Best pop music albums of 2024, according to our pop music critic

This Top 10 list of the best albums of 2024 is actually a Top 15.

Sorry if that seems like cheating, but so many high profile artists demanded inclusion that I needed extra room to make sure personal favorites also got their due.

The story of the year was the dominance of women in pop. Taylor Swift ruled the world, Olivia Rodrigo staged the most in-demand summer tour, and, with “Good Luck Babe!,” Chappell Roan’s fame skyrocketed.

That wave is carried forward by Charli XCX and Sabrina Carpenter, two veteran pop acts whose music is all the better for the years it took them to break through. Plus there’s Billie Eilish, Beyoncé’s country crossover power move, indie luminaries Waxahatchee and Jessica Pratt, and Philly’s mighty Mannequin Pussy. (Stay tuned for a Philly Top 10, coming next week.)

So here are my Top 15 albums of 2024. Ranking is silly, but it had to be done. Women outnumber men by a 2:1 ratio, and 10 more honorable mentions are included for your listening pleasure.

Charli XCX is new to the mainstream, but the British singer-producer-songwriter-meme maker born Charli Aitchison has been creating grabby dance floor hooks for over a decade. She played a Making Time party in Philly in 2012, for goodness’ sake! While most of her big wins have been with other artists, this year it all came together on Brat and its expansive sequel Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat, with songs that partied hard while making time for self-reflection. Brat turned cocktails slime green and spawned “Kamala is Brat” memes during the early days of the Harris campaign before Charli headed out on a sold-out arena tour and finished the year on SNL performing in a Lou Reed T-shirt.

Lenderman is the indie-rock MVP of 2024, a droll observer of sad-sack behavior in character sketches that dudes (and women) who love him recognize as authentic. The pop culture references are on point, from the Ferrari-driving, Clapton-listening philanderer in “She’s Leaving You” to the Ozzy Osbourne-loving guitar hero playing couch potato in “Bark At The Moon.” He’s wry, he’s droll, his affection for Neil Young is everywhere apparent.

Lenderman also made significant contributions to Tigers Blood, former Philadelphian Katie Crutchfield’s best and most country-leaning album. The set of Brad Cook-produced songs, as well as subsequent tracks such as a cover of Lucinda Williams’ “Abandoned,” soar with ever greater confidence as the Alabama native, who headlined this year’s Philly Music Fest, embraces the twang in her voice and the ambition in her heart.

Cowboy Carter gets points for cultural impact as well as musical content. Yes, there’s a long history of Black country music going back decades, as well as a groundswell of artists working today redefining what country looks and sounds like. Beyoncé didn’t get here first. But Cowboy Carter calls attention to contributors like Shaboozey and Brittney Spencer while inviting her enormous audience to the hoedown. Is it really a country album, or just a genre blender in a cowboy hat? With pop songs as hooky as “Bodyguard,” does it really matter?

Pratt is a pop classicist, with song structures that recall 1960s girl groups like the Shangri-Las and Ronettes through a late night haze. Songs like “Life Is” are whispery and mysterious with a booming resonance that fills the room. Nothing is overplayed or overstated; melodies linger in the air.

Like Charli XCX, Bucks County’s own breakout star had a long career before becoming uber-famous overnight. The cheekily titled Short n’ Sweet — Carpenter is 5 feet tall — is actually the former Disney star’s sixth album. Here, working with cowriter Amy Allen, she found her tart, dirty-minded, and playful voice on a clever and crisp set that produced two frothy songs of the summer in “Espresso” and “Please Please Please.”

Billie Eilish’s music is all about the exploration of self, and at just short of 23, she’s a pop music veteran. Skilled at deploying her catholic taste — from bossa nova to torch song, hip-hop to pure pop — she navigates growing up under the public eye with grace. Her third album leaves the goth beginnings of her 2019 When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? far behind, turning up the heat on lusty tracks like “Lunch.”

The title of the former Alabama Shakes singer’s second solo album is an existential and a personal query. What Now is a breakup album at a loss to find its moorings, but also an awesomely proficient groove record enveloping a sonic arsenal that moves through funk, rock, psychedelia, and — on “I Don’t” — delicious Philly soul.

The Philly rock and roll album of the year is also one of the best of the year, period. On I Got Heaven, the quartet fronted by Marisa Dabice crystallized its formidable attack that shifts from the sweet to the ferocious in the blink of an eye, with a mastery reminiscent of Nirvana.

Doechii dramatically raised her profile this month with a seamlessly choreographed routine with two dancers whose braids were entwined with hers on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She followed up with a transporting performance at NPR Music’s Tiny Desk with a dazzling all-woman band. Check those out, then dive in to the technically adept, stylistically varied Alligator by the Florida “Swamp Princess.”

Apocalyptically poetic, LOL funny, and insufferably pompous, this is a Father John Misty album of the highest order. He isn’t shy about telling us what’s wrong with our dystopian post-truth age, and writes with amusing self-regard in “Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose.” The 1970s-style rock arrangements never drag, and Misty’s writing is at his sharpest. Particularly on the 8 1/2 minute-long “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools Of Us All.” Ain’t that the truth!

GNX capped a year in which the peerless Compton rapper won a resounding (if hollow) battle with Drake, with the victory-clinching “Not Like Us” emerging as one of three chart toppers. The others: “Like That,” a Future and Metro Boomin collaboration, plus GNX’s percolating “Squabble Up.” Extra points for modeling the “Squabble Up” video on The Roots’ 1999 video for “The Next Movement.” Next: the Super Bowl, and a tour with SZA due in Philly in May.

If you’re going to listen to one country music Morgan, let it be this one. Morgan Wade’s punchy, uncompromising songs hit home with a polished sheen. She kicks butt on a set that pulls off the trick of making universally resonant music from the well-worn subject of life on the road.

On their fourth album, the Dublin post-punk quartet still launches a sonic assault that shakes you by the shoulders, but kilt-wearing singer Grian Chatten and crew have expanded their emotional range. “Favourite” hits a melodic sweet spot previously beyond their ken.

The Cure’s Songs of a Lost World has been mightily praised for sounding every bit as good as the band did in its 1980s heyday. So how about a little love for X, the Los Angeles punks whose final album is their second in four years, after taking a 27-year break. Miraculously, John Doe and Exene Cervenka’s songs hurtle forward with just as much locomotive energy and beatnik wisdom as they did in the early 1980s. And that indeed is a wild gift.

Honorable Mentions: T Bone Burnett’s The Other Side; Mdou Moctar’s Funeral for Justice; Amy Rigby’s Hang In There With Me; St. Vincent’s All Born Screaming; Sturgill Simpson / Johnny Blue Skies’ Passage du Desir; Tyler, the Creator’s Chromakopia; Vampire Weekend’s Only God Was Above Us; Gillian Welch & David Rawlings’ Woodland; Nilüfer Yanya’s My Method Actor; Dwight Yoakam’s Brighter Days.