Two decades after digital downloading was supposed to disintegrate the full-length LP, musicians seem as eager to collect and to sprawl — and sometimes to tighten up — as they’ve ever been. Here are the 20 albums I loved holding varying amounts of space for this year.
1. Sabrina Carpenter, “Short n’ Sweet”
[This is a joke about an album being the whole package.]
2. Taylor Swift, “The Tortured Poets Department”
The backhanded Charlie Puth shout-out? The lyric about looking like Taylor Swift? The ringing of Pavlov’s bell in “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart”? Ugh, her mind.
3. Mk.gee, “Two Star & the Dream Police”
A private universe of sound from the musician other musicians couldn’t stop talking about.
4. Laci Kaye Booth, “The Loneliest Girl in the World”
“Dusty in Memphis” meets “Tango in the Night.”
5. Ernest, “Nashville, Tennessee”
A sprawling showcase of classic-country know-how from a key architect of the modern Nashville style that drives fans of classic country mad. (See also: the manicured knuckle-dragging of Hardy’s “Quit!!”)
6. Tems, “Born in the Wild”
One of global pop’s most distinctive new voices — and perhaps its deepest believer in the sanctity of the groove.
7. Ariana Grande, “Eternal Sunshine”
Grande’s Elphaba to “Wicked’s” Glinda.
8. LL Cool J, “The Force”
It’s not that LL is still rapping well at age 56 (though you have to admire storytelling that lingers on a mother’s “well-balanced potato salad”); it’s that he and his intrepid producer, Q-Tip, make LL’s memories feel somehow unfamiliar.
9. Charli XCX, “Brat”
The louder you play it, the more honest it gets.
10. Billie Eilish, “Hit Me Hard and Soft”
She saved her boldest singing for her most unguarded lyrics. (Duh.)
11. Beyoncé, “Cowboy Carter”
Thoroughly researched, meticulously assembled, genuinely bizarre.
12. Paul McCartney & Wings, “One Hand Clapping”
Turns out the year’s ripping-est live album was recorded half a century ago: Cut over four days at Abbey Road in the summer of 1974 — then relegated to bootleg status for decades among Macca superfans — this is Wings at a zenith of carefree precision. (See also: Fleetwood Mac’s “Mirage Tour ’82,” a double-LP document of two dangerously peppy gigs at the Forum.)
13. Tori Kelly, “Tori”
The sounds of late-’70s Doobie Brothers and early-’00s “TRL” were both in the air this year — but possibly together only here.
14. Kendrick Lamar, “GNX”
Of course it’s about defeating Drake. But “GNX” is also a lesson in history, in geography, in the fine art of writing songs for and about the Dodgers. Kendrick’s victory contains multitudes.
15. The Cure, “Songs of a Lost World”
Guitars!
16. Diiv, “Frog in Boiling Water”
No, really.
17. Clairo, “Charm”
Crinkly, unhurried, sincere but with a sense of humor: Clairo’s third album is like the best possible pull from a dollar bin of forgotten ’70s singer-songwriter LPs.
18. Don Toliver, “Hardstone Psycho”
Where teenage boys from 1984 shake emoji hands with teenage boys from 2024.
19. The Hard Quartet, “The Hard Quartet”
Dudes rock.
20. Kacey Musgraves, “Deeper Well”
At a moment of chaos embraced, spacey Kacey may have misjudged the audience’s appetite for an album of trippy country-folk songs about finally finding peace — which kind of makes it only more endearing.
