2024 Went That Way >>>

And so we come to that time in the blogging year once again, the moment when everyone flips through their back pages to pick out the highlights. I don't have the patience to fill this post with a forest of links to old posts but I did find the time to take a look at all the music that appeared here in 2024.

I went through everything tagged "Music" so as to be sure not to miss anything. (Not the Advent Calendar. I think we've all had more than enough Christmas music for one year.) It was a chastening experience. It always is. Song after song I couldn't remember. Name after name I didn't recognize. 

There wasn't time to listen to all of them again even though I'd have liked to, just to be sure I wasn't missing any future classics. For the purposes of this post, though, it wasn't necessary. This is a Pick of the Year post and the picks pretty much picked themselves. I only allowed tracks I remembered immediately because I'd listened to them often, either back when they were new (Or at least new to me.) or since. If I needed a reminder I moved straight past.

It seemed fair. The main music feature here is called "What I've Been Listening To Lately", after all. The Pick Of The Year has to be music I did, in fact, listen to, not just stuff I found, got momentarily excited about and wanted to share. For the WIBLTL feature my focus is always on novelty and discovery not staying power but the tunes I've chosen here are all built to last.

That got me a shortlist of twenty-one songs. I culled it seventeen. Why seventeen? No reason.

Ok, there was a reason but it doesn't have much to do with the post. I wanted to make a playlist of the final choices to go on my YouTube channel, even though no-one ever watches it or listens to it or whatever it is people do with YouTube playlists. I like making them, anyway. I made a huge one for Christmas and now I've made one for this.

As I was making it I decided it ought to flow like a playlist should, rather than just thrash about, twitching and spasming the way it would if I just slapped everything up there in the order it came to me. In doing that, I came across three tracks that just didn't fit anywhere, so I dropped them. 

Those songs were:

Starburster by DC Fontaines - a lot slower than I remembered it but also far too aggressive to fit in with the other slow ones, plus the video starts with a whole load of nonsense that really breaks the mood. 

Yoo Hoo by Maty Noyes - Ditto with the long spoken intro to the video. Very disruptive. Yes, I could have used the audio-only version but the video was one of the main reasons I liked it in the first place.

In Aeternum Vivae by George Houston - Ditto again on both the time the video takes to get going and how much the video has to do with me liking it to begin with. If you take out the ruined church, the dog collars, all the business with the cigarettes none of them really know what to do with and the fact that George looks about twelve but sounds like he's forty-six, the song on its own doesn't have nearly the same impact.

And then there was Diamond Jubilee by Cindy Lee. I do genuinely love this and I have listened to it all the way through several times but it's over two hours long and comes as one continuous stream. There are individual tracks but snipping them out loses a lot of the effect. You really need to hear the whole thing or not bother.

Which left seventeen. They're all on the playlist. I recommend listening to it as it comes. I think it flows quite nicely. It comes in fast and hard, holds for long enough to tire you out then slows down and gets all introspective before gearing up for an upbeat, uplifting close-out. 

Okay, maybe only it's just Charli and Lorde together at the very end that feels truly uplifting. I don't actually know what the two tracks right before that are about although I suspect it's nothing good. Still, they sound cheery enough.

That just leaves me with a final decision. Should I embed all seventeen here or just use maybe five and anchor the rest as links? I'm going to go have a bath and think about it...

... also take Beryl for a long walk and have lunch, as it turns out. But now I'm back and I've made up my mind. I can't resist going through the lot and giving notes so buckle up. This could take a while.

Homie Don't Shake - Fcukers

Getting lumped in with the Indie Sleaze revival somehow hasn't hurt their profile. I just think it's joyous. Can't hear it too many times. Can't hear it loud enough.

Guess - Charli xcx feat. Billie Eilish

There are three tracks from Brat/Brat but... on this list. There could have been more. Absolutely no question that Brat is the album of the year. It would be my album of the year, too, if I was being strict and keeping to albums that came out in 2024. My album of the year came out in 2023. We'll get to it. Meanwhile, this is by no means the best track on either Brat but it's one of the three or four I've listened to the most. I just love Billie's deadpan delivery.

Tokyo Calling - Atarashii Gakko!

A defining feature of my listening habits this year was falling down rabbit holes of both genre and geography. I fell down a Japanese hole a couple of time, maybe three. There's an insane amount to find down there but this was right at the top, poking out. A real highlight, especially that live performance on Kimmel.

Von Dutch - Charli xcx

First, I am painfully aware I'm picking the least-cool tracks from Brat. Not that any of them are uncool but everything is relative. I just love the video for this one. Plus it fucking slaps!

Second, I cannot believe I literally only just noticed this minute that the xcx in Charli's name isn't capitalized. I think I've always rendered it XCX. I'll stop that right away.

That Sedative - Bad Waitress

Up to now we've been squarely in my wheelhouse but this is slightly askew of my usual tastes. It's very rock. It's what I hear as a clean rock sound though, with the treble up high and a lot of chant. I can do that. Plus that bit where it all goes murky and the vocals are treated lift it out of the rock trap a little. And as I said at the time, it reminds me of Fluffy and Fluffy can do no wrong.

