Where are the rock songs of yesteryear?
As I was putting together this list, I noticed that the number of rock songs, even if you define the idea pretty broadly, was shockingly low. That isn’t a new trend–the number of rock songs on my end-of-year lists have been in slow decline for a decade or more–but this year it really cratered.
So I have been wondering, is this just part of the normal ebb and flow? Rock was ‘dying’ in the early 60s, only to be ‘saved’ by the Beatles. And then again in 80s, only for Nirvana to bust things up again. By the late 90s, ‘alternative’ rock had become a parody of itself, but within a few years the indie boom made rock cool again.
In fact, that’s part of the origin story of this blog. Music blogging was hardly limited to indie rock, but that was (by far) the dominant genre in those early days, and that shared sense of taste is part of what what it all feel like a community conversing together.
Those days are long gone, of course. And while I can’t help but feel some nostalgia for what was lost, I’m glad that this year’s list draws a lot more on pop, dance, electronic, R&B, trap, country, and a million other genres. It’s not like I’ve become a musical polyglot or anything–I remain an indie kid at heart, and I’m always going to love sad boys and girls with guitars–but it’s been good to really listen to more and wider sources. Hopefully this list reflects that.
As usual, I’ve created a Spotify playlist for ease of sharing. But Spotify pays artists basically nothing, so I’ll make my annual request: if you like this music, go pay real money for it. Music is so so good, and artists should be compensated for giving it to us.
1. Soup – Remi Wolf
There is an alchemy to songwriting that is still impenetrable to me, even after all these years of listening and analyzing. Why do some songs just work, when others fall flat? There’s nothing particularly complicated going on here. Verse, pre-chorus, into the chorus. It’s as simple as 1-2-3. Except it’s not. Because it’s only one song in a ten thousand that actually achieves this sort of effortless acceleration. For whatever reason, Soup is one of the few that manages escape velocity.
2. Positively 34th Street – Japandroids
A casual encounter. You put it aside, focus on your responsibilities, the things that make sense. But always, somewhere out there, there’s a tantalizing ‘what if,’ the question of what could have been. Maybe, somewhere out there, a green light…
3. Clams Casino – Cassandra Jenkins
Jenkins excels at storytelling, and this is her finest effort yet. She moves seamlessly between the hyper-specific (I heard someone order the Clams Casino / I said, “Hey, what’s that?” / They said, “I don’t know”) to the universal human experience (“I don’t wanna laugh alone anymore”). It’s an invitation to reflect on what exactly we’re here for, and what we can make of the time that remains.
4. Girl, So Confusing feat. Lorde – Charli XCX
The original is a nice song. The remix, with Lorde’s response, is this incredible bundle of pathos and compassion set to music. Some folks have pointed to “And it’s just self-defence until you’re building a weapon” as the critical line. And it is great. But the place where my heart cracks in two actually comes a little later, when she says “Forgot that inside the icon, there’s still a young girl from Essex.”
5. Love (F)or Money – DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ
It’s been quite a few years since I’ve been to a club. But damn if this song doesn’t make me feel young enough for it. You are buffeted between these huge melodic riffs but just as you’re about to become lost, the synths drop out and you’re left standing on a tightly coiled beat. After a few moments to breathe, you’re then thrown back out again into the tempest. And all you want is for it to last forever.
6. Juliet – Morgan Wade
Things I’m a sucker for: pedal steel, Juliet tropes, voices that crackle and fray just a little on the edges. I never had a chance.
7. North Country – Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
Welch and Rawlings have made a career out of haunting songs about loneliness and loss, and this one is a fine entry into the field. The instrumentation is sparse, allowing Welch’s voice to evoke as few can match. The long years, the quiet memory, the slow touch.
8. Lucky – Erika de Casier
This is one of those wonderful songs, which sounds tender and ethereal when played at a low volume, and which absolutely rips when played at a high volume.
9. Birds of a Feather – Billie Eilish
My favorite song from her yet, and also probably the furthest she’s moved into pure pop. I also think it’s her most emotionally vulnerable vocal performance, which adds so much to lyrics — which do read a little flat on the page but feel wholly alive when she sings them.
10. Nemesis – The Day
Just an immaculate slice of indie pop.
11. Some Kind of Angel – Georgia Gets By
It starts slow, atmospheric, rich and warm. Through a series of punctuated bursts, it grows in intensity, the waves riding higher and higher until finally…they crest.
12. Lost – Soccer Mommy
I never quite know what people mean by ‘chamber pop,’ since lists of chamber pop songs tend to include a lot of stuff that doesn’t seem to fit. For me, it means a blend of rich acoustic notes, delicate vocals, and a string section who dances in between the two. This is a great example.
13. 7 UP – Phoebe Go
A song that feels out of time in the best way. It has the warmth of 70s AM radio, the light bending notes of 80s new wave, the openness of 90s adult contemporary, but doesn’t feel of any of those times. It just feels here and now and right and good.
14. No Man’s Land – Miranda Lambert
Lambert sings with a plaintiveness that absolutely overflows. The song itself is a gentle ballad, slow and stately. But her voice imbues it with such incredible life.
15. Tragic – Charly Bliss
It’s built around a perfectly simple melodic line, which is more or less repeated throughout the entire song, apart from a brief bridge. But it’s just so damn catchy that you never want anything more.
