I’m still of the opinion that we should all wait until the end of the year to post our list of favourite albums and this year I am edging very close to the wire by posting on New Year’s Eve! 

Like most people I have found 2024 to have been good and bad, rewarding and frustrating in equal measure. In terms of music, I have been feeling really positive and found more to personally enjoy and get excited by this year than last. I still have been quite slow and uneven with posting on the blog, alongside an ever changing social media landscape it hasn’t been easy to maintain any kind of consistent online voice.

Still I am thankful to anyone who has read my blog and I just want to express my gratitude to anyone who still follows and comments. You have all made me want to keep posting. And I still believe small quiet places on the internet to share your thoughts are worthwhile things to have.

So then we come to my favourite albums of the year, in ranking order by the arbitrary rules I set up when I began this blog way back in 2017. For no particular reason I decided that to feature on the list an album should be made up of mainly new material by a female artist / group or duo and the top slot is reserved for an album which is majority self-written. The rest of the list reflects my own personal listening and is not intended to be any kind of ‘best of’. 

Please share yours in the comments! Click below to read any review if I have written about the album. 

Another year is almost over and it’s the traditional time to reflect back on what musical treats have nourished us over the last twelve months. 

2024 has been a strong year for women in mainstream music, from Taylor Swift’s epic Eras tour to some stunning breakthrough pop performers like Chappell Roan, Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter. In country music Lainey Wilson won the coveted Entertainer of the Year award and there was also awards for newcomers Ella Langley and Megan Moroney in the genre too. None of these artists appear on my personal lists but I have been heartened by their success.

In terms of my own listening, I always veer towards comforting, introspective, poetic indie and Americana, adding some soft soul and folk with an occasional blast of epic pop or barnstorming country tunes for good measure. This year gave me much sustenance with the return of some of my all-time favourites, alongside a few newer artists who helped me through. 

Some of these tracks may have been released in 2023 but I count any song on an album released this year for this list. I have also included only one song per artist (excluding collaborations). 

Earlier this month I went to see the wonderful The Last Dinner Party play live in Glasgow. The all girl band have a young, fashionable, mainly female crowd and play music that is thrillingly orchestral, dramatic and fun. Being in a crowd like that is heartening and a privilege. The band seem to really care about their audience too, raising money for local food bank charities on each night of the tour. 

However thanks to their overuse of strobe lighting effects I left the show with a headache, feeling irritated to the point of anger. 

Last week Bright Eyes cancelled their entire tour for the rest of the year, citing issues with Conor Oberst’s vocal health as the reason. While a few fans might have been disappointed, most actually breathed a sigh of relief. Anyone who has seen Conor on stage in the last few years knows that performing live has become seriously detrimental to his physical and mental health. The most alarming moment on this aborted tour was him struggling so much he was talking about killing himself, his own songs becoming so physically painful to perform. 

Jane’s Addiction fans witnessed an unraveling of a different sort on their tour last month. After a series of troubled shows where Perry Farrell was drinking copious amounts of wine and failing to follow along with the songs, the band appeared to be on the brink. Instead of cancelling the tour they kept going and, as everyone will have probably seen, this ended up in Farrell assaulting guitarist Dave Navarro on stage, effectively ending the band. 

What both of these incidents have in common is that these men are obviously on the edge – suffering with likely mental health, addiction, physical issues or a combination of all three. They have been forced by circumstance to play live for fans to make money, to fulfil obligations or because they don’t know what else to do with their lives at this point. They have been pushed to the brink because of their jobs and they’re just a snapshot of a wider music industry unraveling due to the pressures of touring right now.  

As 2023 draws to a close it is the traditional time for music fans to look back with love and appreciation for the music that has seen them through the year.

Before I began blogging I would scour the end of year lists in the hope of finding a gem I had missed, and more broadly as an easy way to keep up with the cultural conversation around popular music. Sometimes that has led me to getting depressed at the state of the industry but the best lists can unite fans in wonder and joy.

As a blogger generally I have listed my favourite albums of those I have reviewed, however this year I have not reviewed as many albums as usual. In fact for various reasons I haven’t written about some of my favourite and most listened to albums, including Allison Russell, Brandy Clark and Jenny Lewis.

In 2023 I returned to my old ways of taking things slower, listening at different times than the release schedule, not writing about everything I was listening to. The albums that I did write about I felt I had something to say and the time to say it.

Looking back on this I actually don’t think it was necessarily the best choice to write less, as writing helps my mood and my life, but I liked feeling less pressure to participate in the online culture. To write a blog is to take your time, to listen well and really think, which is why it is such an enriching activity.

So that’s a long winded way of getting round to my list of ten albums of the year. As per other years I keep the number one spot for a solo artist who has written the majority of their record without songwriting collaboration, as this best encapsulates the independent free spirit of what this blog is about.

I have included the link to my original review, if one exists. Please comment below with your choices and anything you’ve loved this year which you think has been overlooked!

A few years back I wrote a post about trying to be a more minimalist music fan, addressing many of the issues I had with the constant demands on music fans to buy more and more and more and more stuff.

After writing that post I slowly began to change my behaviour, and this year I have almost stopped buying new vinyl entirely. In fact the only album I have purchased on vinyl this year is a signed copy of Amanda Shires last album from her concert in June.

Yes, you read that right, this vinyl addict has gone nearly six months without adding anything new to their collection at all. Please send me all your praise for this remarkable feat of resistance in the comments.

Let me walk you through the reasons why I, music blogger with a record collection stretching into the hundreds, came to the blasphemous decision to stop buying new vinyl.