With the end of 2024 rapidly approaching, we’re taking a look back at some of the best albums the year had to offer. Several of our staff members took the time to write about their No. 1 picks, and we hope you’ll find some new favorites among them.

Ashe Burr, Entertainment Editorial Assistant

Girl Prometheus by Flower Face

As the years go on, I’ve found myself questioning what even is love. Is love something that is transactional, where the more love you pour into something else, the more it will love you back? Is it something where it will eat you up until you are simply “Pushing Daisies?” Will giving up a “Skeleton Key” to your heart turn into the sort of “Eternal Sunshine” that accompanies a “Squirrel Cinderella?” Okay, I’ll admit that last one doesn’t make any sense, but much like the Titan with the same name, this album brings a sense of warmth through the rage of a woman scorned.

Ana Wagen, Video Editor/Host of Thee Hourz O’ Power

You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To by Knocked Loose

Knocked Loose knocked it out of the park (haha get it) with their third album. What’s more refreshing, their raw and chaotic take on hardcore, or their refusal to abandon the scene that raised them? In this ode to the liminal space and going insane in Kentucky, Knocked Loose embraced everything that set them apart. Perhaps that’s what led to their meteoric rise this year: a lack of fear in the face of the unknown.

Rachel Kozlowski, Social Media Director

BRAT by Charli XCX

Life, death, and Charli XCX. 2024 was the year of BRAT, and deservedly so. With all the zeitgeist, it can be ironically easy to overlook the thing that started it all – the music itself.
BRAT is Charli’s most cohesive project to date, reveling in its freeing party girl energy with creativity, introspection, and 100% excitement. It takes you on a sonic journey that will leave you feeling like you had an unforgettable night at the club when you haven’t even left your room. Tracks like “von dutch,” “b2b,” and “club classics” demonstrate why Charli has been held in such high regard by pop-heads for so long. This isn’t just a pop-star, this is an auteur
I remember my first listen-through of the album. After favoriting track after track, I heard the familiar beats to the intro of “360”, thinking the album was over and returned to auto-play recommended songs. But when I realized I was actually listening to “365”, a re-worked version of the intro track, I jumped back in my seat. I knew then that I was listening to a generational, 10/10 masterpiece.
If you haven’t given the album a listen, do your ears a favor and give it a chance. Charli XCX captured lightning in a bottle, “went her own way and made it,” and made the cultural defining album of 2024. If you’re wondering why the album that birthed “Brat Summer” is still being performed at Times Square in November, it’s not just because it is iconic – it is the best album of the year.

Ryan Wilbert, News Editorial Assistant

Clancy by Twenty One Pilots

Named after the protagonist of a near decade-long narrative in the making, it’d be easy to write off Clancy as nothing more than fan service for the fanbase of Twenty One Pilots. To my surprise — and maybe to many others’ — what happens is the most intimate and deeply confessional record singer-songwriter Tyler Joseph has ever crafted.
Through reflection and careful self-evaluation, Joseph solemnly admits that even after his meteoric rise to success, he too still hears the little voice that haunts the back of your mind. We can’t be ignorant of its name – depression is real and affects the lives of millions. Terrified of what he once fought so hard against when recognizing his struggles resurfacing in his life, our hero, Clancy, becomes less of a myth and more of a vessel – or a writing tool – to help Joseph write a letter of confession.
Bluntness runs rampant through the record, from Joseph’s recollection of his suicide attempt on “Next Semester” to his struggle with addiction on “Vignette.” Clancy doesn’t pull punches – it never ceases to roll up the fears of letting everyone in your life down while soundtracked by desperate optimism. Fighting against falling into old (and bad) habits, “Backslide” parallels the quiet battle of “Snap Back.” It’s the nostalgia of what once was, the places you once loved – like mentioned on “Midwest Indigo,” a track about both loving and hating your hometown – and the early excitement of entering the musical industry. The tracks are subtly tragic, hidden underneath the pop-punk and rock influences.
Sorrow aside, it wouldn’t be a Twenty One Pilots record without a fight worth documenting. As a college student, shouting the lyric “Can’t change what you’ve done / Start fresh next semester” has probably altered my brain chemistry in an indescribable way. As I write this, the weather gets colder, the sun sets at 5 p.m. and I am coated in darkness more metaphorically than literally some nights. Having put this record on repeat so much, I know that Clancy is real – Joseph is Clancy, Clancy is Joseph and Clancy is all of us. And for me, sometimes that’s all I need to keep fighting against the void, hearing Clancy sing “When darkness rolls on you / Push on through.”

Ashmi Ranjan, volunteer

Bright Future by Adrianne Lenker

Adrienne Lenker’s latest solo album is my favorite album of 2024. It’s serene and free flowing. It takes you to a liminal space that seems impossible to reach lately. Lenker utilizes plucky guitars and piano with banjo and violin to bring together her ideas on love, clarity and pain. It’s precisely rooted in our modern troubles: feeling isolated and lonely, the struggle to be peaceful in one’s life among the chaos of the world. Listening to it, however, is to feel close to the natural world and divinity and the desire to understand and be understood.
Bright Future was recorded straight to tape and all the musicians featured are Lenker’s close friends. It’s totally intimate and comforting. It feels like an answer to some of my worries and might help you live with yours too. On “Sadness as a Gift”, Lenker sings:
“You and I could see /
Into the same eternity /
Every second brimming with a majesty”
I’m trying not to lose those connections that could last for eternity, not to lose touch with the majesty in the seconds of my life. It’s been a tough year but music like Bright Future is getting me through.

Sky Curtright, volunteer

Diamond Jubilee by Cindy Lee

I’ve always felt that the most powerful albums are ones that can create their own inner world, and no other album this year has done that quite as vividly as Diamond Jubilee has. Across the album’s gargantuan two-hour runtime, Cindy Lee brings together the sounds of 50s girl groups, 60s psychedelia, 90s lo-fi rock, and much more into an indie magnum opus that is as refreshing as it is hauntingly nostalgic.
More-so than any other album, Diamond Jubilee reminds me of the film and TV works of David Lynch. Both Lynch and Lee have a gift for combining the surreal with the heartfelt, and both are more than willing to dive headfirst into the unknown. With the former being my favorite director, it’s no surprise that I love the music of the latter as much as I do.
Even with the album not being on major streaming services, it has soundtracked lazy summer days and a tumultuous transition into college, and it is without question my favorite album to have come out in 2024.