The 10 best albums of 2024

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 invigorating 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 12 months several full-length releases defied the odds — and the algorithms — with intriguing, cohesive statements that are more than deserving of your time (some won't even take you 30 minutes). Here, Entertainment Weekly's picks for the 10 best albums of 2024.

The 10 best albums of 2024

10. 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 tagged with. "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 heard this year. Yes, at 18 tracks the album looks daunting. But spend a little time with Born in the Wild's soulful meditation on fame, faith, failed relationships, and self-acceptance, and you'll get lost in its embarrassment of riches. —Jason Lamphier

9. 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 a friend's addiction — reveal that its true 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

8. The Cure, Songs of a Lost World

Veteran rockers who release new music decades after their creative and commercial peak face a fork in the road. Take one route and risk falling victim to underwhelming self-imitation; take another and wind up with a forgettable attempt at reinvention. But 16 years after their last outing, the Cure once again carved their own path and paved it with space debris. Their 14th studio album shimmers like a beacon in a black hole, threading a seamless throughline to their immersive dream-pop orchestrations from times past. Milking modern sound mixing, Songs of a Lost World holds its melancholy tight as it plunges into greater depths, its drums humming like an earthquake, its strings sighing in the abyss. It's a stunning testament to Robert Smith's staying power as a forebear who carries his own torch forward. —Allaire Nuss

7. MJ Lenderman, Manning Fireworks

Like a phoenix from the ashes of a half-smoked Marlboro, MJ Lenderman emerged this year to cement his indie-darling status in the most classic fashion, stringing together rock songs with no frills, minimal backing (he's playing most of the instruments himself), and nonchalant lyrics laced with wry, wicked humor. On his fourth studio venture, the Asheville, N.C., native invents caricatures of masculinity in crisis: a sexually frustrated clergyman ("Rudolph"); a materialistic loser hanging out alone in his Buffalo beach house ("Wristwatch"); a deadbeat husband on a bender in Vegas ("She's Leaving You"). These portraits coalesce to the tune of plucky guitars that sound like they're slicing through a heavy smog. Listening to Manning Fireworks is like cracking open a beer while your home goes up in flames; if you feel like you're perpetually on the verge of collapse, you might as well enjoy it. —Allaire Nuss

6. Jessica Pratt, Here in the Pitch

At only 27 minutes, Here in the Pitch feels like a fleeting 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

5. Cindy Lee, Diamond Jubilee

Cindy Lee does not make it easy to love them. The drag queen indie-pop persona of Patrick Flegel, they released Diamond Jubilee this spring with zero notice or fanfare. The only way to hear it was to download WAV files from a bunk-looking Geocities website or listen to it as one long stream on YouTube. It consisted of 32 songs and clocked in at two hours. But its scrappiness belied its craft. The record can best be described as what would happen if the Ronettes and the Velvet Underground recruited a bunch of ghosts for a secret concert in a cobweb-y basement, yet it also evokes everything from the Everly Brothers and Johnny Cash to glam rock and '80s horror. Cracking open its mystery meant discovering some of the most painstakingly produced music of the year. Flegel, who often sings in an eerily beautiful, childlike falsetto, knew when to kill their 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 creeps in and 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

4. 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 her 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. While the album contains a host of feel-good bangers like the modern queer-girl anthem "Lunch" and the dreamy "Birds of a Feather," it's the moments when the emotions seem to pour out of Billie — like when she wails in grief on "The Greatest" — that stick around long after the first listen. It's devastating. It's honest. It's Billie at her best. —Emlyn Travis

3. Sabrina Carpenter, Short n' Sweet

Yes, 2024 may have been the "the year of the pop femininomenon," as Dazed aptly put it, but only Sabrina Carpenter embarked on a successful stadium tour, inspired a viral Saturday Night Live sketch, potentially got New York City's mayor indicted on corruption charges, partied with Mrs. Claus, and dropped a chart-topping album. The 25-year-old former Disney kid transformed into a global sensation almost overnight with the release of her sixth studio album, Short n' Sweet, a breezy pop masterclass packed to the brim with synth-heavy, retro-inspired charmers like "Espresso" and "Please Please Please," two hit singles that dominated the airwaves all summer long. From all-too-real tracks mourning the state of her dating pool ("Slim Pickins") to come-ons about turning up the heat with a new lover ("Bed Chem"), Short N' Sweet put Carpenter's signature coquettish lyrics and serious vocal chops on full, glorious display, the singer holding both herself and her paramours accountable in the dicey emotional hellscape that is modern romance. That the record’s unfiltered, hilarious sincerity helped it rack up six Grammy nominations, including for Album of the Year, was just the icing on the cake. Isn't that sweet? We'd guess so. —Emlyn Travis

2. Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter

The second installment of Beyoncé's ambitious music history project focused on "country" — a genre, like so many others, that has operated more like an exclusive club than a big tent. But her vision of it flouted all the gatekeeping and drew 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 assertive civil rights statement. Cowboy Carter is full of cameos and callbacks — none greater than Dolly Parton reminding listeners that Lemonade remains a stunning feat eight years on — but at the center of it all 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

1. Charli XCX, Brat

It's impossible to deny the cultural impact Brat had on 2024. Cheeky, hedonistic, and refreshingly vulnerable, Charli XCX's slick dirty-pop juggernaut became the lime-green inspiration for countless "Brat summer" memes, a viral TikTok "Apple" dance, and even a sly, youth-courting campaign reboot in Kamala Harris' last-minute bid for president. But it wouldn't have gotten there without the music, a near-perfect culmination of the glitchy "leaving last night's party at 2 p.m." vibes that Charli has been churning out for the better part of her career. When she's not dishing out future club classics like "360" and "Von Dutch," she's ruminating on the competitiveness, jealousy, insecurity, and obsession — sometimes all at once — that comes with being a woman and a certified superstar. The result was a relentlessly sexy, impossibly cool, multiple-Grammy-nominated romp stacked with enough bass-boosted Bic lighter rave-ups to keep clubs bumping from now to eternity. Brat summer may be behind us, but the Season of Charli has only just begun. —Emlyn Travis

Honorable mentions

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

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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