This “Best of” list is a countdown to Number One. I don’t usually rank music — the choices often become arbitrary. But countdowns are fun. 2024 was a year of overlooked albums, 12 of them my favorites, and here is the best of 2024. A handful of albums I ranked below the 12 here, corresponding online playlists, and other playlists of great 2024 songs will be on Spotify for now.
12. Matty Marz ~ m.w.u
m.w.u is the sound of young talent budding. As sole composer of these songs, Matty Marz distinguishes herself from the current pack of divas and trend-followers. Typically confident in her largely studio-generated arrangements, and nearly abrasive in her lyrics, she tenaciously shifts into a higher gear of skills on m.w.u (“moment with u”). The nonessential was shorn away. Modern, jagged-but-happy and thickly-bumping beats saturate the tracks. The best gift here: “Sing Me to Sleep,” a track leaving Marz so exposed that I feel compelled to offer not-quite a trigger warning: Hear the heart within it, safely placed in its attractive shell. Her jumbling of hope and desperation makes for an amazing “Did all that just happen?” experience.
11. Adeem the Artist ~ Anniversary
Adeem may well be the hardest-working openly pansexual nonbinary musician ever to play the Grand Ole Opry while raising their kid with their wife. Sure, those are a lot of conditions, but it tells you they are blazing their own path, lit by the classic country, folk, and Americana voices that came before, earning every inch of progress by writing and performing well-honed, often drop-dead deep songs. Two songs are awesomely, eerily related. “Night Sweats” is a heartbreaking, futile, necessary, deeply respectful honoring of Gaza Palestinian dead that also accuses U.S. media of turning war into entertaining spectacle. Contrarily, “Rotations“ is a heartfelt and delightful ode to Adeem’s son.
10. T. Thomason ~ Tenderness
T. Thomason has been on my radar since I found their breathtaking new version of Bruce Cockburn’s 80’s classic “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” a revelation of an arrangement that enhances the song’s hidden strengths. That track, included here, makes this a must-have album. But it’s just a launchpad for all the other romanticism, erotica, intimacy, and fun on Tenderness.
9. Billy Porter ~ Black Mona Lisa Volume 2: The Cookout Sessions
Billy Porter is one of my Out Queer Music heroes. His November 2023 album Black Mona Lisa gets a Volume 2: The Cookout Sessions. Baby, it cooks. “Black Mona Lisa feat. Big Freedia,” the revised title song, struts with well-earned pride, getting a new Afro-pop beat from the band Lofey and a new verse to enhance that pride from Big Freedia. The EP brings together a concise mosaic of styles. Porter handles everything with panache, from the jazzy laid-back appeal of “Skin Deep” and the gospel rise of “Audacity” (“My best revenge is to forgive the enemy by simply choosing happiness”) to the simmering hot dance chart hit “Leap.”
8. Namoli Brennet ~ The Poet Tree
These songs are simply gorgeous! If you’ve ever heard what results when a poem or other text not intended as a song lyric gets set to music, you know that it likely feels awkward, with words shoehorned into a contrived melody. But Brennet has given us a small miracle by not falling into that trap. They have set 11 poems, often classic (Sappho, Walt Whitman, Shakespeare) to music that really fits, really enhances the intent and meanings of the poetry. An e. e. cummings poem takes on heightened spiritual meaningfulness, depths that never come through just reading a short poem on a page. This magical music intensifies and beautifies an already intense, beautiful poem. You owe it to yourself to hear The Poet Tree. It’s a unique experience.
7. Grace Petrie ~ Build Something Better
So no one makes protest songs any more, right? And no one makes songs of social commentary anymore, right? Certainly not good ones like they used to make in the ‘60s and ‘70s, right? Surprise! Pick any one of the songs on Petrie’s Build Something Better and be impressed. When Petrie isn’t rallying communities to recommit on the jaunty “Fixer Upper” or plainly charging us to challenge society’s more backward instincts in the blunt truth-telling “Meanwhile in Texas,” she’s falling in love. She got married this year, and the tracks “Start Again,” “Earthwire,” and “Cynicism Free” are inspired by her wife. They’re gifts to lovers and romantics everywhere.
6. Super Cassette ~ Continue?
I don’t know whether Max Gerlock, the mastermind behind Super Cassette, is a fan of Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson’s unmatched studio inventiveness. By Wilson’s example of breaking with tradition to innovate, Continue? can just be enjoyed as hook-heavy nerd rock, or you can notice how brimming with neat twists on standard song structures it is. A narrative about dealing with anxiety disorder functions as a loose through-line tying the songs together. Gerlock turns his personal challenges into a song series that’s unique and fun. On the way to his new equilibrium, he shares his questions, his troubles, and a few answers. Like sad songs played happily, a young but aging man’s struggles are transformed into a work of beautifully layered musical art. They’re ear candy for an active imagination.
