With Something Good, the arts and culture newsletter from The Conversation, we aim to cut through the noise and recommend the very best in new releases every fortnight. And what a soundtrack this year’s newsletters have had. From Charli XCX’s global domination with Brat to Kendrick Lamar’s rap game-changing GNX, these are the best albums of 2024 according to our academic experts.
Recommended by Julia Toppin, lecturer in music business, University of Westminster.
This year has been a great one for Kendrick Lamar. In May, a rap feud with Drake birthed the diss track Not Like Us, which became a cultural and commercial phenomenon. Lamar followed it with an acclaimed live-streamed concert, a Super Bowl LIX halftime show announcement and a surprise album.
GNX, Lamar’s sixth studio album, is a tight 45-minute showcase of his versatility. It mixes politically charged lyrics with a vibe that is pure West Coast LA hip-hop.
The opening track, Wacced Out Murals, is introspective. Luther, which features frequent collaborator SZA, illustrates the duo’s sonic chemistry. Squabble Up and Tv Off with its instantly viral cry “mustarrrrrrrrrd” are compulsively danceable. The album closes with Gloria, which personifies the rap game as a woman Lamar has a complex relationship with.
In the affirming Man in the Garden Lamar asserts that he “deserves it all” while listing his achievements – which include winning a Pulitzer prize in 2018. At this point nobody could argue with him.
Recommended by Glenn Fosbraey, associate dean of humanities and social sciences, University of Winchester.
Something special happens when members of the same family harmonise. Some put it down to a spiritual unity, others to a chemistry developed during years of living together, while otorhinolaryngologists might point to a shared laryngeal anatomy. Whatever it is, The Finn family have it in abundance and the combined voices of Neil (father), Liam (eldest son) and Elroy (youngest song) create harmonic brilliance throughout this album.
It’s on Some Greater Plan (for Claire), however, where the real magic happens, as Neil is joined by brother Tim on a song that ranks with the very best either of them has ever produced.
As a whole, Gravity Stairs may not live up to the consistent quality of Crowded House’s apex Together Alone (1993), but tracks like Teenage Summer, The Howl, Thirsty, and, of course, Some Greater Plan make it a worthy addition to their fine body of work.
Recommended by Alastair Gordon, senior lecturer in media and communications, De Montfort University.
I have spent the last two years listening to modern jazz. Unlike my usual noisy diet of international underground punk rock, jazz makes for a great study soundtrack. So when the new Messthetics record was released with jazz saxophonist James Brandon Lewis recruited to add an innovative layer over the instrumental tracks, I had to listen.
Brandon Lewis leads the band through some seriously great post-hardcore punk-influenced modern jazz tracks. He adds depth and contour to an already great instrumental band. The record takes the listener on an original musical journey, shifting from freeform expression to carefully structured arrangements and juicy earworm melodies. It makes for a sublimely addictive experience, moving from heavy loops to delicate phrasing.
For me, the Messthetics are one of the most interesting and innovative post hardcore punk groups around right now. And each listen to this collaboration reveals new, subtle musical innovation.
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Recommended by Neil Cocks, associate professor in the department of English literature, University of Reading.
One of the most striking features of Alone, the first single from The Cure’s chart topping album Songs of a Lost World, is a missing instrument. The track doesn’t feature the band’s signature use of cymbals. It is as if their inclusion would add punctuation and life to what is necessarily monolithic and deathly, an elegiac seven minutes of dirty bass, soaring keyboards and dense, introspective guitar.
If this sets the tone for the album (all tracks are grey), it also belies the contrasts that make it so compelling. Drone\Nodrone offers a cathartic, wah-wah infused rock-out, while I Can Never Say Goodbye puts pop sensibilities to work in a song mourning the passing of singer Robert Smith’s brother.
What stands out most, however, is Smith’s extraordinary voice. It’s unchanged through The Cure’s 48 years of recording and so a counter to themes of decay – intimate and personal against the monumental sound the band has conjured.
Read more: How The Cure went back to their gothic roots for their new number one album
Recommended by Lillian Hingley, postdoctoral researcher in English literature, University of Oxford.
Charli XCX’s Brat album is not a single moment, but a collage, a prism – it is constantly expanding with retrospect. Having given a taste of her promised club album during her March PARTYGIRL Boiler Room set, fans were surprised by how different and vulnerable the “final” versions of the tracks were when Brat released in June.
When launching Brat’s remix album, Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat, in October, Charli commented on how the different versions reflected the “infinite possibilities” of her songs.
