Year End Music Countdown # 23: 2024

I was tempted to pare down this year’s countdown to 20 – perhaps even 15 – songs. I simply didn’t feel as though I could drum up enough effusive praise for a full 25 song list once again. Not since 2021 has the situation felt so dire in the world of alternative rock, especially with pop music shining so brightly in 2024. But I just have too many opinions that cannot be left unsaid. They are bursting out of me and so you must endure a full list once more.

I must warn you that although a lot of the following will sound like tepid or even backhanded praise, I legitimately do enjoy all these songs to some degree.

The Top 25 Songs of 2024

25.  How Far Will We Take It? – Orville Peck feat. Noah Cyrus —  

I still don’t believe that Orville Peck has written that ONE big commercial hit to define his career by, and he still hasn’t returned to the artistic high he had with the fantastic “Turn to Hate”, but at the very least he has incorporated hooks into his songwriting once again. His latest album had no less than three memorable songs on it: “How Far Will We Take It?”, “Where Are We Now?” and “Midnight Ride”.

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24. Dunning Kruger National Park – Fanning Dempsey National Park —

The strangest part about this project isn’t the odd mirroring song title, it’s the fact that the Fanning in the name of the band refers to Bernard Fanning – as in Australian rock band Powderfinger’s lead singer Bernard Fanning. After years of inactivity he’s reappeared with this new band that sounds a lot like Keane doing a facsimile of turn-of-the-millennium Radiohead.

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23.  Calling You Out – Charly Bliss —  

If you were to tell me that this song was entirely AI generated with the prompt “indie pop Carly Rae Jepsen”, I would believe you.

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22. She’s Leaving You – MJ Lenderman —

The one qualm I have with this song is that the subject Lenderman sings about is a painfully outdated boomer stereotype that just doesn’t make sense anymore. The anachronistic depiction of a midlife crisis shows its most apparent flaw with the line “believed that Clapton was the second coming”. Lenderman doesn’t seem to realize that guys going through their midlife crises in 2024 are no longer beer-bellied office guys who worship Eric Clapton. They’re bearded New York type guys who peaked in 2001 and venerate Thom Yorke, Ezra Koenig, and James Murphy.

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21. Docket – Blondshell feat. Bully —

The conversation surrounding Blondshell has predominately been about her nepo baby status. It should have been about the fact that the supposed wunderkind loves to wreck her potentially great songs. “Veronica Mars” was about two minutes too short, and “Street Rat” could have been a #1 hit if it weren’t marred with poor production. Luckily “Docket” nails the basics of songwriting with the platonic ideal of a 3:30 length and clean production, and builds upon that with a decent tune.

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20. Zero Sum – The Smile —

Several interviewers in 2024 asked Thom Yorke about potential future Radiohead releases, which seemed to irritate the frontman. To paraphrase – he just wants to have a good time, man. He’s doing The Smile and he seems to be having a blast, dropping three albums in just two years. It still does feel a lot like a “buddies from work” type project, but hints of his old work do creep into songs like “Zero Sum”.

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19. End of Beginning – Djo —

There are a few moments in this song when it feels like it wants to be bigger than it is. It’s just aching for that big release instead of maintaining a chill, laid-back demeanour for its entire duration. Personally I would love to hear a full-on active rock cover by some aching heart band like Fuel or Three Days Grace.

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18. Cherry Blossom – Empire of the Sun —

Empire of the Sun, aka MGMT if they weren’t terrible, continue to understand what makes good music.

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17. Sanity (Re: Jack Antonoff) – Paramore —

It’s a devil’s compromise. The demo version of the song is unpolished, but it’s straightforward and uncomplicated. The rework by Jack Antonoff is sleek and clean, but it’s filled with unnecessary flourishes and annoying (and weirdly insistent) overproduction. Also it’s done by Jack Antonoff, who in recent years has cratered every bit of the goodwill he built up in the 2010s.

