2024 has arguably been one of the largest years for popular music in recent memory- largely in part due to the quantity of star-studded celebrities that dropped music all throughout the year. The year came off of 2023, a year massively successful for country artists like Zach Bryan (with #1 hit “I Remember Everything,”) Luke Combs (with his #2-peaking cover of “Fast Car,”) and especially Morgan Wallen- who claimed the top song of the year with “Last Night”, topping Billboard’s Hot 100 for 16 weeks.
While 2024 took a while to initially start, it soon took off with a bang at the end of January with the release of Megan Thee Stallion’s “HISS”. The song, a precursory slander towards lots of rappers, caught media attention about its line of people being “mad at Megan’s Law”, a double entendre that seemingly dissed fellow rapper Nicki Minaj, due to her marriage with an alleged sex offender. Nicki Minaj’s diss track released days later, “Big Foot”, was heavily disliked by the public for its seemingly disjointed lyricism.
February introduced Beyoncé’s transition to “Act II” of her 3-act trilogy, following her 2022 electronic album “RENAISSANCE.” “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” was released after promotion during the Super Bowl, notably a transition into a country sound. The new genre-shift for Beyoncé created lots of controversy around her, a black woman, writing in a genre recently dominated by white men. This controversy continued into March with the release of the album, “COWBOY CARTER”, with her re-interpretation of Dolly Parton’s iconic “JOLENE”. Despite it, though, both the single and the album were very successful- even though the lack of success on country radio for “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” is indicative of a bigger issue in the country industry.
In March, Kendrick Lamar broke the internet with his feature on Future and Metro Boomin’s “WE DON’T TRUST YOU,” specifically the track “Like That.” The song comes as a response to Drake and J. Cole’s 2023 song “First Person Shooter”, in which the two state that they and Lamar were the “big 3”- a statement which Lamar took and the world by storm by flipping the statement on “Like That”, claiming that “it’s just big me”. While J. Cole initially responded to the diss wit
h “7 Minute Drill”, he deleted it the following week, apologizing to Lamar and opting out of the battle.
However, Drake did not back down. Both Lamar and Drake exchanged diss tracks across the coming months: Drake’s “Push Ups”, Lamar’s “euphoria”, Drake’s “Family Matters”, Lamar’s “meet the grahams”; Lamar accused Drake of hiding a secret daughter while Drake said that Lamar was a domestic abuser. However, Lamar won over the public with his song “Not Like Us”- the more upbeat rap song was seen as a laugh in Drake’s face, playing off Drake’s album “Certified Lover Boy” by calling him a “certified pedophile” and saying he was “tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor”. Drake’s defensive response to this, “The Heart Part 6”, was panned and clearly paled in comparison to the accusations Lamar threw at him.
April came with the release of Taylor Swift’s “THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT”, her first unique studio album since her 2022 release of “Midnights” and her highly successful “Eras Tour”. The album, along with its “Anthology” counterpart, earned the largest streaming week and best vinyl-selling week in modern history.
However, the two weeks preceding Swift’s release were notable for the release of some of the defining songs of 2024. On April 5, Chappell Roan released her song “Good Luck, Babe!”: the artist initially known as an opener for Olivia Rodrigo’s “GUTS Tour” created tons of virality around the explicitly queer anthem. But Roan only got bigger- her discography streaming sextupled after the release of “Good Luck, Babe!” with her live performances at several music festivals making waves over the internet. Her 2023 album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess”, was the main benefactor of this, in which the album’s songs- “HOT TO GO!”, “Red Wine Supernova”, “Pink Pony Club”, “Casual”, and more- all got massive attention.
Less than a week later, Sabrina Carpenter released “Espresso”. Having gained gradual success over time, most recently with her own “Feather” going #1 on Pop Radio earlier in the year, the large debut of “Espresso” only got bigger and bigger over time as its tongue-in-cheek lyrics became staple catchphrases: from “I’m working late, ‘cause I’m a singer” to “Switch it up like Nintendo” as well as the namesake “That’s that me espresso.” And just like Roan, Carpenter only got bigger over time- with her releasing “Please Please Please” two months later to massive success featuring a music video with real life boyfriend Barry Keoghan- her following “Short ‘N Sweet” album and accompanying tour became staples of 2024 in music.
Yet, the biggest song of them all came a day after “Espresso”, with Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”. While Shaboozey had been a relatively unknown artist prior to 2024, as a black country artist, his inclusion on Beyoncé’s previously mentioned “COWBOY CARTER” became the predecessor to one of the largest songs of 2024. The song, a country re-interpretation of J-Kwon’s 2004 song “Tipsy”, gained lots of traction online- so much so that it has reached the #1 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 for 18 weeks (and still counting as of November): the second most only behind Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Old Town Road” and its 19 weeks.
Billie Eilish released “HIT ME HARD AND SOFT” in May to massive success as well. With immediate smash songs such as “LUNCH”, to fan favorite tracks such as “WILDFLOWER” and “CHIHIRO” cumulatively being massive songs on streaming, “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” was clearly the biggest hit of them all, reaching #1 on Pop Radio and already accumulated over a billion streams in less than 4 months. For more info, check out Julia’s story here.
All of this happened in the first half of the year, with plenty of hits to spare. Not to mention Tommy Richman’s “MILLION DOLLAR BABY” spreading all over TikTok, Post Malone teaming up with Morgan Wallen and pivoting to country with the giant “I Had Some Help”, Charli XCX’s 2024 revival with her “Brat” album and the accompanying “Brat summer” trend, Zach Bryan’s “The Great American Bar Scene” album, Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile”, BLACKPINK’s ROSÉ & Bruno Mars’ “APT.”; 2024 has tons of songs to remember it by.
This is all without mentioning Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” and Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things”, the two songs that have silently dominated streaming and radio since the start of the year and are considered the biggest songs of 2024 in the U.S. and globally respectively. But now, the question lies in what will music look like in 2025- with A-list stars like The Weeknd and Lady Gaga planning to drop albums, to the recent viral success of Gracie Abrams, 2024 proved that anything is possible in music for the coming years.
