It’s taken a little longer than normal – I am almost certain this is the latest in the calendar year I’ve ever posted it – but at last I can reveal my 20 favorite songs of the year.
This year I’ve had the the least enthusiasm I can recall about the process.[1] Usually I’ll dive into the songs in mid-fall and slowly get obsessed with the list, or at least with certain songs on it. For a week or two these will be the only songs I listen to. I never caught that fever this year. The top 5–8 songs seemed locked in, in some order, but the rest just couldn’t get my juices flowing. At one point I thought about doing only a top 10, but eventually my interest revived enough to settle on 20 songs. Still, it feels like a year where there isn’t a ton of difference between songs 11 and 30-whatever.
I realize I’m not making the best pitch for you to devote time to reading my thoughts and reviewing these songs. I apologize and ensure you it will be worth your time. At least the listening part!
20 – “Glass” – Glom
I nearly bumped this song because it is freaking impossible to search for information on this band in general and song in particular. Every search engine wants to spit out lists of the greatest Glam bands of all time. Not what I was looking for. Fortunately for Glom, the song is so pretty and fun I couldn’t resist it.
19 – “Field Recordings” – Restorations
These guys show up every 4–6 years with another B+/A- album that carries the banner for great, listenable, straight-ahead rock music. They make the wait worth it each time.
18 – “In A Dream” – Trace Mountains
Maybe a little shared DNA between this track and a few The War on Drugs tracks that leverage an insistent, mechanical, Krautrock rhythm section to propel the song forward.
17 – “Blue Skies” – Finnoguns Wake
Every year-end list needs a certified ripper. Here is 2024’s.
16 – “Kiss Me (Kill Me)” – RINSE featuring Hatchie
If Hatchie puts out music, she makes the list. That’s one of the 157 rules that govern these annual collections. An interesting twist to this year’s entry, as she provides the vocals for her husband’s project.
In a year that had a ton of great fourth (fifth? sixth?) wave shoegaze songs, this one, which leans more dream pop than shoegaze, hit the hardest with me.
15 – “Philosophy” – Middle Kids
Hey, three straight Aussie acts!
As tends to happen these days, the two best songs of MK’s album Faith Crisis Pt 1 were released as advance singles in 2023 (“Highlands” was #6 on last year’s list). This was the highlight of the tracks that were new in ’24.
Also, I received a personal message from lead singer Hannah Joy as part of my Spotify Wrapped package for this year. Even though she didn’t address me by name, I know she recorded it just for me in appreciation for being an advocate for her band and one of their biggest listeners. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.
14 – “The Howl” – Crowded House
The current CH lineup is 3/5 Kiwi, 1/5 Aussie, and 1/5 American. So our Down Under run continues. Kind of. What the heck is going on here?
Neil Finn’s music has gone adrift a bit over the last decade, at least to my fanboy ears. He still makes nice enough records, but they lack singles loaded with the perfect pop punch present in his greatest songs.
When he reconvened Crowded House for their latest album, he added his sons Liam and Elroy to the lineup on guitar and drums respectively. Liam wrote this track, and while the lyrics are a little more artsy and ambiguous than his dad’s – I’ve always thought Liam’s voice sounds like his dad’s but his music and lyrics land closer to his uncle Tim’s – he helps guide Pops back to the sonic pocket he spent so much of his career in.
13 – Slugger – SASAMI
SASAMI is one of the more interesting people making music these days, combining about as wide a range of influences as you can imagine, from Korean folk to singer-songwriter ballads to metal. Here she comes close to, but does not quite reach, Crying In The Club Songs By Robyn territory.
12 – “Tonight (Was A Long Time Ago)” – Jack White
One of THE musical highlights of 2024 was White’s surprise, No Name album. First given free to customers at his two stores who bought other albums, it was later made available to fans everywhere via a series of semi-cryptic clues online that lead to a free download site. A week later it landed on proper streaming services and in traditional record stores. White-heads like me spent a couple weeks blasting this return to the music that first made him famous: roaring, bluesy, raw, riffy-as-hell garage rock. It wasn’t a full recreation of the White Stripes sound, and Meg was not behind the drum kit, but it was pretty damn close.
11 – “Old Tape” – Lucius featuring Adam Granduciel
No official new music from The War on Drugs in 2024. And it may be some time before they get around to it, given their touring schedule for 2025.[2] Adam Granduciel did help out his pals Lucius with backing vocals and guitar on this lovely song about shutting down the voices of doubt in your head and forging ahead.
10 – “Superstar” – Hinds
Summer time. Car windows down. A pissed off driver, thanks to a crush revealing their true nature. A song comes on the radio and the driver starts singing along. They sing louder and louder. Soon they are shouting. Then the tears come. Now they are screaming. By the end of the song the driver is laughing, wiping the tears away, and realizing that despite hurt, they are better without that asshole in their lives.
