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!
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.
We’ve once again reached the halfway point of another year, and as such it creates a perfect opportunity to reflect on the past six months just to check in and see how things are going so far. You don’t need another recap of pandemic fatigue, vaccine distribution, and the “return to normalcy” while our democratic institutions remain in constant peril. That’s not what this site is about. Everyone is stressed out enough already, so let’s take a moment to remember the good things, like music. Oh hey, remember music? It’s that thing you can play to soundtrack your life and enhance your emotional state. The right song can turn your entire day around, for better or worse. A fond memory can be triggered by a song, or an uptempo beat can somehow make a sunny day that much brighter. Great stuff, right?
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. 
It seems like every year I comment about how challenging it is to put together a “Top Songs” list, because unlike albums, which are larger works meant to be taken as a whole, songs are fractions of that whole. There are multitudes more songs in the world than albums, so in essence it’s like splitting hairs. Imagine my surprise then, when this Top 50 Songs of 2019 list came together rather easily. Perhaps there were fewer standout tracks than normal to really catch my attention. It was a slightly “off” year for music, so that might have helped too. Color me clueless as to the actual reason, because all that matters is these are 50 songs I can say without a doubt are the ones I loved and in many cases listened to most this year. My sincerest apologies if your personal favorite didn’t make the cut. Everybody has their own unique tastes, and while I’d hope most of these songs will satisfy, you might feel differently. That’s okay! The songs on this list span across nearly every genre of music and range from dancefloor bangers to depressing bops and back again. My sincerest hope is that you’ll discover something new you haven’t heard before, and may even fall in love with it as much as I have. There are really only two rules I set when composing this list: 