TURN's 30 Best Albums of 2024

It’s no surprise that “PARTYGIRL” is the name Charli xcx adopted for the DJ nights she put on in support of *BRAT*. It’s kind of her brand anyway, but on her sixth studio album, the British pop star is reveling in the trashy, sugary glitz of the club. *BRAT* is a record that brings to life the pleasure of colorful, sticky dance floors and too-sweet alcopops lingering in the back of your mouth, fizzing with volatility, possibility, and strutting vanity (“I’ll always be the one,” she sneers deliciously on the A. G. Cook- and Cirkut-produced opening track “360”). Of course, Charli xcx—real name Charlotte Aitchison—has frequently taken pleasure in delivering both self-adoring bangers and poignant self-reflection. Take her 2022 pop-girl yet often personal concept album *CRASH*, which was preceded by the diaristic approach of her excellent lockdown album *how i’m feeling now*. But here, there’s something especially tantalizing in her directness over the intoxicating fumes of hedonism. Yes, she’s having a raucous time with her cool internet It-girl friends, but a night out also means the introspection that might come to you in the midst of a party, or the insurmountable dread of the morning after. On “So I,” for example, she misses her friend and fellow musician, the brilliant SOPHIE, and lyrically nods to the late artist’s 2017 track “It’s Okay to Cry.” Charli xcx has always been shaped and inspired by SOPHIE, and you can hear the influence of her pioneering sounds in many of the vocals and textures throughout *BRAT*. Elsewhere, she’s trying to figure out if she’s connecting with a new female friend through love or jealousy on the sharp, almost Uffie-esque “Girl, so confusing,” on which Aitchison boldly skewers the inanity of “girl’s girl” feminism. She worries she’s embarrassed herself at a party on “I might say something stupid,” wishes she wasn’t so concerned about image and fame on “Rewind,” and even wonders quite candidly about whether she wants kids on the sweet sparseness of “I think about it all the time.” In short, this is big, swaggering party music, but always with an undercurrent of honesty and heart. For too long, Charli xcx has been framed as some kind of fringe underground artist, in spite of being signed to a major label and delivering a consistent run of albums and singles in the years leading up to this record. In her *BRAT* era, whether she’s exuberant and self-obsessed or sad and introspective, Charli xcx reminds us that she’s in her own lane, thriving. Or, as she puts it on “Von dutch,” “Cult classic, but I still pop.”

On Mustafa’s 2024 debut album, the Sudanese Canadian songwriter moves from topic to topic with the deft narrative craft of a seasoned wordsmith. “Dunya,” which translates from Arabic to “the world in all its flaws,” perfectly encapsulates Mustafa’s approach to songwriting: It\'s raw and unfiltered but totally in awe of the planet on which we find ourselves. On opener “Name of God,” Mustafa surrounds himself with little outside of an acoustic guitar melody, letting his powerful voice carry the song’s emotional heft. He blends the personal and universal on the song, asking, “Whose Lord are you naming/When you start to break things?” Elsewhere, on the percussive “Old Life,” he looks back with mixed feelings on a relationship long in the rearview. He croons, “I\'m not yours/But there\'s a part of your life that is mine.” All we are, Mustafa asserts, is the experiences we have.

In a short time, Claire Cottrill has become one of pop music’s most fascinating chameleons. Even as her songwriting and soft vocals often possess her singular touch, the prodigious 25-year-old has exhibited a specific creative restlessness in her sonic approach. After pivoting from the lo-fi bedroom pop of her early singles to the sounds of lush, rustic 2000s indie rock on 2019’s star-making *Immunity* and making a hard pivot towards monastic folk on 2021’s *Sling*, the baroque, ’70s soul-inflected chamber-pop that makes up her third album, *Charm*, feels like yet another revelation in an increasingly essential catalog. *Charm* is Cottrill’s third consecutive turn in the studio with a producer of distinctive aesthetic; while *Immunity*’s flashes of color were provided by Rostam Batmanglij and Jack Antonoff worked the boards on *Sling*, these 11 songs possess the undeniable warmth of studio impresario and Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings founding member Leon Michels. Along with several Daptone compatriots and NYC jazz auteur Marco Benevento, Michels provides the perfect support to Cotrill’s wistful, gorgeously tumbling songcraft; woodwinds flutter across the squishy synth pads of “Slow Dance,” while “Echo” possesses an electro-acoustic hum not unlike legendary UK duo Broadcast and the simmering soul of “Juna” spirals out into miniature psychedelic curlicues. At the center of it all is Cottrill’s unbelievably intimate vocal touch, which perfectly captures and complements *Charm*’s lyrical theme of wanting desire while staring uncertainty straight in the eye.

