The debate over whether a musician’s legacy lies in an album or a single is more contentious than ever as music shortens and singles dominate the internet. While both clearly play a role (like all good things), I lean toward the single. The album is too rare for me. I’ll take it a step further, it’s not just the single, but more specifically a moment within the song that defines the musician. Ideally more than one moment. It’s what makes a good beat a great song. The highs and lows.
This year we started a playlist of Daily Goodies to highlight that moment and match it to a video for Instagram and TikTok. Our 2024 Music of the Year playlist features over 200 defining moments. Yes, that’s too much, but we tried too hard this year and distillation is harder.
Latin women dominated my music listening this year according to Spotify’s Wrapped, the first four songs on the playlist above, and my wife. No musician more than one Chilean singer, Mon Laferte.
Mon Laferte has one of the best catalogs and live performances I’ve ever listened to/seen. Comparable to Bill Evans on quantity of quality songs. Comparable to Kali Uchis on putting on a show. I caught Mon Laferte at BottleRock’s sister festival of latin music, Festival La Onda, and it was the performance of the year—right next to the man below.
So many artists copy. All. So many aren’t good at it.
When I first heard Jalen Ngonda, I thought of Marvin Gaye, but not in a copycat way. Pushing his sound forward rather than replaying the past poorly. His live performance however was something else.
Marvin wasn’t a thought in my head throughout Ngonda’s entire set. A moment I remember so present and somehow I recorded most of it below.
