This year's event takes place April 20, and features releases from Olivia Rodrigo to The Beatles and beyond.
This year’s Record Store Day — which happens April 20 — boasts approximately 387 different titles that will be made available at participating shops nationwide. And the numbers show there’s a voracious public hungry for physical product, further cementing the importance of owning the music you spend your good money on, as opposed to merely streaming it on a DSP.
According to Luminate, the music industry sold 49.61 million units of vinyl in 2023, an increase of 14.2 percent from the previous year. And here’s the kicker, it was the largest 12-month period for such sales since the Los Angeles-based analytic company began tracking retail data for music back in 1991. And not just for wax, but CDs as well, given the modest increase in sales that format has experienced in recent years.
So what to buy this year? Perusing through the RSD list of the upcoming titles that will be available to varying degrees of scarcity, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the staggering amount of choice available for this year’s music-geek shoppers’ holiday. But fear not, as Billboard has reviewed, researched and revisited a slew of the titles slated for Record Store Day 2024 in an effort to bring you a comprehensive compendium of picks well worth your time and legal tender.
We’re not only talking strictly vinyl here, either, as electronics and, yes, those old compact discs are also fair game this year.
Here’s a list of what we think are most worth the trouble of leaving your home to wait in a long line in hopes the person ahead of you doesn’t snag the last copy of what you’re looking for.
7″ single, unknown color vinyl, 15,000 copies (Geffen) Nothing beats a good old pop switcheroo, especially when it’s two of the country’s hottest stars covering one another’s hit songs. Olivia Rodrigo’s rendition of Noah Kahan’s recent top 10 hit “Stick Season” transforms the song into her own, while Kahan keeps it faithful with his take on “Lacy,” whose origins stem from a poem the pop star wrote for a college class. Both songs were recorded during each artist’s respective appearances on BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge in the fall of 2023. Meanwhile, Kahan’s second album, 2021’s I Was/I Am, will also be made available this RSD on blue vinyl.
2 LPs, multiple vinyl colors, 10,000 copies (Atlantic Records) While declaring the band’s independence from former label Atlantic Records in February, Paramore also revealed that the group would be serving as this year’s official Record Store Day ambassadors. And along with the accolades, the Tennessee band will also see the digital remix edition of its 2023 Grammy-winning Atlantic swan song This Is Why get a physical release. Packaged either as a standalone LP or a double album with the original record, this new version of Re: This Is Why comes in a variety of colors and includes a Jack Antonoff mix of “Sanity,” joining the likes of Foals, Panda Bear, The Linda Lindas, Wet Leg and others in reinterpreting Paramore’s finest work to date.
2 LPs, opaque violet vinyl, 4,500 copies (Rhino) The pride and joy of Paterson, N.J., might be in the thick of six-year bid inside a federal prison for drug trafficking. But Fetty’s universally lauded self-titled 2015 debut makes a return to vinyl for the first time since its original street date, pressed on deep violet acetate with three bonus tracks from the Japanese deluxe edition, including the indelible “Let It Bang” and a pair of tracks with his longtime rhyme partner Monty. If you didn’t catch the vibes of Wap’s blend of spitting and songcraft on this album the first time, now is your chance to cop one of the definitive rap records of the 2010s.
2 LPs, 4,200 copies (AWAL) Who would’ve thought the revival of traditional pop in the 2020s would come courtesy of an Icelandic-American singer whose sound is as informed by Ella Fitzgerald as it is by Taylor Swift? Originally released in digital form between the street dates of her 2022 debut, Everything I Know About Love, and its star-making 2023 follow-up, Bewitched, this live album was recorded in Laufey’s hometown of Reykjavík at Harpa Concert Hall with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and makes its physical debut this RSD on resplendent black vinyl. In addition to lush versions of such early originals as “Beautiful Stranger” and “Like the Movies” from her Typical of Me EP, A Night At the Symphony also finds the singer elegantly interpreting Great American Songbook chestnuts such as Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness of You” and the Cole Porter standard “Everytime We Say Goodbye” as well. Stunning.
3 LPs, 4,500 copies (dBPM) Originally released in 2011, Wilco’s eighth album was the first one released on the band’s own label (dBPM Records), and one of the very best studio endeavors in its stacked catalog, serving as a spiritual cousin of sorts to the group’s 1999 pop masterpiece Summerteeth in tone and texture. This RSD edition of The Whole Love expands the album into a three-LP set that contains all of the bonus tracks from the original deluxe edition of the 12-track LP, including their cover of Nick Lowe’s “I Love My Label” and the motorik-esque instrumental “Speak Into the Rose.” There are also SiriusXM and iTunes session takes of key album tracks, along with a selection of live performances from the group’s famed Chicago studio The Loft, including another Lowe cover in his classic New Wave era hit “Cruel to be Kind” featuring the man himself sitting in.
