The Worst Albums of 2024
Enough of the positivity. Let's get critical.
Let’s talk about some truly terrible music. The worst that 2024 had to offer. Katy Perry. Eminem. Beyoncé.
Hang on, put those pitchforks down — I’m only joking about Beyoncé.
I know today’s poptimist music writers don’t usually engage in this sort of negativity. It feels like a rockist trait — something we mostly left behind in the mid-2000s shift away from the obnoxious elevation of authentic (read: guitar) music.
Film critics, on the other hand, are generally all too happy to eviscerate clichéd writing, a questionable acting performance, or any number of poor directorial choices. And 95% of rom-coms. They hate those. Consequently, features of this ilk are relatively commonplace in film media. I’ve already read several this year.
But music critics? Today’s writers have almost become too kind. We celebrate new releases and tend to sidestep things we don’t like. Everything is presumed to have value to someone. If we don’t get it, maybe it’s us? Nobody wants to be that person who puts the boot in.
Essentially, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
It’s a nice mantra, but the natural end-point of #bekind criticism is a situation where everything is ostensibly good or great, leaving the reader none the wiser. This leads us to a perfectly valid question: what’s the point of music critics?
In considering this existential dilemma, I headed to the website of leading music aggregator Album of the Year. Like Metacritic, AOTY collates reviews from a large number of sources — No Ripcord included — and generates an average critic score for every album of note. Unlike Metacritic, it focuses exclusively on music. For this reason and many more, it’s my preferred aggregator.
In 2024, AOTY has aggregated a total of 270 albums with 10 or more critic reviews. Can you guess how many have an average critic score of 70/100 or above?
244.
That’s a little over 90% of notable new releases scoring 7/10 or above. Either the majority of these records are pretty decent, or there’s some serious grade inflation going on.
So, let’s embark on a journey of discovery as we explore the 26 records that scored less than 70. Or, as I prefer to call them, the absolute worst records of 2024. We’ll work through them from (relative) best to worst. I can’t promise a captivating soundtrack, but we’ll try to have some fun along the way.
26. SOPHIE
“SOPHIE”
This posthumous release scored an average of 69, which sounds pretty respectable to me, but in 2024 means it’s a terrible album. Additionally, SOPHIE deserves extra credit for inspiring Charli xcx’s masterful brat.
25. PERSONAL TRAINER
“Still Willing”
This Dutch indie-rock band are outliers as the only relatively new indie band in the bottom 26. Was Still Willing one of the year’s worst records? Of course not. It sounds fairly solid to me. It’s good but not great, like a lot of releases by up-and-coming indie bands. And yet it has a lower average score than Dua Lipa’s phoned in Radical Optimism.
24. FRED AGAIN..
“ten days”
Fred Again.. is only here because that scoundrel Anthony Fantano used a rating lower than 6 to signify his disdain towards ten days.
23. ZAYN
“ROOM UNDER THE STAIRS”
In his excellent 2017 essay about poptimism for The Quietus, Michael Hann describes a set of poptimist sacred cows. One of these — “to not care about Taylor Swift or Beyoncé or Lady Gaga or Zayn Malik is in itself questionable” — seems to have aged like a pint of milk, because Zayn is now fair game for critics. Few publications embraced poptimism quite like Pitchfork, yet even they scolded ROOM UNDER THE STAIRS, claiming it “hits like background music”.
22. MOBY
“Always Centered At Night”
I never liked Moby, and neither did Eminem. In a highly predictable twist, none of us created worthwhile music in 2024.
21. KERRY KING
“From Hell I Rise”
The 60-year-old thrash metal guitarist, formerly of Slayer, has a name that screams early 90s Premier League defender. Was he secretly a full-back at Ipswich Town? When he talks about Hell does he actually mean East Anglia? I have so many questions.
20. THE VACCINES
“Pick-Up Full Of Pink Carnations”
Our first landfill indie band! Spoiler alert: they’re not the last. Critics are generally on safe ground tearing into derivative guitar music and the knives were certainly out for the dreadfully-titled Pick-Up Full Of Pink Carnations.
[They] seem doomed to flop around aimlessly for eternity, occupying mid-afternoon festival slots and presumably asking middle-aged parents to put their hands in the air and breathe in the rank nostalgia.
I wrote that about The Wombats in a scathing 2/10 critique of their last album, which remains my lowest score of the decade. It works equally well for The Vaccines.
19. JUSTICE
“Hyperdrama”
If you saw Justice perform live in 2024, chances are you weren’t there for the new stuff.
18. CIGARETTES AFTER SEX
“X’s”
Less dream-pop, more the stuff of nightmares. If Guantanamo Bay ever needs a house band, they could do much worse than Cigarettes After Sex.
17. POST MALONE
“F-1 Trillion”
No arguments from me. Post Malone popped up on a couple of huge records this year (Taylor Swift, Beyoncé) but his own is straight-up garbage.
16. THE DANDY WARHOLS
“Rockmaker”
“With its captivating soundscapes, star-studded collaborations, and undeniable talent, this album is destined to become a staple in the collections of fans worldwide, promising countless hours of exhilarating listening pleasure for years to come.” — Spill Magazine
This is high praise from Spill, even if their somewhat mechanical writing style bears an uncanny resemblance to my teenage son’s last-minute English essays. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
15. ZARA LARSSON
“Venus”
No, I’ve got nothing.
