Top 10 Albums of 2024

By: Clare Buchanan

2024 was a relentless year when it came to new music. All the pop girlies seemed to be having their moments this year as they released new albums, ranging from Sabrina Carpenter’s glimmery Short and Sweet, Taylor Swift’s leviathan project, The Tortured Poet’s Department, to Ariana Grande’s pleasantly earnest Eternal Sunshine. Pop music seemed to make a comeback in 2024, but other artists outside the genre also put together some meaningful projects such as Kendrick Lamar’s GNX, Tyler the Creator’s CHROMAKOPIA, and SZA’s new take on her influential album SOS, SOS DELUXE: LANA. Diaphanous indie artists such as The Marías, Clairo, and Adrianne Lenker also had their respectable moments this year with their soft, slightly melancholy ballads that took social media by storm. 

My personal top ten albums of 2024 span multiple genres, but there is a common theme. My favorite albums of this past year are ones that I feel are cohesive projects with a clear, powerful message. I am a sucker for a storyteller, so it is no shock to anyone that a majority of the albums on my list lean country and folksy. However, my top ten list is by no means a credible or reliable source. I have no musical experience except for that one time I was in a folk trio band freshman year of college which has since disbanded due to ironically unforeseen circumstances.

Here are my top ten favorite albums released in 2024:

(Photo Credit: Spotify)

10- Visions of Dallas, Charley Crockett 

⭑ Key Songs ⭑ (“Avoiding Mirrors” + “Killers of the Flower Moon” + “Crystal Chandeliers and Burgundy”)

Charley Crockett has solidified himself as an unstoppable force in country music. Crockett had a big year in 2024. He wrote songs for the “TWISTERS” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” movie soundtracks and opened on tour for Leon Bridges. In my opinion, there are very few remaining country music visionaries today. It is rare to find an oracle like Crockett. He is truly a master storyteller. (Like- “Grass grows so high, it covers up the graves. But listen for a while, and it might start givin’ names.” Are you joking?!) Honky tonk music and Southwest prairie music have virtually been forgotten on the country music scene as more conventional forms of country music have taken precedence. Despite this travesty, Crockett’s voice is chillingly nostalgic and is the sound of the desert wind personified. Delving into Crockett’s discography, you will find some gems that sound like they might have been produced in the 50s or 60s, but that is not the case. Crockett has an ear for the nostalgic and this guy is just out here doing his thing and he is absolutely excelling. Visions of Dallas is a confirmation of Crockett’s once-in-a-lifetime presence and spirit, filled with twang and catchy hooks.

(Photo Credit: Spotify)

9- I’m Doing It Again Baby!, girl in red. 

⭑ Key Songs ⭑ (“DOIN’ IT AGAIN” + “Pick Me” + “You Need Me Now?)

This album is the musical representation of what it feels like to walk the streets of Seattle. I have no idea why Seattle is the place I associate this album with since I haven’t been to Seattle since early 2023, but this album sounds like freedom, which naturally, reminds me of Seattle. I feel like such a cool, gay girl listening to this album. I’m Doing It Again Baby! brings me back to the second semester of my freshman year of college, which was a tragically disastrous time, but a delightfully disastrous time at that. 

I think the current general consensus in the lesbian community is that we like girl in red again…I think? Either way, I don’t care. I have been a girl in red lover since ninth grade and I have to stay true to myself and my roots. I’m Doing It Again Baby! is such a chaotic, painfully relatable album about mental health struggles, lesbian mess, and heartbreak. This album is sonically surprising. Each song takes you on a different journey. To me, girl in red, is the epitome of alternative music. This album is blunt, chic, charged, and fierce and it’s one of the greatest albums released this year, by far. 

(Photo Credit: Pitchfork)

8- Deeper Well, Kacey Musgraves

⭑ Key Songs ⭑ (“Giver / Taker” + “Irish Goodbye” + “Dinner With Friends”) 

Kacey Musgraves, the visionary that you are. Mother Musgraves has been nursing me with her wit, grit, and grace ever since her debut single, “Merry Go Round”, came out in 2010. Musgraves has one of those voices that is extremely distinct to me. I am a lover of Musgraves’s entire discography, INCLUDING the very much overlooked and underrated Star-Crossed. Musgraves has paved the way for so many women in country music and has also been a voice of reason within the heavily male-dominated genre. 

