I do think that broadly, I have listened to more music than usual this year. I also think that for pop music, this has been an absolutely fantastic year and proof that great years of music aren’t just whatever year you were 14 in. With both of those things said, my favourite album of the year does not stray from the consensus and has not had a great deal of competition in my heart since its release in May. My urge to be a contrarian has been stifled, squashed and beaten down. By whom, you may ask? It’s Charli baby.

In every conceivable sense, brat (stylised to be lowercase in a move that frustrates my inner and outer pedant) is the album of the year. If you weren’t overly familiar with the work of Charli XCX before this year, you are now. Her landmark album, ten years after exploding onto the pop scene, has created iconography that spilled over into films, TV and even politics (much as we all try to move on from that one.) Even if you went the whole year without listening to the album, you know what brat is. For many, the album snuck up on them. If I may have permission to be smug, I knew from the second I heard lead single “Von dutch” that I was going to be locked in. In the second half of that first verse, there is a pulsating bass that gets brought in which acts as a sort of emotional Shepard tone. For those unaware, the literal Shepard tone is an audio illusion in which a piece of music appears to keep raising in pitch, despite not doing so. Metaphorically, that’s what “Von dutch” did for me, ever escalating in intensity until the song finally wraps up and leaves me a broken man. Appropriately, my closest comparison isn’t music but the film Uncut Gems, a janky rollercoaster that I love to be thrown around on. The music video featured Charli beating the shit out of the cameraman while they followed her through an airport and yeah, that’s about the effect this song has on me, a banger that leaves me bruised.

If you’re here for bangers, my oh my are you in the right place. “360” gets us off to a great start and the refrain “I’m so Julia” (in reference to the breakout star of the aforementioned Uncut Gems) has never been far from conversation since release. We then jump into the wicked and wild “Club classics”, in which beats are all slowly layered on top of each other in a way that caused me to burst into a wild grin the first time I heard it. It’s outlandish, as is all of A. G. Cook’s production on the album, and you can’t shake the feeling that there’s no way he and Charli can get away with this. Speaking of getting away with it, the sheer transparency of “Sympathy is a knife” is audacious too, a barely concealed attack on the likes of Taylor Swift that conveniently also has a beat to shake your head to. Another favourite of mine is “Mean girls”, a ripping yarn about being horrible that out of nowhere drops the best piano solo of the century. Debussy would be proud, even if he wouldn’t know what the Staples Centre is. Final amongst the bangers is the closing track “365”, which interpolates the opening track but folds it in deeper and deeper and deeper until it bursts. As someone who no longer enjoys clubbing, this nightmare banger is the most appealing adaptation of how horrible being trapped in the club can feel. It’s a phenomenal way to end the album.

Lest we think Charli is just capable of bangers and bops, there’s also songs on brat that slow it down and get in depth about her life. “I think about it all the time” comes as a strange turn when you first hear it, really slowing the tempo down as Charli reflects on the purpose of her career and whether she should scrap it all for the chance to have a child. It is raw and a little messy, but both of those elements compliment the other to make a song that just feels real. The song on the album that really moves me though is “So I”, a song that is an ode to Charli’s friend, collaborator and hyperpop icon Sophie. In 2020, Sophie died after falling off a roof, having gone up there to stargaze. I wouldn’t usually specify cause of death but in contextualising Sophie for those who haven’t heard of her, I think it is important to know that to her last breath, she was in pursuit of intangible beauty in the world. This slow ballad reimagining a possible future that never was is at once a beautiful tribute to such an artistic soul and at the same time, entirely against what Sophie was known for, Charli even musing “Would you like this one? Maybe just a little bit.” The rawness comes through in these songs like a sledgehammer, enhancing the high energy of the songs that sit alongside it in a way that only a well structured album can.

The exciting thing about brat is that this isn’t even half of the project. In October, Charli released Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, which was a remix album full of guest stars. They aren’t all home runs (regarding Matty Healy being on the song “I might say something stupid”, I’m sure he will) but they are way more hit than miss and all reshape their original songs into new and worthwhile experiences. Ariana Grande emphasises the difficulty of fame on “Sympathy is a knife”, Caroline Polachek sings about foxes having sex in the newly downbeat “Everything is romantic” and “So I” is finally turned into the kind of weird up-tempo song Sophie might have liked. An honourable mention also goes to the “Von dutch” remix, a remix I originally rejected for being too different to the original, but that not only converted me to its new take but also eventually brought me around to the musical prowess of Addison Rae. Once again, we end on “365”, but now ratcheted up to a new insane level. When I head the song for the first time as I walked into a Lidl, I felt like I had been electrocuted. It was phenomenal and a massive statement to prove that months after brat originally came out, it could still be the talk of the town.

