Best music albums from 2024

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last updated 12 December 2024

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Kim Deal: Nobody Loves You More

There's no great stylistic shift here for Deal, said Stevie Chick in Mojo. "Nobody Loves You More" comprises "swooning pop, subterranean dissonance and at least one waltz, all firmly within her long-established paradigm". However, as well as being "sublime", it is by far her most personal record to date, with songs referencing the death of both her parents, and her mother's prior struggles with Alzheimer's. That backstory is most explicit on "Are You Mine?" – a "brilliant, frankly devastating piece of songwriting, and yet still uplifting". The whole album is a "life-affirming listen, where joy and despair, love and loss, are irrevocably entwined, and kept afloat by Deal's unfailing lightness of touch".

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"Never has the apocalypse sounded so lush," said James Hall in The Daily Telegraph. The title of this "stately and swooningly produced" sixth album from Josh Tillman, the American musician who performs as Father John Misty, is the Sanskrit word for "great cremation ground" – and there's a "doomsday epicness" to its "monumental ballads". I was reminded of the "big, sweeping singer-songwriter" albums of the 1970s: Elton John's "Honky Château", or George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass". "It's an astonishing body of work that's immediately catapulted into my contenders for album of the year."

Tillman "remains a superlative chronicler of life's perverseness", said Lisa Wright in The Observer – whether his barbs are aimed at himself (as on "Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose") or at the platitudes referred to on "Mental Health". Musically, the album ranges from the "Hollywood theatricality" of the title track and the swagger of "She Cleans Up", to the "catharsis" of "Screamland's" apocalyptic climax, and leaves you wanting more.

Released without warning late last month, Kendrick Lamar's "GNX" is a "hard-hitting masterpiece", dripping with eccentric wit and convincing menace – and it has "eclipsed every rap release this year", said Peter A. Berry in Variety. "Combining vicious sincerity, kaleidoscopic California sounds, and the athleticism of a decathlete", the collection caps a stellar year for Lamar, in which his Drake diss track "Not Like Us" earned multiple Grammy nominations. A musical mosaic, GNX contains mariachi, jazz and impeccable soul samples, and "indisputably reaffirms" Lamar's status as the "most dynamic spitter the world has to offer".

While it doesn't offer the "grand, complex statement" found on Lamar's previous great albums "To Pimp a Butterfly, Damn" and "Mr Morale and the Big Steppers", "GNX" is "nevertheless hugely impressive: compact but substantial, punchy but broad in musical scope", said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. "I deserve it all," drawls the Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper on "Man at the Garden". At the risk of "swelling his head further... you can understand his triumphalism".

Michael Kiwanuka is an unassuming north Londoner, now living on the south coast, "with a voice like Bill Withers and a penchant for pouring his innermost thoughts into delicate acoustic soul", said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. His superb self-titled third album won the Mercury Prize in 2020 – but it was at the height of lockdown, so he was denied his moment of glory. This equally impressive follow-up is a "seriously accomplished album" that should bring further acclaim. Kiwanuka's regular producers, Danger Mouse and Inflo, catch "an organic sound in which every drum fill, guitar riff and string cascade hums with life".

There's no drastic change to the artist's "warm, woody sound", said Tom Doyle in Mojo. But Kiwanuka is now a 37-year-old father of two, and there's a sense that his writing here draws on greater "life experience". The "slow-burning opener" "Floating Parade" is a highlight, as are "Lowdown (part i)" and "Follow Your Dreams". But "tasteful tones and masterful grooves feature throughout" this fine collection.

Peter Phillips's group, The Tallis Scholars, have for decades been producing "some of the most beautiful and expressive vocal sounds around", said Geoff Brown in The Times. They are famed for their "robust clarity, purity and radiance", and those qualities are on abundant display on this disc of sacred music by Robert Fayrfax, an early Tudor composer favoured by Henry VIII. "If the final Amen setting in Eterne laudis lilium doesn't lift your heart, nothing will. And the album's engineering is impeccable, with enough breathing space between these heady pieces to stop you "fainting from too much joy".

