The 100 best songs of 2024: 100 to 51

Iglooghost

Coral Mimic

The Irish-born UK-based producer and beatmaker Seamus Malliagh aka Iglooghost has long been making head-swerving electronic music with nods to hip-hop and sound design.

His 2024 TIDAL MEMORY EXO album is filled with tracks that sound like they are trying to make their mark before they disappear. ‘Such as ‘Coral Mimic’, which runs at full clip – a frantic digital hardcore spectre with punk and ambient music sonics leaking in its step.

Its pace echoes its fictional origins.

“ I made it on a horrible corrosive drum sequencer that can only be touched with gloves on. Every 4 minutes the LCD display gets obscured by an internal fuel leakage, so I had to keep stopping so I could siphon the excess diesel out in time. The tune turned out alright but you can tell I’m clearly really pissed off cos of the technical issues distracting me.” 

Susanna

Elephant Song

A piano note run in an unconventional time signature, is the bed of this beaut of a track from the Norwegian singer and composer Susanna.

Susanna released a new album Meditations on Love on August 23rd via her own label SusannaSonata. 

‘Elephant Song’ is an ode to being in process; to struggle, to stumble, being in doubt, feeling vulnerable, but to keep on going. All we have is here and now. Highly inspired by the Ethiopean pianist Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, and the first song I made on my new piano (a Steinway from the sixties which I totally emptied by savings account to buy).”

Susanna

The Alchemist, Action Bronson

Minnesota Fats

A highlight on The Alchemist’s new album The Genuine Articulate which also features Schoolboy Q, Larry June and Conway The Machine.

‘Minnesota Fats’ is named after the fictional pool player who inspired the film The Color of Money, and features a big dirty bassline as its central motif.

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Bricknasty

Boyfriend

A highlight from Bricknasty’s XONGZ mixtape, a live favourite and a perfect example of their off-kilter earworm soul punk jazz vibe.

“I wrote this song for me ma and her girlfriend at the time (2019). They’re split up now but it was good while it lasted and I’m happy for her always and happy this song came from them twos relationship.”

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Paranoid London, Mutado Pintado

The Motion

From the industrial electro duo’s album, the brilliantly titled Arseholes, Liars, and Electronic Pioneers, comes this siren call dancefloor number. It’s a bit Chemical Brothers, a bit electro, a bit techno, and the voice is their frequent Paranoid London vocalist Clams Baker (also Warmduscher/Sworn Virgins).

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New Jackson

Out of Reach

David Kitt released the second album from his electronic project New Jackson OOPS!… POP, and its strengths are its techno pop meets standard songwriting duality, and I dig the Stock Aiken Waterman ’80s reference in its up-to-date sound.

“Out of Reach was the last track I wrote for the album. I had a version of the album that Iiked but the whole thing didn’t feel quite ‘oops’ or ‘pop’ enough. I had the melody and chorus of Out of Reach knocking around for a while and I wrote and recorded the lyrics and vocals in one long session the day before mastering was booked. It gave the album a shot of pop urgency that made it really gel as a whole. I get a mild bang of Jason Donovan off it but it has giddy techno-pop sugar rush that I really like and it makes it a worthy addition to the New Jackson canon. And hey Jason D via Stock Aiken and Waterman is definitely part of my pop musical DNA.

David Kitt.

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Group Listening

New Brighton

Interloping woodwind and delicate keys form this rolling organic ambient wave of a track from the twosome, Paul Jones and Stephen Black aka Group Listening.

It’s from the band’s album Walks on PRAH Recordings.

Walks draws from the field recordings of Ernest Hood; the abstraction of Harold Budd; the saxophone of Sam Gendel; the “heightened naturalism” of a Martin Parr photograph; the clarity and site-specificity of Japanese ambient, environmental & new age music of the 80s and 90s, and, prominently, Robert Walser’s pseudo-biographical novella The Walk — an appreciation of the philosophical space gifted by walks to walkers.

The Trip

I Need

Full steam ahead dance music – house pianos, speed garage and soul vocals slammed together into one keeling-over Ibiza reality TV-referencing rave banger.

Sloucho, Emby, k-caz

Brand New

Along with its superb Aisling Phelan video that feels like a GTA Easter Egg, ‘Brand New’ is a dose of garage two-step urgency that showcase the cub raps of Emby and k-Caz.

‘Brand New’ features on Sloucho’s NPC album.

Remi Wolf

Cinderella

Superior funk pop from Remi Wolf’s second album Big Ideas. “Me and the boys in the hotel lobby,” is THE hook.

