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The Best Albums of 2024


Variety's music writers offer their picks for 2024's best albums, including Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift, Charli XCX, Jack White and more.

Her fresh and consistent take on the decades-old style has helped cement her burgeoning career after the success of her Grammy-winning breakthrough single, “Water.” On top of that, Tyla has delivered expertly choreographed dance sequences and visuals throughout much of this year, continuing to expand her world for listeners across the globe. The ghosts of Laurel Canyon past loom over the record’s nine tracks, where the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter embellishes her stripped sound with minute adjustments — the chiming glockenspiel on “Life Is,” a Farfisa on “By Hook or by Crook” — that bring subtle texture to her haunting compositions. Tasjan isn’t just writing songs for an LGBTQ+ audience, but he’s more forthright than ever in taking some of the material there, and in a year when the queer community might not be feeling the safest ever, he welcomed gay and straight fans alike with a true rainbow of a record, one that includes tracks as soberingly topical as “Nightmare” or as delightful as the androgyny-celebrating “Pants.”

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