I’ve been doing end-of-year music lists for over 20 years now. My first was back in 2005 (my album of the year was Sufjan Stevens – Illinois). I’ve moved to a new location for most things these days, but wanted to cross-post my end of year lists here for old time’s sake. Songs today, albums tomorrow.
The dominant theme for this list is women. Or, more accurately, lack of men. It’s been a trend for a while, but there are just virtually no men making music I enjoy anymore. Not sure whether that says more about my own tastes or about the musical misadventures of all the guys.
In any case, these are the songs I enjoyed the most this year. I’ve included a Spotify list, but I’ll do my usual exhortation to please pay artists for their work. Spotify is horrible for artists, and if you care about music it’s worth paying people to make good music.
1. Bottle Blonde – Momma
It’s the sort of ‘growing up’ song that can only be written by those in their late twenties who already feel ready to look back with a wry compassion for the mistakes of their raucous youths. It’s a record of mistakes, misunderstandings, glorious nights, and bad choices. A love song to their (slightly) younger selves. An invitation to join in the essentially-human experience of feeling guilt and shame for what you’ve done while also still loving the person that you were, who helped you to become the person you are today. A song that makes me want to dance and cry and give myself a hug and laugh and smile.
2. BROKEN – Ela Minus
For long stretches, it moves in a slightly disjointed, stream-of-consciousness reflectiveness. Then the chorus erupts and it attains this massive propulsive energy, even as the lyrics are still focused on the feelings of lamentation. That combination of dark and bright is gorgeous and it speaks to something powerful about music itself. The way it becomes a part of you once you hear it, and together you become something else.
3. Attachment Theory – IDER
A song that’s equal part funny and heartfelt, about the epidemic of self-diagnosers who are destroying relationships all around us. But mostly it’s just an incredible bop.
4. St Magdalene’s Wood – Kelora
It seems insufficient to describe this song as haunting. It weaves itself around you, whispering promises of a world beyond our own. And if you tilt your head just right, you can almost see the veil between realities shimmering in the light. What lies on the other side? Do we dare to step across? That way lies madness…but also maybe redemption?
5. Lifetime – Erika de Casier
There’s a lot of 90s revivalism in the pop culture air these days, but trip-hop is not one of the genres that’s been well-represented. This track remedies that gap. It’s one of those songs that sounds instantly familiar as soon as you hear it, but which retains a certain alien quality no matter how many times you listen.
6. Drive – Audrey Hobert
Driven by a thumping beat, counterpointed by a syncopated ratatat percussion. And her voice, skipping merrily over the surface, wrapping itself around lines with far too many syllables. But it never feels too busy. It’s just the stream-of-consciousness reflections of someone who is fed up with boys and ready to go somewhere, anywhere else.
7. Destination – Neko Case
I didn’t love the rest of the album but good god this song is right up there with her best. The first few times through, I felt like the orchestration threatened to overwhelm the song, but the more I listen the more it feels like a natural supplement, adding just that touch of elegiac wonder.
8. I Just Do! – girlpuppy
A pitch-perfect document of that ridiculous position we put ourselves in, in the early stages of a crush that overwhelms all judgment and thought. The way we throw ourselves into it with barely a thought of where it might go or what it could mean. The impossible highs, the questions we refuse to ask. Is it a good idea to give in? Maybe, maybe not. There will surely be some regrets, but maybe it’s worth it for the few exquisite moments that you can hold onto after the storm blows through.
9. Los Angeles – Big Thief
If this song existed when I was 22, it would have instantly made it onto every single roadtrip mixtape I made for years. Hard to think of many other songs that do more to evoke that specific feeling of movement—of leaving something behind, and of something new coming up over the horizon.
10. Teenage Love – Katie Gregson-MacLeod
It’s filled with biting details: his receding hairline, reckless behavior, drugs, and ultimately the duality of an apparent medical condition with his heart (maybe invented, maybe real?) and the very clear psychological condition with his heart. But the two tentpoles that hold up the song are: first, the line that ends the first verse (“My mum says it’s bad for my health I haven’t forgiven you yet / But God, I’m bitter in the blood so I will be when I’m dead”) and the raging outro, in which she unleashes that anger in a series of “I hates.”
11. Dream Aloud – Heaven
It’s warm, it’s gauzy, it’s mellow. It makes you feel good. If you like shoegaze-adjacent power pop, you’re going to like this song.
12. PVC Divide – Gordi feat. Anais Mitchell
It sometimes feels like it’s all been memory-holed, but doctors and nurses and other medical professionals went through some incredible sacrifices during the pandemic. Not just the risks they took and the hours they devoted to care. But also the pain and suffering they had to witness, and the separations they had to endure. Between themselves and their loved ones. Between the sick and the dying and their loved ones. God bless them.
