PopMatters picks the best pop culture for your enjoyment, including music, film, TV, books, games, comics, and more.
The 30 best pop albums of 2024 radiate with unstoppable playlist power, much-needed sweet escapism, self-reflection, self-criticism, and killer melodies.
The year’s best album re-issues include rock legends, essential R&B artists, classic pop, jazz, alternative rock, global beats and so much more.
PopMatters‘ 30 Best DVDs of 2024 hereby presents a glorious cavalcade, a prestigious panorama, a scintillating smorgasbord of classic films (and one newbie).
The genre rediscovery via TikTok during the first stages of the pandemic has been going on long enough that we might consider it a Shoegaze Revival Revival.
Artists worldwide have been exploring the visionary potential of electrical instruments in all manner of new and novel ways to create psychedelic music.
As always, rock was a guitar-led extravaganza in 2024 with artists drawing from an ever-widening musical well. These are the 25 best rock albums of the year.
Annarella and Django’s Jouer is lush with thought, skill, and, yes, play, intangible elements that make this genre-defying album superb and satisfying.
This was another year of riches in the best jazz and creative music, with barriers between the tradition and the avant-garde melting away.
Thematically, much of this year’s best punk and hardcore music addressed mental health and working through the past while striving for a more peaceful present.
The excellent Brassroots Democracy details the beautiful and bleak ways that jazz music created the soundtrack of an emancipatory movement that lasts to this day.
Americana has never been better with the quality of music, diversity of styles, and the artists’ demographics in terms of race, gender, and wealth.
The year’s best folk albums transcend genre boundaries, yet each entry remains firmly grounded in the folk ethos of connection and storytelling.
