexterity, the drug-fueled mania, the sleezeball lyrical factor - way past eleven. The album, though quite good, can be a bit much to take in in one sitting, but this song, the album's peak and one of the very best songs of 2024, is in its own warped way a tour-de-force of musical performance art.
11. I Got Heaven - Mannequin Pussy: On fourth album I Got Heaven (Strong Recommend, #13 AOTY) Philly punk quartet Mannequin Pussy finally manages to blend its competing hardcore punk and powerpop/shoegaze sensibilities into one seamless, tantalizing whole. The results are electrifying. So electrifying that to my Chicago friends, I would submit the record's spectacular first half—fueled by killer cuts like Loud Bark, I Don't Know You, Sometimes, and the blistering title track here—is so good it is worthy of future WXRT perfect-album-side consideration.
12. That's How I'm Feeling - Jack White: Now thirteen years removed from the breakup of The White Stripes, Jack White has finally freed himself of the urge to stylistically differentiate his solo work from that of The White Stripes and the result, sixth album No Name (Solid Recommend, #25 AOTY), is the best of his solo career. Gone are the rapid structural shifts, random experimentation, and noodly jamming that made his solo career and ventures with The Racounteurs and The Dead Weather such frustratingly uneven affairs, and in their place, a return to hard-hitting, streamlined blues-rock and The Stripe's clever, tongue-in-check simplicity. We're featuring best cut That's How I'm Feeling here, but do not miss the album's other knockout track, Archbishop Harold Holmes, on our final mix in this year's collection Vol. 9 - Cinqurgary.
13. 3 Sisters - Waxahatchee: Both Nancy and I's favorite album of 2024, Waxahatchee's sixth full-length Tiger's Blood (Highest Recommend, #8 AOTY) finds the transformation of Katie Crutchfield from brooding, spiky singer-songwriter to indie-country siren—a transformation that started with previous outing Saint Cloud—now complete. Absolutely effortless and unpretentious in feel, Tiger's Blood is not an album that will blow you away on first listen, but a bigger grower or better front-to-back listen in 2024 cannot be found, and by your third or fourth listen you'll be bobbing your head to every slow strum of MJ Lenderman's countrified guitar and singing along with every one of Crutchfield's deliciously idiosyncratic drawls. Going with personal fav 3 Sisters here over the album's biggest hit Right Back To It, but that song and a few others from Tiger's Blood can be found on our country/folk mix Volume 5 - Cowgirls, Outlaws & Homesteaders.
14. If Tomorrow Starts Without Me - Bill Ryder-Jones: The year's best quaint, chamber-pop album, lechyd Da (Solid Recommend)—the title is Welsh for "Good Health"—comes to us courtesy of ex-Coral guitarist Bill-Ryder Jones. In this track, a spin on the It's A Wonderful Life concept, Jones contemplates the state of his life and most important relationships if all were to end for him the following morning. Characteristic of all the music on the record, somewhat downcast lyrical content is made charming and hesitantly uplifting through specifics of take and delicately creative arrangement choices.
15. Death & Romance - Magdalena Bay: Death & Romance, our favorite straight disco cut of 2024 and Paste Magazine's song of the year, comes to us courtesy of the Miami-born, LA-based, eighties-kitcsch-loving electropop duo Magdalena Bay and their exhuberant second full-length release Imaginal Disk (Solid Recommend, #19 AOTY).
16. Best For You And Me - Helado Negro: It's been said of Stevie Wonder that his greatest contribution to music (even more than all the outstanding individual songs) is he gave the synthesizer heart and soul, discovering in its mechanical, artificial essence something profoundly organic and human in feel. Few artists working today have carried on that tradition of humanizing electronic music more effectively than Latin-electro-folk pioneer Helado Negro, and he continues to push the form on his eighth album Phasor (Solid Recommend), thinning his compositions sometimes to mere pulse-like threads, but at no time sacrificing his trademark welcoming warmth—a technique well on display in highlight Best For You And Me. Just a fantastic album to throw on when entertaining, and for more great music for relaxed entertaining moments, be sure to check out Vol. 8 - Dinner Bells, our mix of some of the year's best chillwave, crossover jazz, orchestral torch songs, and late-night R&B.
17. THE GREATEST - Billie Eilish: Billie Eilish's deceptively named HIT ME HARD AND SOFT (Strong Recommend, #6 AOTY) really only hits hard about 10% of the time as it presents some of the most downtempo and introspective contempory pop of 2024, but it's loaded with compelling, sophisticated songs, from gentle mega-hit BIRDS OF A FEATHER to the even softer WILDFLOWER to the grooving LUNCH to my favorite, the crescendoing torch song THE GREATEST featured here.
