2024 Music Year in Review

In late 2023, I gave myself a very loose challenge to listen to one distinct album each day(-ish). I wrote a post about the first week and after that I tried to keep track of them offline in Obsidian. I didn’t do it every day or always keep track of it very well, but that’s alright.

The handful that I did track were pretty balanced between new-to-me albums and new releases by artists I follow. I had forgotten about a couple of these since they were one-listens — not usually because I didn’t enjoy it, but it’s easy to get distracted by old and new favorites. There’s always so much music!

New to me

• Sleater-Kinney, Little Rope (2024): A band I’ve known of for a while, but had never really listened to much.
• The Rentals, Lost in Alphaville (2014): A vinyl guy on TikTok was raving about this album. It lived up to the hype and is one of my favorite finds of the year. Somehow I had not heard of The Rentals, despite it being Matt Sharp, formerly of Weezer.
• The Warning, Keep Me Fed (2024): A really solid rock album by some mujeres Mexicanas. I’m a sucker for ladies who rock.
• Chappell Roan, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (2023): Another favorite of the year. I hope it wins the Grammy. “Um, can you play a song with a fucking beat?!”
• julie, my anti-aircraft friend (2024): I came across a fellow GenX on TikTok who publishes the blog “New Music for Old Heads” and this album in one of their best-of posts caught my attention because shoegaze.

Aside: I love the idea of that blog and recommend it:

“This is a place for people who want to get into new music but feel overwhelmed by it, or maybe even think it hasn’t been good since [insert whatever decade it was that you were in your 20s]. Basically, I’m trying to get you excited about music discovery again.”

— New Music for Old Heads

New-ish by artists I follow

Interestingly, several of these were one-listens, but writing this reminds me to listen to them more.

• Oh Land, Loop Soup (2023)
• Casandra Jenkins, My Light, My Detroyer (2024)
• DK the Drummer, Lockers Volume 1 (2024): Darren King, former drummer of Mutemath. This is a fun, high energy album with a lot of great collaborations.
• Thomas Powers, A Tyrant Crying in Private (2024): solo album from singer of The Naked and Famous
• Lauren Mayberry, Vicious Creature (2024): solo album from the singer of Chvrches

Concerts

I only attended a couple concerts this year: Zoe Boekbinder’s Covid cautious backyard concert and Five Iron Frenzy with their old-school set. Both were a lot of fun!

I had a ticket for Sixpence None the Richer at the end of the year but unfortunately missed it. :/

Scrobbles

If you’re not familiar, “scrobbles” are the song listening data you can send to Libre.fm, Last.fm, or similar services. I’ve been on Last.fm for a long time, but I haven’t checked it in quite a while. There was a time when scrobbling stopped working on Android due to some security updates, so a good chunk of my listens from my phone weren’t reported. I just played around with some settings and got it working again, though! That’s why my 2024 listening report is kind of slim.

• My top artist was Cinnamon Chasers, mostly Dopamine (2024): great electronic music to work to
• Runner up was BT, The Secret Language of Trees (2023): some chill ambient music, also great to work to
• 2,791 listens; 309 artists; 452 albums; 2,154 tracks
• 54% new artists; 72% new albums; 55% new tracks; among my small set of friends on Last.fm, I apparently came in first for percentage of new artists
• My first track of the year was apparently “Speak to Me” by Pink Floyd. I’m not a huge Pink Floyd fan, but I was talking to someone who had never listened to them before so decided to give it another listen.
• I apparently listened to 14 tracks with “fire” in the title

I joined Libre.fm in September, so only have a few months of listens in my 2024 recap. I’m glad there’s an indieweb version of services like this. Boards of Canada came in first over there, since I finally listened to most of their catalog for the first time (I know).

What were some of your (new or old) favorites that you listened to last year? Happy new year of music!