The Best Vinyl Records of 2024

The Highlights is a recent addition to my own vinyl album collection at home, and it does not disappoint. This career-spanning compilation from one of my favorite artists offers two LPs of killer R&B, pop, and alt-rock tracks—including collaborations with Daft Punk, Kendrick Lamar, and Ariana Grande. It’s truly a sonic feast, and all your favorite Weeknd tracks should be here: “Blinding Lights,” “Can’t Feel My Face,” “I Feel It Coming,” “Starboy,” “Call Out My Name,” “Love Me Harder,” and plenty more.

If you’re not already a Springsteen devotee with some of his records, then this Greatest Hits album is a near-perfect sampler platter, collecting songs from his early career alongside a few originals recorded in ’95. “Born to Run,” “Hungry Heart,” “Atlantic City,” “Dancing in the Dark,” “Brilliant Disguise”—this is a top-shelf showcase for one of rock’s finest American poets.

Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black is the sophomore album from the late singer-songwriter, known for bringing jazz and soul music back to the pop charts in the mid-aughts.

Conceived as a breakup album with the sounds of the ’60s, it features “Rehab,” “You Know I’m No Good,” title track “Back to Black,” “Love Is a Losing Game,” and “Tears Dry on Their Own.” Rolling Stone declared it one of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” in 2020.

Ten is a contender—one among many—for greatest studio album of the 1990s. Vocalist Eddie Vedder and one-time drummer Dave Krusen brought incredible chops to the Seattle group just as it was about to record its debut, and the rest is history.

So many of the great Pearl Jam tracks emerged right at the beginning, like perfect seashells washed up on the beach: “Once,” “Even Flow,” “Alive,” “Black,” “Jeremy,” “Release.” It’s a towering monument to the grunge movement’s enduring legacy, as vital as Nevermind or Dirt or Superunknown.

On one hand, the soundtrack to The Graduate is emblematic of 1968. But as a classic rock album, freed of much of the movie’s context, the songs themselves are an ageless, inextricable part of pop culture.

“April Come She Will” can be heard on an episode of the beloved NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation; Quentin Tarantino put “Mrs. Robinson” in his most recent film. Simon & Garfunkel are one of music history’s great duos, and their hauntingly beautiful songwriting continues to resonate with listeners discovering it anew.