2024 has been a bumper year for music releases—and not least in the pop arena, where new records from the likes of Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, and Tyla have all conquered the charts. In fact, aside from that Drake-Kendrick beef and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour juggernaut, this year’s biggest music story has been the stratospheric rise of a new guard of pop sensations, in the form of Sabrina Carpenter (whose eagerly-awaited album drops this weekend), Chappell Roan (whose sleeper hit debut was in our 2023 best albums list), and Charli xcx (whose Brat summer just keeps on rolling).
The best news of all? There’s still plenty more to come: the final four months look set to be just as jam-packed with releases, from artists including Fontaines D.C., Jamie xx, Mustafa, and Laura Marling. Here, find the Vogue staff’s picks of the best albums of 2024—so far.
Adrianne Lenker, Bright Future
It only takes a few seconds of moody piano chords at the beginning of Adrianne Lenker’s sixth solo album (the musician is also known for her work as the lead singer and guitarist of Big Thief) to feel transported—and instantly reminded of Lenker’s masterful abilities as a songwriter. Across 12 bracingly intimate vignettes, Lenker’s devastating way with words—that opening track, “Real House,” touches on her itinerant childhood and the death of a beloved pet, but somehow lends those subjects a universal sweep—is matched by the power of the stripped-back, folksy instrumentation and the soft twang of her raw, unprocessed vocals. But there are exhilarating moments too, like her jangling, ferocious new version of Big Thief’s fantastic “Vampire Empire,” where she sings a looping refrain of “I’m falling,” her voice anguished and starting to break, so you’re never quite sure if that means she’s falling head over heels in love or plunging into the abyss. —Liam Hess
A.G. Cook, Britpop
As a long-time collaborator of Charli xcx (and co-executive producer of her year-dominating album Brat this summer) and having a hand in album standout “All Up In Your Mind” from Beyoncé’s Renaissance, A.G. Cook is arguably best known as your favorite pop star’s secret weapon. And his experimental sensibility has, in the past, produced album projects that bend the rules of the classic LP format, from 2020’s 49-track epic 7G to the futuristic Apple which dropped just a month later. Yet despite being spread across three discs (each representing past, present, and future), his third record Britpop feels like his most cohesive statement yet. That’s partly due to the lightly tongue-in-cheek title and the clever marketing rollout that accompanied it, but also the music itself: the album’s three-part structure allows every facet of Cook’s genre-agnostic talents to shine, while the playful fusion of glossy synths and fuzzy guitars with lyrics that reference Arthurian magic and mysticism come together to form a thrilling, escapist whole. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of pop bangers here, too: the Charli and Addison Rae-featuring “Lucifer” on disc three is as addictive as any mythical warlock’s potion. —L.H.
Ariana Grande, Eternal Sunshine
Prior to the release of Eternal Sunshine, Ariana Grande stated that she would not be releasing any new music until after her Wicked era was over. But then came the SAG-AFTRA strike last year, which gave way to what I believe to be one of Grande’s best—and certainly most mature—bodies of work. Picking up from where the 2020 hit-charged Positions left off, Eternal Sunshine sees Grande experiment further sonically (alongside pop savant Max Martin) while delivering a poignant and introspective examination of the breakdown of her marriage. There is the delicious fun of “The Boy is Mine” and “True Story,” and the timelessness of “We Can’t Be Friends,” which will be remembered as one of Grande’s fan-favorite hits. Oh, and be sure not to skip “Saturn Return Interlude,” which casually shines a light on why Grande was feeling particularly self-reflective at that moment in time. —José Criales-Unzueta
Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter
“This ain’t Texas”… but it’s one fire country album! Part two of her (alleged) three-act musical project, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is a stellar follow-up to 2022’s Renaissance. On the record, the singer takes on the country genre, and then completely redefines it—fusing its signature twangy sounds with elements of house, rap, and dance music. Come for the features—Post Malone, Miley Cyrus, country icons Willie Nelson, and Dolly Parton—but stay for the soulful Bey vocals (duh). Especially on tracks like “Blackbiird,” a cover of the Beatles classic featuring singers Tanner Adell, Tiera Kennedy, Reyna Roberts, and Brittney Spencer: a powerful reclamation of a genre that has historically drawn from—but excluded—Black artists. —Christian Allaire