“‘Cinderella’ is a lyrical collage of the ups and downs and mood swings and transient lifestyle I was experiencing while writing this album. Constant travel and rapid changes led me to feel such a rollercoaster of emotion—moving from feeling really insecure to feeling really good to feeling manic and depressed and then feeling OK again, while desperately craving a grounding figure to tell me I was doing a good job. So, this song was me stepping in as my own fairy godmother telling myself that I was in control.”

Mount Kimbie

A Figure In The Surf

My favourite track from The Sunset Violent, a lo-fi guitar band dreamy chug that is far and away from the post-dubstep that they first became known for. It just marks how much the band, now a four-piece have morphed in recent years.

Sabrina Carpenter

Espresso

Perfect pop music.

Khruangbin

Hold Me Up (Thank You)

Texas instrumental trio Khruangbin really went interstellar this year after a few year’s of growing appreciation for their subtle easy listening psychedelia.

I didn’t love the 2024 album A La Sala – it felt too lightweight and background to hit, the smooth interlocking instrumental grooves, backing vocals, and a shimmering vibe of ‘Hold Me Up (Thank You)’ worked for me all the same.

Ezra Collective, Yazmin Lacey

God Gave Me Feet For Dancing

Dancing celebrated as spiritual commune with soul from the British jazz collective. Food for the soul and feet.

a lazarus soul

The Dealers

A Lazarus Soul chiefly identify as a Dublin band. Their last album was called The D They Put Between the R & L, and their songs talk of the true Dublin working class.

From their album this yea r-  No Flowers Grow In Cement Gardens, ‘The Dealers’ is a beautiful stirring acoustic and string-arranged song about Dublin street traders.

The song is a beautifully-realised elegy to Bridie and Tessie, two Dublin characters “out on their feet, selling knocked-off Reebok along cobbled streets.” The song’s orchestration is by Joe Chester and features noted Irish musician Steve Wickham on violin.

The pleasure of listening to the lyrics of these characters is a big part of the appeal, as is Brian Brannigan’s vocal.

The video for ‘The Dealers’ was made by Myles O’Reilly. The song was directly inspired by singer and songwriter Brian Brannigan’s trips with his mother Peggy to get the groceries from Moore Street’s street traders, which Brannigan calls “a love letter to these warrior women”.

Biig Piig

Decimal

We now know Biig Piig’s debut album 11:11 arrives in February and 2024 single ‘Decimal’ features. The song has the artist switching between Spanish and English on a full-bodied song about an inescapable attraction. The club-leaning bassline is partly inspired by the studio where it was made – Paris’ Motorbass studios, founded by recently deceased French producer Philippe Zdar of Cassius. A lot of great dance music, and French touch was made there.

Kelly Lee Owens

Dreamstate

It’s hard to ignore the Daniel Avery comparisons here, so I won’t. The Welsh producer Kelly Lee Owens’ title track of her new record is clearly inspired by her mentor’s acid electronic dancefloor cuts as popularised by the Drone Logic era. No bad thing, mind.

Owens has consistently put tracks on her records to date that have that transportive synth workout that act like meditative propulsive higher state of consciousness reaches, and ‘Dreamstate’ ticks that box on her fourth album, which draws more on dreamy songcraft and pop vocals.

JPEGMAFIA

SIN MIEDO

In another timeline Kanye is making shit that slaps this hard. Rap, rock, industrial, electronic fusion.

Peggy plays Dublin in January.

Yaeji

Booboo

 ‘Booboo’ harks back to the body music of ‘Raingurl‘, including an interpolation of that track, but it actually goes harder than that breakthrough for the American Korean producer.

It’s the first song since the artist’s more introspective 2023 album With A Hammer.

‘Booboo’ is just a club banger, albeit one that reflects on that breakthrough in 2017.

“i think with anything – a little breathing room, a little break – distance makes the heart grow fonder. with the overpowering attention that came from raingurl, i took a break from clubbing, dance music, and the underground scene, but in that time away from it all, it’s allowed me to gain new perspective and a deeper appreciation for it. this year is the 10-year mark for many of the parties my friends and i used to go to, so booboo coming out now feels like full circle moment. and with my closest friends—who i’ve witnessed grow as DJs and start their own labels, throwing parties & having fun, all while creating a radical and safe space, it’s been so fun being their cheerleader and now rejoining them in the club, front right! “

Yaeji

LCD Soundsystem

x-ray eyes

‘x-ray eyes’ was the first confirmation of new LCD Soundsystem before Primavera Sound announced a new LCD album would be released in 2025.

‘x-ray eyes’ has a low-key 12″ feel that reminds me of their very first releases, aura: play it in a dive bar.

