Another year of phenomenal music down. What a great year for pop, too. I’ve been thrilled with the quality of pop music hitting the zeitgeist and the charts; I feel most of it has moved beyond the emptiness that has plagued it in the past, even when the songs are pure sugar, aiming squarely for the pleasure button.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the sheer amount of musicians who go for the vintage/retro vibes, or even straight up using synth sounds copied from decades past. Some of this year’s biggest pop stars use sounds lifted from the hits of the 1970s and 80s. As someone who’s favorite decade of music is the 1960s, I of course welcome this and enjoy a lot of this music (clearly, it’s all over my favorites below). But I can’t help but wonder if it comes at a small cost of not exploring the sounds of the future.

Now maybe this is just me, but in the late 90s going into the late 2000s, there was a greater feeling of trying to figure out what new sounds could be made and integrated into popular music. Now, there have been and always will be those on the fringes experimenting and testing out new musical ideas; I’m referring to more of the household names in music, even at the “big indie” level. When I think of examples, Timbaland, the Neptunes, Missy Elliott, and Daft Punk immediately come to mind. There were those who used the past as inspiration but found completely modern ways of remixing it, such as the whole New York rock scene (The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol). Justice and Crystal Castles took sounds of the 70s and 80s and gave them a complete digital makeover. Then some just straight up sounded futuristic, like Animal Collective.

But when I ask myself “who sounds like music of the future?”, not too many come to mind. I think the biggest example would be Charli XCX, who’s consistently made a point to try and push boundaries of pop and electronic. “Brat” may be influenced by classic club songs but it is a thoroughly modern album. Hyperpop as a whole (which a lot of Charli’s stuff is included in) is the main genre that I listen to and am constantly surprised by, wondering “how was this made?”.

I do hope that music, as a whole, can push more towards finding new areas to discover. I worry that endlessly remixing sounds of the past may only lead us to a snake-eating-its-tail situation in the future, where the only difference between songs is a particular person’s melodic sensibilities but not much else. Great songwriting/production will always be in vogue but there’s something magical about listening to a song and being hit with a sledgehammer feeling of “this is the way forward”.

That said, here are my favorite albums of 2024:

20. Snoop Dogg/Dr. Dre – Missionary

19. Empire of the Sun – Ask That God

18. Mdou Moctar – Funeral for Justice

17. Justice – Hyperdrama

16. Kendrick Lamar – GNX

15. Brittany Howard – What Now

14. Fontaines D.C. – Romance

13. The Last Dinner Party – Prelude to Ecstasy

12. Mannequin Pussy – I Got Heaven

11. Lupe Fiasco –  Samurai

10. Tyla – TYLA

09. Father John Misty – Mahashmashana

08. Ariana Grande – eternal sunshine

07. Kali Uchis – ORQUÍDEAS

06. Magdalena Bay – Imaginal Disk

05. Sabrina Carpenter – Short n’ Sweet

04. Jessica Pratt – Here in the Pitch

03. Jamie XX – In Waves

02. Charli XCX – Brat

01. Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us