Ultimately, it’s his finished product that wins – though I must underscore that if the demo of “Sanity” was cleaned up it would be the far superior version.

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16. Beautiful Eyes – Amy Shark —

I don’t think I’ve ever listened to an artist with a mindset as similar to mine as Amy Shark. So many of her song lyrics reflect my core beliefs and here she essentially spells out what I’ve been yelling for decades: the only romantic relationships worth having are ones that grow from friendships.

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15. To Be Alright – Aurora —

Like a rippling pond reflection that slowly comes into focus, “To Be Alright” coalesces into a big pop moment as it draws to a close.

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14. Caroline – Nestor —

There are few surprises left in the music world. Unexpected covers, mash-ups, remixes, features, or samples are rarely ever actually unexpected in 2024. There aren’t too many unique gimmicks a band can employ to stand out in the crowd anymore, but Nestor seem to have one.

This is a band that formed in 1989, did not release any physical music, reformed after over 30 years apart, then started releasing music that sounded like the era they were borne out of. They may as well have been frozen in a cryogenic chamber when you hear songs like “Caroline”, which would have been a #1 hit in the late 80s.

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13. Blow It – Jack Kays —

People often relate to the subjects of song lyrics, but here Kays sings about someone he (nor anyone) wants to be. Essentially the perfect pop-punk song for the 2020s.

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12. Good Luck, Babe! – Chappell Roan —

If you were looking for respite from Chappell Roan here, I am afraid I must disappoint you. This is a good song.

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11. Ashamed – HEALTH —

HEALTH are a hard band to “enjoy”. Even as a fan of their music, I find it very difficult to revisit any of their work. Often released in the dark winter months, their 0% joy approach to their work is draining on the psyche and doesn’t lend itself to repeat listens, especially in the 2020s. It’s TOO relatable. It’s strange then, that HEALTH are almost preternaturally gifted at writing hooks but also at keeping their music surgically clean. No overbearing distortion or dissonance here – the style is all incredibly accessible.

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10. Image – Magdalena Bay —

It’s funny that instead of making new music, Grimes has opted to be weird on Twitter and put on disastrous DJ sets – yet when a band clearly influenced by her puts out a massive gem of a single, she hops right onto a remix of it. Hey Grimes, why not just write some new gems of your own?

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9. My House – Royal Republic —

Is this a Steel Panther type situation? Are Royal Republic a serious band or just a send-up of macho 80s hair metal? The lyrics to “My House” border on satire, heavy on confidence and low on sensible grammar and syntax.

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8. Close Encounters of the Richard Kind – Pocketboy Solid —

Capturing the neuroticism and off-kilter vocals of early Arcade Fire, this track veers very close to gimmicky territory but with such strong hooks manages to refrain from becoming too twee.

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7. Backslide – Twenty One Pilots —  

The requisite lighter waving song off Twenty One Pilots’ latest release, “Backslide” follows in the footsteps of songs like “Choker” and “Chlorine” with its huge melodic hooks.

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6. Cherry Tree – Quarters of Change — 

Despite knowing very little about their music and even less about the band themselves, Quarters of Change have appeared on my year-end countdowns for three years in a row now. Did I unconsciously become a fan? “Cherry Tree” is the best song they’ve written so far, opting for more of an up-tempo 80s power ballad approach rather than the no-wave of their 2022 release or the late 90s post-grunge of last year’s “What I Wanted”, but the rest of the album leaves no solid clues about where the band is deciding to go next.

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5. Hate Me If You Want – ALEXSUCKS —

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Are we as a society still doing the early 90s comeback? Or are we still doing 80s pastiche? Or maybe 70s? It’s all of them at once and more, including 2005, which this song seems to have been directly lifted from. The angular guitar hooks, the four-to-the-floor beat and the openly emotional lyrics are very twenty years ago.

