Let’s be real: in music in 2024, Brat reigned supreme. Barely a year ago, Charli XCX was pop’s cultiest figure, the poster child for mainstream indifference to outsider pop artistry; now even grandpa’s out here “365 bumping that”. It is the music story of the year, and it is progress.

But there were other albums that also drew our attention, altered our perspectives, and offered escapism when necessary. These were our critics’ 10 favourite albums of the year.

Charli XCX, Brat
It was the year of the endless Brat summer. Charli XCX’s sixth album was nothing short of a pop culture phenomenon, its distinctive slime green cover and Arial font splashed over billboards, Instagram photo-dumps, and even presidential campaigns. Brat is a club pop masterpiece, acidic and warping, reaching for the highs of the dance floor while also unravelling Charli’s anxieties about fame and motherhood. The album became shorthand for a specific breed of grinning nihilism, and Charli XCX – having dipped in and out of mainstream attention for a decade – found herself as one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. The follow-up remix record delivered even more hits – Lorde’s feature on Girl, So Confusing was the music moment of the year. Thank god our summer has only just started – we’re not ready to leave the Brat universe. Jules LeFevre

Ela Stiles, Not a Stranger
Melbourne musician Ela Stiles’ self-titled 2014 album contained almost nothing but her voice and her next, Molten Metal, oozed drones and industrial texture. On this year’s Not a Stranger, Stiles burnishes those outsider impulses with pop splendour. Lover pulses with shadowy synthetic desire; Mummy’s Back recalls the dark intensity of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill (with added riffs); and on The Only One, Stiles marries ’90s R&B to expansive Ibizan sunset synths. Not a Stranger is a deliciously dark, trippy-disco listen for fans of Italians Do It Better, with the kind of adventurous production flourishes and sincere vocal performances that rarely make it onto major label pop releases. Nick Buckley

Tyler the Creator, Chromakopia
In a year where pop’s girlies grappled with maternal anxiety (Charli XCX’s I Think About It All the Time, Astrid Sonne’s Do You Wanna, Sabrina Carpenter’s Juno), Tyler the Creator was the only one doing it for the dudes: on Chromakopia, he tussled with regret over a recent brush at fatherhood (Hey Jane), recontextualised his relationship with his own absent father (Like Him), even spat the most enlightened bars about male responsibility since ‘Pac’s Keep Ya Head Up. Then there was Take Your Mask Off, a self-directed diss track filled with such lacerating self-loathing it made a mockery of Kendrick and Drake’s feud; and Balloon, where breakout Doechii got unhinged in a Nicki-on-Monster kind of way. Raw, messy, honest and, for many, awkwardly off-putting, Chromakopia’s an overstuffed statement of personal bloodletting. That is to say, a pure work of art. Robert Moran

Sabrina Carpenter, Short n’ Sweet
Like Britney and Christina before her, Sabrina Carpenter got her start on the Disney Channel, then broke free from her PG beginnings with music that was decidedly more adult. Short n’ Sweet is her star-making sixth album, stuffed with deliciously funny double entendres, sugary synths and good-humoured self deprecation. “I know I have good judgment, I know I have good taste/ It’s funny and it’s ironic that only I feel that way,” she sings. Fab songwriters and producers such as Amy Allen and Jack Antonoff deserve credit, but Carpenter co-wrote every track and her distinctive, agile soprano dips and soars like a hummingbird. Annabel Ross

Adrianne Lenker, Bright Future
Matters of the heart are Adrianne Lenker’s bread and butter, both in her solo project and as the leader of the indie band Big Thief. Her sixth solo album showcases her fine songwriting and storytelling skills, building on the traditional folk base to create an immersive and emotive world. Sometimes the songs are sparse – on opener Real House, Lenker sings over a simple piano backing, telling an evocative story of childhood innocence lost. The freewheeling single Sadness as a Gift is more luscious instrumentally, with guitar, violin and piano; Free Treasure features beautiful harmonies as Lenker muses about the total liberation of love. The lyrics of EVOL are twisty and tricky, looping backwards and forwards, but even with a gimmicky premise, Lenker’s lyricism and emotional honesty shine through. That depth of feeling is what marks this record most – whether singing about joy or sorrow, there’s a real sense of intimacy and safety. Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

