ALBUM OF THE YEAR: CHARLI XCX, BRAT
Riding the zeitgeist with consummate ease, Brat was ubiquitous in 2024: the twittersphere declared this (northern hemisphere) Brat Summer, Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris was "Brat", and a zillion TikTokers threw up #brat in an effort to highlight their oh-so-daring personalities. Yet when freed from the social media yoke, the sixth album from the former Charlotte Aitchison transcended the Gen-Z-hot-mess-pop-star aesthetic, gloriously hybridising the past two decades of electronic pop to craft her own singular vision of pop’s potential. From the opening synth flourishes of 360 — where Charli asserted she’s "looking like an icon", then doing little over the remaining 41 minutes to refute such a claim — Brat was at once hedonistic, brash, belligerent and imperious. Yet, for each plea of "I wanna be blinded by the lights, lights, lights", there was a disarming vulnerability, as Charli wrestled with being a "365 party girl" (365) while wistfully longing for motherhood (I think about it all the time), and how friendships with other powerful women can be both empowering and a source of anxiety (Girl, so confusing). Likewise, the spectre of late hyperpop collaborator and friend Sophie loomed large, most notably on the ballad So I, lending emotional heft to the memeability of that cover. It was these electrifying contradictions ("you’re all about writing poems/ but I’m about throwing parties") that made Brat so potent, a thrilling confluence of the Apollonian and Dionysiac.
Though when the navel wasn’t being contemplated, Brat’s gaze was squarely on the dancefloor — frantic layers of EDM and breakbeats (as on the preposterously exhilarating Von dutch), huge, emotionally climactic songs with soaring melodies and eardrum-busting bass (the exquisite Talk talk and Club classics) and the arch irony of the twitchy masterpiece Everything is romantic amounted to a monument of impeccably sleek pop futurism.
Key track: Von dutch
ARTIST OF THE YEAR: KENDRICK LAMAR
Approximately 1855 days elapsed between Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer-prize winning DAMN. (2017) and it’s follow-up, 2022’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers (2022), earning K.dot an unwarranted reputation for atrophy. A spate of guest spots since then satiated rap fans, including on Future and Metro Boomin’s Like That in March, where he claimed "no big three/ just me", a retort to the idea that he, Drake and J. Cole comprise an elite rap triumvirate. In a genre where the sound of clashing antlers is commonplace, this seemingly innocuous line ignited a beef for the ages, reaching levels of egregiousness a month later, when Drake tried to goad a response with Taylor Made Freestyle, which utilised daft AI-generated renderings of vocals by West Coast icons 2Pac and Snoop Dogg. It worked. Kendrick’s dense, shapeshifting Euphoria dropped a week later, opining "I make music that electrify ’em/ you make music that pacify ’em" and that "I like Drake with the melodies/ I don’t like Drake when he act tough". The verbal volleys continued (Drake’s Family Matters sniped — perhaps presciently — "Kendrick just opened his mouth/ someone go get him a Grammy right now") until May 4, when Lamar responded with both the eerie Meet The Grahams (whose multi-tracked taunts of "you lied" still haunt to this day) and Not Like Us, the seismic bars heard around the world. That a song suggesting his rival "likes ’em young" hit the charts at #1 and was nominated for multiple Grammys (including for Song and Record of The Year), while garnering it’s composer an invitation to perform the Super Bowl halftime show is nothing short of an astonishing testament to the depth and breadth of his talent and pop culture standing; that it was followed up by the surprise release of sixth LP GNX in November made 2024 quite the year for Compton’s rap prophet.
Key track: Not Like Us
PLACE OF THE YEAR: IRELAND
It was a stellar year for tunes from the Emerald Isle. Romance, the fourth LP from Fontaines DC, saw the Dublin quartet add artful experimentation to their spiky brand of post-punk to thrilling effect — flashes of nu-metal and string-laden balladry complemented their move to XL records (home to arty outsiders including King Krule and The Smile). Lead single Starburster was the most thrilling panic attack since Talking Heads’ Once In a Lifetime, with lead singer Grian Chatten name-checking J.D. Salinger, the Challenger Space Shuttle and the Chinese calendar while literally gasping for breath over off-kilter mellotron and spidery guitar lines.
The third album from Irish pop-folkie Hozier, whose beguiling blend of pop and literary allusion pervaded Unreal, Unearth, preceded a batch of sold out Aotearoa shows where he entranced us with his dreamy, misty-moor energy. Citing Dante’s Inferno as an inspiration, the album played fast and loose with an abundance of mythological themes — on paper, an impenetrable proposition, but his charismatic brogue and way with the craic rendered his on-stage presence irresistible, as he also scored his first #1 single with the rollicking Too Sweet.
Equally as alluring were Belfast-based hip-hop trio Kneecap. A semi-fictionalised biopic following the trio as they turned from mischief-makers to unlikely figureheads of national identity wowed Sundance Film Festival viewers this year, the New York Times labelling the film "gleefully chaotic" — a fitting description for the group themselves. Fusing Irish language, rap attitude and a staunch republicanism (they claim to hail from "the north of Ireland"), second LP Fine Art saw Moglai Bap, Mo Chara and DJ Provai find a post-Troubles sense of pride via their blisteringly belligerent — and, at times, brilliant — brio.
Key track(s):
Fontaines DC: Starburster
Hozier: I, Carrion (Icarian)
Kneecap: Parful
"COMEBACK" OF THE YEAR: THE CURE, SONGS OF A LOST WORLD
Pre-pandemic, and riding the crest of the Cure’s 40th anniversary wave, Robert Smith teased new material, including one album that’s "very, very doom and gloom". Emerging half a decade on, their 14th album (and first since 2008’s 4:13 Dream) was a somber triumph rife with stately gothic grandeur, as Smith gracefully reflected on age, loss and regret. Yet its sprightly eight-track, 49 minute runtime offset any anxiety around the album being overwrought and bogged down by glacial-paced noodling; instead, Songs Of A Lost World dripped with crepuscular elegance, echoing not only the cover art of 1981’s Faith, but the oppressive atmospherics of Disintegration and Pornography. Opener Alone set the tone, with airy synths and cavernous drums buttressing Smith’s magisterial vocals, while Drone:Nodrone was awash with electric psychedelic guitar squalls, as Smith found himself "staring down the barrel of the same warm gun" — a truly sparkling return.
Key track: A Fragile Thing
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
It’s not for nothing that Beyoncé was announced as billboard’s greatest artist of the 21st century, and Cowboy Carter made a compelling case for such an honour, breathlessly encompassing an array of sounds from country and/or western to hip-hop and opera on LP number eight, on her way to snagging 11 Grammy nominations; Vince Staples’ insouciant storytelling and dry humour made the stark rhymes of Dark Times more affecting, as the Long Beach rapper dealt with depression, loss and the perils of being gang affiliated over eerie G-Funk synths and dusty soul samples; Exploring indigenous identity via electronica, Tāmaki Makaurau-based producer and academic Tiopira McDowell (Ngāti Hine) unleashed his debut LP Waerea under the Mokotron moniker. A uniquely Aotearoa artefact, the LP wove together te reo, taonga pūoro, breakbeats and basslines while challenging colonial mindsets and fostering pride in Māori culture — ka-friggin’-rawe!