Deeper Well might not be considered “country” by some, but to me it has a country foundation which Musgraves then builds off of with her dreamy synth vocals and sounds. Deeper Well is a no-skip album. This folksy masterpiece was released in the spring and literally twinkles with new growth, hope, and self reflection. Deeper Well is an exploration of self following a period of change. This album is stripped down and raw. The deluxe version, which came out this summer, solidified Musgraves’ songwriting prowess and cool girl ability to say so much without trying too hard. She remains an aloof, mysterious, folksy forest elf angel. 

(Photo Credit: Spotify)

7- Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé

⭑ Key Songs ⭑ (“16 CARRIAGES” + “II MOST WANTED” + “ALLIGATOR TEARS”)

THIRD Texas native and we’re only on number seven!

Cowboy Carter…I seem to be the only one in my social circles who thoroughly enjoyed this album. There was much debate about if this was really a “country” album, an argument I will not dignify with a response…

I don’t really think there is room to argue that Beyoncé is one of the most dynamic and gifted performers of our lifetime. Rennee Rapp said it best: if you can’t acknowledge this reality, “you have no taste, are a hater, and should look inward.” Cowboy Carter brought me closer to this understanding, as I was initially drawn to the album by the Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson features, but stayed for the kaleidoscope of sounds with prolific messages portrayed through songs such as “AMERIICAN REQUIEM” and “YA YA.” 

Beyoncé knows how to make an album. Beyoncé knows how to create visuals and a tracklist which exude a deeper meaning beyond just the songs. Cowboy Carter was no different. This album was an f-ing statement. It was an elegy to those before her and a roadmap to those who will follow her. I am confident that as time passes, the general consensus as a culture will be that this album was extremely culturally significant and sonically revolutionary.

(Photo Credit: Spotify)

6- Lighthouse, Francis of Delirium 

⭑ Key Songs ⭑ (“Give It Back To Me” + “Real Love” + “Alone Tonight” + “Blue Tuesday”)

I almost didn’t put this on my list solely because I want to gatekeep Francis of Delirium as long as possible because I fear that this artist is going to take off literally any second now and then they won’t be my little secret anymore. But, then I realized that I don’t really have that much influence as a lowly Salemite columnist, so I will share with the readers the good news. The good news is that Lighthouse is going to be your next favorite album. 

If you are a fan of girl in red, Suki Waterhouse, and other European indie rock musicians, you are going to love Francis of Delirium from Luxembourg. When I first discovered Francis, the name alone was enough to peak my interest. The cover art for this album is extremely unique and detailed. I am *obsessed* with linoleum cuts. Each of the linoleum cuts on the album cover represent a key song and turning point on the album. I find great joy in this. 

The sleazy electric guitars and hazy vocals make Lighthouse the perfect winter album to listen to while watching the rain (or snow if you live in a normal place in the United States that isn’t the desert basin buttcrack of California) with a cup of tea. Lighthouse is unexpectedly rock forward, while also being delicate. The visuals only add to this album, and I’ll let you in on an even bigger secret. Francis released an EP this September called, The Softer Versions, which is a collection of some of their favorite songs off Lighthouse stripped down and made even more dreamy. Readers, you must go give it a listen. 

(Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

5- brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, Charli xcx

⭑ Key Songs ⭑ (“Talk Talk featuring Troye Sivan” + “Everything Is Romantic featuring Caroline Polachek” + “Von Dutch featuring Addison Rae”)

For our grandparent’s generation, there was always the question, “Where were you when World War II ended?” For our parent’s generation, they are often asked, “Where were you when the Berlin Wall fell?” The children of our generation will be asking us this: “Where were you when brat summer hit?”

Brat has become a case study in the discussions revolving around what it means to make a culturally significant album. Charli xcx now owns the color neon green. Charli’s marketing team was given an assignment, and they did not take it lightly. The anticipation for this album was then met with a cultural shift tsunami, as “brat culture” took center stage this summer. Charli xcx crafted a project that feeds off of the cynicism of millennial and Gen Z postmodernism, while somehow giving a voice to and honoring LGBTQ+ club culture and the it-girls of the 1990s. This is powerful. 