Billie Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft
Turn on the radio this summer, and you were bound to hear a Billie Eilish hit or two. The singer’s third studio album is fast becoming one of the albums of summer 2024—with hits like “Lunch,” “Birds of a Feather,” and “Chihiro” leading the way. As Vogue writer Suzy Exposito wrote in her review, it’s the “uninhibited Billie we’ve been waiting for”; her ear-wormy, chill-pop tracks are more poetic, queer, unapologetic, and ethereal-sounding than ever. And if you haven’t cried-shouted to “Skinny” in your room yet, you’re simply not living. “People say I look happy, just because I got skinny,” she sings, “but the old me is still me. And maybe the real me. And I think she’s pretty.” —Christian Allaire
Charli xcx, Brat
Sure, there have been more commercially successful albums this year, but none that have had the same cultural impact as Charli xcx’s barnstorming Brat. (“Kamala IS brat,” anyone?) But it wasn’t just that puke-green cover and the frenzy of speculation that surrounded some of the songs purported to be about other pop stars—and in some cases, were later confirmed to be true, as when Lorde and Charli “worked it out on the remix”—but the fact it was Charli’s most accomplished and cohesive album to date. At first, the wild pendulum swings of the album’s sequencing may feel bracing—the thundering synths of “Sympathy Is a Knife” followed by the twinkling confessional of “I Might Say Something Stupid,” for example—but it’s Charli’s masterful ability to reconcile those contradictions that have made her an accidental spokesperson for millennial angst, as she sings about everything from her complicated feelings around motherhood (“I Think About It All the Time”) to the double-edged sword of late-night debauchery in your 30s (“365”). Most of all, though, it’s just a really great time on the dancefloor, as her Partygirl DJ sets around the world have proven. It may feel like the album she was born to make, but the most exciting part of it all? Knowing that Charli is probably already one step ahead, planning her next giant leap for pop-kind. —L.H.
Clairo, Charm
It’s a unique joy to grow up alongside an artist, especially one like Claire Cottrill. The singer, more commonly known as Clairo, delivered her most probing venture yet with her third album Charm. With her ’70s-inspired sound, Clairo is in her element, exploring sensuality in a way that feels evolved beyond the girlish likes of her early hit “Bags.” On “Sexy to Someone” she sings about the thrill—the motivation, even—of knowing that somebody desires you, while TikTok breakout “Juna” talks about wanting to buy a new dress just so you can take it off. But it isn’t all rosy. Opener “Nomad” twists the knife with “I’m touch-starved and shameless / But I’d rather be alone than a stranger.” Love and lust, she reminds us, is just as thorny. —Hannah Jackson
Dua Lipa, Radical Optimism
With Radical Optimism, Dua Lipa delivered the perfect summer album, full of luminous melodies that sound as if they were made by the sun glistening on top of the bluest Mediterranean waters somewhere. The songs are perfectly engineered to be the companion to your brain as you lay out somewhere and attempt to reach that blissful no thoughts/head empty lifestyle. But don’t take that to mean the songs are devoid of feeling: “Happy for You” may make you weep. —Laia Garcia-Furtado
Erika de Casier, Still
With Still, the Danish-Portuguese musician Erika de Casier delivered one of the year’s most arresting albums, blending slinky, Aaliyah-esque R&B with smooth, sophisticated soul—then pushing it through a futuristic, bedroom-pop filter to deftly avoid anything that felt like pastiche. (If you needed further evidence of de Casier’s zeitgeist-y instincts, there’s her side gig writing songs for the breakout K-pop act NewJeans.) Yet even if de Casier’s approach is modish, it always rings as authentic: a genuine homage to—and fresh twist on—the American R&B powerhouses she grew up admiring as a young girl, watching late-’90s music videos on MTV at home in Aarhus. That sense of fun is also present in the sly sense of humor that courses through the record, from the almost comical directness of some of the songs (“Is it getting hot in here / Or is it just me?” she winks on album standout “Ooh”) to the title itself, a tongue-in-cheek nod to records by J.Lo and Dr. Dre, in which the word “still” was used to emphasize their totemic status and longevity within the music industry. “It’s meant to be kind of funny, because I haven’t been around that long,” de Casier told Vogue back in May—but if Still is anything to go by, she’s only just getting started. —L.H.
