Pardon the lack of image or formatting I’m blogging on my phone, for playlist please hammer this hyperlink

The way I saw it, retromania was the major theme in 2024 music, highlighted by Chappell Roan’s 1980s approach, the heightened mainstream energy around country/Americana, and, to a lesser degree, Gens Z and Alpha loving dnb/jungle. I try not to be a trendy mf, but l was not immune to the backward pull. Throwback styles are present on my best songs list via Tommy Richman, Fabiana Palladino, Mk.gee, and GloRilla pulling from from the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s.

The other big retro event of the year was indie sleaze, a mini movement inspired by 2000s hipsterism, by people who weren’t born at the time. It was something various entities were colluding to “make happen,” and smacked of struggle because there was no good music to support it. But it was something, and people were into it.

2024 music wasn’t strictly about old aesthetics, though. Innovators were innovating. And I would’ve liked to have read more stories about their innovations. Everybody and their mom wrote about Cash Cobain this year, but what is it about the way he makes beats that has so many fans in a trance? How did his sound cut through in 2024? Why does it still feel so fresh, for years now?

And like, off the top of my head, the bugged out funk of current era Brazil — it’s absolutely crucial to be following now, and has been the past few years. I love that it seems to soundtrack these huge popular parties. Could it be that the music of the people can also be so raw and experimental? Or maybe the popularity is in some way a fabrication on the internet, which is its own kind of performance? I have questions, and I’m still waiting for the great modern funk article.

But back to the nostalgia: it seemed like everyone got sucked in, a little bit. Even artists like Charli XCX and AG Cook, whose overall “things” are about pushing pop forward, made their 2024 hit “360” in the bubbegum bass style of hyperpop/digicore from around the turn of the decade (yes it’s possible to be nostalgic for four years ago). It’s a modern masterpiece that scans to me as retro, albeit the most recent that retro can be.

Why did the past dazzle us so much in 2024? Maybe we are scared for the future of the world and want something familiar to make us feel safe. Maybe artists just have a special fondness for certain older music, and they want to share that with fans. I can’t call it, and I also don’t care that much, although if you have a theory please lmk. Music has no expiration date, and getting an education is cool, so if you got turned on to righteous jams from some time before you were born by a song that came out yesterday, hell yeah.

Top 10 Songs

Fisherrr - Cash Cobain and Bay Swag

2024 saw Cash seep into the pop realm with his borderline unfinished yet seemingly scalable sexy drill, going on a production/features run outside his native New York, and lacing Don Tolliver, Travis Scott, Big Sean, and Bktherula, to name a few. But he saved his best song for home, a slow-building, half-drumsless concoction of sustained strings and just a few well-chosen chords, with lyrics about local hot girls who eat all the cabbage in the corner compartment of their Jamaican take out container. Fisherrr is unhurried in a way that most rap isn’t, which is refreshing, and durability wise builds Cash’s legacy of perfect songs, hanging with new classics like Slizzy Like and Vacant. Song of the summer, no doubt.

Yeah Glo! - GloRilla

Cowbell instance #1 on this list. Yeah Glo! is one of those rap bangers that hits right away and just feels right, the kind of song GloRilla should make whole albums of. But I guess this is mixtape Glo, technically.

Stay With Me Through The Night - Fabiana Palladino

Currently Fabiana is making the dopest music of any Palladino, which is saying a lot since her dad Pino is a certified bass god, and her brother Rocko is crazy on the bass, too. Grooving on keyboards and singing about relationships, she dropped an album of perfect soulful pop songs this year, all in older styles. This one nails yacht rock. The video is sick, too, I love how it’s all about the music.

Mire - 1010benja

There are several times when 1010benja, the best singer singing, catches an out of body flow on Ten Total album. Mire is the bangingest. Does the bass remind you of drill? Perhaps it’s intentional. The verses are about needing a honey, chorus about breaking up, it’s lyrically characteristic of the project as a whole, full of contradictions and confusions, however with a moment of clarity and an ultimate plea for assisted comfort: “I need your help / not your belt.”

Million Dollar Baby - Tommy Richman

Sorry, it just needs to be here. Tommy Richman is maybe the new Justin Timberlake, whom we have moved on from, as a society, and guess what, he’s problematic, too. His album was uneven but he got one with Million Dollar Baby, some Virginia-via-Memphis funk that more than got the job done as an R&B banger.

Hate the Real - MCVERTT and 41

MCVERTT’s best beat ever, slowed down Jersey Club with the most yearning sample of what is that, tenor saxophone? Definitely the beat is releasing hypnotical gasses. For their part, 41, drill’s Brownsville boy band, raps super hard about zoning out and facing blunts/depression. Who can relate? Even though I got 26 in 2024’s big 41/26 feud, I can’t deny this song was something special.

Candy - Mk.gee

I initially hated on Mk.gee thinking his guitar sound was a Jai Paul ripoff. I now know I was wrong, and he’s doing his own thing, and able to write perfect rock songs with a deep rhythmic pocket. Respect. And if he makes songs with Bieber, which he is rumored to be doing, more respect fuck it.

Wickedest - Tems

This song helped me get my confidence up when I was feeling really shaky. Big stretch here but I’m three years into a career pivot into social work, now finished with school and starting my second job as an LMSW. Tems sings about being on for three years and the triumphant difficulty of maintaining her vision. Shit clicked for me a few days before I started my new gig: I got this.

Hell of a Ride - Nourished by Time

Incredible build up to a song finally beginning, a world being constructed before your ears. Singular vaguely John Hughes esque dreamy synth rock songwriting that is sprawling and anthemic. Real auteur shit.

360 - Charli XCX

This is a 10 out of 10 song, word to Will Anderson of Hotline TNT. And I don’t give a fuck, I was always here for bubblegum bass. I loved it in some of the earliest seedlings of hyperpop like “Bipp,” and I loved it in 2020 digicore on songs by quinn and d0llywood1. And Charli is here killing it for the last time? Probably not but she is killing it, and it doesn’t hurt that this song was beloved by my wife and kindergartener and was one of a few jams we all agreed on this year.