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One major theme that runs through Pitchfork’s best albums of 2024 is disbelief. There are pop albums that defy all expectations, indie rock records that shouldn’t work but do, rap tapes that are made of everything but the raps, surprise debuts, stunning comebacks, and shocking finales. It’s the albums that leave us speechless that make us want to write about them. Here are those 50 incredible albu

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission. There are enough great books about music each year to fill a library. It can be a lot to get through, so we selected a handful that we really love, including memoirs, history tomes, and more. Below, find a list of personal favorites from this year, as picked by Pitchfork staffers and

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit Fishmans’ 1996 masterpiece, a landmark of Japanese rock that fits a lifetime of aspirations and daydreams into a single 35-minute composition. The prospect of making an album with only one gargantuan song was one of those tossed-off comments that see

Steve Albini, an icon of indie rock as both a producer and performer, died on Tuesday, May 7, of a heart attack, staff at his recording studio, Electrical Audio, confirmed to Pitchfork. As well as fronting underground rock lynchpins including Shellac and Big Black, Albini was a legend of the recording studio, though he preferred the term “engineer” to “producer.” He recorded Nirvana’s In Utero, Pi

Pitchfork’s editors are already thinking about what albums have left the biggest impressions and will land a coveted spot on our year-end list. So we’re spotlighting some of 2024’s most outstanding releases to date by rounding up albums that have earned high scores and Best New Music designations with a quick list of RIYLs (that’s Recommended If You Like) and links to our coverage. Unlike our year

Clockwise from top left: Album art from SZA, Sufjan Stevens, Caroline Polachek, André 3000, boygenius, and Kali Uchis. Image by Chris Panicker. In times of chaos, music can be a place of escape or comfort. This year, favorite artists like SZA, Sufjan Stevens, and Fever Ray returned with reliably stunning releases, rising artists like Nourished by Time, Amaarae, and yeule pushed the boundaries with

As we head into the second half of 2023, Pitchfork’s writers and editors are already thinking about what albums have left the biggest impressions and will land a coveted spot on our end-of-the-year list. So we’re spotlighting some of the year’s most outstanding releases to date by rounding up albums that have earned high scores and Best New Music designations with a quick list of RIYLs (that’s Rec

The independent distributor will cease distributing physical products next month Portland, Oregon–based independent music distributor CD Baby has announced in an email newsletter to customers that it will no longer warehouse, ship, or distribute CDs, vinyl, cassette tapes, or DVDs to Amazon or music wholesaler Alliance. Its warehouse will close and customers will have 60 days to pay for their inve

Paying tribute to the visionary Yellow Magic Orchestra member and Oscar-winning composer, who died last month at 71 from cancer Most people would identify Düsseldorf, Germany, or Detroit—hometowns of Kraftwerk and Cybotron, respectively—as the birthplace of techno. Some might make a case for Sheffield, England, and its scions the Human League and Cabaret Voltaire. One city that never comes up is T

William Basinski’s “Melancholia II” sounds like what might happen if despair itself walked into a studio and someone pressed the record button. Little pops poke through its smeared dreariness, like a despondent person bumping their forehead slowly and repeatedly into a microphone. Basinski, perhaps the most celebrated ambient composer of the 21st century, composed the seven-minute track in his usu

Tom Verlaine, the iconic frontman of Television, has died in New York after a brief illness, according to a statement shared by a publicist. Verlaine was 73 years old. Verlaine’s work with Television is punctuated by the group’s landmark 1977 debut album, Marquee Moon, regularly hailed as one of the best albums of the 1970s. Television’s intricate, airy compositions embodied the experimental wing

Yukihiro Takahashi, the influential musician, drummer, and vocalist who co-founded Yellow Magic Orchestra, has died, The Japan Times reports. Takahashi underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor in August 2020. The following year, he revealed he was suffering from additional health problems. Takahashi was trying to recover at his home in Karzuizawa, Nagano Prefecture, but he caught pneumonia in ear

2022 was the year of the comeback. As the music industry stumbled out of its pandemic fog, many artists finally delivered long delayed, highly anticipated, and sonically experimental albums that met some of the expectations built up for them. Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Björk, Alvvays, Rosalía, and Mitski returned with records that were worth the wait. And rising artists like Sudan Archives, Special

