As 2024 winds down and 2025 looms on the horizon, it’s time to look back at the year that was in pop culture. We asked our staff to pick their favorite movies, games, music and television from the past year, and now we are sharing it with you.
The rules are pretty simple: The album/movie/game just needed to be released in the calendar year 2024 to be considered. For television, just one episode had to air for the first time over the last year. To be clear, this list isn’t necessarily the best of the year, it’s our favorites.
This last year was a fun one for music, as we saw a fantastic showing from the ladies with massive albums from Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, plus a breakthrough album from new pop princess Sabrina Carpenter.
Here are some of our favorites of the year.
Warning: Some of these music videos contain NSFW language.
Personally, this is my favorite Beyoncé album. She sounds fantastic, the songs are a beautiful mix of genres and her influences and it is unlike anything else I’ve heard. It’s a cohesive and perfect album wall-to-wall, making it one that I want to sit with and listen to on the best possible sound-canceling headphones. My only beef is that “Desert Eagle” is CRIMINALLY too short (you give me 1:12 of perfection???).
— Caroline Darney
To me, there is no more omnipresent and important album in 2024 than BRAT. While it entered every ether of culture ranging from memes to TikTok dances to iconic green branding to SNL appearances, it was also just plainly good music that elevated the general awareness of hyper-pop to new heights. Her songwriting is nothing short of fantastic, and there is nothing that makes me dance as effortlessly as this album does.
— Bryan Kalbrosky
Leon Thomas’ brand of R&B is definitely an acquired taste. It can will be toxic. It will be brash. It will be unforgiving at times. But it sounds incredible. He’s an amazing vocalist capable who only keeps getting better with time.
— Mike Sykes
No one was expecting this album from Swift, and they certainly weren’t anticipating the 14 additional tracks of The Anthology, but it’s one of the most raw projects from the 14-time Grammy winner. It’s an album that gets better and better each time you listen, and it’s become one of my favorites in her discography. The Tortured Poets Department includes two of her all-time best bridges in “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and “How Did It End,” one of her best songs in “The Black Dog,” a more-than-worthy track five in “So Long, London,” and a heartbreaking banger in “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.”
Plus, the TTPD addition to the Eras Tour was one of the best parts of the set.
— Darney
This album arrived to me from whispers and rumors of its greatness, unavailable for streaming on your usual platforms and originally only possible for purchase on a GeoCities website if you wanted to own a version beyond the two-hour YouTube link. But the mystique played into the allure of this sprawling project and beautiful drag performance, virtuoso guitarist and brilliant songwriter. It sounds on the whole like nothing I had ever heard but reminding me of all-time greats like The Velvet Underground, the most experimental phases of Brian Wilson, or 1960s girl bands like The Ronettes.
Discovering this is deeply rewarding and pays dividends, teleporting you to somewhere long ago as if it played faintly in the background of a diner before you were born. It is timeless, beautiful and blends together that takes you places both familiarly nostalgic and entirely unknown. Melt into this one, baby, and let it have its transformative impact.
— Kalbrosky
This beef was as much a study in the art of rap battles in the digital age as it was a simple dispute between two heated rivals. We had almost instant song responses, social media trolling, artificial intelligence, sports involvement and so so many opinions about what was going on. Drake’s Family Matters is one of the best diss tracks I’ve ever heard, and it might go down as only the third or fourth best song of the entire back and forth because of how calculated and meticulous K. Dot was with not just his song creation but the timing of when he released each song. This was the greatest rap beef ever.
— Prince J. Grimes
Tyler the Creator’s latest album was one of his all-time best, maybe right behind Flower Boy. A few songs in, you realize there’s something really deep going on, with him grappling with adulthood. It stopped me in my tracks and made me listen a few dozen more times. Just incredible.
— Charles Curtis
I don’t think I’ve fallen in love with an album as quickly as the latest release from MJ Lenderman, a prolific and undeniably cool wunderkind who, at 25 years old, is already receiving regular comparisons to Neil Young. While I was more familiar with his band Wednesday, he thrives in the frontman role as well and does a phenomenal job with some unforgettable lyricism and guitar distortion.
— Kalbrosky
I still lean towards Leon Bridges’ first album is his best, but I love all his stuff. This year’s Leon is just… vibes. There is just something about his voice that scratches my brain in the best possible way. “Ain’t Got Nothing On You” is a song that is now maybe in my top three favorite songs from the Texas crooner.
— Darney
While overshadowed by the fact that Kendrick Lamar released his album on the same day, this was a wonderful addition to the Father John Misty catalogue and probably his best release in nearly a decade. A master of his craft, he especially took me breath away on “Screamland,” and I think that’s perhaps the best song released by anyone in 2024.
— Kalbrosky
This is Kendrick Lamar’s victory lap. After completely eviscerating one of hip-hop’s titans in Drake, K Dot sends a message to the rest of the music industry: If you’re not with me, you’re against me. And he does it over so many West Coast-centric beats that make it impossible for you to hit that skip button.
— Sykes
I’ve listened to this album an unholy amount of times. It’s so good, and really shows the depth of Tori Kelly’s voice and her growth as an artist. She’s one of the most underrated singers in recent history, and if you do nothing else with your time, listening to this album — ON REPEAT — will change your life. Thank me later.
— Meghan L. Hall
If you don’t know WHY? or frontman Yoni Wolf, what better time than now to dive into one of the most underrated catalogues of the past few decades. One of the most unique and singular talents in music, few have a knack for storytelling and lyricism and songwriting quite like this idiosyncratic band. Sometimes heartbreaking but always clever, they scratch an itch in my brain, and I’m always craving more.
— Kalbrosky
I feel like I’ve been a fan of Kacey Musgraves since I saw her perform “Follow Your Arrow” at the 2014 Grammys. In the 10 years since, she’s evolved and grown up with her music. You can still hear some of her John Prine-like singer-songwriter folk roots on Deeper Well, but she also mixes in soft rock and pop, and draws from all sorts of sounds – from ukeleles to flutes to violins to steel guitars. The songs are politically aware and clear-eyed, and Musgraves is revealing and down-to-earth. The opening track, “Cardinal” might be the catchiest and my personal favorite, while “The Architect” is perhaps the most powerful. Ultimately, this is an album where you can feel Musgraves grappling with being in her mid-30s and taking stock of what’s important to her.
— Mitchell Northam
Mk.gee was a new discovery for me in 2024 and this album became an immediate addiction that is probably not getting enough credit. Entirely self-produced at home, I’d trust this guy to soundtrack any emotion I’m experiencing in my life if my life were a movie or TV Show.
— Kalbrosky
Our new pop princess came in to save the summer (and fall and winter) with her unbelievably catchy “Espresso” and then followed it up with a somehow even catchier “Please, Please, Please.” Her Short n’ Sweet album is exactly that — it only runs 36 minutes — but it’s wall-to-wall bangers to make it her breakout. Carpenter knows exactly who she is and she is so refreshing. Short n’ Sweet is funny and clever and heartbreaking and wonderful. Any time you can get a twangy bop like “Slim Pickins” and something like “Taste” on the same album, it’s a massive win.
— Darney
There was so much beef in hip-hop this year, and this is the album that started it all. Future and Metro Boomin’s We Don’t Trust You is arguably the most pivotal album of the year.
— Sykes
This is yet another great album by Vampire Weekend, who came onto the scene in 2008, and have released exclusively good music since then even as the world keeps changing around them. I saw them perform this album at Madison Square Garden, and it was a highlight of my year. Ezra Koening is such a delightful frontman of what is perhaps the best American rock band of this century.
— Kalbrosky