Julianne’s Favorite Music of 2024
A non-hierarchical list of music that kept me going in the Year of the Basura
As many have noted, 2024 has been a harrowing year: between worldwide genocide plus a fairly devastating U.S. election, it felt like nothing less than teetering on a precipice. Simultaneously and perhaps relatedly, it was a bountiful year for incredible music. In lieu of publishing a massive, ranked Best of 2024 list, over the next five days the co-founders of Hearing Things will each publish our own individual lists of songs, albums, live shows, and other assorted phenomena we loved this year. Part of this is because we are building our site from the ground up, rather than as one big, overarching perspective from on high. We wanted to further reflect each of our personal tastes—the same ethos that dictated our list of 100 Songs That Define Our Decade So Far.
My list is alphabetical, rather than ranked. Not to sound lofty about it, but I’m trying to divest from hierarchical culture wherever I can. And to be honest, I’ve never really loved ranking my favorites—mainly because I think all of my favorites are the absolute best. Music is so subjective, as are the circumstances in which a person listens to it, that it’s always felt weird to me to lay out the way one piece of great work has more or less value than another by simple rank. (I’m a writer! I hate numbers!!!)
But I do love making lists in general, because I’m a freak and a nerd, and one of the driving facets of my whole career has been telling people about great shit they might not have otherwise heard. So my strategy for this year-end list is simply: a lot of obscure-ish gems I loved in 2024, and a handful of populist faves. I kept it focused on songs, in some cases because the artists in question haven’t yet released a mixtape or an album (if they ever choose to at all), but also because it reflects how I usually listen to music—perhaps in part due to streaming’s devaluation of albums, but mostly because I grew up in the era of FM radio, when a “single” really meant a “single.” Here are my 2024 faves.
SONGS I HOPE U HEARD
Aziya: “Call My Name (Lux Lisbon)”
Mentored by the one and only Santigold, this London pop singer sprinkles goth and new wave synth elements throughout her delectable album Bambi. In the same year the Cure dropped their best album in decades, I kept going back to this song’s gloomy, reverbed guitar and deceptively sweet-sounding chorus. I haven’t felt this elated singing along to a lyric about dying inside since the ’90s! 🚬
Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso: “El Tiny”
NPR’s Tiny Desk series had another amazing year: Doechii! Teedra Moses! The freakin’ Lox! But the only episode all my friends wanted to talk about was this session with Argentine pop experimentalists Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso, in which they transformed their wacky house and trap tracks into public-radio-respectable bossa nova and funk with a 10-piece backing band—albeit respectable-sounding songs about watching that ass clap and, oops, figuring out they’re fucking the same girl. (To wit: “We’ve been fucking the same girlllll,” they sing in English on “El Único.”) MUSIC IS FUN!
Chip, D Double E, Frisco, Flirta D, Skepta, Bruza, JME, Jendor, Novelist, Jamakabi, and Flowdan: “Grime Scene Saviours”
Twenty years after Lethal Bizzle’s seminal grime posse cut “Pow (Forward Riddim),” star rapper Chip pulled together a cross-generational cavalcade of the genre’s most formidable emcees—including a few from “Pow”—to do what they do best in each of their signature styles. This includes Skepta getting back to basics (i.e., away from his worst pop impulses), the iconic D Double E dropping his inimitable, elastic-mouthed ad-libs, and the out-here but unknowable JME remaining my unheralded king. The only way this banger gets more massive is with its hopefully-inevitable live performance with DJ AG on the streets of London.
Deja: “Shake That Nyash”
A rising rap-and-Afrobeats-inspired pop singer’s perfect joint for club pre-gaming and generally feeling cute, though its log drum-pumped sass and confidence is also suited for lifting one’s aprés-work spirits. Through her self-assured delivery, Deja embodies two of the oldest motivations in music: relief and ecstatic deliverance, particularly after The Man (or men generally) has depleted you to the point of exhaustion.
Ela Minus: “Broken”
The only way out is through, and “Broken” is the musical embodiment of Robert Frost’s maxim: a glimmering bit of transcendence submerged in total despair, the Chilean producer and singer Ela Minus vocalizing her own sense of sorrow and lack of faith. In a song addressed to her mother like a prayer, the incongruity between lyrics and delivery made the point that all the god and humanity Minus seeks is inside the arpeggios and curlicues she puts in her synths. It sounds like spinning so fast you whirl up into the skies.
Infinity Song: “Metamorphosis” / Michelle: “Akira”
Absent gospel, vocal choirs in pop music aren’t usually considered cool, and dork shit like Pitch Perfect hasn’t done much to rehab that image. But here we have two groups making the case for the freaky beauty of unison and harmonies, recalling ’60s vocal-centric groups like the 5th Dimension and the Five Stairsteps rather than the Cornell A Cappella Singers or whatever. “Metamorphosis,” from the Brooklyn sibling band Infinity Song, is a sumptuous, guitar-anchored self-esteem track that sounds like the Mamas & the Papas joining forces with the Sea and Cake. “Akira,” by the New York six-piece Michelle, flips Aaliyah’s “If Your Girl Only Knew” into a bisexual confusion anthem, hornier with each harmony. Justice for the high school choir has been served.
Joselito Ke: “Rubro700”
This young Barcelona-based singer and producer is new as hell (he cold-emailed me this track in April; he was set to play his first-ever show in his hometown of Sevilla at the moment I typed this), but you wouldn’t know it from his releases. This song pairs the silkiest of R&B-inspired vocals across zippy drum’n’bass that unfolds into funk carioca and back again—just one example of his adventurous, increasingly prolific production.
