Wednesday, January 01, 2025

Kat's Korner: 2024 in music

Kat: 2024 was a so-so year for me musically.  The good was very good.  It was also very small.  The rest was overwhelmingly bad.

Let's start with the best.


That's Beyonce  tearing it up and putting it back together in Houston on Christmas Day.  2024 was her year artistically. 

1) COWBOY CARTER is the album that should see her finally win the Grammy for Album of the Year.  There was no album greater.  In fact, in my review, I noted it would be at the top when the year ended.  I could make that prediction back in March because it was that amazing. 

One thing did change.  "Levi's Jeans" -- her song with Post Malone.



In my review, I went over my favorite tracks and listed "Levi's Jeans" last, almost as an afterthought.  It's a track that just keeps growing on me and, right now, is probably my favorite.  

All praise to Beyonce for doing something different, something unique and something artistic.


2) Chase Rice's GO DOWN SINGING. This is three great albums in a row for Chase.  2021's THE ALBUM was a huge step forward for Chase and is the best country album of its year.  Then came 2023's I HATE COWBOYS & ALL DOGS GO TO HELL and it was another huge leap.  Now GO DOWN SINGING and I'm thinking only two artists have delivered a hot streak like this before, one where each new album ups the ante: Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder. 

Here he is performing three songs from GO DOWN SINGIN' (the first three songs he performs and "Bench Seat" from I HATE COWBOYS & ALL DOGS GO TO HELL).




"Hey God, It's Me Again," "Arkansas," "Little Red Race Car" and "Bench Seat."


3) Vanessa Williams' SURVIVOR is an eclectic album that somehow works.  Natalie Cole did something similar on EVERLASTING but when she tried to copy herself two years later on GOOD TO BE BACK, it really didn't work. It works here and the ballads are gorgeous but the stand track remains "Legs (Keep Dancing)" so maybe it's time for her to a dance album like Cher's BELIEVE?



That's an amazing track.  She really needs to an album just exploring dance music -- she's sort of done that before with THE COMFORT ZONE.  (Let me note again, as I do over and over every year, I really wish Cher would do another of her rock albums -- and I wish she'd cover Steve Grand's "All American Boy" on it.)


4) Green Day's 'SAVIORS' was the best rock album of the year from one of the few bands that still matters.  DOOKIE remains the benchmark but the 2024 release since 2004's AMERICAN IDIOT.  And if you need proof of that, just listen to "Dilemma." 

 



This is a classic album that you can listen to over and over.  The album shot to number one in the United Kingdom, if you value rock, make a point to check out Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool's latest.

 

5) Melissa Manchester's RE:VIEW is her 25th studio album and it's really something to be proud of.  She's looking back on her catalogue, re-recording some of the best songs.  Sometimes solo, sometimes in a duet like "Midnight Blue" with Dolly Parton.



It's a beautiful duet, it's a beautiful album.  Maybe "Don't Cry Out Loud" spoke to you or "Whenever I Call You Friend" (she redoes it as a duet with Kenny Loggins on this album -- she and Kenny wrote the song that was a hit for him and Stevie Nicks) or maybe you just want to hear a voice that can sing with warmth and wisdom.  If so, check out this album.

 

6) Cher's FOREVER is her first vinyl greatest hits since 1992?  Digital?  Five greatest hits have been released on digital in fact, digital came in to replace vinyl.  Supposedly, according to three different YOUTUBE videos, CDs are supposed to make a comeback this year.  We'll see.   The great thing about digital?  You get it immediately.  As I noted in my review of the album, I pre-ordered the vinyl copy from AMAZON over a month before it was released and they promised a September 20th delivery.  Then it was time for it to arrive and they couldn't fulfill the order.  I reviewed the digital copy because it would be a week later before I got my vinyl copy from AMAZON.  The vinyl version is a 21 track, double album.  It's a nice sampler of her music career and a nice release in the year that she finally got into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame -- an honor she was long overdue.  The problem with the collection is that even if you just focus on her charting singles -- ignore wonderful album tracks like "My Song (Too Far Gone)," "Love Is The Groove," "Stars," "These Days," "Scars," "Rain, Rain," "Perfection," "Why Won't They Let Us Fall In Love," "I Want You," "My Love," "Catch The Wind," "Girl Don't Come," "Reason To Believe," "Song For You," "I Threw It All Away," "Scars," "There But For Fortune," etc. -- ignore those.  Focus just on singles that charted.  Even if you narrow it down to just that, you're not going to be able to offer a strong look at Cher's seven decades of recording.  But for a 21 track release, it's solid.  Makes me wonder though why when CDs were all the rage, Cher didn't get a boxed set?  Women were treated very poorly with boxed sets  MOTOWN, for instance, released a very shoddy boxed set on Diana Ross where there sound quality was awful.  But the bigger problem was that women weren't getting the boxed sets.  Out of every 100 boxed sets, you'd be lucky if three were focused on women.  Janis Joplin, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner,  Carly Simon and finally Stevie Nicks (finally?  1998) was really about it. (The Supremes had to wait until 2000.) Cher needs a boxed set.


7) Joni Mitchell's ARCHIVES - VOLUME FOUR (1976 - 1980) is a boxed set.  It's six discs and continues the Joni archive releases.  It came out the first week of October.  I haven't not been able to get into it.  That might be because it contains some of Joni's work that I really didn't feel pulled in by.  Many refer to this period as a time when Joni lost her sense of melody.  I don't think that's the case.  But as she drifted into jazz tunings and then into jazz, she lost a lot of her audience.  She's always said that there were two choices, lose them by trying to stay the same or lose them by trying to grow.  This album's tied up with that period for me but, more to the point, it's tied up with the election.  I didn't know it had come out.  I was on the road campaigning for Kamala Harris.  I really wasn't able to devote time to listening.  Then came the hideous results and I don't think I gave the attention it warrented.  It's a great album and I have a feeling it would have been much higher on this list were it not for all it conjuges up but that is the nature of art, it's a conversation.  It's an ongoing conversation as well.  I hope to engage with this set for many years to come. 


 

8) Lone Justice's VIVA LONE JUSTICE.  Who would have thought we'd get another Lone Justice album?  Manna from heaven.  Maria McKee is one of our greatest singers and this album shows what the band might have morphed into.  But what they were was amazing enough.  And if you doubt that fact, stream "You Possess Me."





 


9) Kendrick Lamar's GNX is the album I kept noting at my site that I wanted to review but probably wouldn't get to it. It came out at the end of November.  I was still licking my wounds over the election loss and depressed (something I think we all are if we have a functional brain). Right before Christmas, I managed to get two more reviews completed -- "Kat's Korner: Tori Amos' DEEP DIVE into obscurity" to note how awful Tori Amos' albums have become -- for 20 years now she's been on something similar to Joni's jazz trip but without Joni's talent so enough already -- and the Lone Justice one because Maria McKee is one of our all time great singers.  I didn't have it in me for another review.  And, to get this one done, I hit my drugs hard.  Two boxes of Queen Anne's Cordial Cherries.  Chocolate covered cherries are my heroin.  And I've eaten 20 pieces to get this completed.  GNX is a little over forty minutes, twelve tracks, and as good as TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY was, GNX is even finer.  My favorite track?  "Heart Pt. 6."





10) Bring Me The Horizon's POST HUMAN: NEX GEN is an album by a band -- a British band -- that I only just learned of.  They're very big in the UK and, since 2010, they've become increasingly big in the US with each release.  This album made it to number 36 on BILLBOARD's album chart (and to number two on the UK album chart) and it's a hard hitting, metal-type rock.  Choice cut "Top 10 Statues That Cried Blood."



 

 





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