There is a song I have conspicuously not mentioned so far, because it is not only the best song of the album but also the best song of the year. The song is “girl, so confusing”, Charli’s ode to confusing female friendships where you love the same person whose downfall you secretly root for. With the lyric “people say we’re alike, they say we’ve got the same hair”, many immediately assumed the song was about Lorde. Instead of denying, or even just staying quiet, Charli pulled a power move; she released a remix of the song with Lorde. As someone who is a huge Lorde fan (remember, Solar Power was my album of the year for 2021), I have to say that her verse here is some of the best writing she has ever done. Much as Charli used brat to scratch the surface of her soul, Lorde turns up to “work it out on the remix” and deliver an album worth of iconic lines in one verse. I’d be remiss to not mention the “you walk like a bitch, when I was ten someone said that” line which changes the whole vibe of the verse to one of total self evisceration, but I also get goosebumps whenever I hear the line “inside that icon, there’s still a young girl from Essex.” To borrow a dumb twitter phrase, it is a song of two queens coming together to maximise their joint slay. It is the greatest song of the year in every sense, something that will forever define the album that defined the year.

We will see how time treats brat. Ultimately, we will enter an era where it is viewed as cringe. We all are stuck with the legacy of “Kamala is brat” for at least another four years and whenever something is this popular, it has to be unpopular before it can be popular again. But trust and believe, coming from the music expert that I am, brat will be beloved again in the future and endure its criticism. There is no argument that it will define 2024 but its greatness will endure too. Not bad for a young girl from Bishops Stortford.

Honourable Mentions:

Imaginal Disk by Magdalena Bay – Though this list is unranked, Imaginal Disk is my second place. I liked it on a first listen but I haven’t been able to stop listening to it since. It’s playful in its experimentation, welcoming in its oddness, yet always in reach of an operatic grandness. It’s an easy listen that only gets more thrilling the longer you’re there.

Found Heaven by Conan Gray – Like many on this list, Conan Gray is someone whose earlier songs I liked but whose albums have always missed the mark. Found Heaven really did do as its title promised, delivering a fun 80s spin on Gray’s sound that marks them out as someone who continues to have real promise.

Radical Optimism by Dua Lipa – The great crime of Radical Optimism is not being Future Nostalgia, which is tough as one of the great pop albums of the decade. However in the right time, with the sun shining and the world being right, it hit like an absolute freight train.

Don’t Forget Me by Maggie Rogers – As with Radical Optimism, this is an album that needs the sun shining and the open road ahead of you. Rogers really commands a laidback rock style here on what feels like an exciting new direction for her sound.

Short N Sweet by Sabrina Carpenter – Short N Sweet is the sixth album by Sabrina Carpenter but might as well have been her first. It was a big announcement to the world of who she was, what her sound has become and why she’s worth putting in your headphones. True to the name, it’s a delicious dose of sugar that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

The Great Impersonator by Halsey – Consider this my big prediction for the future, one day The Great Impersonator will be looked upon as a misunderstood masterpiece. It came out to a baffling herd of misogynistic hatred, despite being a painfully sincere examination of someone who thought they were about to die finally realising the value in their life.

Charm by Clairo – I’ve liked a few Clairo songs before but always found her albums a little incoherent. Consider me delighted then that she finally scores a true homerun here, in a wistful album that is playful enough to never teeter over into full sadness.

Eternal Sunshine by Ariana Grande – It’s nice to have an Ariana Grande thing from 2024 that I really like! Though she takes a risk by referencing my favourite film of all time, the albums narrative isn’t reliant on it and is able to blossom into its own confident project.

Songs About You Specifically by Michelle – My partner put a song from this album on one day and after it worming its way around my brain for days, I was drawn to the album. Simple pop brilliance, start to finish, I cannot wait for more.

Cowboy Carter by Beyoncé – My big critique of Cowboy Carter? It’s not Renaissance. That album undid years of preconceptions I had about Beyoncé in a big way, so I was going to be very receptive to whatever was next. Though overlong and unwieldy, it does cohere as a project and unlike other epics this year, I can see myself going back often for the whole thing in addition to those regular doses of its highlights.

Cartoon Darkness by Amyl and the Sniffers – I like listening to Australians swear and scream loudly. Easily the best album of the year that your mum will hate.

Only God Was Above Us by Vampire Weekend – There was a Vampire Weekend album this year! Even more impressively, it was great! This band so defined by one era continue to impress as they blaze into the future with a constantly shifting sound.

Kissing With a Cavity EP by Sophie Truax – The puppet girl from tiktok made an EP that I think is fantastic. Opener “fifty50” sets a bleep boop tone before getting nice and silly with an ode to electronic cars in “MFPR1US”. I wish Sophie Truax luck in becoming a bigger artist and not just being “the puppet girl from tiktok.”

GNX by Kendrick Lamar – There are two reasons Kendrick Lamar is on here. First, GNX is a fantastic album that I’ve had on a real solid rotation since its release. Second though, consider this a placeholder for all his songs attacking Drake. “euphoria”, “meet the grahams” and especially “Not Like Us” came together to contribute to a historic downfall of the former biggest name in rap music, a blaze of gunfire that rocketed Lamar to the top of the charts and into legend.