Just as the remix album art’s mirrored text reflects her subversion – and reinterpretation – of Brat, Charli has presented an argument against music purists’ presentations of remixes as negations of “original” songs.
The transformation of the song Everything is Romantic into a remix with Caroline Polachek, in particular, reveals Brat’s status as a perennially launching album. By transitioning from lyrics about summer in Italy to autumn in London, Charli has not only given us Brat summer – but Brat infinity.
Recommended by George Reid, lecturer in music, Kingston University.
For its fresh ambition, Imaginal Disk is a truly standout album. It fuses dreamy synth-pop, psychedelic electronica and lo-fi rock. It’s an evolution from their debut record, Mercurial World (2021), with a more coherent narrative feel and production sensibility.
The album evokes themes of self-love, time, intimacy and mortality. Superimposed, they create the feeling of listening to a dreamscape with its own spatial-temporal logic. The album leads listeners through ever-contracting and expanding production aesthetics, from the depths of claustrophobic bit-crushed rhythms to more organic, prog-rock influenced cinematics and swelling oceanic synthesizer pads.
Mica Tenenbaum’s ethereal vocals are your guide through this kaleidoscopic odyssey. Every track is a genuine surprise, and the album never loses its momentum – enchanting, unsettling, intergalactic.
Recommended by Katherine Schofield, professor of south Asian music and history, King’s College London.
Clearing out old archives earlier this year, a producer at Real World Records accidentally stumbled across something of extraordinary rarity: an unreleased master tape by acclaimed Pakistani Sufi singer and world music legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The album had been laid down in 1990 and then forgotten.
His voice – sublime in its melodic perfection, virtuoso in its rhythmic intensity, with a unique hasp of passion in its timbre – was right up there with the greatest voices of the 20th century: Aretha, Elvis, Nusrat.
When Khan died too young in 1997, his fans knew we would never hear his like again. But this new release, beautifully produced, lovingly remastered and digitised, brings his voice uncannily back to life. The album comprises four traditional qawwalis — a traditional form of devotional Sufi music. One of which, Ya Ghaus Ya Meeran, has never been recorded before.
The listening experience is astonishingly powerful and moving; as if Nusrat is right there in the room with you. A flat out masterpiece.
Recommended by Steve Ryan, course director, MA in songwriting, University of Limerick.
In 1997, the enigmatic collective known as Godspeed You! Black Emperor of Montreal, Quebec, arrived seemingly fully formed with their debut album F♯ A♯ ∞. They then released two more acclaimed albums before retreating into a seven-year hiatus.
Reforming unexpectedly in 2010, they have since released five more albums of their glorious, unmistakable music. While they may not deviate wildly from their original musical modus operandi (field recording samples, elongated ambient passages, quiet to loud dynamism), No Title… is a devastatingly beautiful and essential addition to their canon.
Composed together in one room, there is a palpable sense of friends harnessing the power of music as catharsis and meaning making in desperate times – and that we too are welcome to join them. There is beauty and dissonance here, moments of serene and soaring clear-eyed hope alongside mournful moments of crushing heaviness.
Recommended by Paul Adey, lecturer in music performance, Nottingham Trent University.
Mavi’s third solo album prioritises “spiritual honesty”. The album’s many stripped-down songs are works of veiled contemplation from a rapper on an important transitional journey towards personal enlightenment.
If you’re new to Mavi’s music, listen to Testimony as consolidation of this project. The musically rich, self-contained track adds weight to the album’s title. Meanwhile the emotion on show in I Did confirms that the rapper is still putting it all on the line when it comes to performing.
Along the way, there is a sense that Mavi is embracing the same process of artistic development as other rappers like Mick Jenkins, or Saba. Songs like The Giver display the holistic aspiration for commercial success that you would expect from an artist of this calibre.
Despite this delicate balance of authenticity and industry acumen, Mavi’s unique take on the contemporary Black American experience is never lost along the way.
Recommended by Mykaell Riley, principal investigator of the Black Music Research Unit, University of Westminster.
I was excited to listen to Black Rainbows because it aligns with my musical taste, my research aims and the promotion of Black British music. Rae’s work has spanned multiple genres, from R&B and neo-soul to incorporating elements of free jazz, rock and electronic textures.
As a Black British singer-songwriter, this album is also an exploration of her Black identity and femininity. The songs A Spell, A Prayer and Erasure underline the power of music as one of the best vehicles for documenting and celebrating a complex history.
This project was inspired by objects and artworks at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago. So on a personal level, I also appreciated the parallels between Rae’s transformation of her experiences at the gallery into Black Rainbows, and my own work with the British Library to create the exhibition Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