18. BLACK DOG/WHITE HORSE - BIG SPECIAL: Stylistically, there's little that separates UK spokenword post-punkers BIG SPECIAL's debut POSTINDUSTRIAL HOMETOWN BLUES (Strong Recommend) from the top efforts of like-minded rant-singing contemporaries like Franz Ferdinand, Yard Act, Viagra Boys, or Sleaford Mods, except range. Big Special seems determined to explore every possibile micro-niche in these styles, rather than zero in and master just one or two, making POSTINDUSTRIAL the most engaging male-fronted post-punk album of 2024. As with Sleaford Mods, the antagonistic all-caps titles—BLACK COUNTRY GOTHIC, I MOCK JOGGERS, SHITHOUSE, BUTCHER'S BIN, ILL., BLACK DOG/WHITE HORSE featured here—spell out exactly where this young duo stands when it comes to critiquing present-day British society.
19. Cards On The Table - Nia Archives: Adore this slice of Macy Gray-like quirkiness from multi-hyphenate Nia Archives—one of the top artists in the UK's recent drums-and-base/jungle revival—and her first full-length release, the Mercury Prize-nominated Silence Is Loud (Solid Recommend).
20. Wild God - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: I'm trying to temper my praise of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' 18th studio album Wild God (Strong Recommend, #20 AOTY) because Nick and the boys just elevated its songs beyond belief at Cruel World 2025 in one of the best live sets I've seen all decade. What I will say about Wild God the album is that while the palpable grief (over the untimely passing of two of his sons) that dominated Cave's previous studio efforts Ghosteen and Skeleton Tree hasn't vanished, it has made room this time out for a balancing contemplation on the importance of joy, making Wild God the liveliest (and dare I say "most life-affirming") recording from Cave in quite a while. Going with the title track here (which has 2024's best full band choral entry at the 3:08 mark) over another favorite Frogs.
21. Devotion - Cassandra Jenkins: The most gentle song on this year's Best Of The Best mix comes from New Yorker Cassandra Jenkin's third album My Light, My Destroyer (Solid Recommend, #37 AOTY), a singer-songwriter record that while not quite as fully country/folk anchored as Waxahatchee's Tiger's Blood, Hurrary For The Riff Raff's The Past Is Still Alive, or Johnny Blue Skies Passage Du Desir shares with those albums a similar sense of effortless majesty.
22. King of Sweden - Future Islands: Future Islands' pandemic-and-long-distance-relationship-focused People Who Aren't There Anymore (Strong Recommend) didn't make much of an impression in the year-end lists (though it did receive very solid initial reviews), but I find the record ceaselessly listenable, making it—as with Mahashmashana for Father John Misty—my second favorite album in the band's discography after 2014 career peak Singles. The album's most popular cut King of Sweden represents here, but two more, Give Me The Ghost Back and Peach, can be found on Vol 4 - Indie Stalwarts, our themed deep dive into the younger half of indie-rock's best 2024 efforts.
23. U Should Not Be Doing That - Amyl and The Sniffers: One of the last selections to make this mix, prolific Aussie punkers Amyl and The Sniffers 2024 release Cartoon Darkness (Solid Recommend, #34 AOTY) is another quality addition to the band's rapidly growing canon, with both their regular strengths—fiery but playful commitment, lead singer Amy Wilson's snarling, snotty charisma, guitarist Declan Mehrten's willingness to break with punk convention and rip off super tasty solos—and their regular weaknesses—little stylistic variance, a complete dearth of melody—on full display. But if punk with a lot of feminist bite indebted to classic first-gen acts like the Plasmatics is your thing, few bands deliver better on the sound right now than Amyl and crew do here on tracks like Chewing Gum, Jerkin, Big Dreams, Me And The Girls, and U Should Not Be Doing That featured here.
24. Take Your Mask Off - Tyler, The Creator: It's taken me a long time to warm up to Tyler, the Creator's music, but 2024's CHROMAKOPIA (Solid Recommend, #10 AOTY), which showcases Tyler's growing maturity and empathy and is a cornacupia of outside-the-box creative choices, finally did the trick. A better, more original feeling album than Kendrick Lamar's very-solid-but-nonetheless-career-lowpoint GNX, which surprisingly to me still finished ahead of this work in the year-end aggregates. But you can make your own decision by checking out more from Kendrick and Tyler and many others in our hip-hop themed mix Vol 3 - Battling.