13. Cowgirl Suit – Emily Hines
It arrests you with its simple beauty. Reminds you that you exist in a world where it’s possible to feel things this deeply. The sort of song that cuts so deep that you discover wounds in yourself you never even realized you had.
14. Heartthrob – Indigo De Souza
My four year old heard this song and said ‘this sounds like Dancing in the Dark’ which A) is a reminder of just how insightful kids can be sometimes and B) is a good sign of what a delightful song this is. Because boy howdy does it sound like Dancing in the Dark. But it also sounds like a bunch of other stuff. And it sounds very distinctly like Indigo De Souza. Which means it’s basically pure rocket fuel. Playful enough to let you know she’s not taking it too seriously. But serious enough to know that she is in fact ready to kick someone’s ass.
15. Will My Love – DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ
DJ Sabrina is one of the most prolific artists out there. This track exemplifies her capacity to combine insanely catchy hooks and long grooves.
16. Dear Home Again – Caitlin Canty
A beautiful ambient country song that sounds like the endless expanse of an unfolding night sky. Reminds me a lot of Gillian Welch’s Time the Revelator in tone and approach, if not necessarily in style.
17. Ankles – Lucy Dacus
Dacus got a bit of criticism for her relationship album having basically no heat in it, but I think that’s actually the best part of it. This song is great because it’s not about sex, but instead about that feeling of anticipation that you get when you imagine what it might be like to go for it.
18. Believer – Sister Ray
I wrote about Springsteen’s Reason to Believe a few months ago. This is another interesting meditation on why people believe the things they believe, against all evidence and odds. Set atop a ruminative blend of jangly guitars and horns. Strong Indigo Girls vibes.
19. Billie – shinetiac
Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
20. Float – Jay Som feat. Jim Adkins
Featuring Jim Adkins on a song that sounds like an unreleased outtake from Bleed American is a little on the nose. But, well, it sounds pretty good!
21. Stay – Morgan Wade
I’ve resigned myself to never quite getting the album I want from Morgan Wade. But if you get past the performative messiness (which I think is both performative in both the 21st century sense, which seems to mean ‘overidentifying for the sake of the role’ but also in the original Austinian sense of a performance which is the thing) you do get a few perfect gems, which don’t try to be anything more than exactly what they are, and which cut directly to the deepest part of the heart.
22. Mosquitoes – The Beths
Trauma is always deeply personal, even when the experience is shared with many others. Sometimes that produces communal attachments, but just as often it seems to leave people each going through their own pain side-by-side with another but never, quite ,touching.
23. Omakase of Time – Cassandra Jenkins
My Light, My Destroyer was one of my favorite albums of 2024. This re-imagining of those songs as ambient instrumental pieces was a lovely little bonus surprise this year. This track was the most surprising. The original Omakase was pretty enough, but this version is stunningly simple, and pure as an ent-draught.
24. Svagare än jag – Ida-Lova
A big Swedish pop song about getting dumped and feeling great when you discover that you’re so much happier and so much better without him. It features a potentially ill-advised saxophone solo that just barely stays on the right side of tasteful. This was a big hit in Sweden, though I’m not sure it made much of a dent anywhere else.
25. Too Far Gone – Esme Emerson
A little indie pop masterpiece about the struggles of breaking up. The whole thing is lovely but the greatest bit is the final 20 seconds when her voice drops far back in the mix, rises with a sense of freedom and joy, and you understand that she’s managed to break the cycle and finally set herself free.
26. Tricky Questions – Allo Darlin’
The song is about the rare times when you get your own private window into something that’s otherwise wholly public. A nighttime stroll through the squares of Florence. A place that’s worth traveling across an ocean to see, but which we get all to ourselves in this moment.
27. Who Wronged You – Lucie Fredriks
It starts out gentle, even tender, and then carefully builds toward a crashing wave of vitriol for the guy who hurt her. “Who wronged you?” she asks, and it’s rhetorical, a way of saying ‘someone must have messed you up to make you this cruel.’ But in the final gasp, you still sense that she still can’t help but feel a bit of compassion.
28. Tennis – Lily Allen
Most of the songs from this album really need to be heard in context. But Tennis works entirely on its own, even without knowing anything else from the record, as a document of a very specific moment, when the slow-motion car crash shifts into regular speed. The realization, the panic that refuses to be contained. The eruption of anger doused in humiliation.
29. Waco, Texas – Ethel Cain
The album was (way) too long, but fortunately everything I wanted in the album is contained right here in this 15 minute epic.
30. Valhalla – Molly Nilsson
There was a wonderful wave of Swedish indie-pop (most of it on Labrador Records) that peaked in the late aughts and early 2010s (Club 8, Sambassadeur, The Radio Dept., Laurel Music, etc.). Some of those bands are still around (there’s even one on this list), but there was a window of time when you’d reliably get several killer albums full of jangly songs that evoked dark nights and even darker secrets. This Molly Nilsson record embodies the spirit of those days, and I love it.
