In 2024, every time I became obsessed with a song – wanted to listen to it constantly, to roll around in it, live inside it – I would add it to this playlist.

I do this most years, and it’s one of my favorite traditions, because it always leaves me with an evocative musical diary of my year, one that will catapult me right back to this time in my life when I listen to it again in future years. Not every track on the list was recorded or released this year – they’re all just songs that mattered to me a lot in 2024, no matter when they’re from.

Long-time readers might remember that I used to highlight my favorite songs for you at the end of every year (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022), and I’d like to do the same for you this year. Here are 9 songs that got me through 2024, songs that lit me up, made me think, turned me on, struck a chord. (Why 9, and not 8 or 10? Well, 9 is just how many I loved enough to include here and had something substantial to say about.)

The best way to read this post (IMO) is to hit ‘play’ on each song before you start reading about it. I hope you enjoy these sonic gems as much as I do!

“Sexy to Someone” by Clairo

“[To be] sexy to somebody, it would help me out/ Oh, I need a reason to get out of the house/ And it’s just a little thing I can’t live without”

My uncle Kevan (himself a legend in Canadian punk rock in the ’80s) sent me this one, because he likes the production on it, which is indeed excellent: vibey, groovy, quirky. But it was the song’s lyrics that hooked me immediately. “Sexy to someone is all I really want,” sings the cherubic Clairo; “sometimes sexy to someone is all I really want.” My cousin Sean called this “some of the most unambitious flirting I’ve ever heard,” which made me laugh, because I have the same ambition as Clairo in this regard, and I agree with Sean that it’s not exactly a big ask: I want to feel like someone finds me sexy, at least some of the time.

That feeling, of being wanted and knowing you’re wanted (even if just by one person in the whole entire world), is like a jangly shot of espresso in my veins. It gets me up and gets me out of the house, as Clairo says, and it also gets me creating, smiling, giggling, blushing, and (let’s be honest) jerking off more often.

Like me, Clairo seems to view this sexy energy as a life-sustaining force, “something I see in everything,” which pools and flows throughout your life like “honey sticking to your hands, sugar on the rim.” I’m at my best when I feel wanted and am wanting in return. Despite all the spiritual books I’ve read which decried desire as the root of all misery, I think I’m at my happiest when I’m caught in a hot spiral of want.

“Nasty” by Tinashe

“If you keep up with me, I’ll keep on coming back/ If you do it too good, I’m gonna get attached/ ‘Cause it feels like heaven when it hurts so bad/ Baby, put it on me – I like it just like that”

Speaking of “a reason to get out of the house,” this was my go-to song whenever I had a hard time getting out of bed this year. Even on bad fibro days, I still wanted to dance to this one!

In my line of work, one of the questions I get asked most often is, “I’m into [insert kink or sexual practice here]; am I normal?” I always try to explain to people that sexual ‘normalcy’ is a meaningless construct, and is hardly worth aspiring to anyway (do you really want to have the most average sex life on the block?!). But usually they keep fretting nonetheless – probably because, at their core, they’re afraid that their desires make them undesirable, unloveable, or broken, when in reality, they just need to find partners they’re compatible with.

For that reason, I love this song’s iconic refrain, “Is somebody gonna match my freak?” Tinashe is such a charismatic, captivating performer both dance-wise and vocally that the sentiment comes across confident as hell: no sniveling about wanting to be normal, but rather, wholeheartedly embracing that one is not ‘normal,’ and daring all potential suitors to keep up. We should all be so lucky as to find somebody who ‘matches our freak,’ whatever that happens to mean for us.

“Pessimist” by Julia Michaels

“Made me die, made me melt/ You have changed the way I felt/ With your touch, with your help/ You took a pessimist and turned me into something else”

To me this song sounds like walking home on a winter’s night after a really great fourth or fifth date, thinking, “Jesus, this thing might actually have legs.” It’s that almost-falling-in-love feeling, that oh-shit-what-the-fuck feeling, hands jittering in your mittens. Michaels’ bell-like soprano pings through the curtains of snow like a streetlamp lighting the way forward: “I think I see a lifetime.”