5. THUS LOVE ~ All Pleasure
THUS LOVE is yet another queer-peopled band serving rock and roll heart. It’s been too long since a rock album arrived intent on being innovative and full of catchy hooks. Combining their unique gestalt with aspects of the wave of bands ushered in by Nirvana and Pearl Jam plus late ‘70s / early ‘80s New Wave (think The Pretenders), THUS LOVE’s composed but gritty performances often are as moving as they are headbanging. The stripped-down “On the Floor,” over a solid rhythm section, features guitar snippets that take a few attempts at a running start before they lift off. Here, vocalist Echo Mars reminds me of Simple Minds’ Jim Kerr. But his warmth can turn frustrated-growly or frontman-seductive as called for. “Birthday Song”’s clear-cut refrain “Remember to breathe / It’s the worse it will ever be” turns what would be two clichés of New Age lingo into one solidly grounded intimacy, like a welcome arm around your shoulders. Rock lives in THUS LOVE’s hands, and, as always, much of the best of it is queer.
4. Katie Pruitt ~ Mantras
Offering songwriting chops of Sheryl Crow or Shawn Colvin quality, Pruitt explores 11 different insightful perspectives on spirituality. In the light of self-examination her friendships and family relationships evolve and sometimes break. The simple, simply-fine melody of “White Lines, White Jesus, and You” allows Pruitt to customize her delivery of repeated stanzas to express shifts in emotions. When she ends a verse by singing the title words, their impact still raises chills down my spine nearly a year after first hearing them. Other standouts include “Worst Case Scenario,” “Leading Actress” (ya gotta love any song that rhymes mattress, address, and actress, delivered with perfect smoothness), and “Blood Related.” There isn’t a false or insincere note to be found on Mantras.
3. Zigs ~ Full Circle
Erica Zigon, aka Zigs, celebrates her liberation from a committed relationship gone sour on her fine new album Full Circle. Freeing oneself from an unworkable relationship has made her stronger, re-energized, downright happy. From verse one, song after song vibrates with that lightness. Now that she’s no longer held back she doesn’t have to hold back. Tracks like “Never Learn” (that moment when you tell yourself “I never learn,” but then you do), and “Tangled Up” (all the work to untangle from a lover was well worth it) flip expectations on their heads. Best of all, “Don’t Waste a Minute” fist-pumps freedom, empowerment, letting go of failed relationships. It should be a pop hit, based on unprecedentedly big, positive responses from an excerpt I shared on Instagram. They all fairly resonate with self-confidence in being back on the right track. Listening to Full Circle I constantly heard myself thinking “That sounds fresh!” It’s a cliché, but it’s true. Zigs and her team make small unusual moves that have big impacts, like: Strumming acoustic guitars unexpectedly drop out to let Zigs sing nearly a cappella. A piano break evokes Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is,” working like a jazz solo quotes a melody. Throwback-toned keyboard riffs peek out from under taut arrangements. Credit also Zigs’ frequent cowriters Kevin Schwartz and Michael Zigon and producer Brendan Keenan for these touches. But whoever came up with the ideas that power these fresh but familiar sounds, together they’ve made Full Circle the best debut album of 2024.
2. Aaron Lee Tasjan ~ Stellar Evolution
Tasjan’s queer sensibility shows up in his songs as naturally as sunshine illuminates a Pride parade. His songcraft is top notch. “Dylan Shades” tenderly lifts an opaque veil on a young gay boy navigating the game of love and the modern easy availability of hookups. In “The Horror of It All” his crushes get crushed and high school horniness competes with peer shaming, but the big takeaway is “I gotta be myself now / cause everyone else is already taken.” Exposing darker life events, the self-effacing, trippy, dire instincts of “The Drugs Did Me” progress from survival to revival. Tasjan’s Tom Petty-like delivery on “I Love America Better Than You,” a tongue-deeply-in-cheek masterpiece, brilliantly butts American pride up against American ugliness. Throwing shade and sunshine in equal measure on the good ol’ USA is such a good fit for a witty gay dude. He’s come a long way from co-leading Semi-Precious Weapons, a band that came up through the NYC club scene alongside Lady Gaga, co-writing most of its songs. It’s long past time Tasjan got his turn at big-audience success. While writing Stellar Evolution (from his website): “…Times became very dark for the queer community in the South. Bathroom bans and drag bans were enacted in Tennessee, while right-wing rhetoric around LGBT people became uglier and uglier. Tasjan knew this album needed to reflect the vibrant community that has become home to him.” And so it does.
- Morgxn ~ Beacon
Beacon shines brightest of all in 2024. Morgxn’s song “My Revival” has brought my hand up to rest over my heart in awe whenever I’ve heard it since late 2023. Lately, just thinking of the lyric “Wherever my heart is / I won’t keep it guarded” still gets me emotionally choked up. Re-read that lyric right now and let those words sink in. Who dares declare something like that? When a lyricist comes up with a new way of saying something classic it knocks me over. Several songs impacted me this way this year, but none amaze me like “My Revival” has. In a few phrases, a few minutes of studio wizardry and genuine performances, it confirms that one’s vulnerability is also one’s greatest strength. It’s Morgxn’s superpower, charging the rest of Beacon’s electric journey through joy and sadness, love and loss. Every Beacon track is pop chart worthy, gleaming with details that enhance every singalong-able moment. Yet none of it comes across as trendy or pandering — never dishonest, always real. While Morgxn is fairly successful — he’s had a couple of real hit records — in my not so humble opinion he’s a largely underappreciated talent. Open your heart and let Beacon shine its light on you.
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