Scott Lapatine

Stereogum’s 2024 In Review package continued with countdowns of the ten best albums in metal, rap, hardcore, country, experimental, and electronic music, and more genre lists are coming next week. The metal list marks the last-ever edition of our monthly column The Black Market. 🥲 Thank you Ian, Doug, Wyatt, Michael, and Aaron for the 12 years (!) of kick-ass metal recommendations. Stay tuned for Stereogum’s new monthly metal column launching in 2025. 👀

Did you speak the words “very demure” this year? Can you spell Haliey Welch? Do you not only know who the Rizzler is, but you’re mad at Jimmy Fallon for disrespecting him? If so you may be afflicted with “brain rot,” Oxford University Press’s Word Of The Year. At MATES festival in LA, I caught up with indie musicians Claud, Jillian Medford of Ian Sweet, and Campbell Burns and Jake Johnson of Vacations to asses whether any of them should be diagnosed with the condition. (I have a doctorate in very online.) I also asked them all what “coworker music” was, but nobody knew. Watch the interview below and see a medical professional if any of it is familiar to you.

Robert Smith doesn’t stream music “on principle and never will,” he said on a podcast this week. “I’ve got loads and loads of different iPods with stickers on them so I know in the dark which one’s gonna play which.” If you get a 4GB iPod Mini for Christmas, here’s some playlist inspo from 20 years ago:

It’s the last regular Shut Up, Dude of the year, but check back on Tuesday for the big 50 Best Comments Of 2024 countdown.

“The album is god, period.” That's Jack Antonoff on the And The Writer Is… podcast earlier this month. “There's no brilliant artist that's existed for a real period of time and changed things and has a real audience that isn't based on albums. They don't exist.” I bet you can think of some examples to dispute that claim, but we do love albums around here and probably you do too.

On New Year's Day, Stereogum will turn 23 years old. (It's easy to remember because we share a birthday with Ice Spice.) I spend enough time on social media to know that longreads about Ned's Atomic Dustbin aren't what's setting the algo on fire these days, yet Stereogum's audience is larger than it's ever been, so thank you all for caring. We're especially grateful to everyone who has been supporting Stereogum with a paid Membership , helping to keep independent music journalism alive in '25. We have exciting things in store for next year and look forward to sharing them with you, the best music community on the internet. But first we must look back on things you wrote underneath our posts this year. Shut Up, Dude , this site's long-running weekly best comments countdown, is one of our Members Only features, but I'm once again opening up the year-end roundup to all. Below, enjoy the best of Stereogum readers' jokes and insights in 2024, and we'll see you on the futuresport court in 2025.

Happy New Year everybody!!

This week we were enjoying Polish LSD, cutting coked-up demos with Toto, and poppin’ pillies like a rockstar. 🥴

Earlier this week Timothée Chalamet was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for portraying Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown . He'll host and perform