16. Smaller Half – Kississippi
In the midst of a breakup, we tell ourselves all sorts of lies. Some of them are lies built on fear: I can’t live without this person, I’ll never be happy again. Some of them are lies that we tell because we need them to feel true: it’s for the best, they were wrong for me. This song is about the truth in the midst of the lies. That losing someone really does mean losing a part of yourself. But there’s also nothing we can do about it. And eventually, we discover that the pieces left over stitch themselves back together and somehow, impossibly, we are still better off for the experience.
17. Bikini – Nick León and Erika de Casier
Drawing on elements of glitch-pop, trance, R&B, and a bit of funk, I really am not sure how to categorize this song. Other than just to say that it’s insanely catchy and makes you feel like you’re skimming across the water, almost totally weightless.
18. Ya Ya – Beyoncé
Originally I was going to go with 16 Carriages, then I said ‘don’t overthink this, Texas Hold ‘Em is the best song.’ Then I decided on Bodyguard. Last minute I went with this one. I’m not sure it’s actually my favorite, but it may be the most interesting and it’s definitely the most fun.
19. Double – Wet
It feels like all of the core features of this song could have been packed into a tight 20 second burst of pure joy, or which could equally have been interpellated for hours without getting stale. It’s maybe just a happy accident that splitting the difference happened to give us a three minute pop song.
20. YZ80 – Starflyer 59
That feeling when you look to the sky and see a wave of dark clouds on the horizon slowly, but inexorably, advancing.
21. Diet Pepsi – Addison Rae
I have a genuinely hard time wrapping my head around precisely what this song is doing. On one level, it’s locked in a kind of hyper-nostalgia for an era that only ever existed in teen movies and soft drink commercials. A simple little pop song about sex and sunny days. On another level, it’s performative: taking those tropes and insisting on their reality. In the end, I think it ends up as nostalgia for a version of the present where memory is replaced by imagination. I’ve seen some people reference Lana Del Rey as a thematic inspiration, which does make a lot of sense.
22. Getting No Sleep – Tinashe
Sleek, slinky, and ready to groove.
23. Good Luck Babe! – Chappell Roan
Midwest Princess was the breakout record, but was a 2023 release (though, like a lot of people I didn’t start listening to it until this year). But for a 2024 track, this one is a pretty nice encapsulation of why she went supernova this year.
24. Everyone Who’s Not in Love With You is Wrong – Bess Atwell
Her voice is so rich, so deft, capable of telling an entire story in the way it rises and falls.
25. Hey Claire – Vanessa Peters
I wish it weren’t the soundtrack to 2024, but sadly “there are plans and then there’s how it falls apart” was all too prescient.
26. 半永久機関 – kinoue64
I’m always happy if I have a song on my list that defeats Spotify. In 2024, it’s this track from kinoue64, a Japanese shoegaze band. It’s a little glitchy, a little tender, and a lot pretty.
27. Espresso – Sabrina Carpenter
You probably don’t need me to tell you anything about this song. I can report that on the Helen Dance-O-Meter, this was easily a top 5 track among the Under 1 crowd.
28. Paperweight – Secret Sisters
Close harmonies, fiddle solos, a galloping tempo…what’s not to love.
29. 0898 HEARTACHE – Los Campesinos!
It would be a stretch to call this ‘polished’ but it’s far less messy than the Los Campesinos! of old. I don’t think the new sound totally worked across the record, but it absolutely slays on this track. It’s beautiful, almost stately at times, which makes the explosion at the end even more enthralling.
30. Blue Ruin – Say Lou Lou
I adored every single song from this duo when they first started dropping songs in 2012/2013. This isn’t a full return to glory, but it’s a pretty solid electro-pop song.
31. What’s Fair – Blondshell
A mixture of gauzy shoegaze, bubblegum pop, and quiet/loud alt-rock. If you told me this was a lost track from That Dog, I would absolutely have believed you.
32. glow (feat. Duskus, Four Tet, Joy Anonymous, Skrillex) – Fred Again…
Honestly, I’m not even sure what this even is or why so many artists and producers are involved. What exactly did they all do? But whatever the origin story, it ends up as a glorious mess of sound and kinetic energy.
33. Paranoid – Hippo Campus
The invitation comes from a wonderful bass line that stays surprisingly high in the mix throughout. Then it’s joined by the pinging guitar that sets a perfect melodic tone. Finally, there’s a delightfully understated guitar solo bridge.
34. New Woman (feat. ROSALÍA) – LISA
It opens with such incredible energy, and then takes a slightly odd detour into Rosalía’s verse. Why slow things down with this trap interlude? But it all makes sense when the tempo picks up again you hear them bouncing off each other. It’s those 45 seconds that make the song. Everything else is the infrastructure that lets it shine.
35. It Was Coming All Along – Maggie Rogers
It’s all long goodbyes.
36. Plenty Sun – Ice Spice
I am vaguely aware that there has been a lot of Discourse about whether Ice Spice is Actually Good, but I have managed to stay blissfully ignorant of basically the whole argument. My take is that I didn’t love most of Y2K, but think that this song slaps.
37. Ever Seen – beabadoobee
Listening to this song is like throwing open the windows on a sunny day and letting the warmth bathe you all over.
38. Summer Song – Remy Bond
The Lana Del Rey impersonation is…really something. But if you can get past that, it turns out to just be a good song.
39. Heavy Clouds – Command D
Truth in advertising. This song does in fact sound like heavy clouds.
40. All I Know – Club 8
They heyday of Swedish indie pop has sadly passed, but some of the mainstays are still around. It’s been a long time since they released a full-length but they did release some singles in 2024. This one was the best of the bunch: a whimsical lilting track that could easily slot right into The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Dreaming (which my calendar tells me is now seventeen years old…oof).