Our album reviews are the opinion of one writer, while this list is a survey of our entire staff, balanced against many other factors. Each album on our entire list was nominated on a ranked system by multiple writers, editors and photographers.

Welcome back for the conclusion; the 10 best albums of the year. Or if you’ve missed it, start at Part 1 and read Part 2 before continuing on.

OK, ready? the top 10 includes heavy hitters like Tyler, the Creator and Beyoncé, as well as the year’s best alt-rock and jazz albums.

10. Vampire Weekend

Only God Was Above Us – Columbia – The fifth album by Vampire Weekend features many familiar sounds but expanded and woven together in surprising and refreshing ways, paired with lyrics that are suddenly all-too relevant again.

Standout single “Classical,” with its joyous guitars and bouncy upright bass, is a culmination of every good idea that’s come out of Ezra Koenig’s brain over the years. But the catchy hooks belie an ominous truth in the lyrics about the frustrating nature of the world we inhabit, a place where “the cruel with time becomes classical.” This theme of wistful retrospect in an age where hate and cruelty has become normalized and celebrated, from the pews to the highest levels of government, runs as a thread throughout the album.

You can sense where Koenig is taking listeners from the first bars of opening track “Ice Cream Piano.” “Fuck the world, you said it quiet/ No one could hear you, no one but me/ Cynical, you can’t deny it/ You don’t want to win this war, ’cause you don’t want the peace.” It’s instantly relatable. How are we to find inner peace?

The answer arrives on masterful eight-minute closer “Hope,” a grinding dirge that at first glance seems ironically hopeless. Koenig recounts a long list of metaphors that do anything but inspire hope. Maybe his way of counteracting the hopelessness and angst is to let go of our unhealthy personal attachments to the things we can’t control, and instead find hope in the things we can change, both personally and collectively. There’s reason for hope in the midst of hopelessness, and that’s a message we need to hear.

9. Brittany Howard

What Now – Island – Brittany Howard has consistently been a powerful force. Her chaotic guitar riffs, dynamic vocal range and bold lyricism are all there on What Now. She put the sonic elements first on this album; you’re snatched by wild snare strikes on the title track and jarring ring on the intro to “To Be Still.” The songs stand on their own, though they all sonically align. The highlights include the dark undertones of “Earth Sign” and jazzy, psychedelic “Every Colour in Blue.” Howard remains faithful to her blues rock background, but the jazz flourishes push it over the bar.

8. Kamasi Washington

Fearless Movement – Young Recordings – Kamasi Washington’s new album explored the limits of jazz, hip-hop, funk and rock. It stimulated the souls of jazz aficionados. The album starts out energetically, flexing Ethiopian-flavored jazz psychedelic rock and P-funk with a dynamic bass line. “Asha The First” adds spoken-word lyrics, while the mellow “Computer Love” is enriched with a lush arrangement. A brass-heavy build-up makes way for a funky groove on “The Visionary.”

“Interstellar Peace (The Last Stance)” has an intro that sounds like it was plucked from a sci-fi film, moving into a plaintive, angsty and heartfelt performance by Washington. “Road to Self” features a furious cacophony of piano, drums, sax and bass. Fearless Movement lives up to its name. Over 90 minutes, Washington and more than a dozen collaborators from George Clinton to André 3000 are relentless in their pursuit of new sonic territories, absorbing and magnifying the music that has come before them.

7. Jack White

No Name – Third Man – Enigmatic bluesman Jack White developed his most insane marketing strategy yet for his 2024 album. Step one involved GIVING it away at his Third Man Records stores without fanfare. He’s been on a tear of late, releasing not one but two albums in 2023. But what White lacks in song quantity, he more than makes up for in intensity. No Name is a blistering, searing record with virtuosic blues played by somebody who still has something to prove.

The real achievement is the wedding of White’s homespun intensity on arrangements that favor heart over musical technique to sophisticated offerings with a rhythm section. That offered White a number of musical options not available with White Stripes drummer Meg White. The heavy riff rock of the album’s opening pair of songs, “Old Scatch Blues” and “Bless Yourself,” offer ample evidence that White has no intention of slowing down as he approaches the half-century mark. Songs like “Bombing Out” and “Underground” suggest his signature guitar tone will only get weirder.

6. Tyler, the Creator

CHROMAKOPIA – Columbia – The late-year release proved to be one of the influential rapper and producer’s strongest efforts since 2019’s groundbreaking Igor. While slightly less focused conceptually, it features his signature juxtaposition of beautiful and silly, casually off-handed and profoundly musical. On “Like Him” Tyler moves from the incidental to the transcendent. But the song’s chorus reveals a deep, paternal haunting.

“Mama, I’m chasing a ghost/ I don’t know who he is/ Mama, I’m chasing a ghost/ I don’t know where he is/ Mama, I’m chasing a ghost/ Do I look like him? (Like, what?),” he sings over lush piano.

On “Noid” he pairs Black-Sabbath-like power chord stabs with syncopated rap delivery. But here again the song moves from the trivial to the life-defining. “I can’t even buy a home in private/ Home invasions got my brothers dyin’/ Notice every car that’s drivin’ by/ I think my neighbors want me dead/ I got a cannon underneath the bed/ Triple checkin’ if I locked the door/ I know every creak that’s in the floor.” Like a great fusion chef, Tyler, the Creator continues to undermine expectations with his musical recombinations.

