At the start of 2024, hoping to inspire myself to listen to more music, I undertook a challenge to add one song every week to a playlist. Specifically, I was hoping to find a song that caught my ear each week — maybe I heard it out in the world, maybe I’d sought it out specifically and couldn’t get it out of my head. Ideally, the song would be new (or at least new to me), though I found that rule would sometimes need to bend in order to keep to the song-a-week pace. And I ultimately fell off that pace towards the end — it turns out the ever-growing playlist of songs I (mostly) like took up an ever-growing portion of my listening time, until the playlist mostly stalled out in October.

Even so, I consider the playlist a successful experiment, though not without some true clunkers in the mix. So, following the tradition of a friend (who largely inspired the playlist in the first place), I culled the 40-or-so songs down to a tight 15-song playlist of stuff I truly loved in 2024. For my own benefit, I thought I’d record some thoughts on why these songs made the cut. But first! The playlist:

1. Letting Things Go (Vulfmon/Evangeline, 2024)

This song is like a warm blanket. The tone of the Rhodes, the compression on the vocals — everything lends itself to a coziness that I found particularly alluring this year. It’s got all of the audio nerd-ery I’ve come to expect of Vulfmon (Jack Stratton, of Vulfpeck fame), but Evangeline really steals the show with an absolutely stunning performance here. There’s a lot to praise, but my favorite detail is her vowel formation in the chorus, where that the rhymes of go/know/show/go all have a slightly different color. These are subtle choices, but the stripped down production of this song leaves them room to shine.

2. Let Love Flow On (Sonya Spence, 1981)

This is the oldest song on the list, but had somehow escaped my notice until a week in January, where I heard it playing in two separate locations — that kind of serendipity is exactly why there’s an exception to the “new stuff” rule. There’s a ton of character to the performance, from the peculiar way Sonya Spence clips the ends of words (particularly “Let Love” in the chorus), to the way that clipped phrasing is picked up by the horns. It’s far from all staccato, but those spaces in between notes leaves room to appreciate the gauzy reverb that washes the mix in a kind of soft focus haze.

3. Albert Road (English Teacher, 2024)

I credit this whole playlist experiment with turning my on to English Teacher — I found them while specifically looking for something to add to the list in a particularly un-music-filled week. I love the lyrics, I love the tones, but most of all, I love the slow build of this song. The idiosyncratic grooves that bassist Nicholas Eden and guitarist Lewis Whiting lay down are a treat on the entire This Could Be Texas album, but it’s Lily Fontaine’s vocals that really let that grove build into something magical. The entire band is credited with piano on this track, and I have to imagine it’s for that jangling euphoria after Fontaine hits the high note. It’s a transcendent moment that I couldn’t get enough of this year.

4. Cassanova (L.A.B., 2023)

This is the little song that could. I don’t think it was my favorite when I added it to the list, but it’s retained playability long beyond some of the songs that I loved when I first added them. Even so, I remained ignorant to pretty much everything about this tune until pulling it up for writing this piece. This song is a cover of a 1987 track by LeVert. The original sounds about as 1987 as it can, all synth potpourri and gated reverb on the snare. L.A.B.’s version turns it into a beach party, with those synth lines chunked out on guitar and screamed on a hammond organ. My favorite piece, though, has to be the bass line — somehow a mile thick, but still leaving space for all of that fun on top. Killer stuff.

5. Are You Looking Up (Mk.gee, 2024)

I was turned on to Mk.gee because of their innovative guitar tones. Indeed, this tune showcases a smorgasbord of Mk.gee’s guitar sounds, ranging from kind of synth-y bell tones to throaty, crunchy lead lines. There’s part of me that winces at the harsh, hard-clipped moments on this track, but that sound has become an aesthetic unto itself in the age of blown-out TikTok audio, so it is in many ways the sound of this generation. I subsequently heard this song on an episode of The Bear, which confirms my hipster status of having liked it before it was cool. I can forgive anything if it makes me feel superior to everyone.

6. Dreams (The Cranberries, 1993)

There’s no pretending that this song was new to me in 2024. I have distinct memories of hearing it in the trailer for The Baby-Sitters Club, but The Cranberries kind of exploded in popularity in 1994, so it’s possible I’d heard it even earlier. For whatever reason, this song was everywhere this year, which is what inspired its place on the list, though it made the cut here largely in response to hearing that a coworker’s partner considered it a “guilty pleasure.” There’s too much to love in Dolores O’Riordan’s vocal performance — whether it’s the breathy, almost whispered tone at the start, or the bright, almost yodel-y tone towards the end — to feel guilty about enjoying this song. I’m particularly enamored of the vocal countermelody that comes in under the final repetitions of yodel-y bit, which then repeats to become the outro for the whole song. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for the tremolo sound on the guitar. Whatever. This song is great!

7. Toro (Remi Wolf, 2024)

According to Spotify, Remi Wolf is far and away my most-listened-to artist this year. I’m sure I listened to this year’s Big Ideas album several times, before digging back to 2021’s Juno. But it was this track that stole my heart first. The lyrics are so shockingly sexual to still make me giggle at their frankness, but I can’t get over just how impeccable the production is. Wolf’s belting performance is stunning, but my favorite detail is the roaring bass growl in the chorus, landing right after the world “bull” in an inspired bit of tone painting. A number of those kinds of gags featured on Juno (most notably a dolphin squeal in “Front Tooth”), but often in ways that drew attention to themselves like a kind of musical punchline. Here, the gesture makes perfect musical sense, emphasizing the refrain that gives this track its title.

