The pain that comes with selecting your favorite albums of any given year is one most music lovers shouldn’t have to deal with. Of course a majority aren’t critics or writers or even care enough to bother with list-making, so you simply love what you love and keep it to yourself. Or maybe only share some key selections with close friends and family. Here at Faronheit HQ, sharing is caring. The understanding is that you probably don’t have the time or energy to spend listening to album after album, particularly if you have life responsibilities such as a demanding job or children. Hopefully a year-end music recap functions more as a saving grace – a quick reference point that gives you all the highlights in one swoop so you can play catch-up really easily. Of course all tastes are subjective, so what one person loves another may not.
There were a lot of great albums released in 2024. So much so, that my typical “Honorable Mention” section felt like it should be expanded to 15 instead of the standard 10, for a grand total of 65 records that make up the year’s best. And that’s with the knowledge I didn’t get to hear every single album released this year and probably missed some great ones as a result. But in a general sense, I’d like to think the records listed here encapsulate the “sound of 2024” quite well, and in a decade or two it’ll still hold up. Poptimism took a big step forward thanks to Sabrina Carpenter and Charli XCX. Kendrick Lamar, Vampire Weekend, and Father John Misty all made exceptional records following previous weaker entries in their catalogs. Then you’ve got some artists who feel like they’re on their way to superstardom, such as Doechii, Being Dead, Fievel Is Glauque, and Dummy. This list is so packed, I feel forced to apologize to Beyoncé and The Cure for placing them outside of the main list. Choices needed to be made!
If you haven’t heard all of these albums, and I generally assume you haven’t, please do yourself a favor and check some of them out. You’ll hopefully be pleasantly surprised, and might even discover a new favorite. And if you do love a record, please show some real love and support to the artists that made it. Spotify barely pays for streaming, so buy a vinyl or CD copy of the album because it’ll put more money into the pockets of the creatives. Go see some of this music performed live, too. Buying a concert ticket and/or merch is another great way to return the favor this music is giving to you. Then of course, share it with others so they can experience the magic of discovery too. Having said all that, please enjoy Faronheit’s Top 50 Albums of 2024 list below. Once you’ve taken it all in, let me know your thoughts! Reach out on social media to let me know what’s missing, because if I end up loving a record as much as you do, we’ll continue to build the fandom together.
This wraps up coverage for 2024. Cheers to a new year and more great music ahead!
Honorable Mention
Beyoncé – Cowboy Carter
Cassandra Jenkins – My Light, My Destroyer
The Cure – Songs of a Lost World
Dehd – Poetry
Ekko Astral – pink balloons
Erika de Casier – Still
Fine – Rocky Top Ballads
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD”
Hovvdy – Hovvdy
Ka – The Thief Next to Jesus
Lip Critic – Hex Dealer
Merce Lemon – Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild
Rapsody – Please Don’t Cry
Shellac – To All Trains
Wishy – Triple Seven
Well we have once again made it through another year. As such, the time for reflection and list making is upon us. Did you listen to a lot of new music this year? If you did, congratulations because 2023 happened to be a pretty great one overall in terms of pure artistry and quality recordings. Some years it’s a struggle to name 50 records that both held my attention and truly impressed. This one both came together with relative ease, and left me a little sad not everything I loved in 2023 could be included. 50 is a manageable number, plus another 10 honorable mentions because I can’t help myself. Even still, everyone from Jessy Lanza to PJ Harvey to The Armed to Lydia Loveless to Bar Italia all couldn’t quite survive the inevitable cuts and it breaks my heart.
One thing that fascinates me about year-end lists is how little true consensus there tends to be between them. It makes the moments when everyone actually IS in agreement so much more powerful, and a testament to the quality of something. Call it the Paddington 2 effect, or I suppose the Dolly Parton effect, because nobody actually dislikes either of those two things. My favorite song of 2023 falls into that “broad consensus” category. So many people and publications ranked it as their top track of the year that seeing another list fall in line like this one might induce another eye roll and a “here we go again”. But I can’t deny something that’s objectively true, as much as I’d like to be a contrarian. You’re of course more than welcome to disagree with me, along with the hundreds of other music writers who listed this as the #1 song of 2023. What’s wilder, in my mind, is how this 7+ minute track received no commercial or terrestrial radio placement, as far as I’m aware. Instead it just got a lot of organic, fully chosen plays across a variety of formats. If you know your music and have been paying close attention to year-end lists, hopefully my favorite song of 2023 won’t come as a surprise.
Selecting and ranking 100 songs as the “Best of” any given year is a fool’s errand. There’s simply too much music to choose from and the notion that any of these lists can truly encapsulate what it was like to listen to music in 2020 inevitably leaves some important things out or places too much importance on certain artists or genres. In the end it’s all subjective anyway, and what captures one person’s imagination might leave another in the cold. Plus, with so much music available there’s no way you can listen to everything. I know I’ve discovered plenty of songs and artists weeks, months, or years later, only to wish I had known about them sooner so they could’ve been included in a year-end roundup. It’s the way life goes sometimes. But that’s also the benefit of any list like this! For anyone to tell you these are songs that meant something to them in 2020 automatically elevates those tracks above your standard fare. If you’re looking to put your music listening in focus, a list like this can help to some degree. 
Before we get into the nitty gritty of this Top 50 Albums list, let’s first talk about the honorable mentions. This is the space reserved for 2019 albums I also loved, just not quite enough to include as part of the main list. If this had been a worse year for music, they probably would have made the cut. It runs the gamut from two of the biggest pop stars in the world all the way down to some tiny names you’ve probably never heard before. These 10 albums are ordered alphabetically by artist. 