5. The Cure

Songs of a Lost World – Polydor – The Cure’s first album in 16 years, is a triumphant return that cements the band’s legacy as masters of melancholia and emotional depth. From the opening moments of “Alone,” with Robert Smith’s poignant declaration, “This is the end of every song we sing,” it’s clear that the album will embrace the band’s darker, more introspective side. Layers of sweeping keyboards, driving bass lines and sparse, pounding beats evoke the grandeur of classics like Disintegration, while exploring themes of grief, loss, and resilience.

Smith’s vulnerability shines on tracks like “I Can Never Say Goodbye,” a heartbreaking narrative about the sudden loss of his brother, and “Nothing Is Forever,” which resonates with raw emotion. Meanwhile, the upbeat “Fragile Thing,” with its infectious chorus, offers a rare pop moment, reminding listeners of the Cure’s versatility.

The band’s signature ability to find beauty in despair is evident throughout, particularly on the explosive “Drone:Nodrone,” a funk-inflected track fueled by anger and urgency. Ten-minute closer “Endsong” leaves you with a sense of catharsis, as Smith delivers lines like, “It’s all gone/ No hopes/ No dreams/ No world,” tempered by a glimmer of resilience. The Cure confronts the darkness of today’s world with timeless artistry, creating an album that ranks among their very best and affirms their relevance in 2024.

4. St. Vincent

All Born Screaming – Virgin – All Born Screaming and its Spanish-language counterpart, Todos Nacen Gritando, are two sides of a masterful coin. Over the past decade, Annie Clark has explored everything from electro-pop to psychedelic rock. This album effort demonstrates her aim to create music with universal resonance.

All Born Screaming marks a return to her art-rock roots. Self-produced, it blends industrial distortion with introspective themes, delivering one of her most cohesive works. Songs like “Hell Is Near” merge her psych-rock explorations with a post-apocalyptic aesthetic. “Reckless” builds from a slow, haunting melody into chaotic energy, while “Flea” injects playful riffs.

For Todos Nacen Gritando, Clark partnered with Alan Del Rio Ortiz to adapt the emotional core of her music for a new cultural and linguistic context. “El Infierno Está Cerca” took on a suspended, haunting quality while “Hombre Roto” deepened its emotional weight through subtle shifts in rhythm and phrasing. The songs maintained their emotional impact while embracing the rhythmic and phonetic shifts of another language.

3. Beyoncé

COWBOY CARTER – Parkwood/Columbia – This is the most ambitious album from Beyoncé to date. While the second in her planned three-album project is clearly country-inspired, from the fashion to the interludes by Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Linda Martell, it also defies genres by exploring a variety of sounds and influences. What would be jarring transitions between dissimilar songs are smoothed by the album’s framing as a radio show.

That spirit of experimentation extends to the subject matter as well. While revolving around a country theme, the influences span hip-hop, power ballads, psychedelic soul and an Italian opera aria. Even the covers Beyoncé chose show diversity. While her rendition of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” is remarkably faithful, she gives Parton’s “Jolene” a more threatening tone than the original. Sometimes the swings hit (a duet with Miley Cyrus has great chemistry) and sometimes they miss (Post Malone’s unnecessary cameo and awkward flow makes “LEVII’S JEANS” worse). But overall, they add up to a huge success.

Beyoncé proves that she can do just about everything and that she isn’t afraid to innovate while also being willing to embrace her roots. Her ability to fit into and nail seemingly infinite genres is truly astonishing. It isn’t a country album; it’s a Beyoncé album. Beyoncé just happens to be country as hell.

2. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Wild God – PIAS – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds do the hard work of rendering pain into beauty on this album. Specifically, Cave turns the personal tragedy of losing two sons in recent years into a piece of art that not only grieves the devastating loss, but celebrates a world where we’re able to love the people around us with total and endless abandon.

This is not chicken soup for the soul; more like an emotional boot camp where you let it all out. But instead of a maniacal drill instructor screaming in your face, you get Cave’s passionate crooning, his pathos and poetics, and ultimately his love, with which he has clearly found the ability to embrace the entirety of the universe, even if it contains the source of his pain. Listen to “Joy.” “And over by the window, a voice came low and hollow/ Spoke into my pain, into my yearning sorrow/ Who is it, I cried, what wild ghost has come in agitation?” Cave croons. He then describes his ghostly visitor: “A ghost in giant sneakers, laughing stars around his head/ Who sat down on the narrow bed, this flaming boy.”

Cave’s final message from the ghost includes an entreaty toward joy in life that we must all learn to hear again. “This flaming boy said, ‘We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy,” he sings.

1. Charli XCX

BRAT – Atlantic – In a summer filled with big pop music releases, Charli XCX still found a way to stand out while going back to a thoroughly evolved and curated sound she’s been building over the past decade. With planned-out marketing, collaborations on remixes and an arena tour, Brat summer was the gift that kept on giving.

It wasn’t just a club album, despite the production and the party girl image that’s long been associated with Charlotte Aitchison. BRAT, at its core, looks inward and discusses deeper issues like mending friendships, dealing with trauma, loss and insecurity, societal and parental pressures, and not always knowing her place in the world. The album also showed how to heal.

Charli XCX released the album and then let it become something bigger by allowing other artists and fans to put their fingerprints on it. On social media, it might have been a trend or political commentary. Ultimately, BRAT is a mindset about challenging of the norms of the music industry and artistry as a whole.

10. Vampire Weekend. 9. Brittany Howard. 8. Kamasi Washington. 7. Jack White. 6. Tyler, The Creator. 5. The Cure. 4. St. Vincent. 3. Beyoncé. 2. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. 1. Charli XCX.

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