In a year so bizarre that a Kate Bush single from three decades ago somehow topped the charts, it’s fitting that some of the year’s best tracks felt like wildcards. Rising rappers (Glorilla, Ice Spice, and Flo Milli) took over hip-hop, indie comeback kids (Alvvays, Alex G) wrote genre hits, electronic experimentalists (Alan Braxe, Rachika Nayar, Two Shell) kept us on our toes, R&B singers (Amber M

There was a time where there was nothing like the feeling of walking into your local Tower Records or Sam Goody and heading straight for the new releases section. The sight of racks of CDs lined up in endless rows of musical discovery offered the thrill of not knowing exactly what you were going to get. In the ’90s, it was likely that you had only heard one or two songs from an album, on the radio

One of the great joys of listening to music in the ’90s was then being able to curate your own best-ofs. It was the decade of cassette mixtapes, the highly personal, labor-intensive home recording projects that involved patiently waiting for a song to play on the radio in order to tape it, or painstakingly rewinding and fast-forwarding to an exact right moment to dub from one cassette to another.

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit an overlooked masterpiece from 1971, one that helped define the essence of Japanese rock. In 2007, Rolling Stone Japan declared Happy End’s Kazemachi Roman to be the greatest Japanese rock album of all time. For a band that can boast such an accolade

Decades into their career, this J-pop superstar continues to evolve—both musically and personally. BADモード reads like a friend’s gentle reminder that we’re always coming into our own. The path to understanding one’s identity is circuitous and without clear instructions—a never-ending process. That’s been obvious for Japanese American singer Hikaru Utada from the beginning. After their work as Cubic

Graphic by Callum Abbott. The Weather Station photo by Daniel Dorsa, Jazmine Sullivan photo by Amy Sussman/FilmMagic, Tyler, the Creator photo by Para Griffin/Getty Images, Faye Webster photo by Pooneh Ghana, Playboi Carti photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images. 2021 was a very weird year, to put it mildly. With some of the most anticipated albums from music’s biggest stars falling just a little flat,

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They say that “writing is rewriting” because the careful process of revision is the very thing that makes a story, a novel, or a piece of criticism actually work. Revisions, of course, are usually completed just before a piece is sent to the printing press or published on the internet when there is finally no more futzing and no takes-backsies. And then there it is, forever, a good and righteous p

If you’re one of the millions of people who’s seen Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love” hovering in your YouTube recommendations, you probably know about Plastic Lover. In 2017, the anonymous account uploaded an extended version of the 1984 Japanese pop song to YouTube, and in the process helped catalyze a global obsession with the funky, carefree genre known as city pop. Part of why “Plastic Love” go

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today we revisit the Japanese band’s technically masterful, tremendously expensive 1981 album, a record that looms over 40 years’ worth of electronic production. As a Japanese initialism, “BGM” stands for “background music.” It’s meant to evoke the blissful ’80s ambie

In the waning weeks of 2020, a Japanese pop tune from 1979 shot to No. 1 on Spotify’s viral charts. Titled “Mayonaka no Door / Stay With Me” and performed by a then-19-year-old Miki Matsubara, the song is as breezy as a convertible ride at twilight, with Matsubara’s wistful vocals floating over a funky bassline, jaunty horns, and twinkling production touches. Switching between Japanese and English

The legendary dance duo has called it quits 28 years after forming in Paris Daft Punk, the Parisian duo responsible for some of the most popular dance and pop songs ever made, have split. They broke the news with an 8-minute video titled “Epilogue,” excerpted from their 2006 film Electroma. Asked if Daft Punk were no more, their longtime publicist Kathryn Frazier confirmed the news to Pitchfork bu

Perfume Genius, Phoebe Bridgers, Fiona Apple, Lil Uzi Vert, Bad Bunny, and Moses Sumney. Graphic by Drew Litowitz, photos via Getty Images. Let’s face it: listening to new music wasn’t exactly easy this year. Amidst the neverending whirlwind of 2020, it was tempting to crawl into a cocoon of nostalgic favorites and never come out. But the best albums of 2020 proved that incredible new music will a

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit Carole King’s Tapestry, the second act that turned a master songwriter into a music legend. Carole King was a 15-year-old pianist in a poodle skirt when she first took the elevator up to the Manhattan office of a record label with her stack of sheet

In 2019, music videos seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once. Turn on the TV, log in to a streaming platform, open up your social media feeds: Rapid-fire, music-fueled visuals bombarded us from all sides. But with everything from album teasers to TikTok competing for attention, it was harder than ever for traditional music videos to cut through the fray. From FKA twigs’ hypnotic pole dance to