The 2024 Year End Review - Part 2: The 2nd Annual Roundup Of Year End "Best Of" Lists Found On The Blogosphere

Image courtesy of Mohamed Hassan via Pixabay

Last year - instead of publishing its own list - Bloggerhythms highlighted a handful of "best of" posts published by some of the music blogs and websites I read regularly. I'm making this an annual event, so as the calender flips to 2025 the sophomore edition is now online for your perusal.

Some of the bloggers mentioned below are publications with national or international reputations, others were posted by independent, personal blogs like mine with smaller readerships. This year's set of links features fourteen lists posted in no particular order.

Let's hope the man jumping across the gorge in the picture above makes it across to the new year, and I hope all of you do to.
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  • Just Backdated doesn't offer us the usual list. Instead, Chris Charlesworth discusses his favorite rock music book of the year. I wasn't aware of this Beatles book previously, but it sounds like an interesting one.
  • Super Deluxe Edition - a site that exclusively features the latest in box set releases - posted their ten best of the year. It's a unique and popular blog.         
  • Bruce Warren, the former program director of WXPN, 88.5, Philadelphia posted his ten favorite albums of 2024 on his Substack page.
  • Jeff Gemmill, publisher of The Old Grey Cat - who tells us he's not old nor is he a cat - listed his top twenty-five albums of 2024 in alphabetical order. Then, in a followup post he wrote in more detail about his top ten. As usual, Jeff is a big supporter of women artists who mostly work in the loosely named Americana genre, but he'll write about anything if he likes it.
  • Here are ten singer-songwriters that the excellent blog, Culture Sonar, wishes you discovered in 2024. If this genre happens to be your thing you'll want to intently examine this list. Chris Smither - who's had a successful fifty year career - is the only artist featured here that I previously knew. The rest of the article favors additional unknown veterans over newcomers, but all of them could use a few new fans.
  • A blog I discovered earlier this year, Blues and Rock Muse, describes itself as "an independent online music magazine devoted to blues, blues-rock, rock, Southern rock, roots music, contemporary soul and funk music, with an emphasis on great guitar players."  Here are their top albums of 2024.
  • Here are the year's best albums according to Dave's Mix Tape, another blog with wildly eclectic tastes. 
  • Let's finish with two lists that aren't about music. Todd Mason, proprietor of Sweet Freedom - a blog mostly interested in literature that sometimes dabbles in music - published a list of Christmas short stories and reviews that you may find compelling.
  • The last one is by Casey Chambers - no, he's not the female folk singer. He posted the eleven favorite books he read this year on his blog, The College Crowd Digs Me, where he mostly writes about older and often out-out-print, vinyl, rock albums.

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