Another year over. A new one’s just begun. Which means it’s now once again time to count down the very best music of the past twelve months!
Compiling these year-end retrospectives is always a fun but agonizing task for me. I listen to so much music inside of a calendar year, and there’s no way to include all of it, even all of the records I’ve truly enjoyed. I go through a period where I second-guess the music that didn’t make the final cut, and then pivot back & forth on particular rankings. At some point however, you have to call the list done and move on, while looking forward to the hindsight analysis that will await the final product in the years ahead.
As always, it’s important to remember that these lists are completely subjective. These are ultimately the singles and albums that personally moved, intrigued, and entertained me the most throughout 2024. Commercial and/or critical response in the general public space may be an influencer, but is ultimately not a determining factor. Records that I reviewed early in the year may have ultimately been supplanted by those that I didn’t even have the time or attention to give upon initial release. There are also always loads of releases that I never even get to, because it’s impossible to cover it all.
In the end, my “Best Of” is really just my 2024 musical story. It’s going to look different than yours, based both on taste and what music you ultimately had the time to give over the last 365 days. Be sure to chime in via the Comments section to let me know what I missed. The goal of the site is always to provide a reciprocal sharing and dialogue of the records that moved us most.
I’ve got very few guardrails up when it comes to curating the playlists that soundtrack my life, so it’s always interesting to me once these lists are done, to see if there was any prevailing trend or sound that was more dominant than any other. Long-time readers of the blog know that there’s always a steadily rootsy thread running through my own tastes and trends, but there is always room for a rock edge or a pop infection to shine through at the end. For 2024, I’m struck but just how much full-blown, mainstream pop music that I not only loved, but devoured. Seems only fittingly full-circle that this retrospective comes in the midst of our recent coverage of one pop’s most glorious years in history, the fabled 1984.
With all that said, below is the criteria that I used in ranking my Fifty Best Singles and Albums of 2024:
Albums: I considered any album that was officially released during the calendar year of 2024 to be eligible. Also, with the evolving nature as to what is considered a full album release in modern times (“full” records seem to span anywhere between 7 and 700 songs these days), I’m also considering extended-play releases as eligible. Neither compilation albums or today’s endless slew of reissues of a previously released album are eligible.
Singles: I deemed eligible any single (be it radio, streaming, or video singles) released during the calendar year, or those released during 2023 that reached either their chart peak or greatest obvious visibility in 2024. Additionally, for the sake of variety, the number of singles entries is limited to one proper single per artist. However, an artist can appear multiple times if they were on a feature or collaboration with a different lead artist.
You can access the two-part lists as they’re posted using the links below, or via the Home Page:
Fifty Best Singles of 2024: Part I/Part II
Fifty Best Albums of 2024: Part I/Part II
And for nostalgia’s sake, be sure to visit our Year-End archives and see how past lists have aged over time! Click here to revisit countdowns dating back to the site’s first in 2020: The 706’s Year-End Archives
Enjoy and here’s to an excellent 2025, musically and otherwise!
Joe
Editor/Columnist- The 706
The 706 