Every best-of list has landed. They all got it wrong.
Major publications are rushing to anoint 2024's best albums and songs. In their haste, they forgot something crucial.
They started dropping on December 1 like dominos, one after the other, everyone falling over themselves to be first, to be best, to be right. Is it Kendrick Lamar’s GNX? Charli XCX’s Brat? Fontaines DC’s Romance? Waxahatchee’s Tiger Blood? All of these excellent albums have been at or near the top of the multiple best-of-2024 lists that have been rush-released over the past week. All of them are almost entirely wrong.
The problem? It’s too soon. They all called it too early. This year isn’t done. We’ve got an entire month to go. Making a definitive decision on who made the best music of 2024 is incredibly difficult when there are still 24 days left. After the past 11 months, it’s clear anything can happen. There are still major albums coming out. Just two weeks ago, Lamar dropped a clear and obvious contender. It could easily happen again.
Here in Aotearoa, there are still shows by Mannequin Pussy, David Dallas and Jack White to take in before the year is over. They could easily influence whether I Got Heaven, No Name or Vita – all excellent albums and contenders for my own best-of list – make the grade. Seeing an album live changes the context, offers different perspectives and, potentially, elevates it to another level. That could affect its status.
There could be surprises, too. Remember when SZA dropped SOS so late in 2022 it ended up topping a bunch of 2023 lists? Just last year, Home Brew released their own surprise album Run It Back in December and its intense honesty summed up the year perfectly. But the lists were chosen. It was too late to include it. The deal was done. They couldn’t go back on their word, even if they wanted to. (I got it in mine.)
So, no one’s getting my best-music list until December 31. Call me lazy. Tell me I’m bitter that everyone beat me to it. Sure, there may be a bit of that. But, to me, the final day of the year is the only appropriate day to sum up the past 12 months of music properly. So, today, let’s do something else: prematurely dissect everyone else’s premature picks. Let’s get into it…
My favourite best-album list comes from Vulture ($$), a top 10 list with another list of “close contenders” tacked on. It contains some obvious big names in Fontaines DC and The Cure. But it also has a number of artists I’ve never heard of. Who is Rachel Chinouriri? How about mediopicky? Dunno, but I love that scope. I’m looking forward to investigating them all over my summer break.
The top-20 list from The New Yorker ($$) has plenty of surprises too, including Bon Iver’s slight three-song EP SABLE and a Chief Keef mixtape sequel that didn’t click for me. But it’s also extremely pop heavy, with Sabrina Carpenter, Beyoncé, Billie Eilish and Charli XCX all making the top 10. Hmm.
I love Stereogum. Importantly, I trust Stereogum. Their best-of list contains 50 albums and is always a great summation of the year, with love given to many things I like too, like GNX, Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal and Tyler the Creator’s Chromakopia. Even better are the comments, with dozens of personal lists submitted by Stereogum’s smart readers. You’ll find stuff you’ve never heard, promise. (Stereogum has a top 50 songs list too.)
Pitchfork’s had a rough year and the toll shows. It no longer breaks stories, deep-dives are few and far between and its reviews are hit-and-miss. Giving GNX a 6.6 was a shocker, and Lamar can’t even make Pitchfork’s top 50 albums list. But they’re not too-cool to snub Brat, which scores the No. 2 spot, and they’re among the few publications to honour Mannequin Pussy, Kim Gordon and Nilüfer Yanya, all albums I love. (Not to be outdone, Pitchfork has a top 100 songs list.)
I can’t tell what Rolling Stone is up to anymore. The US website is so full of Donald Trump content I can barely bring myself to look at it, and it hasn’t had a big story since their Kid Rock banger in May. Their top 100 album list ($$) leans a little too country and pop for my taste, but there’s room for albums from Elucid, Doechii, Mk.gee and Tyla. But ranking Fontaines DC at No. 58 is criminal. (Rolling Stone’s best songs can be found here.)
NME has a surprisingly good list. JPEGMAFIA’s in the mix. Magdalena Bay, The Smile and The Last Dinner Party are all ranked high, as are a bunch of rap and grime stars I need to go discover. Good job! No notes.
A few other lists worth perusing: Billboard, The Independent, Bandcamp, Mojo, NPR, Crack Magazine and The New York Times, the only publication to make a huge call and put two albums by an artist in the No. 1 spot. (I’m yet to see a list written by a local publication, but we all know about the state of things here.)
For more, Chris Philpott has written a far deeper analysis of all these lists than I could muster over on his excellent Substack, Ephemeral.
