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 online. While both clearly play a role (like all good things), I learn toward the single. I’ll take it one step further, it’s not just the single, but more specifically a moment within the song that defines the musician. I’m not saying that moment is entirely objective, but it’s definitely less subjective.
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.
Latin women owned my music consumption of the year, but none like one.
I don’t say this lightly, but Mon Laferte has one of the best catalogs and live performers I’ve ever listened to/seen. Comparable to Bill Evens on quantity of quality songs. Comparable to Kali Uchis in live performance. I caught her at BottleRock’s second weekend of latin music, named Festival La Onda. It was the performance of the year, right next to the man below.
Jalen Ngonda has a sound that’s taking what Marvin Gaye perfected first, but Ngonda’s live performance is comparable to no one. Not a dull moment and I recorded just about all of it.
I’m leaning more and more on other music curators to find what’s best. Wish I could credit the songs I found from them, but attribution is not easy enough today. Here are a few of my favs:
