Yahoo Lifestyle The 10 best songs of 2024
From swaggering pop-girl anthems to the tightest diss track this century, here is the music that made our year.
If 2024 had a musical narrative, it was pop's total domination — specifically, the pop girlies' domination. A former Disney star introduced her new super-femme persona — a winking bombshell who boasted that she was so addictively hot, she'd turned her lover into an insomniac — and became a hitmaker. British singer Charli XCX had her own pop breakthrough, charging from the cult-fave margins straight into our feeds (and brains), leaving a trail of lime-green chaos in her wake. And we witnessed the rise (and rise and rise) of a certain outspoken Midwest phenom, who stole our hearts and reminded us of pop's endless possibilities. Songs from all these ladies have landed on the list below, along with a banger about a panic attack, a diss track for the ages, and so much more.
Here, we present our favorite tracks this year.
The 10 best songs of 2024
10. Adrianne Lenker, "Sadness as a Gift"
As both a solo artist and the lead singer of the indie-rock band Big Thief, Adrianne Lenker defies musical trends with powerful, ethereal songwriting that communicates with fans on an almost cellular level. On the folk treasure “Sadness As a Gift,” one of the early singles from her latest album, Bright Futures, she proves she deserves all those comparisons to Bob Dylan, imbuing a song about the end of a relationship with optimism in simple lines like "You could write me someday, and I hope you will" and "you showed me a place I'll find even when I'm old." Listen carefully and you'll notice the chorus change as the track progresses, much like our feelings toward a former lover do as time passes. Pairing her raw lyrics with soft guitar twangs and sweeping violin breaks, Lenker makes depicting quiet devastation and eventual recovery look easy. —Tiffany Kelly
9. Fontaines D.C., "Starburster"
The Dublin quintet continue to reinvent themselves with each new record, and on 2024's Romance they roughed up their signature post-punk sheen with a psychedelic hip-hop edge best deployed on the album's commanding lead single, "Starburster." The swirling track, about a panic attack in London's St. Pancras station, lures us in with its sweet yet eerie string loop before its heavy drumbeat kicks into gear and rockets down an unforeseen path, knocking over every single warning sign along the way. Frontman Grian Chatten spits out his every desire and anxiety in a sort of stream of consciousness, punctuating his snarling declarations with loud gasps for air as the terror sets in and he spirals deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of his mind. Somehow, amid all that turmoil, the song still manages to conjure a sense of, as Chatten intones in its chorus, "momentary blissness." —Emlyn Travis
Related: The 10 best albums of 2024
8. Tyla, "Jump"
The South African star officially secured her Bad Bitch status with the opening lines, "They never had a pretty girl from Joburg / See me now, and that's what they prefer," her pronunciation of "prefer" doing more work than half the songs that came out this year. Continuing Tyla's streak of seductively smooth hits that began with last year's omnipresent "Water," the fourth single off her self-titled debut album is a pastiche of swagger, featuring American rapper Gunna and Jamaican rapper Skillibeng fronting a hypnotic blend of Afrobeats, dancehall, and hip-hop. But Tyla holds the center, repping her hometown of Johannesburg while vying for global domination, and doing it all effortlessly and believably, sort of like a South African Rihanna. —Lester Fabian Brathwaite
Related: Tyla addresses her racial identity after 'awkward' radio interview
7. Tinashe, "Nasty"
A solid decade after her breakthrough hit, "2 On," the kids finally seem to be matching Tinashe's freak. After years of struggling with a major label who just didn't know what to do with a beautiful, multitalented pop star in the making, Tinashe went independent, releasing a steady stream of albums and singles flaunting her critical, if not necessarily commercial, viability. That was until this viral bop and its elaborately choreographed, desert-set music video blew into town in April, evoking the likes of Janet Jackson's "You Want This" and Mya's "Case of the Ex." Chock-full of hooks and dripping in luscious production courtesy of Ricky Reed and Zack Sekoff, "Nasty" benefited greatly from the TikTok Industrial Complex, becoming Tinashe's second solo entry on the Billboard Hot 100, proving that while patience may be a virtue, nasty girls get the job done. —Lester Fabian Brathwaite
6. Jessica Pratt, "Life Is"
Jessica Pratt's excellent fourth LP, Here in the Pitch, commences with "Life Is," a three-minute marvel that perfectly encapsulates how disorienting it is to be alive. There's an uncanny, alien quality to her voice, which unfurls like incense smoke, while the track's speckled bongos and subtle chimes glint like light reflected off a cocktail glass. As if mimicking the chorus' repetition of "Time is time and time and time again," Pratt sings in perfect circles while contemplating past failures and manifesting hope for the future: "And when you've fallеn out, get both feet on the ground / The cursеs you keep won't follow you now." It's like these are her parting words as she ascends up and out of the stratosphere. She's off to a better place, or at least a kinder one. —Allaire Nuss
