21 pieces in this section.
A year on from Short n' Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter is the first pop star of her generation who has successfully metabolised the Disney-pipeline training into something that is not, finally, Disney.
Charli XCX's Brat was the pop event of 2024. A year on, the question is not whether the record was good. The question is what Brat Summer actually was, who it was for, and why almost everything it inspired was bad.
Mk.gee's debut full-length is the strangest guitar record a twenty-something American songwriter released in 2024, and nine months in it is still rewiring what popular guitar is allowed to sound like.
A year after 'Not Like Us' broke streaming records, changed halftime shows, and drove a superstar into the career wilderness, the question is no longer who won. The question is what the beef actually was.
A year out, Beyoncé's country album is not a country album. It is a demolition project. An argument for Cowboy Carter as one of the most important genre interventions of the decade.
The Cure's first album in sixteen years arrived in November 2024. A year later, the wait was the point.
Katie Crutchfield's follow-up to Saint Cloud did not need to do anything except be good. It is good in specific, deliberate ways, and those ways are the record's argument for itself.
Kendrick's surprise-dropped November record is the victory-lap album that also functions as a genealogy lesson. Both registers are doing specific work, and both work.
Doechii's Top Dawg mixtape landed in August 2024, won Best Rap Album at the 67th Grammys, and did the specific thing most debut-tier rap records cannot do: hold the weight of a dozen genre switches without buckling.
Josh Tillman's sixth Father John Misty record arrived in late November on Sub Pop. It is the longest the project has sounded and, in a specific way, the least defended.
Jamie Smith's second solo record landed in September on Young, almost a decade after In Colour. It is the sound of a producer who has been DJing for nine years and finally decided to write the album the nights were asking for.
Nilüfer Yanya's third record arrived in September 2024 as the specific consolidation work a third album is supposed to do, and the consolidation has produced the strongest writing of her career.
Justin Vernon's Bon Iver returned in October 2024 with a three-track EP after a five-year studio silence. The short form is the point, and the record argues for it specifically.
Magdalena Bay's second full-length arrived in August 2024 to a slow critical build and a fanbase already waiting. Five months on, the album is the strongest argument for the form in current pop.
Tyler, the Creator's eighth album dropped on a Monday morning, which was a specific choice. The record itself is the specific choice that matters.
Chappell Roan's album came out in September 2023. Her stardom arrived in summer 2024. The eleven-month gap is the interesting thing.
Claire Cottrill's third album, produced with Leon Michels, is the record where she finally finds the sonic register her songwriting has been reaching for.
Billie Eilish's third album is a quieter, longer, more patient record than the one she was commercially expected to make. It is also, easily, her best.
Taylor Swift's eleventh studio album, released as a double in April, is the longest piece of popular music she has ever put out, and the most urgently in need of an editor.
Kacey Musgraves' fifth album is the record of an artist deliberately stepping back from the cultural centre she had briefly occupied. An argument for the retreat as a specific creative choice.
