A reflection on the limitations of year-end music lists, particularly ranked albums lists, in capturing the full breadth and diversity of a musical year.
For NPR Music's hip-hop and R&B editor, no list could capture an accurate picture of the year, yet there's still value in calling out the albums that felt unignorable. — produced, arranged and engineered by the English harpist — arrived in 2024 lacking any narrative baggage, forcing listeners to uncover its secrets on their own. we are publishing lists of the music loved best by individual members of NPR Music's team.
For more, check out the full team's picks for the When I first started working as a music critic, I held nothing more sacred than a ranked albums list. The album felt like the idealized musical vehicle, a prime mechanism for the expression of true artistic vision and an opportunity to see that vision at scale. Songs — there were always so many songs. Too many to really wrap your arms around and judge fairly, in my opinion. But albums were self-contained, easier to quantify and could be stacked up cleanly next to each other — or so I thought then. In recent years, I've started to distrust the process, not simply because canonizing can reward a certain kind of self-important work, but also because the result has felt more and more often like an inadequate picture of the year. Such lists, by nature, exist for consecration and posterity first and foremost; diversity and sprawl are often secondary concerns, and even the most diverse, sprawling list always seems to be riddled with omissions no matter how thorough. Most year-end lists, including ours, only have 50 slots, which immediately creates certain priorities and demands compromise. Individual lists are less tricky, as they can certify individual taste, but even they can't truly say anything definitive about a music landscape growing more fragmented each year.2024, as much as any year in recent memory, exemplifies this issu
YEAR-END LISTS ALBUMS MUSIC CRITICISM DIVERSITY FRAGMENTATION
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