Fabiana Palladino, Fabiana Palladino
It came as a surprise that Fabiana Palladino’s self-titled record, released in April, was actually her debut: the musician has been releasing music sporadically for over a decade, notably as the first signee to the label owned by Jai Paul, the enigmatic London-based musician whose handful of releases have had an outsize influence on 2010s pop and R&B. Despite a guest appearance from Paul on “I Care,” however, Palladino’s album is very much its own beast: a smokey, seductive homage to the finest ’80s pop—think Sade meets The Blue Nile with shades of Janet Jackson—that also cleverly avoids veering into straight-up nostalgia, thanks to Palladino’s immaculate, shimmering production. The irresistible “Stay With Me Through the Night” is one of the year’s best pop tracks, with an addictive funk guitar line underpinning her slinky, yearning calls to a departing lover. It may have taken a while to get there, but Palladino’s debut was firmly worth the wait. —L.H.
glaive, a bit of a mad one
Following the burgeoning glitch pop career of the 19-year-old Ash Gutierrez, who records as glaive—and who started posting emo hyperpop tracks on SoundCloud and Discord during the pandemic when he was stuck at home, bored with remote schooling—has been one of the delights of the post COVID era. a bit of a mad one is his latest release, an ep—just seven tracks—but denser and darker and more infectious start to finish than anything he’s put out. His best compositions are relentless, earnest, assaultive, offhand, and weirdly pretty at the same time. On tour supporting The Kid Laroi this spring, glaive (who is 6’4”) leaped around the stage in a long skirt, his hair bleached and shorn, yelping over the cacophony of his own compositions, still a teenager but more than coming into his own. —Taylor Antrim
Gracie Abrams, The Secret of Us
It’s the year of the indie pop girl, and no one is leading the charge like Gracie Abrams. At 24 years old, Abrams has already mastered the singer-songwriter art of making her albums sound like a chapter in the book of her life—because who hasn’t had the kind of one-sided crush Abrams writes about in “Risk?” It reminds me of the Fearless and Speak Now-era Taylor Swift: when it was just a girl, her guitar, and her best friend Abigail (or, in Abrams’s case, Audrey). My personal highlight is “Close to You,” a song Abrams been gatekeeping from her fans since 2017: it’s the perfect mix of radio-friendly and passionate longing that she does so well. —Irene Kim
Hovvdy, Hovvdy
I needed something like Hovvdy this year, a sprawling, languid, soft-lit, glitchy, rootsy 19-track affair that has suited any number of my lower-key moods. These are bedroom pop songs that sound like they’ve been dragged across a Texas prairie. Hovvdy’s songwriting duo, Charlie Martin and Will Taylor, both originally from Austin, have been a reliable source of charming, twinkly bent-pop melodies for the better part of a decade. But their fifth album feels grander than anything they’ve done, reminiscent of defining albums by Bon Iver and Big Thief, but more spare in its effect. Threaded through with loops and prickly synth beats, Hovvdy’s best moments aren’t nostalgic, but rather invitations to chill out in the ever-present now. —T.A.
Kacey Musgraves, Deeper Well
Saturn returns have certainly been a theme with music this year—and as someone currently going through theirs, Kacey Musgraves’s Deeper Well hit every single spot, twice. Here, Musgraves delves into folk territory as only she could, with a tinge of psychedelia and her ever-sharp wit. “Deeper Well,” the album’s title track, reads almost as an artist’s statement, with Musgraves narrating her growth since her own Saturn return, while “Cardinal” sees her delve into some late ’70s, Fleetwood Mac-esque territory, and “The Architect” displays some of her most evocative and touching songwriting. “One day, you’re on top of the mountain / So high that you’ll never come down / Then the wind at your back carries ember and ash / Then it burns your whole house to the ground,” she sings, with the kind of hindsight only time and proper soul-searching can offer. —J.C-U.
