Vulture's Best Albums of 2024

"This year was one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward and looked backward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists and listeners while rock and roll and dance music stretched past their boundaries, occasionally co-mingling. With a keen awareness of what lies on both ends of the spectrum of human kindness and cruelty, 2024's best music documented an unbreakable will to keep pushing past the worst days to get to wherever the peaceful ones were hiding."-Craig Jenkins-