Best Rock Albums By Year

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2024 stacks up as a really great year in the history of my annual rank lists

78 total tracks as of Dec 31 2024 is a impressive year! In recent years I think I usually end with about 40. But I think there’s some recency bias to consider with the past few years, I do have this sense that I’ve been discovering a lot more great music lately and I had this nagging feeling in past years in the 10s-early 20s that there just wasn’t much good stuff coming out. But I don’t know, I don’t see a lot of 2024 songs I’d ever remove. Same with 2023. Sure, there may eventually be some songs that will fade that will get removed and there may be new ones I haven’t heard yet that will get added. It’s a lifelong work in progress, if there’s anything shocking I’m missing, make a comment! Ultimately, Most years I’ve tracked since I started making my best of the year lists this in my early 2000s blogging days average around 30-40 per year.

In the below list, the playlist is linked on Spotify if you want to check it out and I’ve also listed my top 3 songs from each year, which actually does change from time to time as old songs grow on me or conversely, I get sick of them. Additionally, if there’s a (#) next to a song, that’s where that song currently stacks up on my 50 GOAT playlist.

To help me determine which are the best years of all time,

(#) next to a song indicates where the song stands on my top 50 GOAT playlist

So, as of 31 Dec 2024 this is where I’m at:

My timeline of how these top songs of the yeaer came together for me,

• 1985-1990 I was just getting introduced to music by hearing what from my older siblings played via what they’d bring home or listen to on the radio in the Dakotas (a place that’s often a little behind the times). Lots of hair metal, regular metal, popular rock, etc.
• 1990-2000 I was getting introduced to music watching MTV and VH1 mostly. There was definitely a little radio influence, but radio mostly sucked in the Dakotas as was more country or adult contemporary shit. My Mom wasn’t a big country person per-say, from her I’d mostly hear some 70s – 80s softer rock and she introduced me to The Cars which is one of the most amazing bands of the 80s. I was definitely hearing some old school rap from MTV as well at that time which widened things a bit. There were definitely some other classic rock and metal I was sharing in with siblings around this time like old Metallica, Sabbath, Zeppelin, AC/DC, etc. Not as much David Bowie or Pink Floyd, I’d get into more of that stuff in the early 00s.
• Mid to late 90s I was on my own a bit and collaborating on music interests from classmates, I was still not big on their country tastes but did get into some of the 90s rap they were into and perhaps even took a break from rock and focused on that for a bit, until later in the decade when my older sibling was around more and I was finding more on the internet.
• 1996-2004 I was getting introduced to music on the internet a lot more and in 2001 I moved out of the Dakotas so MTVs Y2Kish shift to realty tv was replaced by a rock radio station in Minneapolis (93X). Also picked up some interest in some progressive rock artists around this time from roommates. I really started exploring more genres and generations of music from this time on, via more internet exploration, and wasn’t so hyper-focused on rock, but in spite of all that it’s still what I listen to the most anyway.
• 2002-2004. This is around the time I started building lists of my favorite songs from those years and decades. Also the time I started blogging a lot.
• Early 10s I was transitioning from radio and internet to streaming and was a fairly early adopter of Spotify around 2011-2012. Was listening to very little modern rock radio and classic rock radio at this point, but was listening to a couple local indie music stations if I wasn’t streaming.
• Early 20s I experimented for a brief time period with Tidal, Apple Music, and Youtube Music as I had been on Spotify a really long time and felt it was time to see what I might be missing. It didn’t last long, Spotify’s user experience was superior all-around and I just couldn’t even after using some online tools to transfer playlists from Spotify.