Wu-Lu‘Daylight Song’Warp
Though just an EP, Wu-Lu’s Learning To Swim On Empty is one of the most ambitious and finely-hewn records of the year, taking the mysterious swirl of memory, nostalgia, self-doubt and struggle that defines so much of our eternal lives, and making it tactile. ‘Daylight Song’, a muddy and yet totally transfixing cut of meditative alt-rock, is the record’s centrepiece, shimmering like an opal.
Sabrina Carpenter‘Espresso’Island
With a past life as a teenage actress in Disney Channel series Girl Meets World and several years spent aiming for a genuine breakthrough as a recording artist, all it took for Sabrina Carpenter to do just that was a studio trip to the north-western French village of Chailland where she was inspired to write perhaps 2024’s defining pop hit. Built around a sleek, breezy disco backing and a caffeine-referencing hook that admittedly might not stand up to much grammatical questioning, ‘Espresso’’s greatest strength is in its sheer playfulness and lack of self-importance (“my give-a-fucks are on vacation”) in a mainstream music landscape that has grown somewhat too earnest in parts in recent years. It’s pop music at its addictive best, quite simply.
Pet Shop Boys‘Party In The Blitz’parlophone
One of Pet Shop Boys’ finest moments in their early years was ‘Opportunities’ B-side ‘In The Night’, which was an ode to the Zazous, a bohemian subculture active in occupied Paris during the Second World War. Nobody really sticks their best material on their B-sides any more, but Messrs Tennant & Lowe revived the tradition with the fantastic ‘Party In The Blitz’, the flip to the ‘Dancing Star’ single. Named after the writer Elias Canetti’s account of Hampstead life during the Second World War, ‘Party In The Blitz’ a both sonically and lyrically witty track that boosted the price of second hand copies of the book considerably. When I interviewed Pet Shop Boys around the release of this year’s album Nonetheless, Tennant told me that the song came from a fascination with London during the Blitz: “Quentin Crisp, who can be a real fucking bore a lot of the time, is great on sex with American servicemen,” adding that on trips to Piccadilly he’ll think, “Wow, in the Second World War, they were all shagging in that gap between the theatres, because there were no lights on” due to the blackout.
Kendrick Lamar‘Not Like Us’pgLang
At the risk of sounding like a complete killjoy, I think I might have been among a minority who grew truly weary of the beef between two of hip hop’s biggest stars that defined the genre in 2024 as it continued on with every desperate jab for a killer blow. With the release of Drake’s ‘Family Matters’ and Kendrick Lamar’s immediate response, ‘Meet The Grahams’, things increasingly looked to be becoming a race to the bottom, in which women – and specifically Black women – and children were merely viewed as hapless collateral. In ‘Not Like Us’, however, released just 24 hours after ‘Meet The Grahams’, Lamar undeniably got one over on his challenger (so much so that it later led to Drake launching a number of truly embarrassing lawsuits) and landed one of his biggest hit singles to date. Against the backdrop of a characteristically banging beat from DJ Mustard, Lamar sounds at ease, and yet truly loaded with hatred, in his delivery as he casts Drake as a sex offender and cultural parasite who steals ideas from more innovative rappers. When you’ve got clubs full of people avidly rapping along to the words “Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophile”, it’s fair to say you’ve probably won the war of words.
Shovel Dance Collective‘The Merry Golden Tree’American Dreams
In this traditional song’s narrative of a boat’s encounter with a pirate vessel, a cabin boy’s sinking of the rival vessel and his captain’s denial of his promised reward, Shovel Dance Collective draw out all manner of emotions – bravery, betrayal, chaos, death, camaraderie, and most of all the sublime loneliness of life on the ocean. Those who’ve seen the band live will be familiar with the way each sweeping chorus builds on the one before, until it reaches a point of utter overwhelm – a quality they’ve captured on record here too.
