I started writing this post in January. It’s now July. So, yeah, either I’ve got a serious procrastination problem or I just kept finding new albums to obsess over. Probably both.
This was supposed to be a neat little January wrap-up. A quick “here’s all the albums I listened to last year” job. But somewhere between album #5 and album #367, I realised I’d built myself a labyrinth of guitar solos, synth swells, and emotionally devastating lyrics I had to reflect on.
I’ve been tracking the albums I listened to in yearly documents for a good few years now. It was originally done in Evernote, but since that service became unusable unless you fork out a tidy sum, I’ve turned to just dumping them into Google Docs instead. Usually I don’t set a target and just see how many albums I can fit in around my life. But, in 2024, I was a few dozen albums down just a couple of months in and I started to wonder if I could listen to 366 albums over the year, one for every day of the year (as 2024 was a leap year).
This turned into a year-long sonic adventure that spanned pop-punk nostalgia, jazz-funk detours, Latin grooves, and a suspicious amount of Jimmy Eat World. Seriously, I think they’ve taken out a mortgage in my brain at this point. I got to September and realised I was falling behind, so I had stints of the year when I blazed through 20 albums in a week. It helps that I have the kind of job where I can stick my AirPods in for 8 hours a day.
There were awesome surprises (hello, Poppy’s Negative Spaces), a few forgettable duds (lookin’ at you, new Green Day), and moments where an old classic smacked me in the soul like it was brand new (I see you, Pet Sounds, and please don’t judge me for never having listened to it until now). Some albums became instant favourites, while others made me question how I made it this far in life without ever hearing them.
Also, can we talk about how much new music came out in 2024? It’s like every artist on Earth collectively decided, “This is the year Tom must never rest.” If it’s new to that year, I’ve slapped ‘2024’ in brackets next to it so you know that it was a new release.
By the way, if one more person says “there isn’t any good music released these days” I will smack you in the face with the hundreds of Spotify playlists, Reddit threads, blogs, niche radio stations and more places I’ve checked out to prove music is as good as ever – if not even better! There’s good shit coming out every week, you just have to go beyond the algorithms and seek it out. That said, I also think Spotify’s algorithms have done a good job of introducing new stuff to me too. You’re not branching out and listening to different things if your algorithms keep throwing the same old stuff at you.
Could you say that listening to so many albums in a single year means I don’t really engage with them on a deep level? Sure, but I never said I know all these albums inside out. It’s definitely the case that I do for some of the albums on this list, as I’ve listened to them before and they’re on there because they’re favourite albums that I often return to. Some of the albums were one and done and I’ll probably never check them out again, but others will become favourites and, even though I didn’t make a note of this, I sometimes listened to an album that was new to me a few times over the course of the year.
Anyway, I’ve finally wrangled all 368(!) albums into one place. Below, you’ll find the full list, Every record I gave a spin in 2024, with my very official, incredibly scientific one-word(ish) reviews. Oh, and those in bold = first time I’ve listened all the way through (as far as I’m aware). I can’t say I remember every album I’ve ever listened to, so there’s the possibility that I’ve given it a listen and just forgotten, although that may mean the album wasn’t very memorable to begin with.
Oh, and one more thing before the list. I track and rate every album I listen to over on my Rate Your Music Profile. Feel free to add me on there if you have an account.