The disc, which comes with a useful booklet note by Phillips, features Fayrfax's four great votive antiphons (vast works, largely in five voices), the "most astonishing" of which is "Maria plena virtute", said David Fallows in Gramophone. Much of this is in just two voices, "something that early Tudor composers did spectacularly well, but perhaps Fayrfax better than most". As ever, the Scholars "run effortlessly like a Rolls-Royce".

Although this year marks the bicentenary of the birth of Anton Bruckner, it has produced few recordings to rival the "canonical versions" of the Austrian composer's nine symphonies, said Andrew Clements in The Guardian. Vladimir Jurowski's live recording of the "Seventh Symphony", however, made earlier this year at the Berliner Philharmonie, "might just be that special". The Russian conductor creates an "effortless natural flow, in which nothing is forced", aided by the musicians of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, who "know this 19th century symphonic repertoire as well as any orchestra in the world".

There have been several recent fine accounts of Bruckner's 7th, conducted by Roth, Thielemann, Rattle and Poschner, said Christian Hoskins in Gramophone. I'm inclined to think that this one surpasses all of them. It's not merely the "transparent and expressive" playing; it's the "careful attention to dynamics", which lends "luminosity and repose" to the symphony's quieter byways, and brings "power and excitement to climactic passages".

Tyler Gregory Okonma – aka Tyler, The Creator – was once effectively banned from performing in the UK by the then- home secretary, Theresa May, owing to his "homophobic, hate-inciting lyrics", said Thomas Hobbs in The Daily Telegraph: on his breakthrough 2011 punk-rap hit "Yonkers", he'd vowed to "stab Bruno Mars in his goddamn oesophagus" while (in the video) eating a live cockroach. Since then, Tyler's music has mellowed and deepened in "fascinating" ways, while referencing his own fluid sexuality. And on his excellent eighth album, the rapper turns "further inwards, dissecting the flawed human being behind an edgy rap persona".

Swapping his aggression for a more "nuanced" sound has brought Tyler awards and commercial success, said Kitty Empire in The Observer. On this new album, which features cameos from his mother, Bonita Smith, he "doubles down on three major themes: maturing (or not), the act of mask- wearing", and his "angsty relationship with fame". It's a strong collection, containing "some unequivocally banging tunes".

Cure fans have had to wait 16 years for this long promised album, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. They may have wondered if Robert Smith was "hanging upside down in a belfry night after night for inspiration before carving each lyric out on a gravestone". Turns out, he was crafting a masterpiece. This eight-track album is a "sophisticated, thoroughly English portrait of death, disintegration and things falling apart, rich in melodrama and bombast". It's The Cure's "The Dark Side of the Moon".

It's their best album since "Disintegration" in 1989, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian: "powerful, possessed of a dark beauty and frequently moving in a manner that feels different to anything they've released before". Detractors sometimes accuse The Cure of being trapped in a form of adolescent melancholy. Not here. This album finds Smith mourning the loss of his brother and facing down his own mortality, and although the pace is often glacial, the music is more direct and purposeful than ever. These are the "most straightforwardly personal songs Smith has ever written".

A lot of people assumed that Laura Marling's superb 2020 album "Song For Our Daughter" was "inspired by new motherhood", said Fiona Shepherd in The Scotsman. In fact, it was an act of imagination. Now, though, the singer-songwriter does have an actual daughter, born in 2023. And her new collection is a "tender pacifier of an album" – with music inspired by birth and motherhood, and "even featuring a little gurn from baby on the rapturous, fluttering Lullaby".

In one sense, the album is like "one long lullaby, with Marling's vocal rocking and coaxing", said Siobhán Kane in The Irish Times. Musically, though, it is very far from one-note. "No One's Gonna Love You Like I Can" has a charming country inflection; "The Shadows" has a "fado sway"; "Interlude (Time Passages)" is "an instrumental piece that is like the fragmented sounds of a 1950s fairground caught on tape"; the closer, "Lullaby (Instrumental)", is filled with the spirit of Ennio Morricone – "conjuring up ideas of history, poetry and family, whatever shape that takes".