With so much going wrong in the world this year (to say the fucking least), I spent a lot of time thinking about hope. It’s hard to stay optimistic in such a fucked-up time, even though we need some optimism in order to keep going. One thing I have noticed in myself over and over again is that romance is an almost-endless wellspring of optimism for me, able to replenish my hope when it’s run dry. Whatever neurochemical hell is wrought on my system by doomscrolling, the opposite effect is achieved when I get a text from the cutie I’m crushing on, or when I go out for an intimate dinner with my spouse, or even when I obsess about a celebrity I think is hot. It’s that same life force again, the one Clairo was talking about.

I relate to this song deeply, because my spouse indeed “took a pessimist and turned me into something else.” Our love is the biggest, best thing I’ve ever experienced in my life, and because we’re polyamorous, I have the freedom and capacity to experience other big loves in the future – something which only really seems possible to me because of how incredible my love story with my spouse has been and continues to be. If it happened once, something similar could always happen again, albeit in different and unexpected ways. It’s one of the things I treasure about non-monogamy, and it’s one of the many reasons I’m glad I’m not such a pessimist anymore.

“What is a Blouse?” by The Zach & The Jess

“What the hell is a blouse? … Is it dissimilar to a baggy shirt?/ Or a sail too small for a boat to work?/ A pillowcase, but with a place for arms?/ A V-neck with exceptional grace and charms?/ A classic tee that got loose and swollen?/ A button-up with all the buttons stolen?”

And now, for something completely different…

This song made me laugh more than any other this year. I would listen to it when I was sad sometimes, because its silliness cracks me up, like when Zach & Jess refer to blouses as “the apparel enigma, the Stonehenge of clothes.”

At one point this year, I was standing in line waiting to get my book signed at a Casey McQuiston reading, and the people behind me got into an animated discussion of the very question asked by this song: “What is a blouse?!” It took all of my strength not to turn around, whip out my phone, and play them the track!

“Co-Op” by Bess Atwell

“I’ve learned to apologize/ Learned to trust somebody with my body, I/ learned there’s a life outside my eyes”

Atwell has described this song as “a bit of a private joke” with her partner: the two of them lived across from a co-op that was always playing music that would get stuck in their heads when they went there. One day Bess came back humming, and her partner said, “Did you even go to the co-op if you don’t come back singing the pop song that was on?” which later became the refrain of this tune. (“You said I couldn’t fit that in a song,” Atwell adds teasingly on the second repetition.)

It’s a song about domesticity, about living in close quarters and loving it. It reminds me dearly of the time I spent crammed into tiny apartments with my beloved during the early pandemic – six months at their place in New York, four months at mine in Toronto. The soothing familiarity of our routines kept me sane during that wild time.

It’s also a song about finally being able to relax with somebody, after the tumult of trauma. I, too, have “learned to trust somebody with my body.” There are many ways to help that process along, but one of them (for me, at least) is to have these comforting rituals I share with my partner, whether they be devouring Netflix dating shows after work, attending our favorite improv show on Sunday nights, or even going to the co-op.

“Broke Boy” by Malia Civetz

“I love my broke boy/ Not a billionaire baller or dough boy/ Used to give him cash so he could get some gas/ ‘Cause he knows how to give me that O, boy!/ Still-lives-at-home boy/ Ain’t got a house or a plane or a Rolls Royce/ There’s no credit card that’s gonna buy my heart/ ‘Cause I gave it all to a broke boy”

I think this is an… anticapitalist love song?! Fuck yeah! More of this, please!

I’ve been a fan of Malia Civetz’s big bold voice and top-notch songwriting for a few years now, and while her song “Is It You?” was my #1 most-played song this year (it’s a banger), “Broke Boy” is the one I have the most fondness for at the moment.