Love Your Money - Daisy Chainsaw

I did say not everything on this list came out in 2024. This is from 1992! One of the weirdest things to appear on the blog this year was an entire post about Katie Jane Garside. I mean, why? I can't explain it. The fact remains that it happened and I did listen to this track pretty much on hard repeat for about two weeks so it has to go in.

Molecules - Daisy Dreams

This has everything I love about a certain stripe of clever, musicianly indie-rock - chiming guitar tones, chugging riffs, crisp, unfussy drumming, overlapping bass/guitar melodies, nagging, insistent female vocals, repetition, repetition, repetition. It even has a semi-spoken middle eight. I must have listened to this twenty or thirty times at least now. I've listened to it four times in the last twenty-four hours. I wish the rest of their songs were as good.

Docket - Blondshell (feat. Bully)

If they were, they'd be Blondshell. There are no mediocre Blondshell songs. Every one is wonderful. Her self-titled album is my album of 2024 although it actually came out in the summer of '23. I didn't get a hard copy until November this year so it counts. 

I actually prefer the version of this that Bully doesn't sing on but this is the one I posted before so we'll stick with it for this post. Here she is doing it at Glastonbury. It just happens to be the one song the BBC chose to leave us when they closeted the rest of the set. Boy, did that make me mad!

Unless something radical happens, you can expect to hear Blondshell here about as often as you hear Lana del Rey, which is whenever there's anything new to share. Her band is great, too. They could do with more credit.

Favourite - Fontaines DC

Best opening riff of anything I heard this year, I think. I got the album for Christmas. I watched the full set from Glastonbury on TV, live in real time, and it gave me chills. I even got singer Grian Chatten's solo album. And yet a couple of years ago I wouldn't give them the time of day. Funny how things change.

Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl - Yeule

There was a week where I barely listened to anything but covers of this song. And the original, which I'd never heard or even heard of before. I really need to watch I Saw The TV Glow now.

wanna go to the gas station? - Martha Sin Del 

I only realized last night what this song is about. I'm not sure if it changes my mind on anything but I guess it's not quite as mellow as I thought it was. I had it down more as a kind of slacker thing, harking back to when slacker was a lifestyle choice not an insult. That's what I get for reading the damn lyrics, I guess. Sometimes it's better not to know.

Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild 

 Merce Lemon

Maybe I should find out what this about, too. Maybe I should find out what all the songs I like are about. I am not as careful with a lyric as I probably should be. As attentive, I mean. I'm more of a title, first line and chorus kind of guy, if I'm honest...

Football - Youth Lagoon

Of course, knowing what the lyrics are doesn't always help as much as you'd think. Not with the stuff I tend to end up listening to the most, anyway. There's always a lot of ellipsis, metaphor and allusion going on. Biographical detail no-one but the songwriter gets. Stuff like that.

I dunno. Maybe I am the person who caught the football. I caught this one, for sure.

Fade Into You - American Football

Perhaps the biggest surprise of my musical year was how much emo I found myself listening to. And enjoying. Particularly mid-western emo. I don't know why, really. I ought not to like it by most counts but I just do. There's something worn-down and weary but not yet defeated about it that sounds especially poignant coming from people in their teens and twenties, although it needs to be said that emo has been around in its many forms for a long time and people in some of the best-known bands would have to be pushing fifty by now. 

Don't you wonder how it must feel to be fifty and still making your living singing songs about how bad it felt being nineteen? Someone ought to write a song about that.

Bunny Goes 2 Business School  idialedyournumber

I may like emo but I draw the line at screamo. Except, apparently, I don't. Not any more. What is happening to me?

Morfina - Kiddie Gang

Kiddie Gang are from Mexico. Monterrey, specifically. You learn something new every day. Or you do if you know how to use Google search. And can read Spanish. Which I sort of can, sometimes. Generally, I try to avoid finding out too much about anyone I listen to these days. It almost never adds to the experience. Sometimes curiosity can't be contained, though.

This one has over 7m views on YouTube so I'm guessing they're quite successful. In Mexico. Probably not anywhere else. Shame.

Blu - Girl Ultra

Also from Mexico. Another rabbit hole I tripped into. And will be falling down again, I'm sure. Many times. It goes deep.

Girl, So Confusing - Charli XCX feat. Lorde 

I find myself whistling this all the time at work. Or humming it. I bet you wished you worked with me. 

A generation-defining moment and here I am, talking about it like it was the theme to a sitcom. No wonder they hate us. I would, too.

And with that we are done for another year. It's been yet another corker for music but then they all are. Good music never stops coming. Great music is a little rarer but there's still a million times more of it than any of us will ever get to hear.

As for 2025, I already have so much stuff backed up after the long slog through Christmas it's going to take several posts just to clear the backlog. So there's that to look forward to. 

If you thought this selection was a little outre, Charli always excepted, I would direct you to Kieran Press Reynolds choices, some thirty tracks altogether, almost all of which will be by people you never heard of and who, if you listen to them, you'll most likely wish you never had.

A few of those will be cropping up here next year so my advice is to go there and inoculate yourself ahead of time.