Joan Wasser is the "unorthodox but consistently rewarding" American singer- songwriter who records as Joan as Police Woman, said Ludovic Hunter-Tilney in the Financial Times. Originally a classical violinist, Wasser has, among other things, played keyboards for Iggy Pop, toured with Lou Reed, and been a session musician for Elton John. On her latest album, "love and pain are the lyrical poles", while the "rhythmic depth and vocal sophistication" recall one of her musical inspirations, Joni Mitchell. It is a top-notch collection, on which the title track is a stand-out: a powerful and "achingly drawn-out number with cryptic lyrics about trying to make one's way in a dangerous world".

The Pink Floyd musician's first original album in nine years is a "ruminative and melodious" pleasure, with echoes of his much-loved band's imperial pomp, said Neil McCormick in The Daily Telegraph. The heartbeat drum pattern from "The Dark Side of the Moon" can be detected on the "elegiac epic" "Scattered". "The Piper's Call" is a "gentle but ominous groove" evoking early Floyd. The lyrics, by Gilmour's wife Polly Samson, are in places "over-wordy and poetically convoluted". But the guitar work – including "ambitious codas" and "flaming rock-outs" – is sublime. "It is a joy to hear one of rock's finest players back in the pink."

At 78, Gilmour "can still drip hi-def liquid mercury from his fretboard", said Helen Brown in The Independent. There are also some attractive lighter elements: a harp introduces "sunshine" to the "murky synth waters" of "Vita Brevis"; Gilmour's daughter Romany brings "breathy-sweet ease" to the vocals on "Between Two Points". This "thoughtful" collection may not snag Gilmour many new fans, but "all ageing Floydies will find succour here".

Jason DeFord, the Grammy-nominated Tennessee artist who records as Jelly Roll, is a "country star for modern America", said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. Following stints in prison, struggles with addiction, and an unsuccessful spell as a rapper, DeFord turned his life around, and emerged as a country musician, a "chronicler of America's defeated, addicted and those generally down on their luck". His new "breakout" album, "Beautifully Broken", offers up a pop-country sound. It's an impressive collection: its stories of "vice, despair and general disaster" are told with a "real sympathy" for their subjects, putting DeFord "in the noble tradition of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and other heroes of the American dispossessed".

"Cutouts" is a bit like the "cheeky younger sister" of "Wall of Eyes", said Roisin O'Connor in The Independent; it's "expansive, brilliant and surprisingly fun". While the arrangements on the former album were sombre and vulnerable in tone, there's a "newfound vibrancy" and an eclectic playfulness to this one. "Colours Fly" "veers from smart, tempered beats and Egyptian guitar scales into something darker and more wild". "Eyes & Mouth" "bounces from a Chic-style riff into dazzling scalar melodies, propelled by Skinner's shimmering hi-hats and skittering beats". Yorke and Greenwood, not a duo known for joyful excess, "sound like they're having a ball".

The first jazz act to win the Mercury Prize – for their 2022 album "Where I'm Meant to Be" – the London-based quintet Ezra Collective "know what they're good at", said Ben Lee on NME. That is euphoric, celebratory, gyrating dancefloor music, "built on a pacy undercurrent of upbeat jazz grooves". This excellent third album retains those foundations while leaning into dance more explicitly than ever, as they pivot further into "hard funk, dub, neo-soul, Afrobeat and highlife". The single Ajala is an irresistible "ode to the latter two genres", while strong horn lines feature throughout, from the "marching, joyous 'Hear My Cry' to the Fela Kuti vibes of 'Expensive'".

Ezra Collective are one of the UK's "most exciting improvisatory groups", and on this up-tempo album they give their "kineticism full expression", said Ammar Kalia in The Observer. Yet its quieter moments are among the most triumphant. "God Gave Me Feet for Dancing", featuring Yazmin Lacey on vocals, moves into "luscious neo-soul territory", while "Why I Smile" and "Everybody" are wonderfully "emotive".

