Thematically, much of this year’s best punk and hardcore music addressed mental health and working through the past while striving for a more peaceful present.
Americana has never been better with the quality of music, diversity of styles, and the artists’ demographics in terms of race, gender, and wealth.
The year’s best folk albums transcend genre boundaries, yet each entry remains firmly grounded in the folk ethos of connection and storytelling.
Hard rock band Shinedown are never quiet about their struggles and never will be as they assure fans that being “slightly awkward, kinda weird” is perfectly normal.
In 2024’s best global music, celebrations of culture abound, with performers playing with sounds of home and family from the Caribbean to Tanzania and beyond.
André 3000’s surprise Album of the Year nod at the Grammys was only one of the many ambient/experimental highlights to happen in a wild year like 2024.
This has proved a fantastic year for heavy music and metal, with masters impressing and newer artists shining. These are the best metal albums of 2024.
In a year full of industry shakeups and unexpected controversies, 2024’s best K-pop tracks provides a surprising degree of relief in a panoply of styles.
PopMatters hits the road for five shows in six days with psychedelic rock eco-rebels King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard who have taken the US by storm.
When the light hits the music just right, Tom Waits’ body of work unlocks and reveals itself: to be at home anywhere is to be at home nowhere at all.
Louder Than You Think documents the early origins of indie rock’s Pavement through the cracked life and times of the band’s first drummer, Gary Young.
For her 1989 album, Taylor Swift wrote breakup songs that cleverly conveyed to fans she had personal freedom even from within her glass castle.