The lyrics on this album should not be overlooked. They are scathing and heartbreaking and hopeful and free. Nothing gets me out of a funk like blasting “Everything Is Romantic featuring Caroline Polachek” in my headphones while I walk the city streets in my big scarf like a total b*tch. “Late nights in black silk in East London / Church bells in the distance / Free bleeding in the autumn rain / FALL IN LOVE AGAIN AND AGAIN!” When I heard those words for the first time, something psychologically shifted within me. Brat is the prophecy. 

(Photo Credit: Spotify)

4- The Secret of Us Deluxe, Gracie Abrams 

⭑ Key Songs ⭑ (“I Love You, I’m Sorry” + “Free Now” + “Tough Love” + “That’s So True”)

Gracie!!! I’ve been following Gracie closely since 2022 when I discovered This Is What It Feels Like the first semester of my senior year of high school. (Extremely influential.) If This Is What It Feels Like is a piano-ballad led bedroom pop album, her second album, Good Riddance, is a more grown-up, melancholy, almost dark exploration of the relationships in her life. The Secret of Us was a shocking third album from Gracie. It is a wise exploration of what it feels like to be in your early-twenties, with upbeat crescendos and perfectly written bridges paired with frantically confused, sarcastic, and delusional lyrics. With each new album, Abrams peels back a layer of herself, and delves deeper into her musical and creative inspirations.

Watching Gracie rise through the ranks of pop culture stardom in 2024 was long awaited. Aaron Dessner is all over this album and it’s beautiful. The way the guitar is used throughout the album is beyond me. Soooo pretty. Listening to Gracie gives me a sense of nostalgia, but also a great sense of calm. In The Secret of Us, Abrams is devastatingly self-aware and honest, and it’s refreshing. As I approach my twenties, I feel like The Secret of Us has been crafted carefully as a confessional road map that is sprinkled with humor, heartbreak, and acceptance of what it means to be a delusional twenty-something singleton trying to make it amongst a sea of other delusional twenty-something singletons who are just as desperate as you are.

(Photo Credit: Spotify)

3- What A Relief, Katie Gavin

⭑ Key Songs ⭑ (“Casual Drug Use” + “Sanitized” + “As Good As It Gets ft. Mitski”) 

My MUNA princess strikes again. When I say that the first three singles of this album were ON REPEAT this year, I mean it. So much so, I was actually in Katie Gavin’s Top 500 listeners on Apple Music. I don’t play around when it comes to Katie Gavin. 

When Katie Gavin first announced her solo album, I did in fact panic for a brief moment. I was terrified this meant she was leaving her band, MUNA, and if that had been true, I probably would have cried so hard and thrown up a little bit. Thankfully, What A Relief was an opportunity for Katie Gavin to fully delve into her personal creative ambitions. What A Relief is a reflective, folksy, stripped-down glimpse into the brilliant, creative mind of Katie. Joni Mitchell’s influence runs deep here in this album. What A Relief also takes clear inspiration from The Indigo Girls and Alanis Morissette. It’s the best of the 70s and the best of the 90s. The use of instrumentation on this album, whether it’s a violin, acoustic guitar, or keyboard, paired with increasingly quick and clever lyrics, solidified What A Relief as one of my top three albums of the year. 

(Photo Credit: Spotify)

2- Flush, Searows

⭑ Key Songs ⭑ (“toothache” + “to be seen” + “martingale”) 

You know it’s a good album when it’s actually an EP and is only 5 songs but still ends up on the top ten best albums of 2024 list. (At number 2, no less!) 

Searows is one of those musicians who speaks directly to my soul in an almost alarmingly specific way. I first discovered Searows when they opened for Ethel Cain in 2023 and was taken aback by their soft yet imposing voice and gut-wrenching lyrics. If it isn’t already clear based on this list, I enjoy some good, melancholy music. Most of the time I do not want to listen to something cheerful, it stresses me out. Nine times out of ten, I gravitate towards an alarmingly self aware, morally courageous, and emotionally sloppy singer-songwriter who writes songs by the sea and weaves in literary allusions into their lyrics. Searows is just the right amount of self aware and Flush is a folksy, wintery gem within Searows’ melancholy, indie, Pacific Northwest inspired discography. Upon hearing “toothache” for the first time, I had a major life crisis/realization/epiphany that forced me to enter a period of deep self-reflection. Music has the power to truly set you free, and that is what this little EP has done for me. 