"M.J. Lenderman is Americana's golden boy right now," said Mia Hughes on NME. The North Carolina singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist plays lead guitar in the country-rock band Wednesday, who released last year's excellent album "Rat Saw God". He was also an "impactful sideman" on this year's "equally brilliant" Waxahatchee album "Tigers Blood". And on his three albums to date as a solo artist, the 25-year-old writes "alt-country songs that are both sorrowful and hilarious, and sings them with a sort of warbling drawl reminiscent of Neil Young or Jason Molina". His terrific new collection, "Manning Fireworks", provides more "literary magic".

His album "Boat Songs", in 2022, was a real breakthrough, said Damien Morris in The Observer – and this slightly darker collection is a "worthy successor" to it. As the album progresses, "increasingly searing guitar solos and distortion accentuate the uneasiness in Lenderman's lyrics. Superb single "She's Leaving You" could be his best song yet, and epic drone freakout "Bark at the Moon" is a joyously weird closer."

Sam Shepherd (who records as Floating Points) released an album in 2021 that was hailed as among the decade's best. "Promises" was a beguiling electro-acoustic masterpiece made in collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra and featured the final appearance by the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. It's a tough act to follow, said Ludovic Hunter-Tilney in the Financial Times. His solution has been to produce an album of glorious music that "aims for a different type of heightened state, one involving muscle, sinew, motor neurons, energy and dopamine – in short, the dancefloor".

Cascade is "made up almost entirely of dancefloor-adjacent bangers, each unique in their tinkering with genre, tempo and chosen instrumentation", said Kitty Empire in The Observer. The nearly nine-minute "Ocotillo" features the Austrian-Ethiopian harpist Miriam Adefris and a clavichord that belonged to Shepherd's great-aunt. The "absolutely slapping" synths of "Birth4000", meanwhile, pay "cheeky tribute" to Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's "I Feel Love". It's an enthralling, giddy collection.

Few stars have "processed grief more eloquently" than Nick Cave, said Kitty Empire in The Observer. Since the death of his teenage son Arthur in 2015, the "former hellraiser" has explored his deep feelings of loss (another son, Jethro, died in 2022) over three quietly reflective studio albums, plus "two documentaries, film soundtracks, a memoir and an agony uncle column" (The Red Hand Files). Here, he is reunited with the Bad Seeds, his band of 40 years, and the result is less muted, allowing for a "different kind of transcendence".

"Wild God" is a "widescreen, uplifting piece", said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. Its nine songs have shades of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, and an "overriding message on the value of life itself". Cave reckons here with mortality: "It was rape and pillage in the retirement village," he croons on the title track. But it's not all doom and gloom: "Frogs" even finds him "contemplating the happy sight of a frog leaping off the road and into the water". Overall, this is a "rich, involving album, as hopeful as it is melancholic".

"Fun and flirty, with a frothy hook and bitter little kick", Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso" has been hailed as the Song of the Summer, said Helen Brown in The Independent. With its follow-up, "Please Please Please", also a hit, this album – the sixth from the 25-year-old Disney Channel graduate – "has a lot riding on it". The good news? "Those punchy little song-shots aren't the only cool moments." This is a collection that "confidently hair-flips" between "TikTok pop, yacht rock, country and R&B".

Carpenter has followed the "well-lit Britney Spears/Miley Cyrus path" from Disney to the charts, said Victoria Segal in The Times. And "Short n' Sweet" proves she is now a "smart pop star". Some of the "best songs" ("Coincidence", "Slim Pickins") show her playing a "kind of Gen Z Dolly Parton"; others ("Sharpest Tool") stay "the right side of anime Lana Del Rey". With "breadcrumbs that fans can pick up in the confessional tumble" and moments "just X-rated enough to subvert her cupcake-frosted image", "Short n' Sweet" suggests she is "here for the long haul".

