The 10 best albums of 2024 (so far)

From Charli's bratty bangers to Billie's finest, here are our favorite records of the year.

In this modern age, when yesterday already feels like a decade ago and many of us have the attention span of a gnat, it's refreshing when art can sink its hooks in you and keep you coming back for more. The power of the album has waned, but in the past six months several full-length releases defied the odds — and the algorithms — with intriguing, cohesive statements that are more than worthy of your time (some won't even take you 30 minutes). Here are 10 of the best albums of 2024...so far.

Beyoncé, 'Cowboy Carter '

The second installment of Beyoncé's immersive music history project focuses on "country" — a genre, like so many others, that has operated more like an exclusive club than a big tent. Her vision of it flouts all the gatekeeping and draws bright lines connecting the past to the present and future. Black country pioneer Linda Martell introduces "SPAGHETTII," a jagged modern-outlaw boast that features up-and-coming style melder Shaboozey, while next-generation country artists Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, Reyna Roberts, and Brittney Spencer turn in a straightforward but no less stirring rendition of the Beatles' lilting "Blackbird," a gentle yet firm civil rights statement. Cowboy Carter is full of cameos and callbacks — like Dolly Parton reminding listeners that Lemonade remains a stunning feat eight years on — but at the center is Beyoncé, serving up another paean to the sounds that stoked her curiosity and shaped her into a singular presence in American pop. —Maura Johnston

Charli XCX, 'Brat'

Break out the white tank top and grab a Bic lighter, because it's officially Brat summer. Cheeky, hedonistic, and refreshingly vulnerable, Charli XCX’s sixth studio album is a near-perfect evolution of the glitchy, "leaving last night's party at 2 p.m." vibes she's been crafting for a good chunk of her career. When she's not serving up future club classics like "Von Dutch," she's ruminating on the competitiveness, jealousy, insecurity, and obsession — sometimes all at once — that come with being both a woman and a certified pop star. The result is a sleek, sexy album that packs a philosophical punch and supplies enough bass-boosted rave-ups to keep clubs bumping from now to eternity. —Emlyn Travis

Related: Lorde, Charli XCX address past feud and 'hatred' in 'Girl, So Confusing' remix: 'I was trapped'

Cindy Lee, 'Diamond Jubilee'

Cindy Lee does not make it easy to love them. The drag queen indie-pop project of Patrick Flegel released Diamond Jubilee with zero notice or fanfare. The only way to hear it is to download WAV files from a shoddy Geocities website or listen to it on YouTube. It is 32 songs and two hours long. It is also one of 2024's most fascinating surprises. It can best be described as what would happen if the Ronettes and the Velvet Underground teamed up with a bunch of ghosts for a secret concert in a creepy basement. But it also evokes everything from the Everly Brothers and Johnny Cash to glam rock and '80s horror movies. The album is at once scrappy and painstakingly produced. Flegel, who often sings in a spectral childlike falsetto, knew when to kill its darlings: No guitar solo wears out its welcome; the feedback lasts just long enough to rough up some of the pretty; every bass line, chintzy drum, and honeyed harmony (also coming from Flegel) emerges then slips away at just the right moment. To quote its title track, Diamond Jubilee unfolds like "a fantasy, a burning memory of something true." It came out of nowhere, but feels like it's always been there. —Jason Lamphier

Billie Eilish, 'Hit Me Hard and Soft'

She’s headlined world tours, broken multiple records, and earned Oscars for her songs for No Time to Die and Barbie, so it can be easy to forget that Billie Eilish is still a 22-year-old just trying to figure life out like everyone else. She navigates its joy and exquisite agony as she tackles love and heartbreak on Hit Me Hard and Soft, her most bittersweet and relatable record yet. Yes, the album contains a host of feel-good bangers like the modern queer-girl anthem "Lunch" and the dreamy "Birds of a Feather," but it's the moments when the emotions seem to pour out of Billie — like when she wails in grief on "The Greatest" — that stick long after the first listen. It's devastating. It's honest. It's Billie at her best. —Emlyn Travis

Related: Billie Eilish brings fans to tears at a listening party for her new album

Hurray for the Riff Raff, 'The Past Is Still Alive'

You know when an album kicks off with the line "You don't have to die if you don't want to die" that you're in for a trip. The latest from Alynda Segarra's folk-rock act, Hurray for the Riff Raff, does detail literal journeys across county and state lines, but those opening lyrics — from "Alibi," about their friend's addiction — reveal that its core themes are upheaval and survival, both Segarra's and that of castoffs and casualties throughout history. A travelogue tracing the musician's formative years as a train-hopping, dumpster-diving punk troubadour, The Past Is Still Alive also casts the net wide to unpack the American Dream — something Segarra would deem a total fallacy if it weren't for the outsider artists and queer mentors they've met along the way. Progress comes with a price, the songwriter wishes to say. The railroad decimated the buffalo; those in power gain control at the expense of the weak, leaving wounds, then scars. How, if we can, do we recover? —Jason Lamphier

