The best Italian albums of 2024 (so far)

We all know and they know too that this is not Subsonica's best album. But it is the sound of a band where the whole exceeds the sum of its parts, musicians who looked at each other and asked themselves: is it worth continuing? The answer is yes, it is worth it. Maybe using a consolidated style, which in 2024 we take for granted if not outdated, to put to music two or three things about the world we live in. Between craft and “magic”, they continue to be a beautiful anomaly.

One of the beautiful things about Stillness, Stop: You Have a Right to Remember it's the balance between the cleanliness and delicacy of certain arrangements, even vocal ones, and the fact that they sing with sensitivity about trying to put in order life that, like everyone else, is messed up. Another nice thing: it doesn't even seem like an Italian record. Not that Italian records are mediocre by definition, but it's clear that Any Other is outside of any category of our pop and fits into an appreciated tradition of underground Anglo-Saxon songwriting.

Sometimes you can win by losing. That's what happened to Mahmood this year at Sanremo. He may not have won but his Gold Tracksuit made it explode again. The piece was just the preview of a solid, mature album, the third. In other people's beds It's his confirmation and makes us understand that in a country that historically struggles to build exportable pop stars, he is the exception.

Naples is a future city, but also retrofuturistic in this EP, it is a city reimagined by people who know the history of the local music scene in the 70s. It is a city where there are not only rappers concerts at Maradona, but also sessions of real musicians (sorry) for whom funk, soul, jazz, pop are the same thing, they are music. So, vote Dario Bassolino mayor of newpolitan power.

For years we have complained that the new urban generation lacked lyrics and depth. That it didn't give weight to all this. Then Kid Yugi arrived, not by chance the most beloved young man of the old generation (Salmo, Noyz Narcos and many other historians of the scene spoke highly of him), to bring writing and storytelling back to the center of music. Inspired by the Lord of the Flies by William Golding, mixes literature and videogames, great featuring and a certain intelligence in the choice of themes to deal with from the pain of living to the Ilva of Taranto. Let's keep an eye on it.

It is the ideal sequel to Gotham Radiobut it comes after the success of Sanremo, a rollercoaster from which she emerges, at least in these tracks, with more intimate songs. Inside this album there is pop, rap, electronic, Latin. If Gotham was a dark city, here Rose has swept away the night. Let the sunshine in.

After a courageous but not perfectly focused album like The Third Summer of LoveCosmo has decided to re-embrace the song form with more confidence, also thanks to the collaboration, during the production phase, of Not Waving. To get there, an internal and psychedelic journey was needed, as he told us here. The result is an alien pop that gives us some of the most exciting Italian songs of these first six months.

Love and other disasters, private and collective. You’ll see that by making a more linear, simple album, at the same time pop and unpopular, in its own “classic” way, Vasco Brondi has found the right path to leave behind the imperfect but dazzling songs of Luci della Centrale Elettrica. Without denying that language, but embracing his characters more warmly, almost comforting them and us, as in the case of Sara, who believes in those who shout in the records. Songs that can be sung in chorus, not at all easy for someone like Brondi.

Our favorite braggart: the former Dark Polo Gang plays the bad boy but, in some tracks, he also shows his more sensitive side (if we can call it that). Drillionaire's productions work and Tony Effe does exactly Tony Effe, among radio hits (Miu Miu), bravado and references to hip hop culture. Fun.

Rhove is not what you think. After a series of successful singles (who doesn't know Shaking?) the rapper from Rho has released a record that seems to be built much less in vitro than many records by colleagues in the same product sector. Rhove says he put everything into it, without being remote-controlled by anyone. Good first time, or rather good first (record).

The step out of the crowd that Mace has taken in the last three years, from that very lucky Obe of 2021 followed the following year by the even more apt Beyondit was exhilarating. In this hat trick Maya It's probably the least successful album, but it's still two steps above most of the albums of his colleagues. Not all the featuring work, but when the pieces fit together it's all a pleasure. Imagining another mainstream is possible.

How nice to know that there is a whole host of talented Italian musicians capable of being appreciated not only in our country, but also abroad. Among these, an honorable mention goes to Maria Chiara Argirò and her fifth studio album, Closerreleased by the Los Angeles label Innovative Leisure. After having graced the stages of SXSW in Texas and Glastonbury in England, and after having ended up among the recommended listening of Four Tet and in the Netflix series Elitethe new chapter in the career of the Italian musician is a pleasure for the ears, an avant pop capable of flirting with electronics, jazz, avant-garde.

It's strange to note that we are still surprised when a woman who raps in Italian is amazing. But maybe something is finally changing, or at least that's what we hope. In this sense, the Swiss Ele A is a breath of fresh air that we needed in a scene – rap and trap – where testosterone is still at worrying levels. She writes and raps well, which is all we needed, and in just seven songs (yes, Waterfall it's actually a long EP).

They say: it's a little manual for making mistakes. It's certainly a good example of how Not make a record in 2024 if you want to hit the charts. They did it anyway and it's weird, hallucinatory, strangely seductive, an album of songs written to be such, unlike their debut, but still so crooked that they remain sound objects to decipher. They are Adriano Viterbini (Bud Spencer Blues Explosion), Fabio Rondanini (Calibro 35), Marco Fasolo (Jennifer Gentle), Alberto Ferrari (Verdena) and you can hear it, in the sense that it's one of those albums where you hear musicians talking, taking risks, putting in all their imagination. Nevermind the Time It's the album you put on when you read the FIMI charts and get depressed.

The beautiful confusion of Angelina Mango, a rising talent of our pop. Poke Melodrama It is a danceable coming-of-age novel, a colourful, never sullen, just the right amount of intense autobiography of a girl who grew up in Lagonegro, in Basilicata, with a father who died when she was 13, a brother with whom she could imagine being in the same family. Chronicles of Narniathe typical teenage mess in the head, a life to understand and invent. It's a mix of street party and international aspirations that works especially in the intense autobiographical pieces and in the outbursts in which Mango dances on traumas.

Geolier has been the Manu de oro of Italian music for a year, but God Knows – which comes after a Sanremo that went beyond all expectations – confirms how much good had been demonstrated and told in The courage of children. There is a difference between the album of those who command the scene and those of the others: the effort that the featuring artists put into it. Listen here to Guè, Sfera Ebbasta, Lazza (who starts with a quote from an Italian rap classic like Crazy days of Bassi Maestro), the Argentine star Maria Becerra, and you'll understand what we're talking about. Geolier has put his talent in the safe: for Naples, and Italy, the future of rap is safe.

Four years on Announcement and after having collaborated with the entire Italian scene, Anna released her first album and took the crown of Italian rapper of the moment without too many turns. Real baddie It's the album you have to make if you're 20 and you're Anna: fun, cool, really baddie. 18 tracks, many feats (from Sfera to Capo Plaza and many others) and a lot of tiktokkaable material. It will appeal to the younger ones, yes, but let's give it time. We are sure that this is just the beginning.