As we build toward the 2024 Billboard Music Awards on Dec. 12 and Billboard’s Year-End Charts reveal on Dec. 13, check out our editorial list of staff picks for the best albums of the year.
In 2023, the year was largely defined by pop hitmakers who ruled the year without releasing original albums — our top three Greatest Pop Stars for ’23 all spent the period touring and/or building off of LPs they had released the second half of the year before. This year: We’ve got ourselves some proper, old-fashioned big, big pop albums by big, big pop stars. Some of those stars were minted in 2024, some have been that big for a decade, some of them have been icons for even longer. But it felt like an everybody-in-the-pool year for pop music on the albums front, in one of the most satisfying ways we can remember in a long time.
But of course, the pop stars weren’t the only one making waves. It was also a great year for new and returning indie rock fixtures, for major country players — including from some first-timers to the genre — and for rising stars on the global scene who we expect to be hearing even bigger things from in the years to come. And of course, we had one massive name getting in just under the wire for 2024 year-end season, with an album that had us scrambling to find room on our individual lists — a problem we were ultimately very happy to have.
Check out our full list below — and be sure to check back for our top 100 songs of 2024 list, which we’ll unveil tomorrow (Dec. 5).
