THE YEAR IN MUSIC, 2024: Don’t Call It a Comeback (But It Is)

LINKIN PARK

Resurgent: Linkin Park with Emily Armstrong are burning up the charts and filling stadiums. Here they play London’s O2 Arena in September on their From Zero tour. (Credit: Jim Dyson via Getty Images)

Could one of the biggest bands of the 21st century truly ever replace a frontman as iconic as Chester Bennington, who committed suicide in 2017? The answer is a resounding yes, despite some initial pushback to the idea from fans and a slightly messy rollout for the introduction of Dead Sara singer Emily Armstrong. Linkin Park has been propelled back to worldwide prominence on the strength of the comeback album From Zero and massive stadium concerts scheduled throughout 2025. At a time when hardly any rock bands, new or old, can compete on the streaming charts with their pop contemporaries, Linkin Park has had songs both new and old on the Spotify Top 100 for months. Bennington once famously sang that “in the end, it doesn’t even matter,” but millions of fans around the globe clearly still believe otherwise.

Daniel Kohn

EMINEM

“I’m sorry, the world isn’t one big liberal arts college campus,” raps Eminem on his comeback album. (Credit: Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

Is it a comeback just because you haven’t been around for a while and then put out an excellent, sharp-tongued album, with all the vigor of your previous work and the usual poundage of dynamite of controversy? Do you have to want to come back, at least show some excitement about it? And what if, quixotically, your comeback is all about retiring yourself?

The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce) went straight to number one on the charts when released this summer, his 11th number one album. So the fans liked and wanted it. But most critics hated it. They may or may not have liked the music, they didn’t really say, but they hated the sentiments! They were shocked, shocked, that the artist previously known as Slim Shady wasn’t impressed with Gen Z, and wasn’t buying into designer pronouns.

And these critics wanted you to know they were grossly offended, tripping over themselves to outdo each other in their righteous indignation. But, er, this is Eminem we’re talking about… who alternately grossly offended and thrilled millions every time he released a song, let alone an album full of provocative missiles! He’s Edward Scissorhands to the achingly politically correct, shredding the precious like cabbage.

So, he is back then! Back where he always was, stirring the shit. Wonderful!

Bob Guccione Jr.

CASSETTES!

The cassette is back, baby. (Credit: Peter Bischoff via Getty Images)

I know we declared 2024 “The Year of the CD” — we like a few drinks and after a while we start declaring things — but the real comeback of the year, as in “most recently dead and buried and totally forgotten,” is the once and still humble cassette. Introduced in 1963 it was as much a revelation to music playback as paperbacks were to reading books, and from then on until the mid ’80s and the arrival of the CD, many, many billions were made, bought, lent, swapped, recorded over, unspooled and pirated. Cassettes were small (but hardy) and relatively cheap. As in cheaper than vinyl records, which were themselves once cheap or at least reasonable. Cassette players were cheap too, and you could also record blank cassettes on them, and so the phenomenon of the curated homemade collection of favorite or mood songs was born.

Somewhere along the line they went out of vogue. CDs were the rage. They were supposedly better sounding (I would dispute that) and they were literally shinier. Digital was the future, analog was doomed to extinction, the plaintive and few wails from people like me that analog sounded better drowned out in the digital thunder.

Now — you’ll have guessed this part — I never lost my love for cassettes, and, to the dismay of my decades-long life partner and despite her cold derision, never lost my cassette collection. Decay has winnowed some of it, as it does all of us, but I still have thousands. I’ve kept the faith. And now, after the long nuclear winter of aural isolation, the clouds have parted, the sun is shining through, and the cassette is back, baby. New cassette players are being manufactured and competition is virile, musicians are releasing more and more records on the format and Amazon is selling old cassettes like a bumper crop. Hallelujah!

BGJ

LL COOL J

A force in fashion, too. LL Cool J leaving Global Studios in London, UK, on November 8. (Credit: MEGA/GC Images via Getty Images)

LL has spent the last 15 years portraying a law enforcement professional on your grandparents’ third favorite cop show, which is exactly the kind of gig that will soften the image of even the hardest MC (see also: Ice-T). It’s surprising that he would even bother with a new album 11 years after the ho-hum Authentic and the mortifying “Accidental Racist,” but The FORCE is really, really good. Produced by Q-Tip, the beats shapeshift constantly with a funky clamor that recalls the spirit but not the sound of his earliest singles. And LL rides them eloquently, from the perspective of a middle-aged Black man in post-George Floyd America. The presence of younger (!) artists like Snoop, No-Longer-Fat Joe, Busta Rhymes, and Eminem only reinforces the uniqueness of The FORCE.

I’m just gonna go ahead and call it a comeback. Better to apologize than ask permission.

Stephen Deusner

THAT DIDN’T LAST LONG!

JANE’S ADDICTION REUNION TOUR

Clipped from a September issue of the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

I’m sick of Lazarus bands, and even sicker of their fans waddling around at overpriced, underwhelming, unnecessary, toothless nostalgiathons. So respect to Jane’s Addiction for doing a comeback that ended early and ugly. That was rock. Rock isn’t about health, mental or otherwise. Rock is about mayhem. Go hard or go home … or both.

My problem with the Jane’s implosion, though, is that it wasn’t ugly enough. Despite ballyhoo from assorted nitwits about Perry Farrell “assaulting” Dave Navarro, the Boston scrap doesn’t even count as a proper stoush — especially not between men who’ve clashed before, as this pair did onstage more than once in the early 1990s. At one of the original Lollapaloozas they tumbled down a ramp fighting like cartoon characters.

OASIS — ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE YEAR!

The world quivers in anticipation. (Credit: Christopher Furlong via Getty Images)

Long before Oasis flamed out in 2009 following nearly a decade of lackluster music, tabloid-fodder soundbites, physical altercations and competent but predictable live shows, a late ’90s critic remarked that “one day we might look back, possibly in anger,” and wonder why Noel and Liam Gallagher were once among the most popular rock bands in the world. The answer, of course, is raucous anthems such as “Live Forever,” “Wonderwall,” “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and “Champagne Supernova,” which have kept Oasis very much alive in the public consciousness for the past 15 years. Despite Noel’s longtime public proclamations to the contrary, a reunion was inevitable, even if it was purely motivated by money (in Noel’s case, a costly divorce). After it was announced this summer, the news set off a Taylor Swift-sized frenzy, with every single ticket for 30-plus worldwide stadium shows selling out in seconds — even in the U.S., where Oasis were barely scraping by when they broke up in the first place.

Jonathan Cohen