In 2024, this guy listened to more music than you, me – and almost anyone else.

Meet the man who sifted and sorted his way through brand new music all day, every day, for the entire year.

It sounds like one of those daft New Year’s plans, a grand scheme elevated by spare time, holiday vibes and possibly too much alcohol: what if you listened to a brand new album every day of the year, then wrote something about it?

Chris Philpott didn’t discard his 2024 resolution, he doubled down on it, crafting rules around exactly how it would work. He decided he’d listen to a new album, something he’d never heard before, five days a week, then publish those reviews for all to see.

So, this year, as he walked to work, when he caught the train home, and while driving his kids to after-school sports, Philpott soundtracked those activities with all-new music. Evenings and weekends were spent sourcing the albums he wanted to hear. For the majority of 2024, everything he listened to was stuff he was hearing for the very first time.

By doing this, Philpott believes he has found a way to break through the noise, to navigate a world in which 120,000 new songs are estimated to land on Spotify every single day. This is his way to filter the good stuff from the bad, and to work out what he really likes in middle-age, a time when many stop bothering with new music and stick to their formative faves.

He kept it up. He did it. Philpott’s having a well-earned holiday now, but this year he published 350 reviews on Substack – the bulk of which were albums he’d never heard before. At a time when music criticism is decimated, I wanted to ask him about this, about what he learned from his experiment, and whether he ever hated himself for making this decision. Or did it have the opposite effect? Has he cracked the code and found a loophole the rest of us are yet to discover?

Mostly, I wanted to ask him: “Mate, why?”

So, I did…

Hi Chris! (Great name.) This year you embarked on a bold mission: to review an album you’d never heard every single day of the year. This is mad! Why do it?

At a base level, it’s purely that I wanted to make sure I was actively trying to find new music I liked. There is nothing as exciting as when a song you've never heard before hits you in just the right way, gets your heart thumping, leaves you speechless, is so new and unique that it makes you feel like the world is full of possibilities and you've barely scratched the surface. Like Kendrick Lamar on ‘Not Like Us’ singing, “Trynna strike a chord and it's probably A minor,” or the back half of Lola Young's ‘Conceited’ after the drum roll, or the chorus of Charli XCX's ‘Sympathy is a Knife’, or the second half of the first verse of Fontaines DC's ‘Star Burster’, or Poppy's verse in Knocked Loose's ‘Suffocate’, or the shock of Mannequin Pussy singing, “What if Jesus himself ate my fucking snatch?” on ‘I Got Heaven’. Also, I like writing and this seemed like a good excuse to do that too.

How many albums did you end up reviewing?

I did a version of this in 2021 during the pandemic but it was less public. This time I went with weekdays to give myself a breather. I ended up reviewing more than 250 albums released in 2024, and 350 in total. That doesn't include any casual listening, or repeat listens, or individual songs, or the singles I review on Tuesdays, or crappy music my kids show me, or the Wicked soundtrack which my daughter has had on loop for three weeks, or podcasts, or audiobooks. It also doesn't include Siamese Dream or Dookie, both of which I bought on vinyl this year. They sound glorious.

Surely you must have hated this decision at some point?

I did what I set out to do despite 2024 being a crazy year for me. Yeah, there were days I didn't feel like listening to anything new. I tried to make sure I was always four or five days ahead so I had the luxury of not listening to anything new and could sit in silence for a change, or put on some comfort music. I've started listening to classical and movie scores when I need a break. Erik Satie is balm for the ears.

How do you choose which albums to review? And how often do you listen to them?

Finding what’s new is a tricky one. I'll go through new releases on Metacritic and Pitchfork for international artists, and then 13th Floor for local artists. I'm careful not to read the reviews. I also check the charts, then I check album release lists on Wikipedia to catch anything else. I actually listen to more than I review because there is a bit of bias going on. If I'm unfamiliar with an artist, I'll check out a song or two to get a feel for them. I'm not looking to shit all over an album so I tend to avoid stuff I know I'll struggle with or dislike: primarily jazz, country and effortless rap. I try to pick as many mainstream artists as I can. Mostly I'm just looking to be entertained. I tend to put that above other qualities. I’ll start listening up to a week before I put out a review, and I'll usually listen three to four times [of each album] before I write anything. I try to vary when and where I listen: while I'm working, while I'm driving, while I'm doing chores.

Is it an instant like or dislike? Or do your opinions change with repeat listens?

There are plenty that I love on first listen. Most of my Top 10 for the year probably fit that description. But there are albums that take a listen or two. Dartz' Dangerous Day To Be A Cold One is an album that I liked more after I'd had a proper listen to the lyrics, which are exceptionally clever and funny. The Last Dinner Party had me scratching my head initially, but I liked it more once I was able to focus. I've never liked Fairport Convention but I did enjoy their singer Richard Thompson's Ship To Shore. Mdou Moctar's Funeral For Justice is an album that I liked more the more I listened, and the more I read about the band and where they came from. I didn't like Sabrina Carpenter's Short N Sweet on first listen but it won me over. I pushed my review back a week because I could feel that turn happening.