At just 25 years old, with four solo studio albums and three as guitarist for North Carolina band Wednesday under his belt, MJ Lenderman already seems like an all-timer. The vivid, arch songwriting, the swaying between reverence and irreverence for his forebears, steeped in modern culture while still sounding timeless—he evokes the easy comfort of a well-worn favorite and the butterflies of a new relationship with someone who is going to have a massive, rich, and argued-about discography for decades. The songs go down easy but are dark around the edges, with down-home strings and lap steel adorning tales of jerking off into showers and the existential loneliness of a smartwatch. But in a fun way. And just as 2021’s “Knockin” both referenced erstwhile golfer John Daly’s cover of Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and lifted its chorus for good measure, “You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In” honors The Band’s classic while rendering it redundant. But album closer “Bark at the Moon” represents Lenderman’s blending of sad-sack character sketches and meta classic-rock references in its final form: “I’ve never seen the Mona Lisa/I’ve never really left my room/I’ve been up too late with Guitar Hero/Playing ‘Bark at the Moon.’” Then he punctuates the line with an “Awoo/Bark at the moon,” not to the tune of the Ozzy song, but to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.” Packing that many jokes into half a verse is impressive enough—more so that the impact is even more heartbreaking than it is funny.

Arooj Aftab’s star-making 2021 album *Vulture Prince* was marked by a distinct and undeniable sadness—a chronicle of grief following the death of Aftab’s younger brother Maher, whom the record was dedicated to. Despite its many contributors, *Vulture Prince* felt nearly monastic in sound and focus, conjuring images of someone processing pain alone and amidst the cosmos, and since its release, the Pakistani American singer and composer has opened up her sonic world to increasingly thrilling effect. *Love in Exile*, released in 2023, found Aftab expanding the jazz side of her sound in collaboration with jazz pianist Vijay Iyer and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, and now her fourth solo album *Night Reign* reflects her biggest leap yet. It’s the kind of record that makes you realize that Aftab can, when it comes to songwriting and style, do pretty much anything—from smoldering balladry à la the late Jeff Buckley and Sade’s endless-sounding quiet storm to trip-hop’s shadowy iridescence—without losing an ounce of raw emotion. Similar to *Vulture Prince*, *Night Reign* features a bevy of notable musicians pitching in throughout: Moor Mother delivers raw incantations over the foreboding structure of “Bolo Na,” while Iyer’s keystrokes are deeply felt across the patient tapestry of “Saaqi” and guitarist Kaki King lends her considerable talents to the refracted jazz-folk of “Last Night Reprise.” But it’s Aftab’s voice—rich, resonant, malleable, and instantly recognizable—that provides the true gravitational pull at the center of *Night Reign*’s universe, echoing through the sparse rustling of “Raat Ki Rani” and shimmering on the surface of the devastating closer “Zameen.” In the press materials for *Night Reign*, Aftab expresses a desire to “make music with and for everybody,” and this record is undoubtedly the fullest realization of those aims yet, revealing new contours in her songwriting and further cementing her as a singular talent in popular music.

On previous album covers for Lorely Rodriguez’s alt-pop project Empress Of, the musician assumed a straightforward pose, casually stunting if not smiling. For the cover of her fourth album, which shares a cheeky title with the awards season campaign slogan, the Honduran American singer-producer throws her hair back as she straddles a shooting star, Los Angeles sprawled out behind her. She’s described it as something of a Hollywood album in all its sordid glam; the aching title track reflects on the end of a relationship with a showbiz scenester (“You wrote the script; your words, not mine”). That sheen of glitzy fantasy shimmers gently over Rodriguez’s club-ready explorations on love’s fleeting nature, running the gamut between heartbreak and hedonism and switching seamlessly between Spanish and English. She longs for “*un hombre femenine, un latine, que baile pa\' mi y solo pa\' mi*” on thumping house jam “Femenine,” wonders about the owner of an unfamiliar pair of earrings on infidelity banger “Lorelei,” and finds redemption in a wild night out on “Cura.” Rodriguez’s lyricism is at times abstract and poetic (“The rumors there, the mirror shows, the cards don’t lie, the boys all know—what type of girl am I?”) and at others sharply seductive (“*Yo soy fácil, fácil de comer, fácil de amar*”). The small handful of guests are like-minded in their boundary-pushing, occasionally messy avant-pop: Rina Sawayama on the love-drunk “Kiss Me” and fellow Angelenos MUNA on the searching “What’s Love.”