2 LPs, black vinyl, 1,800 copies (Deep Digs) Renowned archivist and “jazz detective” Zev Feldman has no less than 10 new titles he’s produced for this year’s RSD festivities, including previously unreleased performances from such titans as Art Tatum, Cannonball Adderley, Sun Ra and Yusef Lateef, among others. Yet the jewel of this year’s bounty is a newly discovered concert from gospel legend and electric guitar groundbreaker Sister Rosetta Tharpe, lovingly known as The Godmother of Rock n’ Roll. Discovered by Feldman while he was researching for potential material at the INA France, this concert – recorded at the Grand Theatre in Limoges, France, on Nov. 11, 1966 – finds Sister Rosetta at her soulful best. Armed with only her superhuman guitar skills and powerful, compassionate voice, this gorgeous capture from French television finds Tharpe enrapturing her audience with the strength of a symphony orchestra as she glides through a 21-song set kissed by such Sunday service staples as “This Train,” “Jericho” and “Two Little Fishes, Five Loaves of Bread.”
LP, 1,200 copies (Lee Mendelson Productions) Though not as household a name as A Charlie Brown Christmas or It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, the sixth animated Peanuts TV special — based on the premise of Charlie Brown and company attending a summer camp with typically hilarious results — remains a low-key favorite for fans of the classic Charles Schulz-created comic strip. This limited-edition vinyl marks the first time the music of intrepid Peanuts jazz composer Vince Guaraldi from the 1969 CBS program has been made commercially available, comprised of 26 short cues from the show itself along with six other previously unheard alternate tracks from the pianist and his large jazz ensemble. Pressed on Camp Green Vinyl, this short run of the soundtrack includes a 12-inch, four-page insert featuring liner notes offering a track-by-track analysis by Guaraldi biographer Derrick Bang, and essays from Sean and Jason Mendelson, sons of the late Peanuts producer Lee Mendelson.
CD and vinyl, run unknown (Chrysalis Records) Take it from someone who has seen them in concert five times, nobody does live hip-hop better than De La Soul. Which is why the return of this wild 1996 soundboard from the sorely missed New York City music club Tramps for Record Store Day should be priority buying for serious hip-hop heads. This gig, booked less than two months before the release of the classic Stakes Is High LP, was originally derided for its looseness upon its initial release in 2004. Twenty years later, it comes back into circulation as a gift in the memory of Dave “Trugoy” Joliceur, who died on Super Bowl Sunday 2023. It feels and flows with the energy of an apartment party, especially when friends such as Common, the Jungle Brothers and a young Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def) roll through to assist Trugoy, Posdnuos and Maseo on a set peppered with such De La faves as “Breakadawn,” “Potholes in my Lawn” and “Itzoweezee (Hot).”
2 LPs, black vinyl, 8,000 copies (Rhino) Some of the highlights of Talking Heads’ 1982 live LP The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads are the first seven tracks, culled from an ace live session on Nov. 17, 1977, for Boston AOR radio station WCOZ-FM only two months after the release of the group’s debut album Talking Heads ‘77. For the first time, Rhino presents the complete 14-song concert spread across two records and pressed at 45 RPM for optimum fidelity. Recorded and mixed by longtime studio collaborator Ed Stasium, this set contains previously unreleased live versions of such TH classics as “Thank You for Sending Me an Angel,” their famous cover of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” and “Stay Hungry,” all of which would later appear on the quartet’s sophomore LP, More Songs About Buildings and Food.
Turntable with four 3-inch records, 2,300 copies (Apple Records) It’s truly wild to think that 60 years have passed since The Beatles first arrived in America and captivated audiences nationwide during the band’s iconic appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. To honor the recent anniversary of this moment, Apple Records has collaborated with Crosley to create arguably the coolest find on the RSD list this year. It’s a Beatle-bedazzled, Bluetooth-enabled tiny turntable designed to play 3-inch records of the four songs the Fabs performed on Sullivan, including “She Loves You,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Til There Was You” and “I Saw Her Standing There.” The little vinyl is dressed in its own outer box with a picture sleeve and collectable poster, and comes packaged in a neat Beatles carrying case that leaves enough room to hold six more 3-inch records if you choose to grow your collection of miniature wax. It’s a genuine thing.
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