25. Coincidence - Sabrina Carpenter: The most recent addition to the ever-expanding club of Disney Channel child actors turned adult pop superstars, Sabrina Carpenter's spirited fourth full-length outing Short n' Sweet (Strong Recommend, #12 AOTY) was her breakout release. But for all the attention lavished on the album's billion-plus-Spotify-listen hits like Taste, Please Please Please, and Espresso, it was the strength of the album's sparer numbers–Sharpest Tool, Dumb & Poetic, and the delightful Coincidence included here–that won me over most.
26. Big Time Nothing - St. Vincent: Art-rocker Annie Clark delivers again on her seventh full-length, All Born Screaming (Solid Recommend, #35 AOTY), a musically moodier release than her previous two studio outings, 2021's Daddy's Home and 2017 career-best MASSEDUCTION. But rather than drag the album down, the darkest turns are the highlights—edgy, barbaric yawps against the present state of things whether it's the painful examination of gender fluidity Broken Man, the so cool, James-Bond-theme-song-like plea to cling to love in a disintegrating world Violent Times, or the funky, Fashion-like acquiesence to spiritual emptiness Big Time Nothing featured here.
27. Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive) - Hurray For The Riff Raff: There are differences in theme and style, but for the most part, whatever one might say positively about Waxahatchee's Tiger's Blood applies in equal measure to Brooklyn folkers Hurray For The Riff Raff's The Past Is Still Alive (Strong Recommend, #43 AOTY), another loaded collection of unpretentious, indie-country winners. The title track featured here is just one example of how effortlessly the album pulls the listener in, especially on its stunning front half.
28. Just Another Rainbow - Liam Gallagher & John Squire: Hankering for a throwback to those late 80s Madchester/early 90s Brit Pop sounds? You'll find no better 2024 offering than Liam Gallagher & John Squire (Solid Recommend). The out-of-nowhere collabortation between the Oasis frontman and The Stone Roses' gifted but all-too-unprolific guitarist is sure to thrill fans of both bands, especially when Squire kicks it into high-paisley gear on numbers like Just Another Rainbow spotlighted here.
29. What Now - Brittany Howard: One of the more interesting album's of 2024, Brittany Howard's What Now (Solid Recommend) finds the Alabama Shakes howler broadening her sound exponentially, softening her vocals and swapping the classic rock and soul structures of her earlier efforts for boundless stylistic exploration. As such, outside of a few tracks, most notably the awesomely dense Jungle/SAULT-like Red Flags, the electro-propulsive Prove It To You, and the super funky title track featured here, the album is more memorable for its seemless flow and unpredictable sonic touches than it is for its individual songs, but it's a fascinating listen nonetheless.
30. Mint Tea - Johnny Blue Skies: Avant-garde country crooner Sturgil Simpson promised early in his career he would only release five albums of original material under his name and he keeps true to his word by donning the moniker Johnny Blue Skies for his sixth album of originals Passage Du Desir (Strong Recommend, #50 AOTY). But ironically (or maybe not) for an album released under a pseudonym, issues of identity, especially one's identity as something separate from one's career, dominate, making Passage one of Simpson's most personal efforts to date. Musically, the album is a masterclass in unforced variation, shifting between Appalachian folk, yacht rock, orchestral pop, low-key blues and Layla-esque extended denouments in addition to the more traditional country numbers with effortless ease, making it our favorite male-fronted country album of 2025. Mint Tea, the album's one light, upbeat number amidst a number of more probing reflections, represents here.
31. Favourite - Fontaines D.C.: A calculated shift to a bigger, more commercial sound, Dublin post-punkers Fontaines D.C. employed the services of producer James Ford (Florence + The Machine, The Last Dinner Party) to give their fourth album, Romance (Solid Recommend, #2 AOTY) an arena-ready sheen and the tactic worked wonders, making Fontaines the UK's biggest rock act of 2024 and pushing Romance to the top of the year-end aggregate charts. Personally, I still prefer their scrappy debut Dogrel and their edgier, sonically denser high point Skinty Fia, but there's no denying that even with this embrace of a slightly more mainstream vibe, with tracks like Starbuster, Bug, In The Modern World, and Favourite featured here, Fontaines D.C. remains one of the most vital and literate rock acts presently going.
