2024 in Music

It’s been a while now since I summarized my previous year in music. The last time this happened was all the way back in 2022, but now I felt it was time to give it another go.

I’m using Deezer as my primary music streaming service, mixed with some internet radio station streaming. Deezer has its own “your year in music” summary, but for some moronic reason, that summary goes live in December, which means that it lacks a whole month worth of data when it’s created. Scandalous! Also, the Deezer summary doesn’t contain any data from my internet radio station streaming, which means it doesn’t really give a proper overview of my year in music.

That’s why I always turn to Last.fm for my music statistics needs. Last.fm, known as Audioscrobbler back in the days, is a lovely little service I’ve been using since 2005. It collects what I’m listening to from a wide range of services, and is a much better source of listening data.

Music Market Crash

In 2024, I listened to a total number of 16 418 tracks, which is a massive 21% decline from 2023, when the number was 20 606. 2023 was a peak year, though, and the 2024 number is actually 200 songs more than I had back in 2021, which was the previous year I had the mental surplus to summarize on this site.

But it’s the quality of the music, not the quantity, that’s important, right? Well, perhaps so. But quality is usually a result of quantity; the more music I listen to, the better music I find.

Come to think of it, I have actually listened to more music last year than Last.fm has recorded. At work, I sometimes stream SomaFM radio stations for a couple of hours, and I’ve grown into the disastrous habit of using Apple’s terrible Music application instead of an proper application, like Strawberry, which would send data to Last.fm. I’d better install Strawberry on my work computer, then.

Top 5 Artists

My top 5 artist for 2024 were

1. Fay Wildhagen (560 plays)
2. Nothing But Thieves (391 plays)
3. Frank Turner (386 plays)
4. The Blue Stones (223 plays)
5. TØFL (207 plays)

Both Nothing But Thieves and Frank Turner was on the list in 2023, but Fay Wildhagen, The Blue Stones, and TØFL are all new entries, replacing Biffy Clyro, Lonely the Brave and Heisskalt.

2024 saw three new interesting “first!” developments on my Top 5: It was the first year a female artist hit number one¹, the first year there are two Norwegian acts on the list (Fay Wildhagen and TØFL), and the first time a band singing in Norwegian (TØFL) made it on to the top 5.

Incidentally, I’m seeing both Fay Wildhagen and Nothing But Thieves live this very weekend, which means pretty much every planet in the universe somehow managed to align themselves correctly².

Notable Discoveries

Fay Wildhagen

From the artists website: Fay Wildhagen grew up in Oslo, Norway and gained prominence when she signed with Warner Music Norway as a 21-year-old and released her debut album Snow (2015) with singles like “Into the Woods” and “We Are”. She was nominated the Norwegian Grammys and P3 Gull as Newcomer of the Year in 2015, and when Fay released her second album Borders in 2018, she had already positioned herself as one of Norway’s most exciting songwriters and guitarists. She was nominated for her work as a producer on the album at the Norwegian Grammys, while playing concerts all over Europe.

In the recent years, Fay Wildhagen has been reflecting on her work as a musician. The more she has pondered, the clearer it has become to her that it’s about being relentlessly authentic.

“Music should come from the sheer joy of its creation. It should come from fellowship, longing, and melancholy. I want to find sounds that touch the heartstrings. That resonate with the emotions and stir something within”, Fay reflects.

As a child, Wildhagen would play on her guitar for hours, utterly absorbed in her own realm of emerging soundscapes. She still does that to this day and says that she is constantly looking for the magic that different instruments and chords can create.

Heisskalt

Heisskalt is a German post-hardcore band founded in 2010. The band appeared on my radar in 2023, but Heisskalt still deserves a 2024 mention, and they just released a new album. It’s hard to find anything about them written in English, so I think I’ll just refer you to their German Wikipedia page, and then you can take it from there.

The Blue Stones

From Deezer’s biography page: The Blue Stones are a blues rock two-piece based in Ontario, Canada.

Guitarist, vocalist and lyricist Tarek Jafar met percussionist/vocalist Justin Tessier in high school, but it took them five years and a jump to the same university to get them to come together and make music. During early jamming sessions they settled into a gritty, blues-inspired sound that drew on the likes of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Howlin’ Wolf while mirroring the set-up of acts like The White Stripes and The Black Keys.

They recorded a self-titled debut EP in 2011, touring the record extensively and following up with their first full-length album, ‘How’s That Sound’, in 2013. It was their 2016 release “Black Holes” that gave them their breakthrough, however. The lead single, “Rolling with the Punches”, made it onto US TV shows including “Shameless”, “Suits” and “Monday Night Football”, exposing the pair to a much wider audience that would, in turn, bring them to a deal with Entertainment One and a global reissue of “Black Holes”.

Sam Fender

From Deezer’s biography page: Sam Fender (born April 25, 1994 in North Shields, England) is a Bruce Springsteen-obsessed alternative rock singer-songwriter who grew up in a musical family near Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and began performing locally as a teenager.

He signed a recording contract and garnered attention in 2017 with singles such as “Play God,” which reached number 89 on the Official UK Singles Chart and can be heard on the soundtrack of the FIFA 19 video game. Other 2017 singles included “Greasy Spoon,” “Millennial” and “Start Again.” He was named on the BBC’s Sound of 2018 list and won the Critics Choice Award at the 2018 BRIT Awards. His 2018 singles include “Leave Fast,” “That Sound” and “Dead Boys,” which appear on his debut EP Dead Boys released in November 2018.

The single “Hypersonic Missiles” came out in 2019 followed by a debut album of the same name that year, which debuted at Number 1 on the UK Albums Chart and was an exercise in gritty, down-to-earth heartland rock à la Bruce Springsteen. The album paved the way for a Best New Artist nomination at the Brit Awards in 2020.

In October 2021, Sam Fender unleashed his second studio album, Seventeen Going Under, to a rapturous response. The LP is both autobiographical and politically charged and shot to the top of the UK Albums Chart. He released his third album, People Watching, in February 2025, which was preceded by the title track and lead single.