As for the album, James Murphy sez:

it’s the first single of what’s shaping up to be a new album. don’t ask me when that is, because we’re still working on it. but it feels very good to be putting out new music. … but, no, there’s no finished LP yet. but when we’re not playing shows, it’s getting closer and closer to completion. so that’s the news. anything else you hear is bullshit speculation.

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Fort Romeau

Blue

A highlight from the eight-track Romantic Gestures, a collection of singles released in the past two years from the producer, a perennial favourite.

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John Glacier, EarthEater

Money Shows

London experimental rapper, producer, and poet John Glacier dropped this nebulous guitar-chugging experimental rap amble, produced by Kwes Darko. on the Like a Ribbon EP on the Young label.

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The Cure

Alone

Nearly 50 years into their career, The Cure are still making timely and essential music. Their first song in 16 years is a doom-laden reflection on mortality, thoroughly uplifting in its mortal bleakness.

 “This is the end of every song we sing,” Smith sings. “The fire burned out to ash, the stars grown dim with tears.
Cold and afraid, the ghosts of all that we’ve been
We toast with bitter dregs, to our emptiness.”

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Bullion, Carly Rae Jepsen

Rare

Bullion stepped out behind the boards for Affection, an album on Ghostly International, with his songwriting hat on, as opposed to his established production rep.

‘Rare’ featuring Carly Rae Jepsen is a Blood Orange-esque soft pop glow, and one of three songs on the record with a guest, alongside Panda Bear and Charlotte Adigery.

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Kabin Crew, Lisdoonvarna Crew

The Spark

Do not pretend you are above this song – it slaps.

The Irish song of the summer.

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Bootie Grove

Always a Kid

French producer Bootie Grove comes through with one of those instrumental dance tracks I love, the kind that radiates through the speakers with a cascading positivity, and a wistful disposition.

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IDLES

Gift Horse

‘Gift Horse’ is a drum-heavy track from Idles’ fifth album Tangk, a rally cry into battle of highfalutin absurdity, with love. The punk version of ‘My Lovely Horse’?

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Charli XCX

Von Dutch

The brat Indie Sleaze anthem. Absolutely ripping into this 2006 track.

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Anwar Highsign, Arckatron, Castle

Kids Don’t Feel

Philadelphia MC/producer Anwar HighSign and LA-based producer/composer Arckatron collab on this headnodding rap cut (with rapper Castle), discovered via Marc Weidenbaum’s This Week in Sound Substack.

That bassline dragging on the floor of the track is sticky like frost ice.

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Yard Act; Katy J Pearson

When the Laughter Stops

I did a 180 on Leeds band Yard Act recently as second album Where My Utopia? dropped the overtly-verbose performative style in favour of brash and bold indie bops like this one, like ‘Dream Job’ before it – it prioritises fun and melody.

Cruza

Supa Anxious

Orlando four-piece Cruza deliver woozy textures, downbeats and razor-thing guitars under whispery vocals that feel like walking into a particularly nice band jam.

GǼG

Bonne. M

Japan’s GǼG (Monkey Timers and Keita Sano) take some crunchy synths and a late-era posthumous Queen classic and create some psychedelic edit magic on Optimo’s label, via their Anarcho Disco volumes 1 & 2.

Father John Misty

Screamland

A highlight from Mahashmashana, the sixth FJM album, ‘Screamland’ starts out as many Father John Misty songs do, with piano and pensive Josh Tillman ruminations, but this time, there’s a wall of noise being held back for the chorus that duly explodes across and that duality between it and the light verses really does it for me.

St. Vincent

Broken Man

A lot of what Annie Clark does these days doesn’t penetrate my musical heart so while All Born Screaming didn’t move me much, ‘Broken Man’ the single stood alone in that regard.

Silverbacks

Giving Away An Inch Of

The Irish indie-rock band Silverbacks third album Easy Being A Winner was absolutely a winner for me, with ‘Giving Away A Inch’ being top of the pile, thanks to vocals from Emma O’Hanlon and the ringing circular guitar work.

John Cale

Shark-Shark

The elder Welsh legend John Cale with some guitar fuzz on the energetic track ‘Shark-Shark’, a song from his album POPtical Illusion on Domino.

“Sometimes you write a song purely for a mood. Shark-Shark’ has two versions – both a nod to finding humour in music. When you’re feeling too much of the real world, the best diversion is something that puts a grin on your face.”

Porij

Marmite

‘Ghost’ is wonkly alt-electronic pop from Manchester band Porij’s debut album Teething.

“You don’t stand a fucking chance….”

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

Challengers – Match Point

From the horniest sports threesome movie of all-time, the Challengers score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross eschews their usual light touch in favour of hedonistic rave tunes, in a way that reminds me of the Dust Brothers’ score for Fight Club.