14. BLEACHERS
“Bleachers”
With two Bleachers records alongside production work for Kendrick Lamar, Sabrina Carpenter, and Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff had his hands in more places than a disgraced hip hop mogul this year. That’s a purely hypothetical mogul, of course. The appalling Bleachers was the most heinous crime Antonoff committed in 2024, a despicably dull dive into the depths of his sad beige signature sound. Like that shockingly bland aesthetic, Antonoff’s peak has passed. His ideas are starting to sound washed out and dated. He is a sad beige man in a Mocha Mousse world.
13. CHILDISH GAMBINO
“Bando Stone and The New World”
Donald Glover is a man of many talents, but you’d never know it from listening to Bando Stone and The New World.
12. LIAM GALLAGHER AND JOHN SQUIRE
“Liam Gallagher John Squire”
The two middle-aged horsemen of the anti-vax apocalypse joined forces to shout at clouds and hammer fretboards like a child of the 80s playing Track & Field. There’s only one place for these grizzled “real music” dinosaurs… to the landfill!
11. KASABIAN
“Happenings”
Oh, dear God.
10. GLASS ANIMALS
“I Love You So F***ing Much”
The inexplicably popular Glass Animals are exactly the type of band that used to have the good grace to be one-hit wonders and then f*** off. Despite setting the bar pretty low, the former public schoolboys have still failed to write another “Heat Waves”.
9. ICE SPICE
“Y2K!”
On the plus side, Ice Spice is now a playable character in the brain-rotting money pit popular video game Fortnite. So there is that.
8. SNOW PATROL
“The Forest Is The Path”
Do you know those overpriced provincial music festivals that specialise in heritage acts and cover bands? Even they will be thinking twice about booking Snow Patrol after this.
7. THE VOIDZ
“Like All Before You”
Oh, Julian.
6. CAMILA CABELLO
“C,XOXO”
Camila Cabello tried something different and got hammered for it. Her club-inflected reboot was branded inauthentic and lacking charisma by critics. Even poptimism couldn’t save her.
5. COLDPLAY
“Moon Music”
At the time of writing, Coldplay are the number 8 most streamed artist on Spotify. That is mind-blowing to me. Chris Martin won’t care that The Telegraph’s Neil McCormick feels his lyrics “sound like Instagram self-help slogans”. Can 92 million people really be wrong? Yes. Yes, they can.
4. JENNIFER LOPEZ
“This Is Me…Now”
J. Lo had a busy year, didn’t she? She released this starry-eyed letter to Ben Affleck in February, only to file for divorce from him — for the second time — in August.
3. EMINEM
“The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)”
“And I'll probably get shit for that (watch) / But you can all suck my dick, in fact,” raps Eminem on comeback single and muted album highlight “Houdini” — but he was wrong. He really didn’t get that much shit for any of The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), because like a musical Andrew Tate, his relevance only extends to the realm of teenage boys. His provocative statements were met with shrugs and yawns. If you want humour with your hip hop, go and listen to Heems. He might not be able to rhyme as fast, but maybe we should prize quality over quantity, and potency over speed.
2. JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE
“Everything I Thought It Was”
Here’s another big star who had a disastrous year. In 2024, Timberlake was less Trolls, more troll. All of the critics rightfully slammed this turgid 77-minute plea for relevance, but The Independent did it best:
“JT hasn’t brought sexy back. I don’t think he took it anywhere near the studio either. Perhaps he left it under one of those hotel mattresses he claims to have broken”.
Brutal. And fair.
1. KATY PERRY
“143”
Rolling Stone called Katy Perry’s 143 “as dated as a Vine”. Rolling Stone! Let that sink in. A lot was written about this record and pretty much all of it was true. Even 143’s best review — a tepid 6/10 from Allmusic — branded it a “relative mediocrity”. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
I’m not going to stick the knife in further because Katy Perry — like most of these artists — is an easy, safe, consensus target. And this is the crux of the article.
Every year, it feels like the critical community unites to lay into a handful of dispensable artists. The algorithms aren’t clamouring for more Katy Perry articles, so there’s nothing to lose by annihilating her for clicks. We’re still too obsessed with Taylor Swift and Beyoncé to throw them to the wolves, but their time will almost certainly come. Today’s bottom 26 is littered with stars who were once considered untouchable. And Kasabian, who were always a bit shit.
I’ve indulged in a few cheap shots above, so I’m not suggesting I’m better than anyone else. But I do wish music critics were bolder in the criticism, and a little more sparing in their praise. 7/10 is not a terrible score. If we’re not going to grade sensibly, maybe we shouldn’t grade at all. It’s become a sideshow. But if we absolutely must slap a score on a record, the mean value has to be closer to 5 or 6. 8/10 and above should be the hallmark of an incredible album, not just a serviceable one.
That’s what I’d like to see in 2025. I’ll be playing my small, largely insignificant part as best I can.
I laughed, I cried! Excellent takes on the whole mess. While I definitely agree on the participation trophy aspect, I don’t think there’s enough space in the art world for much negativity these days, especially if it’s someone’s weapon of choice. There’s nothing worse than listening to an art critic bloviate about how bad something is (usually to make themselves look smart). There are enough artists out there that need lifting up, so I think sticking to the positive has value. To me it’s understood that if something isn’t mentioned that it’s probably not worth mentioning. I wish the numbers would just go away, however. I like Gabbie’s system… “Albums worthy of…” We can figure out the rest!
"It’s a nice mantra, but the natural end-point of #bekind criticism is a situation where everything is ostensibly good or great, leaving the reader none the wiser. This leads us to a perfectly valid question: what’s the point of music critics?"
Where this might lead is the absolutely useless field of art review—a functional autopsy that can't ruffle feathers.
Viva Hate, as a former music critic-curmudgeon once declared...