"Like every year, 2024 was a great year for music, for anyone willing to look and listen. There are more people releasing more music than ever before, and I could feel despair over the fact that I’ll never have the time to hear all the incredible music that I might love. But I think it’s a good problem to have. I’m exposed to so much magic so frequently that I have to share the best of it just to keep track. That’s why I’m here, and why I’m always posting on twitter and now bluesky too. Algorithms have been nice for finding stuff that’s similar to what you already like, but lately they seem as broken as everything else that seemed so futuristically convenient a decade ago. All these services we’ve begun to rely on have eroded, often in line with mass layoffs at the companies that provide them. The human element is leaking entirely out of the corporate music infrastructure. So I think it’s more important than ever that regular people who are tuned in spread the word about the best new (and old) music they encounter.
So, here I am with the annual big album list. I couldn’t settle on just fifty again, or even sixty, so I’m dropping eighty great albums made in 2024 that I think you should really hear. Twenty of them are singled out at the end as the best of the best – especially masterful, poignant, mindbending pieces of music that touched me deeper than anything else I heard this year. Every album is listed with its record label and a link to check it out."
https://optimisticunderground.com/2024/12/09/80-best-albums-of-2024/