It’s one near-impossible struggle to condense a full 12 months of countless weekly must-hear albums down to just 50, but it’s another struggle altogether trying to reduce our favorite songs from these releases—and far, far beyond—down to a mere 10 titles. Several albums on the list we posted earlier this week have warranted plenty of debate as to which is its defining track, while newly minted superstars have returned this year to capitalize on their newfound fame with arguably their best material yet.
However, the 2020s continue to be defined by collaboration, whether it be like-minded indie-rockers combining their powers for a single jam, a long-time solo songwriter being inspired to share the spotlight with her touring band, or a happenstance encounter at a gig leading to an exceptional cross-continental single. While a truly dizzying number of recordings made our shortlist, here are our 10 picks for the songs that defined 2024.
10. Hinds feat. Beck, “Boom Boom Back”
If you think meeting an artist you idolize might be awkward, it’s even harder when you’re an artist yourself. Ana Perrote and Carlotta Cosials met Beck at a documentary screening in Los Angeles. They held down their fangirling long enough to talk to him about doing something together, then nothing happened. Just like a new crush when you don’t know if you should text them or not, Hinds weren’t sure whether they should send Beck a message. Then, when they landed back home in Spain, there was a text from him saying, “Wasn’t I going to sing on one of your songs? How do we do this?”
“Boom Boom Back” is the resultant earworm, an early single off Hinds’ triumphant 2024 LP Viva Hinds. The song kicks off with a strong verse: “Somewhere in the way, in the middle of my loneliness / Feeling strange in the house of a mutual friend / I said, ‘Nope, thank you though, you know I don’t do cocaine’ / My thoughts are boring / You can ignore me.” “Boom Boom Back” only gets catchier from there, capturing the essence of the Los Angeles experience. The video, directed by Perrote and Cosials, is the visual representation of LA through their eyes—playful and exaggerated, black-clad and licking ice creams, riding around in the backs of cars and pickup trucks, all wiry arms and legs. Stucco houses, Mexican tiles, inimitable light, and dusty trees, “Boom Boom Back” is an LA fever dream. To quote Hinds: “Girl, you guys are so funny…you guys are so…cuuute.” — Lily Moayeri
Read our interview with Hinds about Viva Hinds here.
9. Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory, “Afterlife”
Sometimes we just want to be told that it’ll be alright. Sharon Van Etten understands this, and the past decade has been one of collaborative and electrified in-studio tinkering for her after years of indie rock songs steeped in solo-songwriter introspection. Van Etten is going all-in on jam sessions with her redressed band, the Attachment Theory, in 2025. During recent tour rehearsals, the musician found herself initiating extended jams with her longtime band for the first time. The resulting 10-track album’s promo cycle kicked off with lead single and dark synth odyssey “Afterlife.” “Will you see me in the afterlife? / Will you tell me what you think it’s like?” Van Etten asks over the ’80s synth-rock squall.
Van Etten is trying on a new guise here and it’s refreshing to hear her revelry. “Afterlife” owns its longing through its drum pad beat, synth growls, and soaring melody that only the goth-rock and synth-pop genre favorites truly crystallized, all while Van Etten’s yearning for a lost loved one takes center stage. For so many of us, 2024 was full of scrambled signals and media distractions. “Afterlife” looks to human connection to unshackle our grief so we can wake up from the dream of modern life. A jam band can be a ridiculous endeavor without self-editing, but Van Etten and the Attachment Theory let their hair down and step out of the dream world with confidence. — Kyle Lemmon
8. Blondshell & Bully, “Docket”
Last year, Blondshell and Bully delivered two of 2023’s most impressive rock albums, both sharing a knack for grungy power-pop riffs. They carried that momentum forward into 2024, too, with the release of “Docket,” which saw the pair deliver the team-up that we didn’t know we needed. Arguably the indie-rock collaboration of the year, it sees the individual styles meld together perfectly: Blondshell deftly delivers lyrics about the temptations one encounters while on tour, where distance makes things tricky and feelings of guilt crop up easily; Bully joins in on the second verse, emphasizing those feelings and harmonizing from that moment on, the pair providing a powerful display of inner rage unleashed.
The grunge-laden track is full of powerful blasts of guitar—each time the chorus revs up to its pinnacle, it never fails to land. It feels like the best collaboration between songwriters for a single in indie rock since Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen’s 2021 track “Like I Used To.” The way in which Blondshell and Bully complement each other makes you crave a full-length project, but if this is to be a one-off then the pair more than made their mark. — Matty Pywell
7. The Cure, “And Nothing Is Forever”
Everybody dies alone, or so the saying goes. I was on a plane back home to England when I got the text from my mum that that my dad—his fierce, brilliant mind ravaged by Alzheimer’s—had passed away. And though she’d been there with him every day for the two-plus years he’d been trapped in the hospital bed in their former bedroom, she was out walking while the carers were there for their morning visit when he died. I remember video chatting him the morning I flew back, telling him I was coming home, that I’d see him tomorrow. He couldn’t speak, a new development that had made me book my flight before I called—but a huge smile crossed his lips when I told him. I didn’t make it. My mum thought she would be there, but she wasn’t.
