The Black Crowes‘ Happiness Bastards album has been voted the best of 2024 in Classic Rock magazine’s annual end-of-year writers poll. The full countdown, featuring the 50 best albums of the year, is featured in the new issue of Classic Rock, which hits UK stores today.
Classic Rock writer Pat Carty’s review of Happiness Bastards describes the album as “a rock’n’roll record that’s funkier than a tramp’s kacks, more soulful than a gospel convention, warmer than a mother’s love and groovier than the Grand Canyon”, while the new issue of Classic Rock calls it “a genuine return to form in an age when many releases described as such are nothing of the sort.”
“As you grow older, you change with how you see the world in general,” Rich Robinson told us earlier this year. “And we’ve been on a pretty long journey. Forty years since I got my guitar, and we started playing in our basement, seems crazy to me. To think of the arc and the scope of the thing is pretty far out, but it’s really all I know.
“Chris sings like Chris. He doesn’t sound like anyone else. I play like me, and I don’t sound like anyone else. We’re both of us still curious and in love with music.”
Classic Rock‘s Top 10 albums of 2024 are listed below.
You can read the full 2022 Top 50 in the latest issue of Classic Rock. It’s our traditional end-of-year review, featuring interviews with many of the musicians behind our Albums Of The Year, and also comes with a 2025 calendar featuring your favourite rock icons, some high-voltage rock’n’roll-themed wrapping paper for all your festive wrapping needs, and a set of some very tidy drink coasters featuring official Scott Gorham and Thin Lizzy artwork.
The end-of-year special edition of Classic Rock is available to buy online.
Classic Rock’s Top 10 albums of 2024
1. The Black Crowes – Happiness Bastards
2. Judas Priest – Invincible Shield
3. David Gilmour – Luck And Strange
4. Bruce Dickinson – The Mandrake Project
5. Black Country Communion – V
6. Pearl Jam – Dark Matter
7. Ian Hunter – Defiance, Part II: Fiction
8. The Black Keys – Ohio Players
9. Deep Purple – =1
10. Gary Clarke Jr – JPEG Raw