32. I think about it all the time - Charli xcx: I may be doing a disservice to Charli xcx's BRAT (Highest Recommend, #1 AOTY)—arguably the best female-fronted electro-pop album since Robyn's Body Talk all the way back in 2010—by selecting I think about it all the time, the record's one twee, angsty ballad in a tracklist chock full of assertive hyperpop bangers, as repesentive cut. It's both my twenty-two-year-old daughter and the world's Spotify listeners' least favorite cut from the album, but its sweet reflection on the future cost of present day decisions spoke to this old timer in a way that probably doesn't resonate yet with Charli's younger listeners, but likely will more in the years to come. And to hear some of Charli's bangers, as well as a rich assortment of hits from other top female pop artists of 2024, check out Vol 2 - Brats.
33. Good Blood Mexico City - Elbow: Like lead singer Guy Garvey's musical idol Peter Gabriel, Elbow has always had a knack for stirring artrock balladry, something they proved time and again on their first nine full-length releases. But following a string of increasingly mellow, reflective albums, Elbow decided to get back to being a rock band first on tenth studio full-length AUDIO VERTIGO (Solid Recommend), their liveliest effort in years. Good Blood Mexico City is just one of several numbers from AUDIO VERTIGO that showcase the band picking the pace back up to great effect.
34. I'll Take Your Word For It - Redd Kross: Forty-five years into their simultaneously legendary and obscure career, Hawthorne, CA's Redd Kross lean into their lifelong Beatles love bigtime on eighth album Redd Kross (Solid Recommend). Jokingly labeled The Redd Album by fans, the record moves at a faster, more aggressive pace than the bulk of the Beatle's work (Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey would be a mid-tempo number here), but otherwise, everything else about Redd Kross—The White Album-aping cover, the double-album length, the appealingly employed Beatle-esque harmonies and phrasing—plays as a loving but non-derivative homage to the Fab Five. Fun, fun stuff.
35. Heavy - SPRINTS: Greg Kot of Sound Opinion's number one album of 2024, raging Irish quartet Sprints's full-length debut Letter To Self (Highest Recommend, #36 AOTY) misses out on our own number one slot by a few spots, but it is our favorite hard-rock album of any stripe in 2024, combining the emotionally raw, contemporary post-punk sound of many present-day, female-fronted acts like Porridge Radio, English Teacher, and Dry Cleaning with a U2-ish, punk-was-meant-to-lift-the-masses sensibility to deliver a dynamite collection of epic, cathartic cresendos that simply cannot be played loud enough. And let's all keep an eye on lead singer Karla Chubb, whose shrieking tornado of a voice is perfectly matched to music that aims to sound this huge. The aptly titled Heavy, just one of Letter To Self's many rousing tunes, represents here. And to hear several others, be sure to check out our punk-themed mix Vol. 7 - Nasty Women (And Like-Minded Dudes).
36. Endsong - The Cure: When do we know we have truly become old? Health concerns aside, I think for most it's that moment in late middle-age when you realize the world you were raised to live in, the world you came of age in, the world all your instincts have been forged to surive in no longer exists. Younger generations have emerged with their own tastes, beliefs, and priorities, and yours no longer feel as culturally on point or valued. The Cure's magisterial but so defeated Songs Of A Lost World (Strong Recommend, #3 AOTY) dives headfirst into these painful thoughts of age displacement like a slow-churning, Learian rage against the storm–grasping desparately for a few final frayed strands of connection to a world that long ago moved on. So successful is the album at conveying these feelings of helpless disempowerment that its final track Endsong featured here, with its closing mantra of it's all gone/it's all gone, sadly became something else entirely for Nancy and I—our theme song for election night 2024.
37. A Vineyard For The North - Yard Act: I knew the first time I heard A Vineyard For The North, the closing track to UK post-punk band Yard Act's climate-themed and more sonically adventurous, almost Gorillaz-styled second LP Where's My Utopia? (Solid Recommend), that it would likely close this year's first mix as well. Not only does it possess my favorite outro of 2024, but I love the way it takes on the impact of climate change not with the commonplace doom fetishism of the day (something I myself am frequently guilty of), but as a humorous reminder of human resilience in response to crisis, as lead singer James Smith ponders whether the time is "ripe" to join the legion of future-proofing French vinters presently gobbling up south England properties in what will soon be a more environmentally suitable region for growing grapes than those in France.
And that it for 2024's Vol 1 - Best Of The Best.
Again, if you want to check out the other mixes in this year's collection, click here.
And if you want to see how McQ's ranked this year's album releases, click here.
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