When artists experience the kind of career-defining breakthrough that Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield enjoyed with 2020’s *Saint Cloud*, they’re typically faced with a difficult choice: lean further into the sound that landed you there, or risk disappointing your newfound audience by setting off into new territory. On *Tigers Blood*, the Kansas City-based singer-songwriter chooses the former, with a set of country-indebted indie rock that reaches the same, often dizzying heights as its predecessor. But that doesn’t mean its songs came from the same emotional source. “When I made *Saint Cloud*, I\'d just gotten sober and I was just this raw nerve—I was burgeoning with anxiety,” she tells Apple Music. “And on this record, it sounds so boring, but I really feel like I was searching for normal. I think I\'ve really settled into my thirties.” Working again with longtime producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Snail Mail, Hurray for the Riff Raff), Crutchfield enlisted the help of rising guitar hero MJ Lenderman, with whom she duets on the quietly romantic lead single (and future classic) “Right Back to It.” Originally written for Wynonna Judd—a recent collaborator—“365” finds Crutchfield falling into a song of forgiveness, her voice suspended in air, arching over the soft, heart-like thump of an acoustic guitar. Just as simple but no less moving: the Southern rock of “Ice Cold,” in which Crutchfield seeks equilibrium and Lenderman transcendence, via solo. In the absence of inner tumult, Crutchfield says she had to learn that the songs will still come. “I really do feel like I\'ve reached this point where I have a comfort knowing that they will show up,” she says. “When it\'s time, they\'ll show up and they\'ll show up fast. And if they\'re not showing up, then it\'s just not time yet.”

More than 20 years into his career, Dan Snaith continues to shape-shift as an artist. His sixth proper album as Caribou finds the 46-year-old electronic pop polymath diving headlong into big-room dance sounds, more so than ever before: French-touch-indebted synths, city-flattening wub-wub basslines, and the type of clipped-vocal UK garage melodies that pop artists like PinkPantheress have favored as of late. Snaith is taking clear inspiration from his acclaimed full-length under his dance-floor-focused Daphni moniker, 2022’s *Cherry*, as well as the recent stadium-pleasing gestures from left-of-center contemporaries Jamie xx and Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden. The result is the sound of an artist newly invigorated and truly having fun with the music they’re making. *Honey* isn’t the first time that Snaith has turned his attention towards body-moving music. 2010’s *Swim* fused techno’s intensity with his career-long penchant for all things psychedelic and heady, while *Our Love* from 2014 found Snaith rubbing elbows with the melodic bass music explosion that marked much of early-2010s electronic music, all the while applying his intimate and resolutely human songwriting point of view. If those albums felt like a combination of his established tendencies with dance music, then *Honey* feels like a complete breakthrough into pure pop territory. The warm synth waves of “Come Find Me” sound lovingly ripped from Daft Punk’s astral playbook, while Snaith’s soft-focus vocals on “Over Now” are centered in the midst of a spangly disco beat that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Dua Lipa record. Of course, this is a Caribou record, so he has plenty of dazzling and trippy tricks up his sleeve regardless; bear witness to the perpetually ascendant “Dear Life,” which chops up vocal samples in a flurry of glistening synth trickles, or the endless melodic ziggurats of “Climbing,” which recall Nordic space-disco greats like Todd Terje and Hans-Peter Lindstrøm. Every time Snaith seems like he might be touching terra firma, he seemingly blasts off thousands of miles into the stratosphere instead—a dazzling bait-and-switch that makes *Honey* endlessly replayable, as well as one of his most pure and potent works to date.