The ‘Challengers’ track is a hi-octane motif in the movie.

Laura Marling

Child of Mine

“You and your dad are dancing in the kitchen
Life is slowing down but it’s still bitchin'”

The song from Laura Marling’s eight album Patterns In Repeat is about appreciating the newborn phase of parenthood, and was written while “bouncing my daughter in her bouncer when she was four weeks old. I hadn’t sat down to write. It’d been a while since I’d picked up the guitar, just to pass the time, so maybe that did the trick. I wrote the lullaby soon after and thought ‘OK, maybe I could make a record this year’”.

Clara La San

Things You Didn’t Know

Clara La San is a relatively mysterious musician from Manchester, who most people will recognise from featuring on recent Bicep records, and she has provided backing vocals for musician Yves Tumor.

Made Mistakes is the artist’s debut album, an entirely self-written, produced and issued album of nocturnal R&B-pop songwriting, and ‘Things You Didn’t Know’ features on it.

La San deleted her 2018 mixtape Good Mourning prior to this album release.

Empress Of

Lorelei

Lorely Rodriguez latest’s album, the bilingual For Your Consideration has a compelling origin story.

“I was in love with a director and he was announcing his ‘For Your Consideration’ campaign for the Oscars. He took me up on a hill and said he was emotionally unavailable and he kind of broke my heart. I went into the studio that day and we wrote a song called ‘For Your Consideration’ that reflects on glam and Hollywood. That was the gateway for the album and it gave me the opportunity to explore broader themes.”

‘Lorelei’ continues the disappointing lovers theme, with a song about being cheated on.

Hiro Ama, Keeley Forsyth

Billowing

Music for Peace and Harmony is the album fromHiro Ama, the Japan-born, London-based composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Hiro Ama (of Teleman).

‘Billowing’ reminds me of Beverly Glenn-Copeland, in its stirring minimal Japanese electro-acoustic synth work as much of the album does but the presence of Forsyth adds an extra elegiac element to proceedings. It uses an obscure 1980s Japanese synthesiser called the Waraku – the word translated means “peace and harmony”

“A lot of things are fragile and chaotic at the moment in this world, and I wanted to make music to soothe my mind and heart. Modern music sometimes sounds too pristine and sanitised. I like those spontaneous sounds. “

Koreless

Seven

The return of Koreless with his first tune in two years is, this weird and wonky little tune on Young, a track that is sounds like eerie minimalism that could be used to maximal dancefloor effect.

Koreless has produced a lot of FKA Twigs forthcoming album, and she has called him the “guiding light” of what’s to come.

Billie Eilish

Lunch

Lusty lesbian anthem and earworm lead single from Billie Eilish’s third album Hit Me Hard and Soft, marked a softening for the artist, while still keeping the interesting sonics that made her name.

Billie Eilish for Dublin shows in 2025

single men in their twenties

don’t be asking me

JJ Lee and Cónal Murphy are behind the Cork project single men in their twenties, with the debut EP The Sunday Scaries.

‘Don’t Be Asking Me’ is The track is basically an annoying conversation you’d like to get away from from a relative turned into a great song, that builds to an outburst batting away the impending social ineptitude and annoyance at being asked about your own lack of social mobility.

Fabiana Palladino

Stay With Me Through The Night

The Jai Paul collaborator and live band member released her self-titled album this year. ‘Stay With Me Through The Night’ was the first song to be written for the record and has a video co-directed by Fabiana Palladino and Josh Renaut, and shot by Buster Grey-Jung – that showcases the beautiful intimacy of Palladino in situ at the piano where the whole album started.

The song has such a smart classic feel.

Four Tet

Daydream Repeat

A clash of Kieran Hebden’s styles with a rough feedback-heavy noise contrasting with a sweet birdsong melody, which featured on the album Three, on his own label TEXT.

The album also features ‘Loved’ and ‘Three Drums’.

Kim Gordon

The Candy House

You wouldn’t have expected an wobbly electro Memphis trap tune from Kim Gordon but that’s exactly what ‘The Candy House’ is from the trapand electronic-heavy album The Collective. The title and this song is inspired by Jennifer Egan’s book The Candy House, which features a social network in the not too distant future in which memories are uploaded to be experienced by others.

Also, ‘I’m A Man’

Moin, Sophia Al-Maria

Lift You

Understated ’90s alt-rock and slowcore provide the foundation for UK trio’s Moin track with spoken word by Qatari/American artist Sophia Al-Maria.

It’s like Mogwai Young Team, meets M83 meets Midwestern emo.