In 1972, Milton Nascimento released "one of the great Brazilian albums", said Will Hodgkinson in The Times. "Clube da Esquina" paired samba-funk with jazz, classical and psychedelia to magnificent effect. This new venture with the US jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding is firmly in the spirit of that eclectic, joyful approach. It features compositions from Nascimento's catalogue, cover versions – including a "variously languid, urgent and impassioned reading" of The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" – and new material from starry collaborators including Paul Simon and Lianne La Havas. Simon "tries out his best Portuguese for "Um Vento Passou", the kind of melancholic but romantic ballad that makes you want to sip a caipirinha at sunset".

On her terrific new album, the Filipino-British singer-songwriter Beabadoobee (real name Beatrice Laus) "seems to have grown up", said Poppie Platt in The Daily Telegraph. The 24-year-old offers "hazy, lo-fi pop" and angsty, witty lyrics, delivered in a breathy voice that makes her sound "almost like a cross between Regina Spektor and a Disney princess". On this third album, though, the "soft vocals remain, but notes of maturity and strength simmer from beneath the surface". Veteran producer Rick Rubin has imbued the record "with a skeletal beauty, its central acoustic guitars possessing a steeliness" that stop it from sounding twee.

Laus's voice is now more "grounded" and her songwriting is more confident, said Helen Brown in The Independent – allowing her to "embrace the sweet, hooky melodies which swell above her 1990s-indie-inspired sound". She's also more experimental, with a greater range of musical textures. "Beautifully crafted" standout tracks include "One Time" – "loaded with woozy George Harrison-style guitar lines" and slinky brass, and the lovely piano ballad Girl Song.

The British pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen's debut solo recital is "a triumph", said Geoff Brown in The Times. Rather than "repertoire warhorses", she has selected for it 77 minutes of 16th century harpsichord and organ music – William Byrd, John Bull, Orlando Gibbons – which is played "without apology" on a modern Steinway. Her hope is that these "fantasias, pavans and complex ruminations on popular songs" will "become part of the modern pianist's canon" – and they deserve to be. Highlights includeinclude Byrd’s "The Bells" ("contrapuntal dazzler") and Bull's "My Grief" ("a tender snippet that immediately pierces your heart").

Rushdie Momen's "beguiling" playing has a light touch that makes the music of the English Reformation feel "fresh and new", said Erica Jeal in The Guardian. She is "virtuosic" in the dense variations of Bull's Walsingham, and introspective in Gibbons's darkly beautiful Lord Salisbury Pavan. And she weaves "the music through with fine-spun threads of trills and embellishments... It's beautifully done."

I was beguiled both by the British soprano Ruby Hughes's "vocal magic" and the Manchester Collective's "gorgeously expressive" playing on this new disc, said Geoff Brown in The Times. Featuring a wide range of songs – by Vaughan Williams, Ravel, Debussy, Errollyn Wallen, Deborah Pritchard and others – this is a collection that is full of pleasures. It deals in part "with loss and death, but resonates most of all with the joy of loving and living". The clarity and intensity of Hughes's singing is a "glory", and nothing on the disc "appears out of place, everything is deeply felt, and I sat happily throughout, basking in beauty and wonder".

Ariana Grande's "powerhouse vocals" and "chameleonic ability to fuse R&B, electronica and retro-pop have made her one of pop's biggest players", said Poppie Platt in The Daily Telegraph. Her latest album is her first in four years – a period that has seen her married, divorced, and subjected to much lurid media speculation about supposed misdemeanours in her private life. Her response, as evidenced on this "silky, catchy" collection, is to stop caring about what outsiders think. This is "pop at its sexiest – 13 songs designed to lodge themselves in your head for eternity, whether you like it or not".

On "Eternal Sunshine", Grande wipes away the tears and tackles the "big questions of adult life with maturity, compassion – and delicious gossip", said Laura Snapes in The Guardian. The lyrics toy "with perceptions of victimhood and villainy" that the singer knows she can't control; and the sound here is "opulent" and more "full-bodied" than on the "silvery, breathy" "Positions" (2020). It's a "beatific, mature" and impressive collection.