Fcukers arrived almost as explosively as the music they create, crashing down in New York City like a supernova to serve up electropop made for late nights and even later mornings. The trio of Shanny Wise, Jackson Walker Lewis, and Ben Scharf first emerged in 2023, but on their debut EP, *Baggy\$$*, which came the following year, they sound like veterans of the indie-sleaze revival prevalent in the hippest corners of New York and across the country. EP opener “Bon Bon” is a shuffling dance cut built around Scharf’s propulsive percussion and low-end bass wobbles that will shake even the sturdiest club speakers. There’s an intoxicating nihilism reminiscent of turn-of-the-millennium acts like Death from Above 1979 and Basement Jaxx that runs through the track and the entire record. On “Homie Don’t Shake,” which has become a catchphrase of sorts for the band, Wise sings a mantra that might as well be a mission statement for the band: “Silk’s real, leather’s fake, say you’ll DJ at my wake/Blacked out, show up late, ’cause homie don’t shake.”

“This album is the sound of release, the story of a world tour condensed into one night out,” Ezra Collective bandleader Femi Koleoso tells Apple Music. “It moves from getting into the club to sussing the vibe, losing yourself to the music and feeling its euphoria. The dance floor is full of the highs and lows of life and that’s what we’re channeling.” After the London-based quintet became the first jazz act to win the Mercury Music Prize for their 2022 album *Where I’m Meant to Be*, their follow-up arrives with a dance-floor-focused bang. Featuring the band’s typical blend of jazz improvisation with West African rhythm, Afrobeat horns, and fizzing, upbeat energy, the 19 tracks of *Dance, No One’s Watching* inspire infectious movement. Written during a triumphant 2023 world tour, the record encompasses the fanfares of “The Herald,” gentle highlife rhythms on “Palm Wine,” hip-hop swing on “Streets Is Calling,” and emotive neo-soul on “Why I Smile.” “We’re questioning what ‘dance music’ actually means, since everything from klezmer to reggae and waltzes make you dance,” Koleoso says. “This album is an honest expression of all the things that move us.” Read on for Koleoso’s in-depth thoughts on a selection of songs from the album. **“The Herald”** “The word ‘herald’ means ‘bringer of joy’ and that’s what the dance floor brings to us. Ezra Collective has a mandate to bring joy when we play live and it’s what makes our shows feel so connected. We wanted to start the record deliberately with this battle cry. It’s a big shout, a manifesto of what you need to hear when you’re first getting on the dance floor. The right amount of joy will shatter your insecurities.” **“Palm Wine”** “West African highlife is a strong influence for us and this is the first time we’ve referenced it on a record. We were interested in exploring what kinds of music are allowed to be called ‘dance music’ and we think highlife is the perfect example of music for peaceful, elegant dance floors. Palm wine is a drink associated with things being relaxed and going well, and it’s the perfect title for this track that embodies when things are confident and sexy in the dance.” **“God Gave Me Feet for Dancing” (feat. Yazmin Lacey)** “This track carries on the bouncy, beautiful feel of highlife from ‘Palm Wine.’ I wrote the horn line in the shower but, once the track was done, I had a conversation with \[DJ, broadcaster, and author\] Annie Mac about joy and how it feels like God didn’t just make our feet for running and hunting, he made them for dancing, and I realized it needed a vocal too. Yazmin sings those lines perfectly, saying, ‘God gave me feet for dancing/And that’s exactly what I’ll do,’ because we can all access this joy in ourselves.” **“N29”** “I find Berlin beautifully fascinating because of their dance culture, where it’s like people are in deep meditation or being struck by the Holy Spirit on the dance floor. I wanted to recreate that depth of being in the dance on ‘N29.’ It’s named after the night bus that goes from Trafalgar Square to Enfield, through every part of North London, and it encapsulates how a huge part of the dance floor is getting there and getting back from it. This track is the middle of the record, since the middle of the night can see people arriving, already there, or leaving, and that’s what you find on the night bus with people having their different phases of the night on it. At one point, I strike my hi-hat bell like it’s pressing the button to stop the bus!” **“No One’s Watching Me” (feat. Olivia Dean)** “I’m a big fan of Olivia’s, and I was gripped when I watched her at Forwards Festival in 2023 since she was performing with such honesty. I knew I had to get her on the record, and we had such an honest session where we just started talking about life, and she said the best feeling you get when dancing is when it’s like no one’s watching you and you let the music take control. That was the song right there! Musically, it’s modeled on the marriage between Afrobeats and Afrobeat, where the horns are like Fela Kuti but the bassline and drums are like Tems and Wizkid, while Olivia soulfully drops in on top.” **“Hear My Cry”** “This is a reimagination of a church song, something I grew up listening to, since I wanted the record to take us to the church dance floor now. It’s all about how the dance floor can feel bigger than you, it can sweep you up and overcome your feelings of overwhelm. I wanted to do justice to how I hear the song in church with a marching energy but also adding a calypso/soca feel on top. I’m excited for this to come out because we’ve been playing it on tour and people go insane for it. They’ll finally know what it is now since it never had a name before!” **“Shaking Body”** “‘Shaking Body’ does exactly what it says! It’s inspired by how I fell in love with salsa music in lockdown and began writing songs in that vein, including ‘Victory Dance’ from our last album. Salsa is my favorite acoustic dance music, there’s no help from computers, just instruments tearing it to the floor and being full of aggression. We then wrote the bridge to the track separately to take some of that aggression out, like adding more mixer to a strong drink, and letting the listeners know they can still dance once it’s gone.” **“Streets Is Calling” (feat. M.anifest and Moonchild Sanelly)** “We wanted a hip-hop moment on the album as it has a rich heritage of dance in the music and it’s a big part of our palette. We wanted to bring hip-hop with an African accent, hence getting M.anifest and Moonchild involved, blending Afrobeats and amapiano with the Ezra horn lines. I’m really proud of this song, it’s worlds colliding that people wouldn’t expect from us.” **“Why I Smile”** “This is the sound of falling in love on the dance floor. It’s that moment in the night when you’re getting dramatic because the DJ played a couple of your tunes and so you’re having the best time of your life—everything feels right with the world. I’ve been down that hole in Shangri-La in Glastonbury, when the sun is rising and I feel like, ‘I could die today and I’d be good, all my friends are here!’ Musically, I wanted to keep broadening that idea of which music gives you permission to dance, since this has a laidback, neo-soul energy.” **“Everybody”** “‘Everybody’ is based on another church tune, the Nigerian Baptist song ‘Everybody Blow Your Trumpet.’ I love the word ‘everybody,’ since this album is for everybody, and this track is meant to evoke the end of a great night, when you’re not worried about how you’re going to get home, you’re just ascending. It’s a finishing feeling of euphoria, something we recorded in single takes with all our friends in the room, capturing a real feeling.”

