Arts/Culture

2024 In Music 

By Dylan Paris 

2024 has been one of the most influential, and arguably the best, years of music in the last decade. Whether rap, pop, or other genres of music, we’ve had some of the most consistently good music of the last few years. The year has been full of breakout artists that have risen to the top of the industry along with popular artists releasing amazing new music. Here, I rank the music from this year into five different categories, my own spinoff of The Grammys. Let’s get into it.

• Noah Kahan

• Clairo - Winner

• Gracie Abrams

• Shaboozey

• Victoria Monet

• Fred Again

This category is a mixture of both breakout and new artists because a lot of musicians didn’t necessarily start releasing their music for the first time, but started becoming popular this year. In today’s music industry, being unique and niche is very important and a lot of these artists embody that, especially Fred Again. He brings a new creative sound with his DJ style music, but also features a lot of mainstream artists. With that being said, I chose Clairo as the winner for this category. The folk artist’s third studio album, Charm, packed so much emotion and beauty into her short but sweet eleven-song tracklist. This album is the definition of fusing pop and folk together, and she did it wonderfully. Clairo showed her creative lyrics on this album and the self-production makes listening to this album amazing. The best song on the record, “Juna,” talks about having a deep connection with somebody and not wanting to lose them. The song ends with a beautiful trumpet that captivates the listeners attention even more. Clairo is a very creative and talented artist, and this album is just the beginning for her bright future.

• Billie Eilish

• Kendrick Lamar

• Future

• Charli XCX- Winner

• Beyonce

• Taylor Swift

Charli took over the summer with “Brat Summer.” The tagline, which comes from her sixth studio album, Brat, took Gen Z and TikTok by storm. Grossing millions of dollars, this album is filled with club pop songs and techno pop, something a pop artist hasn’t come out with in a long time. Brat has been called album of the year by many critics and fans, and already has one of the most iconic album covers in music history. The British pop artist dropped a deluxe album to Brat which featured a plethora of artists ranging from Bon Iver all the way to Yung Lean and Addison Rae. The album features club songs that make you want to dance and get active. Even with the high tempo and frequent production changes, Charli still finds a way to write lyrics at a deeper level. The Brat artist has gained a lot of new fans this year, and Charli made a name for herself with her unique dance pop style in this era, and therefore, very deserving of this award.

• Metro Boomin - Winner

• Jack Antonoff

• FINNEAS

• Hit-Boy

• Daniel Nigro

• Kanye West

Not only did Metro Boomin produce two full length albums with longtime collaborator Future, but he also fueled one of the biggest rap beefs in the history of hip hop. Every year, the St. Louis native finds new ways to stand out in his production and makes his beats sound fresh. Boomin produced two collaboration albums with Future this year (We Don’t Trust You and We Still Don’t Trust You). Future and Metro Boomin have made countless classics together, and these two albums further proved that. With songs like “Cinderella,” “Young Metro,” “Type Sh**” and of course the instant classic, “Like That” featuring Kendrick Lamar. This song fueled the beef between Drake and Kendrick and it was an amazing way to start off the stacked year of hip hop. Other than his two albums, Metro Boomin helped produce, in some way, most rap albums or artists this year, including Kanye, 21 Savage, Gunna and more. This year further helped the case as Metro Boomin being one of the most influential producers and one of the best the genre has ever seen.

• “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar

• “Speyside” by Bon Iver

• “Lithonia” by Childish Gambino - Winner

• “Like that” by Future, Metro Boomin (feat. Kendrick Lamar)

• “Juna” by Clairo 

• “Darling, I” by Tyler, The Creator

It’s not a shock that I nominated Kendrick Lamar twice in this category since he contributed to one of the biggest rap beefs ever. Even with those circumstances, I decided to go another route. We got a newer and fresher Donald Glover in 2024 than ever before. His new album Bando Stone & the New World proved to be his most creative work in his amazing career. The multi-talented artist announced this would be his last studio album under the stage name Childish Gambino. With this amazing listen of an album came the lead single, “Lithonia.” “Lithonia” got me very excited for this album and I knew it was going to be very different from what we saw of him before. The beginning of the song starts off slow and calm. You can hear synths in the back as Glover starts this epic music journey with beautiful vocals. Then we get into the start of this rollercoaster of a song. The beat drops and powerful electric guitar riffs and chords come in. Throughout the rest of the song there is powerful song writing accompanied with electric production. Lithonia sounds like the ending of a movie and is a perfect way to end Glover's career. I highly recommend checking out this album. 

• "Chromakopia" by Tyler, The Creator

• "Hit Me Hard and Soft" by Billie Eilish - Winner 

• "Blue Lips" by ScHoolboy Q

• "Cowboy Carter" by Beyoncé

• "Charm" by Clairo

• "Why Lawd?" by NxWorries 

Billie Eillish and her brother Finneas went all out for this terrific record. Everything is perfect and it’s hard to nitpick at the little things. We saw her maturity rise on this polished and clean album, compared to her other projects. It brought out all of Eilish’s skills: creative songwriting, catchy hooks, and, of course, her fantastic voice that reaches all time highs on these songs. It seems impossible to believe that Billie is only twenty-two — she’s already put out four albums, some of which are already considered among the most influential of all time. The best part of this album was the amazing bridges and instrumentals. Songs like “The Greatest,” which starts off acoustic but the bridge turns into this explosion of electric guitars and drums. Or, “Skinny,” which goes into a beautiful violin solo towards the end of the song. Catchy choruses layered with songwriting, perfect singing and amazing production from her brother Finneas makes this album very deserving of this title — this is a 10/10 project.

This year of music turned out to be a blessing for all of us and our ears. Every genre had so many hits and underground gems that I couldn’t mention in this article because of how stacked the year was. There are a lot more projects expected to start before the new year so there could be even more to add on this amazing catalog of 2024. Overall this year in music was very influential to many genres and artists. There were many memories made and a lot of artists got recognition to kick start their career. In this writer’s opinion, 2024 will go down as an all time year for music and we will look back on it as one of the best ever.

2024-2025 Edition 1