Jessica Pratt, 'Here in the Pitch'

At only 27 minutes, Here in the Pitch feels like a fading fever dream, with Jessica Pratt's sultry voice equally suited for a charmed French chateau and Twin Peaks' Black Lodge. On her richest — and most ominous — album yet, the L.A.-based folk artist beams elongated vowels through a baroque-pop fog, piercing harpsichords and horns that seem half a world away. Few singers sound quite as timeless as Pratt, whose distinct crooning here defies categorization and manifests like a distant memory. Impossible to pin to a specific era and strangely hopeful, Pitch is the kind of record you'd expect to hear broadcast over the airwaves in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, proof that lovely things can flourish in desolate spaces. —Allaire Nuss

Vince Staples, 'Dark Times'

In his recent Netflix satire, The Vince Staples Show, Vince Staples plays a hapless, exaggerated version of himself who winds up in the middle of a bank robbery while trying to get a loan and later gets jumped by a gang of theme park mascots. The Staples on Dark Times isn't that unlucky, but the rapper is stuck in limbo as he tries to reconcile who he was with the celebrity he's become. "See, it's hard to sleep when you the only one livin' the dream," he confesses on "Government Cheese," only to contradict himself on the next track, "Children’s Song," declaring, "N----s be like, 'Ayy, bro, 'member back when?' / Let it go, loc / I'm way too rich to be your friend." If the album's warped keyboards and smoky background vocals reflect how haunted Staples sometimes feels, his storytelling is incisive, his delivery as coolly deadpan as ever. He knows he can't outrun the past, but he won't let it define him either. —Jason Lamphier

Related: The Vince Staples Show review: The rapper makes magic with this dark, offbeat comedy

Tems, 'Born in the Wild'

Expectations were high for Tems' full-length debut. The Nigerian singer-producer already had an Oscar nom, a Grammy win, and collaborations with Beyoncé, Drake, Rihanna, and Wizkid under her belt before she even announced it. Born in the Wild more than delivers, though, offering a plush panoply of sounds that extends far beyond the Afrobeats label her work is often given. "Burning" and "Unfortunate" are steeped in early-2000s R&B; "T-Unit" pairs the artist's rapping skills with her understated melisma; and "You in My Face" conjures the misty, quiet-storm yearning of Sade. Then there's "Love Me JeJe," a fizzy call-and-response interpolating Nigerian musician Seyi Sodimu's beloved 1997 song of the same name that might be the most joyous thing we'll hear this year. Yes, at 18 tracks the album looks daunting. But spend a little time with Born in the Wild's soulful meditations on fame, faith, failed relationships, and self-acceptance, and you'll get lost in the embarrassment of riches. —Jason Lamphier

Vampire Weekend, 'Only God Was Above Us'

Vampire Weekend have been poster children for New York's indie-rock scene for well over a decade, yet it wasn't until 2024's Only God Was Above Us that the band finally, fully lived up to that title. It's a distinctively urban album that's more kinetic and percussion-laced but every bit as whimsical as their other lauded LPs. The group's signature twinkling guitars still dance on their tiptoes, and frontman Ezra Koenig still inflects plenty of lyrical sincerity into the proceedings. Yet floating above that familiarity is a hypnotic hustle and bustle of hurried tempos that ricochet off one another like echoes in a subway tunnel. Throw in some jazzy interludes with horn screeches akin to elephant cries, and you've got a beautiful cacophony that feels like a major turning point for the big-city hometown heroes. —Allaire Nuss

Waxahatchee, 'Tigers Blood'

The "anything but country" crowd may have met its match with Tigers Blood, the latest from Katie Crutchfield, a.k.a. Waxahatchee, a sometimes tender, sometimes tough record that skates along the genre's hazy edges. Listening to her sixth solo album is as effortless and refreshing as wading in a river on a scorching summer's day, with the Alabama native deploying her dreamy drawl and warbling falsetto like a songbird at dawn. Though the singer's alt-Americana twang here mirrors her previous pivot from scratchier indie rock, 2020's Saint Cloud, this LP finds its own footing in her celebrated oeuvre. Between the gorgeousness of standout lead single "Right Back to It," featuring MJ Lenderman (look him up), and all those arid acoustic guitars that beckon you to the backroads, Tigers Blood delights like a kind stranger's contagious smile. —Allaire Nuss

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