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Everything else you need to know.
It’s Spotify wrapped season and I’m sorry Aotearoa but I’m a little disappointed. Our most-played artists list reads like a highlights package of the last few years, with Six60, L.A.B and Lorde all making the top five again. Our prime minister, still reeling from a mauling at the hands of Jack Tame, got handed another one by posting his own Spotify wrapped results. Meanwhile, The Spinoff has a timely reminder why we shouldn’t celebrate anything Spotify is doing. (I’m an Apple Music user; you can see my own 2024 listening highlights below).
Jack White is playing a second and “final” Auckland show at The Powerstation on Monday, December 16. If there are any tickets left, you’ll find them here.
Slipknot will play a one-off show at Spark Arena on March 11, the same week as Fontaines DC and Shihad. Big week! Pre-sales are here.
I tried to get Drake tickets but this was the show that broke my brain. I refuse to pay $280 for a GA ticket, or $500 for a seated one. It’s ridiculous. It’s scandalous. It’s too much. I’m not going to do it. It looks like others won’t too; there are many unsold seats left at his two shows, despite the seven different pre-sales on offer:
Speaking of Live Nation, the Sherwood News has filed a fascinating report on every single thing the company takes a cut of when you attend one of their shows. As well as artists, venues and tickets, the company also has a stake in what you drink, where you park and even what you sit in. “Live Nation is there to take your money, whether you realise it’s Live Nation doing the taking or not,” it says.
ZZ Top will play Auckland and Wellington shows in May on what they’re calling their “final” tour. George Thorogood is in support. Tickets and dates are here.
I’m not the only one who is feeling a little old to be at Laneway this year. Everything But the Girl’s Tracey Thorn took her son to see Charli XCX play recently and wrote about it for The New Statesman, asking: “Am I too old to join in?” Meanwhile, in a five-star review, The Guardian called a recent Charli XCX show “a slime green triumph”. Maybe I have to go to Laneway then.
In 2007, MGMT released a banger called ‘Kids’ that made them beloved indie darlings and took them all over the world. This footage of them as college kids playing ‘Kids’ at a 2003 campus party before any of that happened is delightful viewing.
PSA: Mokotron has released his new album WAEREA and it’s excellent, a deep, thoughtful and personal album of intense tribal electronica, breakbeats and dubstep. Go listen. (I’ll hopefully have more on this soon.)
I’ve been thinking about this excellent Toby Morris cartoon ever since it was published. In it, he explains in granular detail how arts funding works, and why it’s important. It’s a clever piece of work that explains why it’s more important than ever to support big shows at local levels – not just the major stadium talent.
Little miss perfect isn’t so perfect after all: Taylor Swift rush-released a self-published $40 Eras tour book that fans have found is riddled with errors.
The line-up for next year’s Reeding and Leeds festivals dropped and it’s … completely bonkers. Chappell Roan is up there, with Travis Scott, Hozier and Bring Me the Horizon all on the bill. I’m stating the obvious, but this is messy. (Salt Lake City’s Kilby Block Party has Justice, Weezer, New Order, TV on the Radio and Beach House and is much better. Let’s go?)
Forget Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the Creator and GloRilla: 2024 has been Doechii’s year. For proof, you just need to see the Florida rapper’s Tiny Desk Concert, which packs more people, more rhymes, more intensity and more fun into the small office space than anyone else yet. She’s a star. She’s just waiting for the rest of the world to work it out…
Bonus beat.
I simply don't understand how anyone could insist that Pitchfork's score for GNX was not generous enough - it is uninteresting music, as with most of the years pop hip-hop releases. It's gym bro pump up rap that fails to deliver at all on the promise of the Kendrick Lamar who made Good Kid, replacing the emancipatory messaging of his prior albums with money grubbing braggadocio and repetitive choruses that simply sound horrible. Beats are trash, all the flows are stolen from DJ Quik and Drakeo the Ruler (RIP). There's a reason why people think it sounds bad - it sounds really, really bad, about as bad Vultures 2, and much worse than Eternal Atake 2, continuing a run of awful populist music that started with "Not Like Us", a desperate ploy for attention that worked.
Anyway, all of these lists are perfectly indicative of what I've been talking about for ages now - there is no variety in the taste of music critics who listen to their music on streaming services. They are beholden to the whims of corporate brainwashing, as is the public. If you don't pirate music, they have a path for everyone. They'll show you exactly what you want to hear and things don't develop.