What can I say about this year in music? I would typically toss off some sentiment about how it’s been pretty good overall, maybe even better than expected. It comes from a place of honest belief, because there’s just so much music released in any given year you can always find something new to love. If you can’t, then you’re probably just not looking hard enough. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been disappointed with a majority of releases in a given year. Even when the bigger names or zeitgeisty artists fail to deliver, a smaller artist or band is right there to pick up the slack. So yes, 2024 was another strong one for music.
Singles in particular stood out to me this year more than albums as a whole, even though you’ll see plenty of crossover between the “Best Songs” and “Best Albums” lists. But think about it for a minute. Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” was an inspiration that flourished from his diss track battle with Drake and wasn’t on the album he’d release near the end of the year. Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” was a one-off single that wasn’t on her album from last year with all the other hits. Addison Rae finally gave us a song worth listening to more than once with “Diet Pepsi”, and Disclosure’s “She’s Gone, Dance On” also isn’t connected to an album, though both tracks will probably appear on as-yet-unannounced 2025 albums. There are plenty more examples, from SZA to Panda Bear to ANOHNI and the Johnsons who gave us some very worthwhile singles this year. They all appear on the Top 100 Songs of 2024 list, which you can find below.
The “rules” of this list are simple. To qualify, a song must have been released at some point in the calendar year of 2024, so album advance singles released in fall 2023 are not eligible. Lastly, no lead artist may be included more than once, though featured guests do not count toward this total. The idea is to spread the love around and ideally introduce you to songs you might not have heard otherwise. It gives a leg up to those smaller names like Brennan Wedl, Still House Plants, Fake Fruit, Sea Lemon, and Night Tapes. Plus there’s plenty of local Chicago love with songs from Friko, Brigitte Calls Me Baby, Hannah Frances, Finom, Dehd, and Beach Bunny. You can hear this list of songs via the Spotify playlist at the bottom of this post. I’ll be posting a YouTube version of this playlist as well in the next few days. Of note, the song from Cindy Lee listed below is unavailable on Spotify at the moment, which is why that playlist isn’t complete. I’ll add it back should Cindy Lee allow Spotify to stream it again. Please enjoy, listen on shuffle if you’re so inclined, and share your personal favorite songs with me on social media!