4. Soon – TR/ST — 

Prior to the release of TR/ST’s latest music he put out a statement saying his next songs would be “buried in mud”, or something to that effect. I groaned in disappointment upon reading this. Now, when bands are finally casting aside the horrible lo-fi aesthetic that’s plagued the better part of the last decade? Now, after years of delivering clean production and pristine hooks?

My fears were unfounded as the “mud” seemed to have been metaphorical. “Soon” is TR/ST’s best song thus far, and mercifully mud-free.

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3. Give it Back to Me – Francis of Delirium —

There’s something very comforting about a cyclical hook. Employed to great effect by bands like Built to Spill, Snow Patrol, The Airborne Toxic Event and Band of Horses, it allows for a pattern to build up over the course of a song before erupting into a big triumphant finale. Francis of Delirium have delivered another classic in this style with “Give it Back to Me”, a throwback to the days of earnest indie rock.

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2. We Did It In The Name of Love – The Killers — 

The Killers famously scrapped the album they had planned for late 2023, with Brandon Flowers saying that he didn’t want to continue making music that was tied to the band’s early days.

When you look at the four songs off this lost record that ended up being released to the public however, you see an interesting pattern emerge and you wonder if there were other circumstances at play.

“Boy” sampled Erasure’s “A Little Respect”. “Your Side of Town” was an homage to New Order’s “True Faith”. “Spirit” interpolated Underworld’s “Born Slippy”. And this song was more than a little indebted to Sisters of Mercy’s “This Corrosion”, leading one to believe that The Killers were on their way to making their version of Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, an album comprised entirely of songs based upon established works. Perhaps something about this concept didn’t pan out, and the record had to be shelved.

Fortunately this final offering off it was the best of the four that did see the light of day, and strangely enough released exclusively on….Twitter?

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AND THE BEST SONG OF 2024 IS…

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1. Sundowner – Fontaines D.C. — 

There’s something extremely exciting about Fontaines D.C. Not only are they a group that writes actual, genuine music with character and a mission statement, but they exude an aura of unbridled potential. They feel like a band that is going to be big, and are just one release away from that breakthrough that will turn them into arena headliners. This year’s Romance was excellent, but the best part about it was that it hinted at more excellence in the future.

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Anyway, that’s it, bye.

The Spinelessness of Modern Alternative

Pop music is thriving. It’s blooming and growing for what is hopefully a sustained moment. Then there is the alternative, rock, and indie part of the ecosystem that’s historically been the evolutionary and revolutionary side of the equation. So what is afflicting the mavericks? Why is the overarching trend in alternative music to appear as feeble as possible?

A few years back I wrote about the lethargic “smooth vibes” genre that had enveloped the alternative scene, a Mac DeMarco inspired sound that combined all the worst elements of early 80s new wave and yacht rock into a college zoomer’s afternoon soundtrack.

Slackers are not to be underestimated – a huge contingent of 90s alternative was made by the irreverent, the nihilistic and the bored. Kurt Cobain could easily have been labelled with those three adjectives.

But Cobain also had drive and urgency. As hard as he tried to not care about anything, there was a tangible nature to that not caring. There was still something resembling a message, a statement that Nirvana and Nirvana’s predecessors and peers were built upon.

The bands of the 2020s so far are built upon a different kind of nothing.

As we reach the halfway point of the decade the only noticeable stride that’s been made since January 1 2020 is the move toward occasional uptempo tracks – thanks not to alternative luminaries, mind you, but to artists like Olivia Rodrigo.

While mainstream alternative is still mining the output of the four horsemen of Mumford & Sons, Twenty One Pilots, The Black Keys and The Neighbourhood, the more underground contingent has seemingly coalesced around the anemic sound of indie band Real Estate.

At its core, the sound is a truly awful, unadorned slab of beige. A gaggle of bespectacled introverts plaintively singing about….nothing in particular. Sometimes they have mullets. Sometimes they have mustaches. Sometimes they wear t-shirts. Sometimes they add a little funk or punk to the mix. But it’s never something.

