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L to R: Mdou Moctar, The Cure, Nilüfer Yanya (by Derrick Santini), Michael Kiwanuka, Magdalena Bay, The Last Dinner Party, Maya Hawke (by Shervin Lainez), and Cassandra Jenkins (by Shervin Lainez)

Dec 29, 2024 By Mark Redfern

Under the Radar tends to handle our best albums of the year lists differently than most other music publications. Whereas competitors are in a hurry to get their list up before anyone else, in late November and early December, we prefer to take our time with it and spend the last two months of the year considering and reconsidering as many of the previous year’s albums as possible. We also always aim for a Top 100 (plus honorable mentions), when compared to a standard Top 50 elsewhere. We try to go with our honest feelings, keeping it to the LPs we genuinely loved regardless of trends. Artists that have long fallen out of favor, replaced by new critical darlings, still potentially have a place on our Top 100 if they released a worthy new release. And we also lean heavily towards indie rock music, which is mainly what we cover. You wouldn’t expect a hip-hop magazine to feature a slew of country albums on their best albums list, so don’t get your hopes up for a lot of metal, hip-hop, and chart-topping pop albums on our Top 100. Finally, our list is presented from the number one album on down, rather than the countdown approach that the majority of websites seem to favor.

This year it started with a list of 80 albums I most wanted our writers to consider, added into a Google Sheets spreadsheet. Then other writers and editors added in additional albums they felt were worth considering for an initial nomination list we all voted on, with writers also able to add in even more albums as the voting continued. Eventually 263 albums were considered this year. Contributors had to pick their personal Top 50, with their number one album getting 50 points, their number two getting 49 points, and so on from there.

For an album to make the Top 100 it had to fit two criteria. Firstly, at least three or four different writers or editors had to vote for it, ideally four or more (most of the albums in our Top 30 were picked by 10 or more, with the Top 3 each being picked by 17 different voters). Secondly, it had to be an album we covered in some capacity in 2024, be it via a news item or items, an appearance on Songs of the Week, an album review, or an interview. The honorable mentions section features some albums that our writers liked that we didn’t cover this year, along with LPs that simply didn’t get enough votes but that I still liked. The votes by my co-publisher/wife Wendy and I were weighted slightly more than anyone else’s and we had the final say on what the number one album was (after all, it’s our magazine). I also had the final say on which albums made the Top 100 and I tweaked the exact order here and there, but mostly these are the same results as the raw vote by our writers, accounting for the stipulations I just mentioned. Then our writers penned fresh blurbs on each of the albums in the Top 60.

Musically speaking, in 2024 mainstream culture is stuck in a nostalgia trap and has been for several years. Fueled by Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and easy access to all recorded music, newer songs and albums on the charts are routinely crowded out by music from the past.

The Billboard Hot 100 Top 5 in America this week consists of the exact same songs as this week last year, almost in the same order: Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” (1994) at number one, followed by Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (1958), Wham!’s “Last Christmas” (1984), Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” (1957), and Burl Ives’ “A Holly Jolly Christmas” (1964). This week last year “Last Christmas” and “Jingle Bell Rock” were flipped. In fact, it was also the same Top 5 in 2022 (in a slightly different order again). You have to go back to December 2021 for a much different Christmas Top 5.

When looking at this week’s Billboard 200 album charts, beyond the expected older Christmas albums (by the likes of such long-dead elder statesmen as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, and Gene Autry) it’s littered with non-holiday full-lengths years or decades old, including The Beatles’ Abbey Road (1969), Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors (1977), AC/DC’s Back in Black (1980), Queen’s Greatest Hits (1981), Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1982), Metallica’s Metallica (1991), Nirvana’s Nevermind (1991), ABBA’s Gold: Greatest Hits (1992), Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory (2000), Daft Punk’s Discovery (2001), Creed’s Greatest Hits (2004,) Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die (2012), Arctic Monkeys’ AM (2013), Nickleback’s The Best of Nickelback Volume 1 (2013), Tame Impala’s Currents (2015), and a whopping 10 different albums by Taylor Swift traversing many release years.

The two songs most likely to get kids excited at the monthly dances at my daughter’s middle school? Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” from 1987 and, alas, Los Del Río’s “Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)” from 1995. I have plenty of friends who mainly listen to music from the ’80s and ’90s and others who were once die-hard audiophiles but stopped paying attention to new music in the late 2000s or early 2010s.

As an Under the Radar reader, you’re probably more tuned into new music than most and hopefully know full well that there is a multitude of amazing new music released every year, even if it doesn’t reach the larger public consciousness. Our Top 100 Albums of 2024 runs the gamut from debut albums by exciting new artists to the first LP in 16 years from a legendary group and everything in between. 2024 was another difficult year in terms of events both domestic and international and the outlook for 2025 is decidedly uncertain, due to November’s election results and continued conflicts worldwide. Hopefully you’ll find respite from such concerns in some of the albums on our list and not just the familiar sounds of decades ago.

Check out Part 1 (#1-50) here.

Check out Part 2 (#51-100 and honorable mentions) here.