Judith: “Superboom”
A simple but unreal pop song about love and lust from my fave chingona Judith—sounds like that effervescent moment right before your Bubblicious bubble pops, smells like Baby Magic.
Lechuga Zefiro: Desde los oídos de un sapo
Uruguayan dance producer on cutting-edge Colombian label TraTraTrax makes music for the Anthropocene, sampling field sounds from around the Global South (including pigs, wood, and his beloved frogs) and turning them into the beating heart of the club, cutting through the illusion that dancefloors (or any of us) are at all disconnected from the rest of the natural world.
Lollise: “Mme Mma Ndi”
Few albums moved me this year like Lollise’s debut, I Hit the Water, a gorgeous and ambitious work that got me thinking deeply about immigration, family, self-worth, dignity, style, and a million other big ideas. It’s so hard to pick one, but this quiet song (and video about the beauty in domesticity) made me think of my mom, and I love my mom. “My family is really beautiful, and I wanted to document that,” Lollise told me when I interviewed her earlier this year. “It was just writing about my family and trying to communicate with them, both dead and alive, to be like: You did a great thing. And even if you don’t recognize me, it is because of your tenderness in raising me that I am this way.”
Lynda Dawn: “Love Is Callin’”
All these people trying to make disco for the past several years? Yeah, shut it down. London soul vocalist Lynda Dawn’s 11th Hour is discotheque glamour personified, a fantasy so faithful you could see your own sparkly dress under the mirror ball from above, like an out-of-body experience. “Love Is Callin’” delivers unbelievable Diana Ross realness, though you could say that about most of the album.
Nemahsis: “Stick of Gum”
There’s so much beauty on the Palestinian Canadian songwriter Nemahsis’ debut album Verbathim, which might be the most important of the year—do NOT sleep on “Furniture Killer,” another fave—but the triumphant “Stick of Gum,” both song and video, lives in my soul for the pure human joy it transmitted in a wildly bleak epoch, and what she had to go through to release it. (Find out about all that in my profile from October.) Her raspy voice is love, like freedom.
Nourished by Time: “Hell of a Ride”
Marcus Brown, the chill genius behind Nourished by Time, is my favorite socialist making songs for the end of empire. To me, “Hell of a Ride” is an iconic banger about getting high and thinking about how much time teens spend on social media, and still being high and feeling pretty fucking great that the empire is on its way out! Party music for real.
Qendresa: “Sweet Lies”
“Sweet Lies,” by the Kosovoan British singer Qendresa, is as perfectly Quiet Storm a song as I’ve heard since I was trying to tape Al B. Sure! singles off the radio in my childhood bedroom in 1988. The video is like Bella Hadid, who Qendresa kind of resembles, channeling Patrice Rushen, who she kind of sounds like. Bellissima (lol).
Semma: “Honeycomb”
Semma’s voice can sound like ’90s Mariah (!)—including the whistle register (!!). “Honeycomb” acknowledges that, cheekily plays into it, and gets it out of the way, clearing the slate for her clubbier impulses (c.f. the delectable “Salty,” with UK bass titan Girl Unit).
SONGS U DEF HEARD
Beyoncé: “Texas Hold ’Em”
The first country song I remember knowing all the words to was “The Gambler,” by Kenny Rogers, released in 1978, two years after my birth in a Wyoming hospital. Beyoncé brought that old feeling back with an urban cowgirl barnburner that both staked a claim in and critiqued the current country music establishment. RIP the Las Vegas Sands Hotel and Casino.
Charli XCX and Lorde: “Girl So Confusing Remix Featuring Lorde”
Directness over passive aggression; understanding over vitriol; working it out on the remix over feeding the sexist media ecosystem that profits from girl-fights. The pathos of Lorde singing about body image and linking it to someone policing her walk, of all things—at age 10, of all ages—Trojan-horsed feminist expression onto an album that your sub-average local edgelord tried to frame as post-feminist. This shit made me cry.
Kali Uchis: “Diosa”
The unbelievable elegance of Kali Uchis’ career-best album Orquídeas, as embodied on a track about treating yourself with the spiritual luxury you goddamn deserve.
Kendrick Lamar: “Dodger Blue”
Though GNX is full of Latine rappers and peppered with plaintive wails by the mariachi singer Deyra Barrera, to me most Chicanx song on Kendrick’s album is this stealth brass-knuckle-punch of a lowrider jam. Nothing’s colder or more menacing than an unbothered threat with a smile. Made me miss my first car, a silver 1972 Monte Carlo handed down from my mom.
Kesha: “Joyride”
Have you heard the a cappella? Kesha put her whole pussy in this weird-ass song—an aggressive pop hit in a year when most of the main girlies were doing cute-and-coquette. In 2025, we desperately need more pop songs that project real irreverence. This was like if Lexi Featherston (Sex and the City, Season 6, Episode 18) had lived and got a NASCAR license.
SEMI-NON SEQUITUR HONORABLE MENTION
Paul Russell: “Lil Boo Thang”
Though this sub-Bruno Mars, Christianity-emitting banger is from 2023, it remains relevant due to its 2024 omnipresence in American television commercials. I included it because it is the only song in my whole life I’ve heard in 208,394,784 advertisements and still, even now, get kinda pumped when it appears (though I shall not be partaking in the White Claw). I’d like to say my affinity for this song, by a guy whose sister catfished as him on The Circle, is solely based on how much I love the source material, the Emotions’ “Best of My Love”—but it’s not entirely that. Russell’s sassy little vocal swoops and triadic harmonies just kinda hit me in the party zone. Does this mean my Sunday school teachers are still lurking in my subconscious? Much to consider.
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