A band with a name like Winnetka Bowling League should have an eclectic sound to match. Instead they’re a midwest version of Hellogoodbye, power pop without the power. They sound virtually identical to another new artist named bob junior. Slight, non-committal, and just as forgettable.

Conversely you have Alfie Templeman, who looks and sounds exactly how you’d expect – a goofball making nondescript music for nondescript parties. A bit more energy, but no less forgettable.

Wallows. Dizzy. fanclubwallet. Field Guide. Husbands. Ekkstacy. Indigo Waves. These are the interchangeable artists that Spotify is pushing to centre stage, a place that neither they nor us as the audience want them to be.

Every era thus far has had filler music. This isn’t a new issue inherent to one generation. The problem is that the filler has become the main course. We are in 2024 and we cannot define 2024 musically. We are well past the due date of a fresh new sound and instead sorting through a hodgepodge of bland beige indie, 90s revivalism, and neverending nostalgia. The promise of the dark, innovative trap-pop introduced to us by Billie Eilish in 2019 was extinguished by Eilish herself in 2021 with her own sophomore record.

But again, the matter of genre is only a fraction of the problem. The overarching dilemma is to total and complete lack of uniqueness.

None of these artists have a defining philosophy.

You can point to Lana Del Rey and say she is the queen of slow motion Americana. You can point to the Black Keys and say they are the band most responsible for Ford truck sales. You can even point to Future Islands and say hey it’s raspy synth pop Dracula.

Who can you point to and define in 2020s alternative music? Better yet, who can you point to in 2020s alternative music? Pop music has recently begun to churn out some household names, and it appears that alternative has ceded the responsibility of being the vanguard to the mainstream. Noah Kahan and Glass Animals are shared assets, the latter on the brink of the follow-up fail.

There are thousands of problems in the world and none are being addressed through song. It has become an utterly passionless genre where singers only utter halfhearted observations about daily life.

Definition, clarity, and urgency. It doesn’t matter if you use distortion or not, how many keyboards you use, or who your influences are. The alternative world needs to start being an alternative once again.

Is Music Back?

Even the most miserly curmudgeon – also known as myself – cannot help but admit that music is back. Music itself has value again. Something has clicked in the collective consciousness and music is relevant in mainstream culture once more. Whether that’s because AI has secretly begun writing all pop hits or artists have stepped up their game in order to counter AI, well that’s a mystery. But we are halfway through the year and so far have four, yes four (??) mega hits.

As is tradition, the beginning of the year gave us the requisite legacy artist hit single in Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em”. Not only was this Beyonce’s return to the spotlight after 8 years without a viral release, it also began a spirited discussion about her move into country music. What a twist – the public were actually talking about music itself.

But we have been fooled many times over the past decade with these early year hits. Last year Miley Cyrus gave us flowers. The flowers wilted within months and nothing grew to replace them, leaving the rest of the year bare.

To have three more songs reach stratospheric heights in the zeitgeist with half the year left is nothing short of a miracle. Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso”, Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” and Morgan Wallen + Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help” are all actual, real hits. The songs themselves, without context or baggage, are the focal point and are succeeding on their own terms organically.

Sabrina Carpenter is particularly interesting in that she is developing as an artist in the most natural way we’ve seen in years. Touted to be a next big thing way back in 2020, she has slowly climbed her way to the top rather than being placed their by the shadowy executive committee. I could be cynical and say that this might simply be a more careful approach to foisting her upon the world and is in fact calculated, but even if so, it’s far more preferable to the forced “fame” of Rita Ora / Phoebe Bridgers / Skylar Grey.

Carpenter might very well be an industry plant, but her stardom has been built in a much more tolerable way than say, the daughter of rich and powerful industry insider JJ Abrams. Gracie Abrams is also a big music story in 2024, but in this case it’s more about the fact that she is the nepo-iest of nepo babies and gifted with Taylor Swift tours and features with zero work and all privilege.