31. 3rd Time Lucky – AJ Tracey
The thing that immediately grabbed me was his flow, stepping deliberately across a lovely skittering beat and a beautiful keyboard line. But then I started listening to the lyrics and realized it’s about his love for his mom and her fight with cancer, and I was all-in.
32. Staying Alive – Club 8
Club 8 have been making new versions of this same song for closing in on 30 years. You can say that an artist should try to expand their range, but when they’ve drifted too far away from atmospheric Swedish pop, it generally hasn’t been great (with the one exception of Spring Came, Rain Fell, back in 2002). And every time they make a new version of this song, it sounds great. So keep putting them out, I say!
33. Blueprint – Emily James
If you told me this was a lost track from an early 2010s Taylor Swift album, I would absolutely have believed it.
34. Folded Hands – Kylie Dailey
For the first verse, ‘are you a believer in love that could last’ is slightly resigned. It’s a real question, and one that she clearly doubts will receive a positive answer. The second time, it’s triumphant. It’s not a question that expects an answer; it’s an invitation. It’s worth taking the risk and believing, she says. Give it a try.
35. 23’s A Baby – Blondshell
The strange mixture of resentment and admiration that she feels for her mom for having a kid at 23. On the one hand, why. On the other hand, how.
36. Play – james K
Equal parts dream pop and psychotic breakdown. One of the best kiss-off songs of the last few years.
37. Clueless – Beach Bunny
It’s churlish to complain about a song this good, but I wish they had really set it on fire. The ‘ba da da’ refrain works sort of like a release valve, preventing the explosion from kicking off. Which I understand as a piece of songwriting craft, I suppose, but…I kind of just want the song to explode.
38. Bashville on the Sugar – Yumi Zouma
Yumi Zouma are experts at this sort of rambunctious pop song. It skitters and dances through your life, inviting you to follow along. For a while you tumble along with it until it eventually passes over a hill and rolls along off to the horizon.
39. Shapeshifter – Lorde
Lorde has that special knack of writing songs that are actually very specific and literal but which feel archetypal and universal. It’s the sort of thing that feels very simple when you hear it done right–of course we can all relate to these very normal human experiences—but it’s incredibly hard to actually do it. This song does it.
40. When You’re Sleeping – Katie Malco feat. mui zyu
Katie Malco has yet to put out a song I don’t like. Always hits the perfect balance between emotional and thoughtful, between caring too much and playing it cool.
41. Relationships – HAIM
My biggest regret about this song is that I didn’t get around to listening to it until the fall, when this is one of the most definitively summer songs you’ll ever hear.
42. After You – Babygirl
One of the great questions in philosophy is ‘what comes after?’ After evil, after the revolution, after an act of mercy, after injustice. After love. After you.
43. Headphones On – Addison Rae
The Lana Del Rey impersonation is uncanny, and not really in a good way. But damn it is just so unbelievably catchy that I’ll put up with it.
44. Future Tree – Emma Pollock
It’s been almost twenty years since I’ve heard an Emma Pollock song that hits as hard as this one. Still doesn’t quite live up to the glory days of the Delgadoes, but it’s a very fine entrant into her career discography.
45. Exhale – Skullcrusher
There’s something very strange about the act of creation. There’s this sense of anticipation, when you can feel the thing coming into existence. It feels both self-contained, emerging from within, but also external. Like an idea that’s there on the wind which you just happened to breathe in at the exact right moment. And then there’s the moment, captured in this song, when you carefully exhale and hope that it emerges the way you intended. Or maybe the way it was always meant to be if only it could find the right medium.
46. Elderberry Wine – Wednesday
I really ought to love Wednesday. They check pretty much all my boxes. But for some reason I’ve never quite been able to ‘get’ them. This song is the closest I’ve come.
47. World’s Worst Girlfriend – Shura
She described this as “me at my peak dramatic gay” which I think really sets the tone for a delightfully over-the-top, glossy 80s pop song.
48. New Bad – Esther Rose
Verses: 10/10 no notes, perfect. It’s a shame the rest of the song doesn’t match up. With a chorus to match, this thing would spit fire.
49. Opalite – Taylor Swift
The only two songs that have stuck in rotation from this mostly pretty forgettable album are Opalite and Fate of Ophelia. In part because those two seem to do a better job of wearing their influences (outright thefts) more lightly. I could have gone with either here, but gave Opalite the slight edge, since I’ve always loved that “oh oh oh oh oh” descending melodic line (borrowed from Be My Baby or, more recently, Mates of State).
50. Blade Bird – Oklou
The nursery rhyme delivery, the birdsong that sounds like a tiny rocket launch, the light touches of hyperpop production, the enigmatic lyrics…there’s a lot that’s peculiar about this song. I’m still not quite sure it actually works for me exactly. But I keep coming back.