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Best music of 2024

  • Explosive … from left: Pataka Boys, Emahoy Tsegue Maryam Guebrou, Mk.gee.

    Desi rap, deep jungle and truck-stop concrète: five-star albums you may have missed this year

    From Jordana’s sprightly soft rock to Pataka Boys’ collagist UK-Punjabi hip-hop, our writers pick their must-listen gems from 2024
  • Composite: old music rediscovered. Robert Palmer, Little Annie Bandez, Charles Aznavour

    French flirting, flute fusion and love flowin’ free: the best old music we discovered this year

    A little crate-digging can yield buried treasure – as our music writers found this year when they discovered everything from Taiwanese pop star to Cher’s disco era
  • Chat Pile.

    From Charli xcx to Chat Pile: Guardian readers’ favourite albums of 2024

    Tyler, the Creator’s ‘pure vocal power’, Jamie xx’s ‘sheer genius’ and Ashe’s ‘beautiful storytelling’ – our readers pick out the new music that has most impressed them this year
  • Fundamentally honest … Charli xcx

    The 50 best albums of 2024: No 1 – Charli xcx: Brat (and Brat and It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat)

    Smart, funny, moving and full of big tunes, the in-your-face masterpiece was the right album at the right time, striking a cultural nerve and defining a change in mindset
  • Oozing self-possession … Charli xcx.

    The 50 best albums of 2024

    Topped with Charli xcx’s swaggering yet vulnerable Brat, here are the year’s finest LPs as decided by 26 Guardian music writers
  • Charli xcx Oasis Taylor Swift 2024 pop Petridis

    You and I are gonna live forever: why 2024’s pop was all about sharing the moment

    Pop may be full of solo artists and individually tailored streams, but the Eras tour, Brat summer and Oasis reunion showed we still long to be part of a crowd
  • Unerringly brilliant … Cindy Lee

    The 50 best albums of 2024: No 2 – Cindy Lee: Diamond Jubilee

  • Clairo.

    ‘I desperately wanted friends, and flings, and to understand myself’: Clairo on making one of 2024’s best albums

  • Insular and intimate … Billie Eilish

    The 50 best albums of 2024: No 3 – Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft

  • Dream-like … Carlos Nino, Damian Dalla Torre, Nala Sinephro

    The 10 best contemporary albums of 2024

  • Dizzying heights … Welsh National Opera’s Death in Venice with No Fit Circus.

    New heights, fond farewells and daring acrobatics – the year in classical music

  • New boundaries … Clairo

    The 50 best albums of 2024: No 4 – Clairo: Charm

  • Beautifully brittle … Róis, The Rheingans Sisters, Jacken Elswyth

    The 10 best folk albums of 2024

  • Beyonce, press image for Cowboy Carter, 2024

    The 50 best albums of 2024: No 5 – Beyoncé: Cowboy Carter

  • Remarkable … Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Lord Spikeheart, Ganavya

    The 10 best global albums of 2024

    DJ Love celebrated car horns, Kenyan metalhead Lord Spikeheart traversed trap and doom, while 82-year-old Milton Nascimento joined forces with Esperanza Spalding
  • Enthralling … Wayne Shorter, Mary Halvorson, Charles Lloyd

    The 10 best jazz albums of 2024

    A Mercury prize winner, a host of fresh collaborations and a posthumous release of a much-lauded live performance are all among the year’s standouts
  • Kim Gordon, Chappell Roan and Beyoncé.

    The 20 best songs of 2024

    Here are the year’s most outstanding tracks – from Fontaines DC to Beyoncé via Kendrick Lamar – as voted for by 26 Guardian music writers