From “Not Like Us” to “Nasty” and “Slut Me Out 2” to “You a Stepper,” these are the songs we had on repeat this year.
See The FADER’s top 50 albums of 2024.
There is a great run of four songs in the middle of this list. It comprises a blissful track from Japanese experimentalist Hakushi Hasegawa, a burst of blown-out fury from OsamaSon, a breathtaking seven-minute Urdu-Hindi epic by Sheherazaad, and an inescapable pop smash from Sabrina Carpenter. It’s a neat encapsulation of this publication’s genre-blurring ethos, an idea established a quarter of a century ago and carried forward today by the sharpest group of music journalists out there. This list, like everything we’ve run this year, whiplashes between sounds and ideas and languages. It is chaotic, and we hope you love that as much as we do. — Alex Robert Ross
50. Nourished By Time, “Hand On Me”
Erotic Probiotic 2, Marcus Brown’s 2023 debut as Nourished By Time, expertly blended so many sounds — R&B, deep house, new wave, neo-soul, funk, post-punk, Baltimore club music — that it felt less like a lockdown project than a long-buried masterpiece from some reclusive auteur. “Hand On Me,” from his follow-up EP Catching Chickens, breathes the same rarified air. It’s a crying-in-the-club combination of early hip-hop beats, stringy synths, and cascading vocals punctuated occasionally by gunshot-like cracks and falsetto flourishes. It makes no sense on paper, but Brown’s music never does. — ARR
49. ANOHNI, “Breaking”
No one turns world crises into beautiful music like ANOHNI. On “Breaking,” she sings about the degradation of our natural world, acknowledging her complicity even as she documents her suffering. But it’s all rendered so sweetly, backed by soft guitar and clarinet, with ANOHNI’s voice as soothing as ever. On the chorus — “It’s really something to be breaking” — the pain that flows quietly through the rest of the song spills forth only to be swept away with the beginning of each new verse, like the gardens, the willow forests, and the white deer swiftly disappearing from the surface of the earth. — Raphael Helfand
48. Tems, “Love Me JeJe”
Originating from a freestyle session with friends, “Love Me Jeje” courses with tender desire. Interpolating Seyi Sodimu’s 1997 single of the same name, Tems builds on the familiarity of the old favorite to craft a romantic fantasia while playfully switching between a sung-rap flow and thrilling call-and-response schemes. The reference to Sodimu helped garner a multi-generational audience for the track, Tems’ careful reworking of the source material paying homage to the past while imagining a bold new future. It is a conscious embrace of light-heartedness and joy. — Wale Oloworekende
47. Tyla, “Jump”
Much of Tyla’s self-titled album is built around the supreme confidence that the singer has in herself, but the scope of that self-belief is rarely on display as clearly as it is on the sticky-sweet “Jump.” Here she’s in her element, abandoning the obfuscated allusions of 2023’s “Water” for a more pointed delivery. Over smoky drums, she sings about being appreciated across the world while Gunna contributes a verse about doing anything to please her. It’s a deft meld of styles and cultures that finds Tyla at her best and most confident. — WO
46. Oklou, “family and friends”
Who is the real Oklou? A doe-eyed cousin of Thumper the rabbit from Bambi, or the immense, all-knowing godhead who rules over Marylou Mayniel’s meticulous electro-pop compositions like little bubble universes? On “family and friends,” the oblique, often religious imagery of 2020’s sleeper-hit “Galore” remains, but more confessional details have started to creep in alongside her Eurodance synth melodies and almost pagan percussion. In presenting what seem to be cutting words from a scorned lover — “’Are you frozen? Are you even human? Are you even real?’” — Oklou gives up some infallibility, but brings us that much closer to her. — Walden Green
45. ILLIT, “Magnetic”
The five members of ILLIT are sick with a crush on “Magnetic,” a perfectly engineered pop song that bubbles like a just-shaken soda can. Millions of odes have been written on this topic but none are as cute as this one with its “Oh! My! Gosh, You’re my crush!” exclamations, swift Jersey club beat, and seriously addictive “yu-yu-yu-yu-yu-yu” hook. The rookie K-pop girl group have released a handful of songs since this one, but for now it’s still their brilliant peak. — Steffanee Wang
44. Molly Nilsson, “The Communist Party”
In an alternate universe, “The Communist Party” — Molly Nilsson’s communism-themed update of Madonna’s “Vogue” — came before Madge’s track, and the world became a better place. The writings of Marx and Engels became gospel for the young, gay fashion crowd, before trickling down into the mainstream and changing everyone’s lives for the better. Perhaps best of all, Nilsson became a star. That’s an alternate universe, though. All we have is this one — and here, we thank God we have her at all. — Shaad D’Souza
43. Young Jesus, “Brenda & Diane”
