Embracing the "Best Of"

Featuring a highly scientific, 8 hour megamix of 2024's musical excellence

We examined the 91 + hours of music in the 2024 archives of our radio show — which we host weekly from our dining room table each Sunday evening. We trimmed it down to a neat and tidy, erm….143 songs.

Amrita’s Methodology

I used to view “best music” lists with a jaundiced eye. Even though I’ve always taken reasonable care to keep up with new releases, I never verbalized my own “top tracks” or “best albums” in any remotely public way; primarily because I didn’t care to defend my picks from interlocutors who demanded that I validate my own taste.

This comes in part from being a woman interested in anything. …Obviously a phenomenon that long predates me, personally. However, I was in college during the rise of fullscale “hipsterdom” in the mid-00’s. What people miss in their trot down memory lane with the retconned “indie sleaze” era is the overwhelming (and predominantly male) gatekeeping involved in every facet of liking, purchasing, playing, and concertgoing.

And it wasn’t just a feature of “indie” music, either. Jazz music and classical music had their own assholes at the gate, I found. When I was a teenager, paying entry to the boys’ club of liking anything (because everything was a boys club) meant being relentlessly quizzed on your expertise.

That latter day meme “oh you like X? Name Y” is basically a documentary

It was a losing proposition, even if your knowledge of new releases was near-encyclopedic. And so, I would start to qualify my opinions to avoid such badgering. My spiral of equivocation would look something like:

“It’s not that these are the BEST, per say, by some universal standard. They’re just my favorites.” → “It’s not even that they’re my favorites per say, by some formal, defensible metric. They’re just things that I liked.” → “Or, you know, they’re just things I listened to.” → “They’re just things.”

Reductio ad nothingness. At that point, what’s the point of even making a list? Nowadays of course, an AI aggregator can construct you a blandly thorough (and mildly deranged) version of that before you can even think to ask for it.

I feel so much less combative now about proving that my point of view exists. Maybe it’s a measure of the times; cultural gatekeeping is for the girlies now, too! Maybe it’s a sign of my own advancing age. Or maybe it’s a matter of putting a flag in the ground for human curation. I’m assured in my taste, and I delight in learning where others might diverge.

So anyhow, all of this is to say: here are the best songs of 2024. Period. Come at me, bro.

Andrew’s Methodology

I work most freely when there are parameters. The blank page is daunting. The universe is vast. But the playlist that holds our 2024 show archive is finite. Long but manageable. Even still, scrolling through the list felt like a chore, initially. In selecting the “best” tracks from the year, I found myself considering what criteria to apply, what order to sort the list by, how long to listen to each track before making a determination. It felt like work.

Then, I ran out of time. With only a day to sort through hours and hours of music, I sat on my bed with my headphones deep in the ear canals and moved with a quickness. I added some tracks furiously and skipped others without much consideration.

In time I noticed a pattern. A methodology started to develop. It was simple and easy to apply. I added tracks that I didn’t want to forget. Many of them from small bands, new artists, albums that flew under the radar, good tracks from terrible albums. I threw songs on the list that captured MY 2024. They are the best of 2024 for no other reason than that they stuck with me for a while. In a way, my list isn’t a BEST OF 2024 but more of a STICKIEST OF 2024. Tracks that stayed in my ears for one reason or another. It could be a fun lyric, a nostalgic sound, or a chord progession that doesn’t come around often. Take a listen. See what sticks with you.