8. You Are Not Alone (Mavis Staples, 2010)

I might regret already using the word “impeccable” in reference to a song’s production before getting to this tune. This was written and produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, who brings a ton of Wilco’s sound to the production on this one, which is scratching a very particular itch for me. Mavis Staples’ voice is obviously the main event here, but the way she blends with the band is a thing of beauty. I do kind of chuckle at the “open up, this is a raid” part of the chorus, which would strike me as a funny lyric even without the emphasis of the music, which almost demands you put your hands where Mavis can see them, but I think that helps leaven what otherwise might be an overly earnest song.

9. In Circles (Alycia Lang, 2024)

This song sure is pretty! The swirling stereo effects on the guitar in the opening bars of this tune are a dazzling effect that could easily overstay their welcome, but when that gesture returns later in the tune, the guitars are accompanied by pizzicato strings, adding a kind of woody tone that lends a sense of reality and space that I tend to lose when encountering dramatic studio effects. As those strings develop, their arco sound connects further to the synth-like drones that swell up from the dreamy space the lyrics seem to emanate from. Lots of cool stuff going on in this one.

10. Thirteen (Bedouine/Hurray For The Riff Raff/Waxahatchee, 2020)

This is another cover — the original was released as a single by Big Star in 1974 — but the song takes on another dimension in the hands of a trio of femme-presenting singers. Both versions take the perspective of its thirteen-year-old narrator(s) seriously, singing them without a hint of irony, but there’s an added layer of queer-coded defiance in this cover. That’s supported by the stripped down production, putting most of the focus on the vocal performances and simple guitar line. Rock rebellion never died, kids just wear it differently these days.

11. So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings (Caroline Polachek, 2019)

I’m honestly obsessed with so many of the elements of the production for this song, it’s all I can do to just list them on this one: the subtly syncopated bass line; the crystalline synth tones; Caroline Polachek’s breathy vocal performance on the pre-chorus; the vocoded harmonies on the chorus; the crunchy guitar tone that comes in halfway through the chorus; Polachek’s big inhales before each chorus; the “whoo” yelps in the outro; the hard cutoff at the end. Whoo! I can (and do) listen to this one on repeat without any fatigue.

12. God’s a Different Sword (Folk Bitch Trio, 2024)

This is another one where the formation of the vowels is so lovely as to take an outsized space in my enthusiasm for the song. Listening through now, “walking,” “heard,” “started,” “go,” “good,” and “god” all catch my ear as having lovely little surprises to them. Folk Bitch Trio hails from Melbourne, which I realize may account for much of what I’m hearing as interesting pronunciation choices, but whatever —I still like it. They have a remarkably short list of songs available on Spotify, but I like this one a ton. Looking forward to more from them!

13. Soup (Remi Wolf, 2024)

Remi Wolf nabs a second spot on the list! I wasn’t kidding about listening to Big Ideas on repeat this year. This one puts Wolf’s vocal performance even more front-and-center, and she fills that space gorgeously. It’s easy for me to think of this song being all belt-y chorus, but she lightens up in subtle, beautiful ways in the verses. Of course, those belt-y choruses sound great, too, bolstered by a whole chorus of multi-tracked Wolf vocals. The production on this whole album is spot-on, but I’m particularly enamored of the base tone on this one. It only bubbles to the surface occasionally, but goodness does it sound good.

14. I Guess (Lizzy McAlpine, 2024)

This track is dripping with gorgeous production flourishes, but the highlight for me is definitely Lizzy McAlpine’s vocal performance. She casts a chillingly flat affect in the verses, which stands in stark contrast to the alluring subtleties of the rest of the track. She starts to soar along with the instruments in the chorus, but comes back down to that detached character for each verse. And of course, she leaves the climax of the song to the instrumentals, disappearing into a chorus that crescendoes into a blare of horns and jangling pianos, lightening up into some falling action every bit as nuanced as those early bars. What a ride!

15. Kaleidoscope (Chappell Roan, 2023)

There’s a degree to which the title of The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess presages my own relationship with the album. I was completely bowled over after first hearing “Pink Pony Club” last year, but found a lot of the flash of the album fatiguing upon repeat listenings. It makes sense, then, that the least flashy track on the album would make the list. There’s no dance or shout-y chorus on this one, just an absolutely stunning vocal performance that celebrates Chappell Roan’s unique strengths. Her flipping between her chest and head voice, sometimes after every other word, is just so lovely, giving sonic reality to the uncertainty of the lyrics. She lends a few moments more confidence, adopting a tone that sounds for all the world like a brave face, but always retreats back to that uncertain, wavering voice. It’s just so good.

Fifteen tracks I can stand behind is a sure sign to me that the playlist experiment was a worthy one. I’m thinking of doing a kind of runners up list later this week, as I suspect the reason tracks didn’t make the list is even more interesting than the reasons they did. Either way, I hope you enjoy listening to this playlist in the meantime. Looking forward to starting fresh in 2025!