Throughout December, CHIRP Radio presents its volunteers’ top albums of 2024. Our next list is from Board Member Barry Owen.
Wow this was hard! I’ve probably got about 25 albums that I listened to a lot this year, but these 10 were my favorites (at least they are now!).
Could’ve easily made this an all-Chicago list this year - what a great time for Chicago music! Thanks to all the CHIRP DJs who turned me on to many of these records and artists!!
Sophia Ramirez of CHIRP Radio recently spoke with Emily Haden Lee, a singer-songwriter and artist originally from Missouri who is now based in Chicago. Her debut album The Woman I Would Be was released on September 20th. You can listen to their full interview here.
Sophia Ramirez: Thank you so much for joining me today Emily, and congratulations. Emily Haden Lee: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
SR: So this album has been in the works for a little while. How long exactly have you been working on it? EHL: Let me think. I moved to Chicago probably almost 10 years at this point and I've been working on it for that time. It's definitely been an on and off sort of project. At the beginning of the year, when I got pregnant, I was like, okay, before I have kids, I think I need to get this out into the world because it's going to really rock my world and change everything when I have children. I had just sort of slowly been recording the songs without any sort of intention behind it, and I really wanted to have an album by the end of the year. So that's kind of how I decided to finish it. It wasn't a super deliberate thing, I guess, that just kind of came together over time.
There was a lot to parse through this year and it wasn't always of great quality. I can't confidently say that some artists performed better than their previous records (including one on this list). However, I did listen to the greatest diversity of genres this year, a feat that seems to keep one upping it self each year.
I put this list off as long as possible because even into December, there are releases I'm looking forward to. I also got into many albums that were not released in 2024. To name a few: D'Angelo's Black Messiah, Rufus Wainwright's Poses, Pavement's Terror Twilight, Pearl Jam's Yield, and among many 21st century releases.
I managed to pick the CHIRP No. 1 record last year but don't expect any of these albums to crack the top 10 this year.
Throughout December, 
Sophia Ramirez of CHIRP Radio recently spoke with