When Charli XCX recorded her sixth album, Brat, she thought her prickly, abrasive dance anthems were “not going to appeal to a lot of people”.
In the end, the record topped the charts and became a cultural phenomenon. It was nominated for seven Grammys, referenced in the US presidential election, turned into a paint swatch, and named “word of the year” by Collins Dictionary.
Now the album has been named the best new release of 2024 in a “poll of polls” compiled by BBC News.
In multiple end of year lists, critics called Brat “brilliant from start to finish” and “pop music for the future”, praising the way its “painfully relatable” lyrics captured Charli’s insecurities, anxieties and obsessions.
In the star’s own words, the record is “chaos and emotional turmoil set to a club soundtrack”.
“The louder you play it, the more honest it gets,” said the Los Angeles Times.
The BBC’s poll is a “super-ranking” compiled from 30 year-end lists published by the world’s most influential music magazines – including the NME, Rolling Stone, Spain’s Mondo Sonoro and France’s Les Inrockuptibles.
Records were assigned points based on their position in each list – with the number one album getting 20 points, the number two album receiving 19 points, and so on.
Brat was the runaway winner with a score of 486 points, nearly twice as many as the number two album, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.
In total, the critics named 184 records among their favourites, from the The Cure’s long-awaited comeback, Songs Of A Lost World, to the kaleidoscopic rap of Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal.
Here’s the top 25 in full.
1) Charli XCX – Brat
Charli was born Emma Aitchison in Essex, UK, and has been chipping away at the coalface of pop for more than a decade.
At the start of her career, she scored hits with shiny pop anthems such as Fancy, I Love It and Boom Clap – but over the years, her music has become more volatile and aggressive.
Underground anthems like Vroom, Vroom and Track 10 turned her into a cult star but, as she confessed on Brat: “I’ve started thinking again about whether I deserve commercial success“.
With that in mind, she entered 2024 with a new sense of purpose.
“Before we’d even done much writing, she had a masterplan of all the stuff she wanted to write about, and all the things she wanted to say,” producer AG Cook tells the BBC. “She had a real vision for the album, right from the start.”
“Even the name Brat was in play for about two years,” adds co-producer Finn Keane.
Released in June, Brat became the soundtrack to the summer; and Charli extended her success with a remix album that rewrote many of the songs and added an array of guest stars, from Billie Eilish and Robyn to The 1975 and Lorde.
The remix project was “really, off-the-cuff and last minute”, says Cook, “but that’s been part of the fun of Brat”.
“Charli is just incredibly quick and open to ideas,” adds Keane. “You can give her kind of any kind of crazy track, and she’ll instantly be able to come up with something super hooky, with a twist that’s very memorable and elaborate.
“She’s just incredibly musical.”
Billboard: “Charli XCX pulled off one of the most exciting and culturally significant album launches in modern memory… And best of all? It was all on Charli’s own terms. Drawing inspiration primarily from club culture and hyperpop, Charli pulled once-niche spaces in music into the mainstream.”
The Forty Five: “In making a club record to ignite the underground, she’s reached the world’s biggest stages. Musically, Charli is at her peak.”
2) Beyoncé – Cowboy Carter
Frequently mis-labelled as a country album, Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter is so much more. A racial reckoning with the black roots of American folk music, its 27 tracks embrace everything from line-dancing to psychedelic rock, with guest appearances from Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Post Malone.
The Times: “The pop hoedown single Texas Hold ‘Em remains the best piece, but the acoustic guitar-driven sexy ode Bodyguard is another highlight. Will this finally win Beyoncé her best album Grammy?”
NME: “A masterclass in creativity from an artist who never forgets her roots.”
3) Fontaines D.C. – Romance
The fourth album by Dublin’s Fontaines DC saw the quintet take their scratchy, sinister sound and run it through a technicolor filter. The results include everything from stadium-sized sing-alongs (Favourite) to panic-inducing punk anthems (Starburster).
Allmusic: “When all is said and done, they remain fantastic songwriters, able to convey a variety of emotions without relying on the trappings of punk. The corners may have been sanded off, but it has only revealed new and interesting textures underneath.”
Mojo magazine: “Fontaines D.C. are now, in terms of risk-taking potential, the Arctic Monkeys’ closest rivals.”
4) Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard And Soft
The title says it all. None of the songs on Billie Eilish’s exquisite third album are content to sit still, moving from hushed intimacy to emotional volatility as the singer navigates the murky waters of her early 20s.
The Telegraph: “Eilish has made something rich, strange, smart, sad and wise enough to stand comparison with Joni Mitchell’s Blue. A heartbreak masterpiece for her generation, and for the ages.”
The Guardian: “An album that keeps wrongfooting the listener, Hit Me Hard and Soft is clearly intended as something to gradually unpick: A bold move in a pop world where audiences are usually depicted as suffering from an attention deficit that requires instant gratification.”
5) MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks
Billed by one publication as the “poet laureate of indie rock”, MJ Lenderman’s breakthrough album is tender, melancholy and wryly funny, populated by a cast of flawed, disappointed and disappointing characters he observed around his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina.
New York Times: “An ace guitarist with a keen ear for jangly tones, he lends even his most pathetic characters a bit of warm-blooded humanity.”
The Line Of Best Fit: “How he gets you to care about nobodies from nowhere and their very strange plights is in part to do with his knack for universal empathy, but more importantly, the fact that he sings everything like he was just robbed at gunpoint by his 8th grade bully who he later watched win the lottery. You feel bad for things you don’t necessarily even understand.”
6) The Cure – Songs Of A Lost World
Sixteen years in the making, The Cure’s 14th studio album didn’t disappoint. Written during a period where frontman Robert Smith lost his mother, father and brother, it is simultaneously dark and fragile.
Speaking to the BBC, Smith said making the record had been “hugely cathartic” in escaping the “doom and gloom” he felt.
Time magazine: “It’s no exaggeration that this is an album haunted by death, so it’s almost ironic that, musically speaking, there hasn’t been this much life in The Cure for decades.”
Pitchfork: “It feels like a record whose time is right, delivering a concentrated dose of The Cure and cutting the fat that dogged their later albums.”
7) Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee
A sprawling, two-hour opus of dreamy pop and psychedelia, this is one of the year’s most mysterious records. You can’t buy the CD or vinyl, and it’s not available on Spotify or Apple Music. At the time of writing, it’s only available as a continuous, ad-free stream on YouTube, or as a download from Bandcamp.
But the seventh album by Cyndi Lee (the drag alter-ego of rock musician Patrick Flegel) is definitely worth your seeking out – like the lost transmissions of a ghostly 1960s pirate radio station.
Uncut: “Cindy Lee has managed to buck just about every trend, convention and expectation of what releasing music in the digital age is supposed to look and like. And, even more crucially, it sounds just as refreshing.”
Stereogum: “Diamond Jubilee is two hours of unrushed wandering through a lo-fi escape, catchy to the point of sticky, tarnishing in its abrasiveness yet sun-baked to perfection.”
8) Waxahatchee – Tigers Blood
On her sixth album as Waxahatchee, singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield tackles everything from anxiety and self-doubt, to her ongoing struggle with sobriety, with piercing insight and a laid-back country-rock feel.
Pitchfork: “Her mind is alive and humming, and her language leaps out at you with its hunger.”
Consequence of Sound: “Crutchfield is still growing, both personally and artistically, and we’re just glad she’s invited us along for the ride.”
9) Kendrick Lamar – GNX
After landing the decisive blow in his rap beef with Drake, Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar took a victory lap on his surprise sixth album, GNX. Razor sharp and rhythmically complex, it’s both a poison pen letter to his detractors, and a love letter to Los Angeles’ hip-hop culture.
LA Times: “Lamar is worked up about liars, about folks doling out backhanded compliments, about other rappers with “old-ass flows” wasting space with empty rhymes. Indeed, what seems to make him angriest is the idea that a person could triumph in hip-hop by taking hip-hop less seriously than he does.”
Complex: “Even cooler is how much space Kendrick gives to underground rappers from the LA scene—figures who are talented but raw, and would likely struggle to gain national recognition without a boost.”
10) Sabrina Carpenter – Short N’ Sweet
Six albums into her career, former Disney star Sabrina Carpenter landed on a winning formula – one that puts aside the cookie-cutter pop of her teen years, and zeroes in on her sly humour as a USP.
Fleet of foot and packed with memorable one-liners, it produced three number one singles in the UK, including song of the year contender Espresso.
New York Times: “A smart, funny, cheerfully merciless catalogue of bad boyfriend behaviour.”
Esquire: “The range, humour, and sophistication of these 12 songs were a revelation.”
The next 15
11) Tyler, The Creator – Chromokopia
12) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Wild God
13) Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown
=14) Mk.Gee – Two Star & The Dream People
=14) Jessica Pratt – Here In The Pitch
16) Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us
17) Adrianne Lenker – Bright Future
18) Doechii – Alligator Bites Never Heal
19) Clairo – Charm
=20) Taylor Swift – The Tortured Poets Department
=20) Nala Sinephro – Endlessness
22) English Teacher – This Could Be Texas
23) The Last Dinner Party – Prelude To Ecstasy
24) Magdalena Bay – Imaginal Disk
25) Nilufer Yanya – My Method Actor
The chart was compiled from 30 “best of” lists in the following publications: Billboard, Complex, Consequence Of Sound, Daily Mail, Dazed Magazine, Double J, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, The Forty Five, Gorilla Vs Bear, The Guardian, The Independent, LA Times, Les Inrocks, Line Of Best Fit, Mojo, Mondo Sonoro, NME, New York Times, Paste, People, Pitchfork, Pop Matters, The Skinny, Rolling Stone, Stereogum, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, Time Magazine and Uncut.