Last year, the London-based all-female quintet The Last Dinner Party were "hailed as the heirs to everyone from Kate Bush to Sparks and Roxy Music, thanks to their raucous live gigs and gothic, romanticised aesthetic", said Poppie Platt in The Daily Telegraph. Before even releasing an album, they'd won the Brit Award for Rising Star, supported The Rolling Stones and played Glastonbury. The deafening buzz around the group makes the release of their debut studio album "one of the biggest musical events" of the year. "And, phew" – it's great! All "curtsy to the new queens of pop".

This release "gleefully delivers" on the group's promise, agreed Helen Brown in The Independent. "Burn Alive" has a "hooky bombast" and riffs that recall Pink Floyd. "Sinner" sees them go "full glam rock" with "punchy-perky synth notes and multi-tracked back-to-back vocals". And their breakthrough smash "Nothing Matters" marries the "camp-crisp pronunciation and melodic smarts of Abba to the dirty bacchanalia of indie rock". This is music that "makes being young sound fun again".

The beautifully "daydreamy" songs on Faye Webster's new album coast along in a fashion that's "almost drowsy", said Ludovic Hunter-Tilney in the FT. These are unhurried songs "about time from the vantage-point of a 26-year-old who has a nagging suspicion that she should be doing something more with it". But in real life the Atlanta-based singer-songwriter is a "paragon of productivity": this is her fifth album. And under the "placid surface" of her music, there's a lot going on: subtle orchestrations and lyrical connections that repay the listener's close attention.

The belated popularity on TikTok of Webster's 2017 song "I Know You" has won her a wider audience, said David Smyth in the London Evening Standard. Now the "gorgeous country-pop fare" on this new collection should turn her into the major star "she deserves to be". Webster's "exceptionally beautiful voice" is "soft and intimate, comfortable sitting back when the music gets busier". And her writing is a winning mix of the "complex and the casual", "understated yet heartbreaking".

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Best music albums from 2024

Kim Deal: Nobody Loves You More

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Father John Misty: Mahashmashana

Kendrick Lamar: GNX

Michael Kiwanuka: Small Changes

The Tallis Scholars: Robert Fayrfax

Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 (RSB/Jurowski)

Tyler, The Creator: Chromakopia

The Cure: Songs of a Lost World

Laura Marling: Patterns in Repeat

Joan as Police Woman: Lemons, Limes and Orchids

David Gilmour: Luck and Strange

Jelly Roll: Beautifully Broken

The Smile: Cutouts

Ezra Collective: Dance, No One's Watching

M.J. Lenderman: Manning Fireworks

Floating Points: Cascade

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Wild God

Sabrina Carpenter: Short n' Sweet

Milton Nascimento and Esperanza Spalding: Milton + Esperanza

Beabadoobee: This Is How Tomorrow Moves

Mishka Rushdie Momen: Reformation

Ruby Hughes/Manchester Collective: End of My Days

Ariana Grande: Eternal Sunshine

The Last Dinner Party: Prelude to Ecstasy

Faye Webster: Underdressed at the Symphony

Kim Deal: Nobody Loves You More

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Father John Misty: Mahashmashana

Kendrick Lamar: GNX

Michael Kiwanuka: Small Changes

The Tallis Scholars: Robert Fayrfax

Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 (RSB/Jurowski)

Tyler, The Creator: Chromakopia

The Cure: Songs of a Lost World

Laura Marling: Patterns in Repeat

Joan as Police Woman: Lemons, Limes and Orchids

David Gilmour: Luck and Strange

Jelly Roll: Beautifully Broken

The Smile: Cutouts

Ezra Collective: Dance, No One's Watching

M.J. Lenderman: Manning Fireworks

Floating Points: Cascade

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Wild God

Sabrina Carpenter: Short n' Sweet

Milton Nascimento and Esperanza Spalding: Milton + Esperanza

Beabadoobee: This Is How Tomorrow Moves

Mishka Rushdie Momen: Reformation

Ruby Hughes/Manchester Collective: End of My Days

Ariana Grande: Eternal Sunshine

The Last Dinner Party: Prelude to Ecstasy

Faye Webster: Underdressed at the Symphony

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