Charli xcx‘Guess’ (featuring Billie Eilish)Atlantic
It often strikes me that artists, musicians and writers all-too-easily forget that sex is awkward, funny and prurient, focussing instead on the yearning for love, the pain of it ending or, all-too-frequently from modern music PRs, the earnestness of it being “empowering” (1,624 uses of the word in my 2024 email inbox alone). ‘Guess’ then, is not my personal track of the year purely because it’s such killer pop, but thanks to how it’s both deeply horny and a bit of a hoot. While Brat and its accompanying remix LP were hardly shy of bangers, in the union of the two most interesting artists working in the mainstream today, ‘Guess’ arguably surpassed the lot of them in its effortless squelchy delivery of complete and utter filth. That it owes a lot to the grubby electro of the early 2000s is no secret – the vocal lines reference Daft Punk’s 2005 track ‘Technologic’ – but this merely cements it as an instant classic of the form. Only two-and-a-half minutes long, ‘Guess’ is one of those tracks that just oozes with the sense of joy in its making. Despite how saucy it is (“Pull it to the side and get all up in it” etc), it remains playful rather than gratuitous, toying with the listener in the final line that can be taken in more than one way: “You wanna guess if I’m serious about this song.”
Xiu Xiu‘Common Loon’Polyvinyl
A change is as good as a rest suggests this peerless Xiu Xiu single – the cream of the year’s rock music – from a new home in Berlin. The same torrid violence and scornful artiness underpins the group’s sound but it’s otherwise delivered with the kind of emotional punch you get from encountering a John Hughes movie when you are 13, or from your first encounter with the Flaming Lips and low grade acid at the age of 15. Uncommonly good.
The Cure‘Alone’Fiction / Polydor
It’s not enough just to be still on your feet when the final bell is rung. Like David Bowie did on returning from his sabbatical with ‘Where Are We Now?’ in 2013, The Cure proved just how right we were to miss them while they were away with ‘Alone’, the first track that they shared from Songs Of A Lost World, their first studio album since 2008. Everything is so perfectly in its place; a pure example of impeccable late style for the post punk, alternative rock generation. Let’s just hope it’s not as final as it sounds.
Chappell Roan‘Good Luck, Babe!’Amusement / Island
If you’ve been anywhere near a wedding or someone’s 40th birthday party this year then you already know that the most important pop song of 2024 is ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ No track has so reliably had this sort of effect on drunk older millennials since ‘Everywhere’ by Fleetwood Mac or maybe ‘Mr Brightside’ or something. From its Wham! synths to its Geocities lyric video, it pushes all the little nostalgia buttons in a way that feels knowing and smart, and yet somehow not annoying. It has just the right amount of histrionic. If it didn’t have such an enormous range then everybody would be singing it at karaoke (no doubt many people still try and live to regret it). It is also just an extremely well-crafted song, in quite an old-fashioned sort of way. Elton John (who allegedly once sniffed at ‘Firestarter’ because you can’t play it on a piano) would no doubt approve. So, too, I expect, would your mum. It has that thing, where the first time you hear it, you immediately feel like it’s a song you’ve known forever. This one is not going away. And you know what, I’m fine with that.
Mica Levi‘Slob Air’Hyperdub
The general mission statement put out each year to staff and core writers when it comes to submitting our personal ballots for songs of the year is to avoid those that are particularly long, abstract or ‘difficult’ where possible since we like to think our other round-ups of the year’s best music tend to cover those worlds more than adequately. It’s somewhat ironic then that Mica Levi’s ‘Slob Air’, clocking it at just over 12 minutes and consisting largely of a repetitive, galloping drum loop and swirling strings, should top our list of 2024’s best tracks. Marking the ever-unpredictable artist’s debut for Hyperdub, it’s hard not to be completely swept up in its dreamy repetition though, as subtle moments of progression – occasional choruses of indistinguishable vocals, sudden rafts of rumbling sub-bass – weave their way into the track so curiously and hypnotically without upsetting the air of serenity that underpins it all. You could perhaps call it shoegaze, but above all, it’s just Mica Levi.