(Photo Credit: Spotify) 

1- Older (And Wiser), Lizzy McApline 

My number one favorite album of 2024 is Older (And Wiser) by Lizzy McAlpine. I have a false sense of personal connection to Lizzy McAlpine because she came to my high school to film her Five Seconds Flat short film my junior year. (This is still the coolest thing that has ever happened to me.) Beyond my parasocial connection with McAlpine, I greatly admire her as a songwriter and composer.

I am an album listener. I appreciate artists who take time to craft an actual album, not just messily put together a conglomeration of music engineered to have a few hit singles with fillers in between. I enjoy an album that evolves with me as I listen to it. When this album first came out, I noticed it was very different sonically from her last album, Five Seconds Flat, which had a lot more indie pop forward, catchy songs like “Orange Show Speedway” and “All My Ghosts.” Older (And Wiser) was a lot calmer and there was just a lot less noise, which caused some people to deem the album as “boring.” This is simply not the case. There were less obvious sweeping bridges and crescendos in Older (And Wiser) but these addictive feelings in the music were replaced with subtle saxophones, acoustic guitars, and keyboards that lingered in the background instead of exploding and extinguishing immediately. Sometimes I don’t want a high spoon fed to me, I enjoy a well placed slow burn. 

Watching the documentary McAlpine made about the making of Older helped me place the inspiration and core meaning of the album, which was about the passing of time, maturing, and reflecting on a past relationship. Older was quiet and meticulous and almost mind-numbingly perfect. McAlpine talked about how the making of this album took years. Years. She worked on each track with her live band to the point of exhaustion. And the result, quite frankly, is one of the greatest albums I have ever had the opportunity to connect with. 

I listened to Older the entire month of April when it first came out. I had it on passively as I did homework or as I was falling asleep. I probably listened to the first seven tracks ten times before I lost track of the album. Over the summer, I gravitated towards the trending pop-forward sounds to get myself through the Los Angeles heat waves, but found myself thinking about the album come autumn. Something was drawing me to it. Around September, Older hit me like a ton of bricks. McAlpine has always been nostalgic for me. She has an ability, similarly to Gracie Abrams, to transport me to a specific time in my life that I don’t necessarily want to remember, but the feeling is so addictive that I regress and give into it. That is what the second half of the album felt like for me. Slipping away, giving into something bitterly sweet like sucking on butterscotch stuck between my teeth. When I heard “Drunk, Running” for the first time, I burst into tears. 

I spent a good amount of last semester sitting in the student center well until 2 am, staring out into the dark watching the highway, writing, listening to this album, and digging deep into parts of myself I had completely repressed out of a fear of the feeling that would wash over me once I faced it. Older explores dissatisfaction, the feeling of “settling” within a relationship, and the almost regretful effects a person experiences when retelling the narrative of that relationship years after. Older explores the idea that while you as a person have changed, the person who you were in that relationship is immortalized by the memory of that relationship. This is my interpretation of the album, with probably some of my own projections, but as I was having these sorts of life-changing, self-aware breakthroughs as a result of this album, McAlpine decided to drop five more tracks and release the deluxe version, Older (And Wiser), in October. Earth-shattering would be an understatement. These five tracks wrap up the album perfectly. They are somehow even more scathingly honest and debilitatingly yearnful. Closing the album out on “Spring Into Summer” feels like a hopeful release and acceptance of the past. There’s a moment where on first listen you think the song has ended. But then, there is one minute and thirty seconds left, in which no lyrics are actually sung, yet there is a joyful and proud goodbye from McAlpine and her band, as they close out this era of creation and close the chapter on this part of McAlpine’s personal journey towards self-understanding.

Honorable Song Mentions:

“Sailor Song” – Gigi Perez

“Lubbock” – Grace Gardner & Caroline Carter

“Diet Pepsi” – Addison Rae

“Tough” – Lana Del Rey and Quavo

“Nomad” – Clairo 

“Loml” – Taylor Swift 

“After the First Kiss” – Faye Webster 

“Purple Gas” – Zach Bryan and Noeline Hofmann 

“We can’t be friends (wait for your love)” – Ariana Grande 

“Man on the Moon” – Megan Moroney 

“Dumb & Poetic” – Sabrina Carpenter 

Honorable Album Mentions:

Alligator Bites Never Heal – Doechii 

The Loneliest Girl In The World – Laci Kaye Booth

Deep Sea Creatures – Sophie May

Leon – Leon Bridges 

Still Hungover – Ella Langley