Back in the day, you knew a song was a hit when you heard it everywhere. Well, at what passed for everywhere back in the day: blasting from open windows, backyards, cars, stores, boomboxes, maybe transistor radios (remember those?). And when it made the jump to your younger sibling or cousin’s Walkman, that was the true certification.
These days, things are both the same and very different: The public plays a bigger role than ever not only in making songs into hits, but getting them into the mainstream in the first place. It’s like the old metaphor about a butterfly’s sneeze being the spark that leads to a hurricane thousands of miles away: One person puts a song on a TikTik video — new, old, niche, or an old hit our parents or grandparents rocked to on a Walkman or transistor radio — and it moves and moves until even the old-school gatekeepers have to pay attention because it’s about to be the biggest song in the country.
Consequently, for the past few years, the charts have been all about new artists and huge songs, and that trend was bigger than ever in 2024. Are you feeling so tipsy you’re about to lose control before you get some help to find beautiful things? (OK, we’ll stop.) Yes, Shaboozey, Teddy, Tommy and Benson lit up the top end of the charts, but Kendrick, Post, Sabrina, Zach, Hozier and Future + Metro came in strong as well, making for a stylistically diverse Top 25 with more than a few artists, songs and situations we certainly wouldn’t have seen coming a year ago (like a Kendrick-Drake beef?). More than most years, 2024’s Top 25 makes for an awesome, odd and awesomely odd playlist.
The chart data comes from the best possible source — our colleagues at Billboard and Luminate, with details below the chart — but the other decisions are ours, based on research, conversations and arguments masquerading as conversations. As this chart and these honorees show beyond any doubt, it was a great, great year for music.