“And Nothing Is Forever”—taken from Songs of a Lost World, The Cure’s stunning eight-track treatise about mortality and their first album in 16 years—is about that precise scenario. This song was inspired after Smith’s promise to be there for someone who was very ill when they died, but wasn’t able to be. And yet, as the song swells toward its end, there’s still some hope within it that maybe we’re never actually alone when we die, because we’re carried in the hearts of all of those who love us, even if they’re not actually there when we go. For me, this song is my dad’s smile when I told him I was coming back. Every time I hear this song, I see that smile, and feel all the love it contained, even if he couldn’t articulate it. It’s devastating, but also a beautiful, wonderful thing. — Mischa Pearlman
Read our review of The Cure’s Songs of a Lost World here.
6. Doechii, “Denial Is a River”
Many storytellers like to build up suspense, lead the audience into a deepening mystery, and then hit us with a jaw-dropping reveal. Doechii, on the other hand, never strings listeners along. In the first verse of the Florida rapper/singer’s “Denial Is a River” from her debut mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal, she revisits a purportedly autobiographical story from 2019 in which she reveals that her man is cheating on her with another man. That’s just the beginning of the story, though.
Backed by a surprisingly upbeat and bare-bones instrumental that doesn’t quite match the tumult she details in her lyrics, Doechii keeps her messy narrative impressively light in tone. She playfully goes back and forth with a purported therapist and she frames the rest of the story amidst her rise in the music industry. At the same time, she acknowledges her affinity for sex, drugs, and money, all while noting that her self-worth was at an all-time low as she was enjoying the so-called perks of fame. With a vivid and humorous narrative and a song title that pays homage to a famous line from former salacious talk show host Wendy Williams, Doechii has solidified herself as a storyteller to watch with “Denial Is a River.” — Soren Baker
Read our interview with Doechii about Alligator Bites Don’t Heal here.
5. Chappell Roan, “Good Luck, Babe!”
Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” is a funeral pyre mourning a clandestine queer affair through the medium of glitzy ’80s synths, melodramatic drums, and teary-eyed strings. These large-scale romantic motifs carry emotional liberation, even as Roan grieves a relationship burdened by the weight of sexual erasure. “Think I’m gonna call it off / Even if you call it love / I just wanna love someone who calls me ‘baby,’” she sings on the pre-chorus, excavating the grey area of semantics and actions representing genuine emotion. That moment is an instant, clear-headed rush where Roan chooses herself over a relationship humming with internalized homophobia.
“Good Luck, Babe!” is a final goodbye to a lover in denial that’s more sympathetic than catty, recognizing that both factions of this situationship deserve better for themselves—an equal partnership symbolized by the mutual use of “baby,” for one thing, accepting the reality of their heart without shame for another. Alongside an effervescent melody and tightrope vocal acrobatics, she conveys that no relationship is worth sacrificing self-acceptance and unconditional love, which they both deserve. This is perhaps why it feels grander than a breakup anthem; the chorus alone (“You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling”) is a poetic revelation that suggests that denial of one’s truth is a kind of death. Following the long-awaited release of her debut The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess last year, the one-off single feels like a profound release affirming her meteoric rise. This synth-pop classic is vulnerable yet, in the end, uncompromising, representative of a pop star willing to speak up against normalized insanity and hypocrisy. — Margaret Farrell
4. Justice feat. Tame Impala, “Neverender”
Justice and Tame Impala are a match made on some heavenly rave’s dance floor where the drugs are just flowing around the pit. Their collaborative track “Neverender” captured the best dance and pop qualities of both groups with its soaring synthesizers, lovelorn lyricism, and disco energy. The standout single from the French EDM duo’s latest album Hyperdrama is an exemplar of dance-music strut and psychedelic flow, but simplicity keeps the dopamine hits coming as it grooves along. Coasting on that energy, the music video for the single leans into anime stylings to express these psychedelic adrenaline rushes.
Similar to both group’s collaborative cut “One Night/All Night” from the same album, “Neverender” showcases Kevin Parker’s lush falsetto dancing along to a spacey and smooth groove with plenty of cycling bursts of build and release. “The time is upon us, I should’ve been honest / The pain in my heart, I remember the sharpest,” sings Parker, providing a dance-floor mantra over a dark shuffle and marching waves of tripped-out beats. “Neverender” feels like a truly balanced collaboration, with neither faction fully taking the lead. “We wanted this track to sound as if a dark/techno iteration of Justice had found a sample of a disco iteration of Kevin Parker,” the duo explained upon the track’s release. Mission accomplished. — Kyle Lemmon
Read our interview with Justice about Hyperdrama here.