Speaking of Swift – am I allowed to have a smug “I told you so” moment? Not only was her boyfriend’s championship run in the Super Bowl as scripted as any WWE showdown, but her latest album failed to launch a single hit. Oh, The Tortured Poets Department is absolutely a success. The week after its release gave us a frenzied dissection of every song title and lyric. And yet not one word online was written about the music itself. I couldn’t tell you what direction Swift took with this record, the hook of any of the songs, or even a quotable line from the album. I can tell you that thousands upon thousands of posts were made about it though, parsing every word for hints about Swift’s past relationships and what led to their respective ends. Swift is still the biggest artist on the planet, but I maintain my position that this is a marketing feat, not a musical one.

The same can be said for Charli XCX, who for the past decade or so has also been constantly pushed into the limelight without any content to back it up. There was a minor hit in that Boom Clap song but even that’s stretching it. 2024 brought her some fortune though, as millions of youths are having themselves a “brat summer”. The branding for her new record has been extremely on point, from the meme-able album art to the aforementioned appropriation of the album title to the supposed (and somewhat confusing) feud/feature with Lorde that’s also been fuel for discussion in mainstream circles.

The biggest discussion however, was gifted to us by Drake and Kendrick Lamar. A bitter rivalry that escalated into a volley of diss tracks, the beef between the two rappers has been the most talked-about music related story of the year. But like with Taylor Swift’s output since 2017, “Not Like Us” is not a #1 hit because it’s a memorable melody, but because of the furor surrounding it. Furor even rap veteran Eminem managed to capture with his ragebait comeback single. It might not reach the outrage of his prime, but to rile people up 25 years into his career is impressive.

There’s room for improvement among all the excitement though; not everyone’s writing superhits, and more often than not we’re getting the same flat, monotonous choruses we’ve been hearing since 2014. Only now they’re so tOtAlly 90s instead of so tOtAlLy 80s.

Ariana Grande’s latest flopped, as did Camila Cabello’s, both thanks to those one-note, unmemorable choruses. Charli XCX might have the best branded record of the year, but let’s be honest – there’s very little in the way of big hits on that record thus far. Nelly Furtado and Katy Perry are attempting to jump on the hype train with a comeback but both those campaigns are going about as well as Gwen Stefani’s botched grasp at a revival in the late 2010s (not well at all).

All in all, the scorecard is looking decent. New household names, earned success and a legacy comeback – even if nothing else happens in 2024 we have already surpassed the past 5 years combined.

Year End Music Countdown # 22: 2023

For the past 22 years that I’ve been scrutinizing, analyzing, and criticizing modern music I’ve never gone through a full year as uninspired and boring as 2023. The entire year felt as though the world was collectively waiting for a big event that never came. A massive hit song, a masterpiece album from a celebrated act, a festival performance unlike any other before it – none of these materialized in the past twelve months. It was an empty expanse, a landscape void of genuinely big moments.

This will be further explored in an upcoming post diving into the trends of 2023, but in the meantime here are the meagre gems I managed to pluck from the wasteland this year.

The Top 25 Songs of 2023

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The Canonization of Taylor Swift

Despite her BFF and occasional producer Jack Antonoff’s rabid protestations, Taylor Swift is not a good songwriter. When left to her own devices Swift creates monotonous, repetitive choruses that range from one to three notes and recycle the same handful of chord progressions every album cycle. She is also a surprisingly unremarkable singer – a statement so uncontroversial only her most ardent fans would disagree.

Yet she has undoubtedly become the world’s biggest pop star, certainly of this moment, but also arguably of all time. A monolithic presence that has outsmarted every media trap, sidestepped every music industry pitfall, and calculated every single necessary action to outshine not only her peers but also some of the most popular artists to ever grace a concert stage. Her marketing and PR team have turned her into a phenomenon thanks to one mantra: it’s not about the music.

Continue reading “The Canonization of Taylor Swift”