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Best music of 2024
The 20 best songs

Here are the year’s most outstanding tracks – from Fontaines DC to Beyoncé via Kendrick Lamar – as voted for by 26 Guardian music writers

Tori Amos on trauma, Trump and Neil Gaiman

It’s a heartbreaking grief

‘They felt they couldn’t market us to white people’
90s hip-hop iconoclasts Digable Planets return

Eminem and Debbie Mathers showed that hip-hop is the genre where men come to terms with their mothers

Thomas Hobbs

Spotlight

Taylor Swift soap, saucy socks and Pet Shop Boys tea sets
It’s the culture Christmas gift guide 2024

From a Snoop Dogg firepit to a sweater celebrating the brutalist genius of Preston bus station, here are 40 fabulous festive suggestions for the culture vulture in your life

Classical

Album review
Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie – Yuja Wang’s solo piano dazzles

Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie – Yuja Wang’s solo piano dazzles

Opera
The Pirates of Penzance – not modern nor general but major fun in revival of Mike Leigh’s trad staging

The Pirates of Penzance – not modern nor general but major fun in revival of Mike Leigh’s trad staging

Music books
Every Valley: The Story of Handel’s Messiah – hallelujah! A fresh take on the composer’s much-loved work

Add to playlist

Welsh carols, Derbyshire ballads and Cajun drinking songs
The best folk music for Christmas and winter

One to watch
Elmiene

You may have missed

K-pop idol Rosé of Blackpink fame grew up in Australia – but she could never have made it big here

Wing Kuang

Asian Australian musicians are finding massive success overseas but receive little acclaim or recognition back home. Why?

Each year, Spotify Wrapped is the confronting report card that reminds me of how uncool I am

James Colley

For those of us with unflattering music taste, this can be a difficult time of year

How we made
‘There was a catalogue of errors – but once we opened, we were on fire’: how we made Fabric nightclub

‘We wanted to bring the underground to a bigger audience. We had Bono in the DJ booth once. No one recognised him. In that dark space, he was completely free’

‘A dancer dances, even with replaced hips and scoliosis’: only one actor can play Liza Minnelli

Stuart Heritage

Despite Minnelli’s memoir not being finished and a queue of ‘Academy award, Emmy, Tony and Grammy winners excited to talk’, the star of the upcoming biopic is already obvious

Live music this week

Vampire Weekend
Crowd-pleasers, covers and 10-minute cowboy medleys

Crowd-pleasers, covers and 10-minute cowboy medleys

Charli xcx
A glorious, one-woman triumph

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