Culture Crash: From Billie Eilish To Taylor Swift: 2024 Has Been A Wild Ride For Music Lovers

We’re not even halfway through the year, and 2024 has already  been an absolute gold rush for music fans. We have huge releases from Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish. We also have new albums from bands like Vampire Weekend and Bleachers, as xwell as Maggie Rogers, Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa. And in case you were living under a rock, millions of us online streamed along as one of the craziest rap beefs of all time unfolded between Kendrick Lamar and Drake.

*But with all of those new releases, what has been able to rise above the fray and become music that you listen to on a weekly basis? Well, for me the album of the year so far is Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter, a tour de force of a concept album that sees Beyonce reclaiming country sounds and mixing them up with rap, hip hop, and classic rock in an eclectic and absolutely electric fashion. I also am a Swift fan, so The Tortured Poets Department has been on repeat. A dreamy but vicious series of songs that will crush your soul lyrically while delivering high highs on songs like Guilty as Sin, Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me, The Black Dog, and The Bolter. We also have an absolute banger in Hozier’s Too Sweet, a potential song of the summer candidate with Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso, and new songs from Olivia Rodrigo – I love Obsessed.

Beyond all of that, Dominic Fike released a short little EP called 14 minutes with some of my favorite sounds of the year on tracks like Hi Grace and misses.

Like I said, 2024 has been a gold rush of new music so far, and I still have releases from Omar Apolo, Glass Animals and Lana del Rey to look forward to in the months ahead.