9 – “Docket” – Blondshell featuring Bully
There are a million – million and one? – songs about music groupies. Not many of them have come from the perspective of a female artist. This one is more about the difficulty of keeping a relationship back home when you are a traveling musician than the random hookups on the road themselves.
Last year Bully made the list with help from Soccer Mommy. This year she lends guest vocals to a friend’s track, a true banger.
8 – “Sage” – Sun June
Via the Duck Assist AI tool on the Duck Duck Go search engine:
Burning sage, also known as smudging, is an ancient spiritual ritual that involves the burning of sage or other sacred herbs to purify a space, release negative energy, and promote healing.
We need a fuck-ton of sage in this country. And more songs as gorgeous as this one. The post-chorus/outro section is the most beautiful 90 seconds of music made this year.
This was the annual track that really grabbed me over the last two months and climbed from the bottom of the list to the top half.
7 – “Wildflowers” – Jim Nothing
Clean, pure, jangle pop that sounds like a warm spring day. You can draw a straight line from The Byrds to R.E.M. to this song. It made me about as happy as any song in the last quarter of the year, a period when I needed things to make me happy. Also, our second New Zealand act.
6 – “3 Sisters” – Waxahatchee
Katie Crutchfield has always had a presence. There’s a quality to her voice that defies pinning down and appeals to me despite its pronounced twang. On her latest album, Tiger’s Blood, she completed a transition that began with her last album. She sounds bigger, stronger, more confident than ever. She embraces her rural roots while keeping one toe firmly planted in the indie rock world. That comes across most clearly on a song like this, where the restraint she sings with makes her seem even more powerful than when she’s emoting with all her might. Tiger’s Blood was not my favorite album of the year (it was in the running,). But it likely was the best one I listened to all year.
Bonus points for the title. Not sure if any of my girls have heard this song, let alone enjoy it, but I like that it makes me think of them.
5 – “She’s Leaving You” – MJ Lenderman
Man, did the music critics love Lenderman’s album Manning Fireworks. It is at or near the top of every Best Of list I’ve read this month. I gave it a shot; it wasn’t for me. Too twangy and Appalachian for my tastes. This song, though? Incredible. Absolutely incredible.
BTW, Lenderman appeared on Waxahatchee’s album, and served as opening act for her tour.
4 – “Gift Horse” – IDLES
When I first heard this, especially the closing lines, I was pumped for another pointed, anti-establishment track from my favorite rabble rousing band of the moment. Then I read an interview with lead singer Joe Talbot in which he said it is about how grateful he is to be a father, how much he loves his daughter, and how he wanted to write “a beast of a tune” about her. That puts the final line in a total different context.
Fuck the King
He ain’t the King
She’s the King
Mission accomplished.
3 – “The Fences Of Stonehenge” – Wild Pink
John Ross has a gift for making hazy-yet-bright songs that hit me right in the core of what I love about music. Those big, layered, open chords on this track are pure magic.
2 – “Hawkmoon” – Hurray for the Riff Raff
A music critic at The Atlantic suggested that HFTRR’s album was the newest, great, American road trip album. That makes this the newest, great, American road trip song. A perfect, three-minute and forty-two second distillation of Alynda Segarra’s adventures as they navigated the artistic communities of New Orleans after running away from home in New York as a teen. This also contains my favorite lyric of the year:
I’m becoming the kind of girl they warned me about.
1 – “Wreckage” – Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam isn’t supposed to make new, great music anymore. Sure, they’ll put out a new album every 4–5–6 years that might include a couple decent songs. But those singles and the albums themselves generally fade from memory quickly. Their concerts are still incredible, but they had fallen into the Old Rock Band trap of being pulled in too many different directions and spending too little time together (and probably being too old) to create compelling new songs.
Until this year.
Producer Andrew Watt, who helped Eddie Vedder on his surprisingly great solo album two years ago, insisted the band record as they used to: in focused studio sessions playing live. Rather than spending months, or even years, making an album, Dark Matter was mostly assembled in a three-week stretch. The result was a tight, fierce, absolutely locked-in effort, their best album since at least 2006’s Pearl Jam, and possibly 1994’s Vitalogy.
This track was the clear standout. It does not compare, thematically, to some of PJ’s greatest songs. It’s about a relationship falling apart – standard old man rock stuff – rather than mentally ill homeless people, teens sent to mental hospitals against their will, school room suicides, serial killers, or how fame can overwhelm you. It is hopeful rather than hopeless. It is bright rather than dark. And the magnificent final 60 seconds? Maybe the most gorgeous 60 seconds in the entire PJ catalog. I listened to “Wreckage”” a million times this year and never got sick of it. For good reason it topped my Spotify Wrapped countdown. And this list.