3. Fontaines D.C., “Starburster”
On “Starburster,” Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten transforms terror into a litany of desire: “I wanna see you alone, I wanna sharp the stone... I want the preacher and pill, I wanna bless with it.” There’s a darkly funny element to these lyrics, which, Chatten has claimed, were originally written as a joke—a liberating unseriousness that allows the track to reach uninhibited emotional heights. Inspired by a panic attack he had at St. Pancras Station in London, “Starburster” races both like a train and like churning thoughts, punctuated by his gasps for air and the sardonic refrain, “It may feel bad.”
This is sung over cascading piano, pounding drums, and reverberating guitar, dueling textures that mimic the track’s inner battle and that echo throughout the rest of the Dublin post-punk quintet’s groundbreaking album Romance. Chatten’s desires are varied on “Starburster”—sexual, chaotic, anti-colonial, even sometimes self-annihilative—but all give way to an overarching need for respite, which he gives voice to in the bridge as the music turns suddenly calm. “Never wanting, only wonder,” he recites over strings between pastoral visions of an imagined future—until the beat kicks back in like a harsh reminder of the present moment, a jolt back to center. — Annie Parnell
Read our review of Fontaines D.C.’s Romance here.
2. Kendrick Lamar, “Not Like Us”
This year, Kendrick Lamar pulled off something that can be viewed as miraculous: In the midst of the unyielding avalanche of polarizing media, Kendrick made a seemingly ubiquitous song, a rap tune that captured the imagination of listeners, whether they’re die-hard rap fans or not. “Not Like Us” checks several significant rap boxes. For one, diss songs have been a hallmark of the genre since the mid-1980s. Since then, diss tracks can do anything from propeling an artist to new heights to ending their career. Time will tell whether this catchy cut, considered by many as the zenith (and conclusion) of the Kendrick/Drake rift that exploded in May (assuming lawsuits don’t count), will have that type of outsized significance. In the short term, though, “Not Like Us” has been such a cultural touchstone that it’s been performed by multiple college marching bands and served as the anthem for the LA Dodgers during their run up to the 2024 World Series—and through to their victory.
These placements denote a second key to the song’s success, as it has life beyond rap (and has remained in the public’s consciousness for six months—an eternity in the modern era). In a general sense, “Not Like Us” represents a refutation of phonies, something many hip-hop fans have railed against since the culture’s genesis. That idea is in sync with Drake’s detractors, who for years have blasted the Canadian for being, in their minds, a disingenuous outsider whose talent and motives are suspect. In an era where so much of what Americans consume is potentially dubious, Kendrick Lamar gave us something to collectively rally around with “Not Like Us.” — Soren Baker
1. Charli XCX feat. Lorde, “Girl, so confusing”
Of the many gravity-defying achievements on Brat, the blockbusting pop extravaganza from Chari XCX, perhaps the most astonishing is this: She wrote and recorded an entire album about the particular experience of being famous (or, as one song puts it, “famous but not quite”), and she did it in a way that actually feels relatable. Delivered in the casual, conversational tone of a text-message chain between friends, Brat catalogs all the ways in which Charli’s life isn’t like yours or mine—how she wants to hear her own tracks blasting at the club; how awkward it would feel running into Taylor Swift backstage after a show. And, it chronicles all the ways in which her life isn’t so different after all—how she’s anxious about her career, her body, her reputation, finding time to balance career and family.
What album highlight “Girl, so confusing” does so well is harness Charli’s public perception to elucidate the album’s broader themes; like the songs on Taylor’s pungent opus Reputation, it makes a meal of metanarrative. When the 1.0 version of the song released, hinting at a frictive relationship with a female peer, it was widely assumed to be a shot at Lorde. Then, the big reveal: a remixed version of the song with Lorde herself showing up in a spirit of solidarity—you could even call it reconciliation.
Like the rest of Charli’s extended Brat body of work, the track revels in the abrasive and the artificial; its clattering groove is based around a dingy, speaker-rattling din. The lyrics include direct, insider-y references to the music industry, specifically how it pits women against one another. Whether despite or because of these things, the song feels roundly warm-blooded, disarming in its vulnerability, guileless in its candor. It emanates understanding of the hurt involved with performing a role in public, even while being unfairly compared to other women locked into the same performance.
And all that’s before you get to Lorde, deployed here in the way great mixtapes deploy rappers: She shows up, perfumes the song with her own fragrance, spits a few bars, then she’s out. In one of the most remarkable performances of any album released in 2024, the singer answers Charli’s candor with her own diaristic reflections on competition, insecurity, and body shame. And then this song, seemingly born of tension, coalesces into compassion and shared understanding. It sounds for all the world like a minor miracle worked out in real time. — Josh Hurst
Read our review of Charli XCX’s Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat here.