Genres are a mess, algorithms are a shambles, charts mean nothing, nostalgia remains massive, Oasis became the world’s biggest stadium fillers and ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ hit No. 1 again. So what did it take to cut through in 2024?

Keeping up with music is an impossibility. Breaking through is almost an impossibility too. Algorithms can't do their job effectively because the number of data points is just too massive. Nostalgia is big because casual listeners are turning to the music they used to love in the face of too many options. Authenticity is crucial. You need to be seen as a real person, relatable and accessible. Think of someone like MJ Lenderman, who is topping all sorts of best-of lists: he presents as a realistic version of himself, he plays his own instruments, he sings about relatable subject matter. Authenticity explains why Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan are everywhere, and it explains the critiques of Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, whose work feels more like it was constructed in a lab to achieve a goal. I don't think music goes in movements anymore – globalisation put an end to that. You couldn't have grunge, or the Dunedin Sound, or the Britpop Invasion, because listeners are onto new music too fast. There's no opportunity for a movement to build momentum.

Has this process changed your relationship to music? Have your own tastes changed?

My tastes have definitely changed. I’m more open to styles and genres than I used to be. I was a music snob in my early 20s, listening to metal, nu-metal and grunge, and not always the good stuff. Twenty-two-year-old Chris would never be thinking about how high to place Charli XCX and MJ Lenderman on his list. I think I can hear music differently now too. I feel like I’m more appreciative of uniqueness, of creativity, of when something sounds different and when something works. And by listening to a lot of different music, it makes me appreciate the music I really do love, the bands that are my go-tos, like Deftones.

Do you think others should follow your mad experiment and do what you’re doing?

Maybe not this exact task. But I would encourage everyone, of any age, to keep looking for new music. Find a way to identify new stuff, like the charts, or the reviews page at Stereogum, or the social media page of a local record store, and give it a go. That feeling of experiencing something new – not even new to the world, just new to you – is an ecstasy that is available to anyone at any time.

Last question! Are you going to do it all again next year?

Absolutely, yes.

Chris Philpott’s 50 best albums of 2024 list can be found here; his Substack Ephemeral is here.

Thanks for being here and supporting Boiler Room. If you like this newsletter and want to support something that is increasingly rare, a local music journalist doing his thing, the best way is to upgrade your subscription. I’ve got big plans for 2025, and I’d love for you to be able to see them. To do that, use this big blue button when you’re next near a laptop (it won’t work on your phone, sadly)…

Everything you need to know.

• If you feel like there’s a Big Day Out-sized hole in your January calendar, then Whammy Bar has the party for you. On January 25, the Auckland venue will host The Ultimate Tribute to the much-missed festival, with DJs spinning hits from the Blue and Orange main stages and the Boiler Room, which is the name of the sweaty dance tent which this newsletter is named after. “You’ll relive the energy, the music, and the pure, unfiltered vibes of the festival that brought us all together,” it promises. Tickets are just $10; they’re available here.

• Speaking of upcoming tours, Slipknot aren’t due here until March but reviews coming out of the UK, where the masked metallers are on tour, are spectacular. “Heads bang, mosh pits burst into life, and menacing, razor-sharp guitar riffs eviscerate every corner of the room,” writes a critic for The Guardian in this five-star review of the group’s Leeds show. “Behind the masks, they remain ageless and indispensable.”

• Reviews are also good for Better Man, the Robbie Williams biopic which hit cinemas on Boxing Day and features the UK pop star being played by … a CGI monkey. “Electrifying” is how the New York Times describes it. “Neither hagiography nor hatchet job, the movie casts an understanding eye on a once-infamous musical artist who weathered dizzying highs and devastating lows,” writes the critic Jeannette Catsoulis. Sounds good, I just … I don’t know if I can.

• Timothée Chalamet is also scoring rave reviews for his performance as Bob Dylan in the biopic A Complete Unknown. “Chalamet is undeniably brilliant – and you can see his dedication in every sardonic eyebrow raise, every careful pluck of a string,” writes NME in a review that predicts he’ll earn an Oscar nomination for the role. It’s not out here until January 23; here’s the final trailer.

• If you’re still digesting Christmas leftovers, I recommend you lie down and read Alexis Petridis dissecting 2024’s music trends. “The most striking thing about pop in 2024 was the way it was dominated by a handful of huge, monocultural stories, which spilled out of the music pages into the mainstream news agenda,” he writes for The Guardian. He manages to expertly link Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, the Oasis reunion and Spotify algorithms. “People still want to be part of something bigger than themselves, and they’ll still use pop to do it,” he says.

• Lastly, I’m spending my holidays catching up on all of the music that made best-of lists that I haven’t had time to listen to over 2024. I’m embarrassed to admit I missed Cool World, the second album from Oklahoma noise-rockers Chat Pile that came out back in October, but I’m glad I’ve found it now. It’s everything I love about heavy music: towering riffs, cheat-rattling rhythms and commanding vocals that combine to form complex anthems. Be warned: this is not Christmassy at all, but it might help you recover from too much time with the in-laws…

Bonus beat.