It’s one of my favourite times of the year—time to celebrate and share some of my favourite releases from 2024 with you!
As always, there’s a strong focus on Pop music, with a sprinkling of other genres for good measure.
I genuinely think this year has been brilliant for Pop Music, especially for women in the genre. I don’t say that purely to be inclusive – the Pop girlies deserve to be celebrated this year. From Beyoncé to Dua Lipa, Ariana Grande to Sabrina Carpenter (our new Pop Princess), we’ve been spoiled with phenomenal albums.
We know this has been featured before but we’re including the studio version this time. Stunning downtempo R&B track which utilises a minimalistic feel. Zayn’s gentle flasetto soars over fluttering synths and wailing guitars.
2) Bring me the Horizon – Follow You
Moody and powerful alternative-rock track with a huge chorus.
3) Corrine Bailey Rae – Been To The Moon
Innovative neo-soul track which utilises jazzy guitars, twinkling keys and sonic elements. It’s electro verses evolve into a breezy chorus which mirror ’70’s soul.
4) NAO – Fool To Love
Another brilliant neo-soul/alt-R&B track from East Londoner Nao. Her vocals glide over industrious synthesisers and hip-hop beats, resulting in a chilled-out track.
5) Ratboy – Move
Brilliant hip-hop/indie rock fusion with an incessantly catchy chorus. It does remind us somewhat of another song, however… *ahem The Beastie Boys’ ‘Body Movin’…*
6) Riton – Rinse & Repeat
Punchy bass lines, house beats and Azaelia Banks-influenced vocals drive this huge club smash.
7) BB Diamond – Feeling
Reminiscent of 90’s house with synthetic piano riffs and sweet vocals, this disco influenced club track is both uplifting and brilliant.
8) The Knocks – The Key
Catchy electro-track featuring elements of soul and rap. Comprised of funky bass lines, squeaky synths and slick vocals, this is underrated perfection.
9) The 1975 – If I Believe you
We’ve wanted to include lots of material from The 1975’s latest album for a while but we’re waiting for it to appear on Spotify! We had to include this track, however so here’s a recent live version which is loyal to the studio one. Stunning and accomplished biblical track on which Matt Healy searches for and beseeches a higher power to curb his loneliness. It channels Prince and D’angelo, utilising organic percussion, spine-tingling gospel choir vocals, eerie electro elements and an understated horn solo to create the best track The 1975 have ever done. [Read our review of their latest album here.]
10) Gallant – Bourborn
Stunning alt-R&B track from American singer-songwriter Christopher Gallant, under his stage name Bourborn. Syrupy vocals, including a stunning falsetto, coat dreamy 80’s-influenced synthpop instrumentation.
To celebrate this year’s Brit Awards Ceremony (due to be held at the O2 Arena, London on 24th February 2016), here’s our playlist of some of the nominated acts’ best works. We’ll review the ceremony after it has taken place so watch this space!
I set The Music Box up in 2013 after numerous other failed attempts at blogging. This year, we became solely a music blog with all other posts exported to an additional personal blog.
2015 has seen The Music Box go from strength to strength. We have received hundreds of likes and shares and our review of Markus Feehily’s ‘Fire’ album was tweeted by the man himself . We are hoping for this success to continue throughout 2016 and wanted to share some of our new developments with you for the next year.
Music Monday
To date, Music Monday has involved a selection of ten songs, both old and new that we have been enjoying immensely in the past week. They are usually accompanied by a short excerpt on why we love them here at the Music Box.
From 2016 onwards, this will be changed to ten new or current songs which we consider to be the hottest records in the world.
*NEW!* Feel Good Friday
Every Friday, we will be adding five tracks to our Feel Good Friday Spotify Playlist. There will be opportunities for suggestions too.
*NEW!* Artist Feature
Artist Features will be pieces dedicated to an artist. Generally to promote little-known or up and coming acts, these are to raise the profile of genuinely talented artists.
Themed Playlists
These will continue as usual.
Album Reviews and Live Gig Reviews
These will continue as usual.
Thank you so much for all of the follows, likes and shares of our posts and for the support this year. Please continue to share our posts and blog to help us out!
We don’t earn any money from this and do it purely for our love of music.
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