5. Sabrina Carpenter, "Espresso"
Sabrina Carpenter’s highly addictive "Espresso" kept us wired for nearly all of 2024. The former Disney Channel star released the single in April, and by the end of June it was a massively streamed, ubiquitous hit and a welcome earworm. With sly dismissals like "my give-a-f---s are on vacation," Carpenter adds some bite to its frothy, upbeat package, while its defining genius hook — "Say you can't sleep, baby / I know, that's that me espresso" — inspired discourse about grammar in pop lyrics, and basically became modern art. The song found another life in October, showing up in a viral Saturday Night Live sketch in which a group of bridesmaids led by Ariana Grande parodied it. Something tells us we'll be taking shots of "Espresso" well into the 21st century. —Tiffany Kelly
4. Waxahatchee feat. MJ Lenderman, "Right Back to It"
Katie Crutchfield's most disarming weapon may be her self-awareness. On "Right Back to It," the crown jewel of her stellar 2024 album, Tigers Blood, the Alabama-born country-rock musician — a.k.a. Waxahatchee — details her flaws unsparingly. She is stubborn and impulsive, fatalistic and self-sabotaging, hanging by a thread and scared shitless. But she is only able to be so open, so vulnerable, because she has found someone who truly gets her, whose affection is "written on a blank check," who has her back and will weather the storm. That lasting unity is reflected gorgeously in the song's chorus, as indie breakout MJ Lenderman joins Crutchfield over twangy banjo and guitars to deliver the richest harmonies of the year. The love they celebrate on "Right Back to It" may not sound romantic, but it sure the hell sounds real. —Jason Lamphier
3. Kendrick Lamar, "Not Like Us"
In a year when America felt more divided than ever, Kendrick Lamar gave the masses a common enemy in Drake, a self-proclaimed "certified lover boy" who will now be remembered by many as a "certified pedophile." This summer's "Not Like Us" — which dropped less than a day after Lamar's previous Drake-dragging single, "Meet the Grahams" — is a diss track of epic proportions, its seismic goods including a relentless barrage of foul ripostes ("Tryna strike a chord and it's probably A minorrr…") and a crash course on colonization. DJ Mustard's sneering strings are as tantalizing as those lyrical taunts, while the infectious chorus serves as a unifying battle cry that transcends the rappers' petty beef. Rapid-fire, funny, universally acclaimed, and composed at lightning speed? Needless to say, in the most famous feud of 2024, Kendrick came out on top. —Allaire Nuss
2. Charli XCX, "360"
This year, the Britpop icon truly was everywhere — or in her insanely catchy parlance, "so Julia." The second single from Charli XCX's blockbuster sixth studio album lit the match of Brat summer, and it has burned bright well into the cold months. Boasting a propulsive beat that dares you not to strut and memorable lyrics that wedged themselves into the zeitgeist ("No style? I can't relate"), "360" is a jolt of messy ecstasy that recalls Robyn at her Body Talk-iest (which makes the Swedish diva's cameo on its remix all the more fitting). Even the Grammys recognized the sheer brilliance of "360," nominating it for Record of the Year. And for further proof of its undeniability, check out its music video, rife with the internet's "It" girls, including the prototypical Chloë Sevigny, causing minor property damage with her major slayage. No style? They can't relate. —Lester Fabian Brathwaite
1. Chappell Roan, "Good Luck, Babe!"
Love songs are inherently melodramatic, but in their quest for pop perfection, Chappell Roan and producer Dan Nigro leave no stone unturned. The Missouri-born breakout's standalone single "Good Luck, Babe!" is a tale of unrequited love — or in this case, a love denied — in which the stakes feel life-and-death. Tracing her torrid affair with a woman in the closet, Roan opens the track with lilting karaoke synths reminiscent of Wham!'s "Last Christmas," her cabaret drawl painting the portrait of a damsel in distress trapped in a doomed relationship of her own volition. But by the time she reaches its octave-soaring, bodice-ripping chorus, her overlapping Kate Bush-ian vocals backed by a stately symphony, it's as if she's become another character entirely. Her lines, "Make a new excuse / 'Nother stupid reason / Good luck, babe" are as defiant as they are exasperated; she knows her worth and she will break free. Toss in a primal, core-shaking bridge that would make even Taylor Swift consider throwing in the towel, and you have the most epic breakup anthem since "Since U Been Gone." The hit that catapulted Roan's career and changed her world forever, "Good Luck, Babe!" is the sound of a Midwest princess burning down the tower and becoming her own hero. —Jason Lamphier
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