Eliza & The Delusionals, Make it Feel Like the Garden
The mission statement for Eliza Klatt and company’s second album is stated very clearly in the title. The Gold Coast trio envisioned a sprawling, vivid album, at many points dreamlike, like wandering through an overgrown garden bursting with colour. Did they succeed? Yes, and then some. The technicolour instrumentation and arrangements give serious heft to the band’s skilled songwriting, which channels the shimmering and starry-eyed pop of the early 2000s, sliced through with late ’90s alt-rock. Falling For You spins sax lines among curtains of guitars, Another You builds into a Sam Fender-level rush, while Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert joins on the gritty Lately. Find a garden bench and stay a while. It’s worth it. Jules LeFevre

Nicolas Jaar, Piedras 1 & 2
Piedras 1 & 2 is a collection of songs that Chilean-American composer Nicolas Jaar originally wrote for a radio play. The backstory is complicated but it’s essentially a fable inspired by dictatorship and colonisation in Chile and Palestine, contested histories of place and ownership, and how memory and trauma affect narratives. If that all sounds heady and heavy, it is, but Piedras is also strewn with moments of lightness and immediacy, as in the Latin noise-folk of Aqui and Rio de Las Tumblas, and the trio of spindly IDM jams concluding the double album. It’s the electronic auteur’s most personal work yet. Annabel Ross

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Dawn Again, Every Dog’s Hotel
Every Dog’s Hotel is the house music equivalent of your first sip of a cold schooner, that moment when the froth lingering on your top lip gently expresses its refreshing mist on your nose’s tip. Following on from a string of excellent 12″ EPs, producer Nick Verwey conceived the album’s “pubwave” sonic template during lockdown while missing Naarm’s Balearic beer gardens. As it moves through sophisticated, downtempo, deep house and breakbeats, the album’s banana lounge bass luxuriates horizontally, while its cooling synths quench your thirst for the club without leaving the barbecue unattended. Every Dog’s Hotel has been the source of untold hours of relaxation in 2024. Nick Buckley

Erika de Casier, Still
In a year of maximalist pop, Erika de Casier’s Still functioned as a salve. Whenever I wanted to slink into an otherworldly fantasy, the Portuguese-Danish singer’s icy R&B – all languid early hours, through-a-rain-streaked-window mood – took me there. The album’s bubbly opener Home Alone is a perfect showcase of her deceptively intricate songwriting, her feathery come-ons twisting across a cosmopolitan sonic palette that touches Afrobeats, Middle Eastern guitars, classical strings and even tango, while the delightfully sullen My Day Off is unpredictably serpentine, like a Lil Jon production through a downer haze. A love letter to Y2K-era R&B evoking the underplayed mystery of Aaliyah, this is nostalgic reverie at its most forward-thinking. Robert Moran

Fontaines DC, Romance
Fontaines DC are one of the strangest and most exciting bands in the world right now. The Irish post-punk quartet’s fourth album takes in a huge range of influences and ideas, from the literary (frontman Grian Chatten has name-checked Jack Kerouac and Dylan Thomas as lyrical inspirations) to the cinematic (Japanese manga and Italian cinema) and the musical (everything from Lana Del Rey to Deftones and Nine Inch Nails can be heard in the complex instrumentation). It sounds like a lot, and it is, but this album is equally propulsive and cerebral – a tour de force of sound. For a good place to start, the Gorillaz-esque lead single Starburster is a shot of adrenaline, driven by Chatten’s impressive, rapid speak-singing and an oddly addictive wheeze that punctuates its chorus; it’s one of the most distinctive songs of the year. We’ll surely be hearing more about Fontaines DC in 2025 and beyond. Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen