AARP’s Favorite Music Albums of 2024 (So Far)

Our top 10 picks to listen to this year include Gossip’s ‘Real Power,’ Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Nonetheless’ and Kacey Musgraves’ ‘Deeper Well’

Jim Farber,

AARP

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Published July 11, 2024

Collage of music albums including "Real Power," "Prelude to Ecstasy," "Nonetheless," "Deeper Well" and Lives Outgrown against blue background with confetti on it

AARP (Cody Critcheloe; Courtesy Warner Records; Courtesy Domino Recording Company; Q Prime; Courtesy Interscope Records/ MCA Nashville)

The finest music released so far this year favors both a gender (women) and a country (Britain). No fewer than seven of the top 10 entries were created by female artists, and an equal number come from the U.K. The female factor could reflect the rising encouragement for women in an industry in which two of the biggest stars are women: Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.

The British aspect definitely reflects the creativity that’s propelled the country to produce many of the smartest new acts over the past few years, including Wet Leg, Squid and black midi. At the same time, this year’s crop conforms to no set genre, sensibility or age. Instead, their work honors the qualities of the best art — originality, beauty and truth.

Album cover with record sticking out of it and five people in picture frame on cover; blue background with confetti on it

The Last Dinner Party's “Prelude to Ecstasy”

AARP (Q Prime)

The Last Dinner Party: Prelude to Ecstasy

Mamma mia! What a rush of sound comes pouring from The Last Dinner Party. This young all-female British quintet became the breakout band of 2023 with the hit “Nothing Matters,” a musical feast stuffed with sounds influenced by the most proudly bombastic bands of the past century. Think Queen (in that soaring mock Brian May guitar solo), ABBA (in the operatic vocal chorale) and Electric Light Orchestra (in strings so vigorous, they sting). And that’s just the start. The full album is rife with rococo melodies, incisive lyrics (female assertion is a specialty) and more-is-more arrangements that you can’t get enough of.

Album cover with record sticking out of it and the word Tangk above explosion on cover; blue background with confetti on it

IDLES' “Tangk”

AARP (Partisan Records)

IDLES: Tangk

Seven years ago, the British band IDLES soared to stardom on a brutalist approach to music. Their guitars cut like chain saws, their drums exploded like cluster bombs, and front man Joe Talbot barked every lyric like a human bullhorn. For their revelatory fifth album, these purposeful brutes shade their assault with nuanced synthesizers and melodies that flow as well as stomp. At times Talbot even manages to croon. Thankfully, none of it lessens the band’s intensity. Instead, it clarifies their focus, making the case for IDLES to rank among rock’s most righteous bands, up there with acts like the Clash and Rage Against the Machine.

Album cover with record sticking out of it and the words the past is still alive and person in cowboy hat on cover; blue background with confetti on it

Hurray for the Riff Raff's “The Past Is Still Alive”

AARP (Tommy Kha)

Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Past Is Still Alive

New York–born singer-songwriter Alynda Segarra, who performs as Hurray for the Riff Raff, boasts a colorful past, including several years spent hopping freight trains across America, Woody Guthrie–style. The fruits of these memories are front and center on The Past Is Still Alive, a folk-rock masterpiece that features some of the best storytelling and most heart-tugging melodies since Rod Stewart’s early solo work. Segarra’s picaresque romp is filled with grifters and drifters, rendered without the sentimentality such figures too often inspire. While the characters may come from Segarra’s past, the artist’s remembrances of them couldn’t feel more present.

Album cover with record sticking out of it and the words Yard Act Where’s My Utopia on cover; blue background with confetti on it

Yard Act's “Where’s My Utopia?”

AARP (Thomas Robinson)

Yard Act: Where’s My Utopia?

How do you follow up a debut album bold enough to earn both a Mercury Prize nomination and the chance to work with Elton John, 77, on a remix of one of your best songs? If you’re Yard Act, you remake your sound entirely. For the U.K.-based group’s second album, they morph from stripped postpunk rockers to musical collagists who sift together disco, art-rock, hip-hop and pop with a cool sneer. The result blends the adventurousness of the Gorillaz with the humor of Ian Dury, enhanced by the satirical lyrics of singer-rapper James Smith. With self-flagellating wit, Smith tries to reconcile his desire for social justice with the raw drive of his ego. In the process, he creates a morality tale as changeable and exciting as the music.

Album cover with record sticking out of it and the words Deeper Well with woman holding flower on cover; blue background with confetti on it

Kacey Musgraves' “Deeper Well”

AARP (Courtesy Interscope Records/ MCA Nashville)

Kacey Musgraves: Deeper Well

The sixth album by Nashville’s Kasey Musgraves finds her entering a new and better life. The title track epitomizes that change — the story chronicles the end of an unhealthy relationship and a halt to her daily “wake and bake” pot-smoking ritual. The results put her in a state of poignant wonder. That’s evidenced by “Cardinal,” in which she thinks she sees a sign of a recently departed friend (the legendary songwriter John Prine), and “The Architect,” the album’s best track, a witty reflection on what’s random and what’s fated in life. Musgraves’ new attitude also shows in the music, which filters country, folk and pop into the simplest, cleanest sound she’s yet devised.

Album cover with record sticking out of it and the word gossip and three people, one wearing shirt that says real power, on cover; blue background with confetti on it

Gossip's “Real Power”

AARP (Cody Critcheloe)

Gossip: Real Power

“I want real power!” declares Gossip singer Beth Ditto in a voice that ripples with verve and conviction. The result could lead you to a political demonstration, a club dance floor or simply a spin around your own living room. “Real Power,” the single from this Portland, Oregon-based trio’s first album in a dozen years, has everything an anthem needs: a placard-worthy lyric, a Red Bull of a beat and an earworm of a melody, all delivered by a voice that seems forever on the ascent. Ditto’s singing combines the rafter-shaking force of Cyndi Lauper with the adenoidal urgency of Ronnie Spector. Boosted by the knife-sharp production of Rick Rubin and the constant catchiness of the melodies, Gossip has created a dance-pop album rousing enough to resonate for years.

Album cover with record sticking out of it and the words This Ain’t The Way You Go Out with woman on cover; blue background with confetti on it

Lucy Rose's “This Ain’t The Way You Go Out”

AARP (Dom Sesto)

Lucy Rose: This Ain’t The Way You Go Out

In the past, U.K. songwriter Lucy Rose sang folk with burning sorrow and pop with sweet aplomb. For her fifth solo album, she brings cool new sounds to the mix. Emphasizing piano instead of guitar, Rose draws from sources as varied as Errol Garner, Claude Debussy and Stephen Sondheim. Her move to piano was necessitated by something horrible — an outbreak of crippling pregnancy-related pain following the birth of her first child. Undaunted, Rose is currently pregnant again, an unsurprising choice for an artist who seems indomitable.

Pet Shop Boys' “Nonetheless”

AARP (Courtesy Warner Records)

Pet Shop Boys: Nonetheless

Pet Shop Boys have always made grand music, lush with synthesizers and steeped in beats. For their 15th studio album, the art-disco duo of Neil Tennant, 70, and Chris Lowe, 64, add a telling new texture. It’s their first release boasting a full orchestra on every track, lending a new sensitivity and sweep to the sound. It’s the perfect setting for songs that portray people on the run from their past to a future that seems predestined. There’s the small-town kid who comes to the city to find his true self (“New London Boy”), the older man desperate for fresh inspiration (“A New Bohemia”) and the international ballet artist aching to defect from his homeland (“Dancing Star,” about Russian dance legend Rudolph Nureyev). All the tracks brim with hope, underscored by a sense of longing too deep and sweet to be sated.

Album cover with record sticking out of it and four images of same person going from blurry to less blurry on cover; blue background with confetti on it

Beth Gibbons' “Lives Outgrown”

AARP (Courtesy Domino Recording Company)

Beth Gibbons: Lives Outgrown

Beth Gibbons has always sounded haunted. Her vibrato shakes with sadness, loss and dire portent. Her sound came to the fore 30 years ago in the pioneering British trip-hop group Portishead, who last released an album in 2008. In the years since, Gibbons, 59, has collaborated on several projects outside her classic band, but Lives Outgrown is her first billed as a solo work. The personal nature of the lyrics confirms the title by addressing menopause, mortality and the parts of ourselves we learn to leave behind. Despite the spooky instrumentation, wan melodies and Gibbons’ despondent tone, there’s deep beauty in the sheer intensity of it all.

Album cover with record sticking out of it and words Proxy Music with woman laying down on cover; blue background with confetti on it

Linda Thompson's “Proxy Music”

AARP (Sean James)

Linda Thompson: Proxy Music

Most fans know her as half of the duo Richard and Linda Thompson, whose albums in the ’70s and early ’80s stand as iconic works of British folk-rock. Fewer people know that the 76-year-old singer has long suffered from dysphonia, a progressive disease that made vocalizing difficult for her for years — and impossible now. For her first album in 11 years, Thompson found a brilliant workaround: She had her talented circle of friends and family sing her songs for her, ergo the clever title, Proxy Music. Guest singers range from her gifted kids Teddy and Kami Thompson to Rufus Wainwright and John Grant. Still, it’s the elegance of the music and the care of Thompson’s lyrics that make these songs some of the smartest and most stirring of her career.

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Jim Farber is a contributing writer who was the New York Daily News music critic for 25 years. He writes for AARP, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and won the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor Award for America's best music writing three times.