I just love how plainly Malia lays it out in this song: Being broke doesn’t make you unworthy of love. Romance is commonly depicted as an expensive endeavor – dates, meals, gifts, etc. – but it doesn’t have to be, because human connection itself is free. And as Malia points out, her broke boy may not be able to afford fancy vacations around the world, but it’s okay, ’cause he “took [her] on a trip with just the tip of his tongue.”

“I Said What I Said” by The Softies

“As soon as I had a place to go, I went/ There’s gotta be more to life than paying rent/ I said what I said, so I wouldn’t have to say/ what I wasn’t ready to tell you”

I never thought there would be another Softies album in my lifetime. There hadn’t been any for 24 years. And then, just like magic, they put out a new one. I practically started hyperventilating when I found out.

I’ve loved the Softies’ sweet voices and mellow guitars since I was about 12 years old, when a listener of my podcast (yes, I had a podcast in 2004… it’s a long story) sent me a digital mixtape. In that .zip file were many songs I still adore to this day, like “All the Umbrellas in London” by the Magnetic Fields and “Chick Habit” by April March… but there was also the Softies, and I fell down that rabbit hole hard, begging my mom to let me use her credit card to order their CDs online. I’ve been a fan ever since, and hope to be able to see them play live someday.

This song has stuck with me most from the latest album, for whatever reason. As with many Softies songs, its lyrics are vague enough that it could mean many different things, but for me it evokes a woman who’s ending things with her male partner upon realizing she’s gay (which incidentally I also wrote a song about once). It’s bittersweet in that way – affectionate, but at arm’s length; compassionate, but cutting ties. And because it’s the Softies, it floats and soars like sunshine on clouds, jazz chords as plainspoken as love.

“Want Want” by Maggie Rogers

“Oh, can we take this slow?/ Everybody’s always known/ but I didn’t want to admit/ And when we’re cheek to cheek/ I feel it in my teeth/ and it’s too good to resist”

I first listened to this one because the aforementioned romance author Casey McQuiston cited it as one of their inspirations while writing The Pairing, easily my favorite romance novel I’ve ever read, which also happens to be a very fucking sexy book. Accordingly, as you might expect, this song is overflowing with lust and swagger. It’s about the immutability of desire: “If you want-want what you want-want, then you want it.” It’s as simple as that.

But while lust itself may seem straightforward, it can lead us into situations that are anything but. Rogers’ agile voice flips between airy softness and throaty bravado as she wavers about whether to fuck a long-time friend, first-time lover: “I hold my breath and count the times I walked my feet up to the line…” How exhilarating, then, to finally cross it.

The driving rhythm of this song feels like the locomotive momentum of lust itself, chugging along even when you wish you could throw the brake. But it’s nearly impossible to get off that train; you really “can’t hide what you desire once you’re on it… and I want you.”

“CVS” by Winnetka Bowling League

“I wanna buy you chocolate hearts from CVS/ Kiss you too hard and follow you west/ Sing you sad songs on a Sunday afternoon/ Yeah, I think I’d like to tie you in ways that you can’t undo/ Dinner in bed and Korean food/ Say ‘I love you’ just a little bit too soon”

The lead singer of Winnetka Bowling League (one of my most-played artists this year), Matthew Koma, is married to Hilary Duff, which is why she has a cameo in this music video. And it’s sweet to see the two of them together, because this song is all about love.

In working on this post, I’ve noticed some throughlines in the songs I’ve loved most this year. A lot of them seem to be about new love, and finding hope in the possibility of new connections. This song is such a lovely manifestation of that – it’s about jumping the gun in a new relationship, wanting to get closer and closer, wanting to fall in love, or noticing you’ve already started to. It’s also about the eerie feeling that you might’ve just met the person you’re gonna spend forever with, something I felt a shade of when I first met my spouse: “In a dream, your future had a voice, and he spoke like me…”

I like that this song also draws your attention to the artificiality of romance, at least the type of romance you can buy from a CVS. One of the dumbest things about love is that we can find ourselves performing these cardboard rituals of romance, not because we necessarily believe in them, but just because our feelings are so damn big, we have to let them out any way we can.

What songs did you enjoy most this year, my darlings?