John Rossiter had decided to quit music after 2022’s Shepherd Head. He went off to study permaculture, as far away from the false glow of his computer as possible. Less than two years later, on the opening song from Young Jesus’ seventh album, The Fool, it’s clear that whatever fatigue Rossiter felt was overwhelmed by the fire in his stomach. “Brenda & Diane” is a glorious piece of heartland rock, empathetic and proud-chested. Rossiter augments his voice, finding an incandescent melodrama at the back of his throat. It’s the perfect vehicle for the short story he tells, and a testament to the healing power of the soil. — ARR
42. YT feat. Lancey Foux, “Black & Tan”
This year’s undisputed global anthem of the nu-jerk movement came from across the ocean with a searingly cool collaboration from London artists YT and Lancey Foux. It’s a feverish trading of Auto-Tuned bars with the pitch of two excited longtime friends at a much-anticipated reunion, as the beat rumbles like a Lear jet mid-turbulence. If flexing had a tag team world championship, YT and Lancey’s song would have earned the belt, its hilarious detail and seamless creative rhythms unrivaled in 2024 rap link-ups. — Jordan Darville
41. Porter Robinson, “Knock Yourself Out XD”
At what point does intense self-searching start to feel just like navelgazing? This seems to be one of the questions that Porter Robinson has been turning over in the wake of his 2021 album Nurture, which featured a number of sober meditations on life and the meaning of art, and whether it was even worth continuing to make music in a confusing world. (The answer he ultimately came to, of course, was a celebratory yes.) But how does one follow that? By poking fun at the very idea of such an enterprise. Lighthearted and prankish, Robinson’s third studio album Smile! 😀 is full of joyous abandon and first-thought-best-thought ethos that forced him not to take himself, or anything, so damn seriously. “Knock Yourself Out XD,” is perhaps the most direct about this changing disposition, delineating a number of grievances he has with the pressures of fame and the complicated pleasures of success, all while undercutting the idea that such things are worth writing a song about to begin with. Full of joyous confetti blasts of synth programming and an overall production aesthetic that feels like getting locked in a Zumiez overnight, it’s gleefully absurd and silly — almost as silly as the idea that touring around the world and playing songs as a job would be worth complaining about. He makes his stance clear on one of the record’s most memorably strange lines, “Bitch, I’m Taylor Swift!” simultaneously celebrating and mocking the unique position he’s in as a person making art that people care about. — Colin Joyce
40. Baby Osama feat. Vontee The Singer, “You A Stepper”
“You A Stepper” is a Tony Bennett duet for the sexy drill set, crafted for genuine romantics who aren’t above the occasional sticky situationship. Baby Osama and Vontee the Singer fold acrobatic vocal runs into a syrupy soulful molten core, softhearted enough to make sleeping with your ex seem wholesome (ish). — Vivian Medithi
39. Hakushi Hasegawa, “Boy’s Texture”
A master of contorting electronic music into disorienting and ravishing new forms, Hakushi Hasegawa creates music that’s a seven-fingered open-palm slap to some dimension of sensation you didn’t know existed. “Boy’s Texture” dials down the velocity ever so slightly, giving way to a new vulnerability within the frenzy. — JD
38. OsamaSon, “ik what you did last summer”
At his excessive best, OsamaSon distills the perpetual onslaught of modern life into hyperactive joy. “ik what you did last summer” is accordingly exuberant and accelerated, rifling through images just as quickly as the South Carolina rapper blows through fresh direct deposits. If the old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born, can we at least have some fun and look fly doing it? — VM
37. Sheherazaad, “Lehja”
Translated from Hindi and Urdu, Sheherazaad means “free city”; “Lehja,” the concluding track on her Arooj Aftab-produced Qasr EP, traces the heartbeat beneath this mythical place’s winding streets. For its seven minutes, “Lehja” is a subversion — of our linear notions of narrative, personifying a city as a singular repressed entity — and of the Hindustani classical music Sheherazaad studied. Listen closely and you’ll hear the steady rhythm of breathing, life itself moving with the song’s gentle currents. — JD
36. Sabrina Carpenter, “Please Please Please”
After years of living through a key change deficit, Sabrina Carpenter has single-handedly restored the candy-crazed pop economy. The first and second verses of “Please Please Please” are in two completely different keys, immediately shaking away any sense of complacency with a subtle disorientating trick that makes our ears twitch. She’s the popstar with the most élan today, never letting her songs fall into idleness and, with her knack for both genre reverence and expansion, never allowing her listener to take pop music for granted. — EM