Kim Gordon, The Collective
Kim Gordon’s always been hardcore, and if anyone needed proof, then The Collective, certainly delivered. Her talk-sing signature found a fuzzed-out wall of bass to smash up against again and again while talking about packing lists, random trinkets that decorate your shelf, or what it’s like to be a man in 2024. Seeing her perform this record live was nothing short of a revelation and punk as fuck. —L.G-F.
Mk.gee, Two Star & the Dream Police
Mk.gee’s rise has been something of a slow burn, with the 26-year-old musician drip-releasing slices of wonky bedroom pop that first caught the attention of Frank Ocean back in 2017 (and were subsequently promoted on his Blonded Radio station). Producing opportunities—for artists like Omar Apollo and Dijon—then arose, and now we have his hypnotic debut album, Two Star & the Dream Police. Mk.gee is more than ready to step into the spotlight—and has honed a delightful mish-mash of genres and sonic textures that feel distinctly his own in the process. It’s lightly psychedelic, with touches of The Police and Peter Gabriel in those supple, groovy synths, and latter-day Bon Iver in its crunchier, more distorted moments, with Mk.gee’s soulful vocals anchoring his more free-wheeling instincts. If you listen to just one track, make it “Candy”: a warped ode offering forgiveness to a wayward lover—and to himself—that sounds like a lost R&B masterpiece from the ’80s put in a blender. It’s weird and utterly wonderful. —L.H.
Omar Apollo, God Said No
After the tender-hearted Ivory, Omar Apollo is finally hitting back with his follow-up record God Said No. With a swagger on “Spite,” he teases his wishy-washy lover with the repetitious “You like it / You like it / Like I do, like I do, like me.” But Apollo can’t help but return to yearning. In what feels like a sonic cousin of his biggest hit “Evergreen,” the singer (with an assist from Mustafa) delivers “Plane Trees,” where he struggles to accept a dying relationship. “Drifting,” with its subdued vocals over an up-tempo beat helps merge Apollo’s feelings of animosity with his romantic predisposition. —H.J.
Remi Wolf, Big Ideas
With Big Ideas, Remi Wolf has done a lot of growing up. On 2021’s Juno, she dabbled with sobriety and discussed avoiding her exes. Now, she may not be sober, but she’s also not numbing herself to discomfort. Wolf paints vibrant pictures of her life over funky bubblegum tunes, like on “Cherries & Cream” (“But you taste like cherries and cream / Tangerine, avocado / Yeah, I’m allergic but I like it a lot”) and “Alone in Miami” (“Soak up the sound of crypto bros / Eating cubanos by myself.”) A particular highlight is the bonus track “Slay Bitch,” a soulful, funky dance track that could get anybody onto the floor. —H.J.
St. Vincent, All Born Screaming
All Born Screaming managed to capture our current mood in a way that only St. Vincent can. Angry, aggressive, raw, urgent, and yet also sensual, and down to have a good time. One of her best yet. —L.G-F.
Tyla, Tyla
There is nothing more delicious than the way Tyla sings the words “sweating out my concealer” in “Jump,” the ninth track in her self-titled debut album—and that’s exactly what the 14 songs in this record will have you doing. Tyla has had one of the most captivating debuts in recent memory with Tyla, which managed to raise the bar set by the good-vibes-only omnipresence of her hit lead single “Water.” Back in 2020, Beyoncé gave an interview in which she spoke about the state of the music industry: “People don’t make albums anymore,” she said, “They just try to sell a bunch of little quick singles.” Tyla is an album, one you are compelled to listen to from start to finish every single time. —J.C-U.
Vampire Weekend, Only God Was Above Us
An album that felt like a surprise but shouldn’t have been. Vampire Weekend have been great for such a long time, are by this point such well-established kingpins of the indie intelligentsia, that we’d maybe started taking them for granted. (When was the last time you put on “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”?) But their fifth album Only God Was Above Us is more vital than 2019’s undercooked over-polished Father of the Bride and more sparkly and joyful than just about anything I heard this year. This is a New York indie pop album with a summertime sense of humor, with arresting changes of tempo and mood. You’ve got the swinging irresistible lullaby of “Capricorn,” the louche sprawl of “The Surfer,” and (my favorite) the anthemic rush of “Gen-X Cops.” A tight ten tracks: Keepers all of them. —T.A.