As someone who invited fame and courted infamy, first with inflammatory albums like *Wolf* and later with his flamboyant fashion sense via GOLF WANG, Tyler Okonma is less knowable than most stars in the music world. While most celebrities of his caliber and notoriety either curate their public lives to near-plasticized extremes or become defined by tabloid exploits, the erstwhile Odd Futurian chiefly shares what he cares to via his art and the occasional yet ever-quotable interview. As his Tyler, The Creator albums pivoted away from persona-building and toward personal narrative, as on the acclaimed *IGOR* and *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST*, his mystique grew grandiose, with the undesirable side effect of greater speculation. The impact of fan fixation plays no small part on *CHROMAKOPIA*, his seventh studio album and first in more than three years. Reacting to the weirdness, opening track “St. Chroma” finds Tyler literally whispering the details of his upbringing, while lead single “Noid” more directly rages against outsiders who overstep both online and offline. As on his prior efforts, character work plays its part, particularly on “I Killed You” and the two-hander “Hey Jane.” Yet the veil between truth and fiction feels thinner than ever on family-oriented cuts like “Like Him” and “Tomorrow.” Lest things get too damn serious, Tyler provocatively leans into sexual proclivities on “Judge Judy” and “Rah Tah Tah,” both of which should satisfy those who’ve been around since the *Goblin* days. When monologue no longer suits, he calls upon others in the greater hip-hop pantheon. GloRilla, Lil Wayne, and Sexyy Red all bring their star power to “Sticky,” a bombastic number that evolves into a Young Buck interpolation. A kindred spirit, it seems, Doechii does the most on “Balloon,” amplifying Tyler’s energy with her boisterous and profane bars. Its title essentially distillable to “an abundance of color,” *CHROMAKOPIA* showcases several variants of Tyler’s artistry. Generally disinclined to cede the producer’s chair to anyone else, he and longtime studio cohort Vic Wainstein execute a musical vision that encompasses sounds as wide-ranging as jazz fusion and Zamrock. His influences worn on stylishly cuffed sleeves, Neptunes echoes ring loudly on the introspective “Darling, I” while retro R&B vibes swaddle the soapbox on “Take Your Mask Off.”