It’s my annual(ish) post of my choices for best music of the year! Is this actually the best music of 2024?
Is that a serious question? ‘Cause, well, no, of course it isn’t. I am not a music critic, haven’t heard all the music released in 2024, and musical taste is highly idiosyncratic.
But these are my favorites, which I’ll give you in four parts:
- Top 30 playlist
- Video interlude! (Some of the cool videos of the year.)
- Top 230 or so playlist
- Me performing my top-played song of the year (according to Spotify)
1: The Top 30!
Let’s title this playlist after a line in the first track: “Get to grips, serenading the apocalypse.” The songs (one per artist) are in a mix order, rather than a ranked order — I wanted this to play like a mixtape, and not a top 30.
2: Video interlude!
A very few of the music-video delights of 2024. I’m sure I’ve missed many.
Hamish Hawk, “Big Cat Tattoos”
A video to match the oblique specificity of the song (“You told everyone about miserable smoothies / You bored my friends from out of town with the virtues of shoegaze”). Love it!
Doechii, “Denial is a River” / “Boiled Peanuts”
Doechii’s performance of “Denial is a River” and “Boiled Peanuts” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is art. Truly marvelous.
Jon Batiste, “Für Elise — Batiste”
Love Batiste’s Beethoven Blues — and not just because Beethoven is, according to Spotify, my #1 streamed artist of 2024 (a claim which is odd because… Beethoven plays on none of the recordings I listened to. Heck, pianos didn’t even exist when he was writing those sonatas. He’d’ve played ’em on a harpsichord). But because Batiste is a genius, and I love the way he riffs on and transforms Beethoven.
I can’t get enough of him talking about and playing music. Here’s a mesmerizing 20-minute conversation, in which he discusses the Beethoven Blues record.
Beyoncé’s Christmas Day Halftime Show
This is amazing. But I can’t embed it. So, I am linking instead.
3: The Top 230! Or so!
This longer 2024 “Best of” playlist includes nearly everything in the Top 30, plus many that flitted in and out of the Top 30, as I made my final selections — well, final as of right now. I could keep tweaking until doomsday (which, the way things are going, could be sooner than we think — but I digress…) Anyway, as in the Top 30 version, an associative logic determines the sequence of the songs. It is also supposed to be one song per artist.
4: Cover version!
As I did last year, I recorded a cover version of my #1-played song of 2024, according to Spotify. As always, you’ll find more enthusiasm than talent here. (As I learned during the Plague Songs series, once I get a full take of the song, I post it. Since I am not a professional musician, I am only aiming for good enough.)
But irrespective of any deficits in my performance, the song is a good one, and, lyrically, has a good balance between despair and hope: “Even if the song’s all gone and it’s the end of the world / No, nothing’s gonna stop us, gonna stop us now. / So, we should keep on dancing.” That strikes me as the right sentiment for facing 2025, as does: “get to grips, / Serenading the apocalypse.”
Here’s a live performance from the Vaccines:
Happy 2025! Hang in there!