We are back! Just like that, another year in music has come and gone, which means it’s time for the fifth-ever FTL Annual Playlist!
I have a 10 month old child now, so no time for any extra preamble. You know why you’re here. Let’s get to the goods!
Time flies, man. It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone. But it has, which means only one thing…another edition of America’s Favorite Year-End Music List! That’s right, we’re back for Year 4 of FTL’s Annual Playlist. This year, thanks to the sheer amount of blue-chip music releases (seriously, it felt like everyone put something out in 2024), The List™ is bigger and better than ever. Hold on to your butts and grab a nice pair of headphones. Time to dig into my favorite year of music since starting this list.
Welcome back for another edition of (surely) everyone’s favorite end-of-year music list! We’re officially on Year 3 of this exercise, in which I do my best to keep up with as much new music as humanly possible without feeling like Steve Buscemi wandering the halls of a high school.
Again, this list is a mostly subjective, mostly comprehendible selection of the music that made my year. Hopefully I included your favorite 2023 album, or mention your favorite song. If not…well there was a lot of great music this year, and there’s always room to listen to more! For what it’s worth, I have 2023 as not quite as good as last year, but better than 2021 (although I am open to hearing arguments to the contrary). Regardless, I loved everything mentioned here, and a few things that didn’t make the cut.
Without further ado, let’s kick this thing off with a brand new bonus category!
I regret to inform you, dear reader, that I have lied to you. Okay, maybe not a full-on fib, perhaps exaggeration is a better description? Granted this space has been prone to the occasional melodramatic post so that shouldn’t be too surprising, but I still feel like I should come clean: Last year, despite my insistences to the contrary, was not necessarily a great year for music. While there were certainly a bunch of excellent releases, in hindsight it wasn’t as good on the whole as I thought it was when I put 2021’s version of this list together.
The good news? 2022 was mostly killer, very little filler. At minimum, it certainly felt like there were more big time albums released by big time artists all year long. And, for whatever it’s worth, I had a much tougher time whittling down the 150+ albums I listened to this year into the tidy top 10(ish) list you have before you.
For The Love 