Rob Sheffield’s Top 25 Songs of 2024

Billie at her most diabolically clever. The first time I heard “Birds of a Feather,” I thought it was a cool Eighties experiment, with a moody tinge of Sade and George Michael. Then this bird built a damn nest in my brain. It’s not a song that struts into the room and demands your attention; it’s the kind of song that tiptoes in and lingers awkwardly in the corner, promising to behave itself if you let it stay, so you keep it around, then bring it a blanket and a cup of tea, until you realize you’ve fallen in love with your new favorite song. It bewitched me all year long, so gawky and frail on the surface, so tough underneath. How did Billie do that? I don’t know if I will love this song forever — but if it’s forever, it’s even better.

Grunge, dude. How obsessively Nineties are the young California women in Momma? They sing this chorus to the guitar hook from Dinosaur Jr.’s “Start Choppin’,” the song Kelly and Dylan cranked while eating strawberries on his couch in 90120. (R.I.P. Brenda). “Ohio All The Time” is a snapshot of two crushed-out kids on a road trip, trying to figure it out if they’re in love or just sleep-deprived. True romance: “I’m stuck in 22/Hanging out forever / Summer’s a tattoo/With you.”

Rosé makes her big solo move with “Apt.,” chanting “apeteu,” which sounds like her hocking a loogie as well as the name of a Korean drinking game. It’s an Eighties new wave playground chant, the kind Blackpink always excel at (from “Ice Cream” to “Yeah Yeah Yeah”), as did her bandmate Lisa in her summer hits “Rockstar” and “New Woman.” The chorus sounds like it was designed to go Oh Rosé, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind. This is the kind of simple sing-along that somehow took eleven pros to write, including the dudes who wrote Toni Basil’s “Mickey.” But she makes this a pop-girl stomp in the lineage that runs from Shirley Ellis’ “The Clapping Song” to Blondie’s “One Way or Another” to Chappell’s “Hot to Go!”

So many songwriting strokes from MJ Lenderman this year on Manning Fireworks, most of them more ambitious than this one. But somehow “Rip Torn” is the one I end up playing most. Just a forlorn little slack-ass slice of burnout country, full of lazy fiddle, lurching like Neil Young in his honey-slides era, with helpful advice about how not to hurl into your bowl of Lucky Charms. Something bruised in his voice and guitar really tugs my heartstrings, even when he’s dropping his stoner philosophy. Preach, Jake: “You said there’s men and then there’s movies/There’s men and Men in Black / There’s milkshakes and there’s smoothies/You always lose me when you talk like that.”

Now Cash Cobain knows how to do an opening line: “Got an attitude, but you bad as shit, so I ain’t mad at you.” He blew out of the Bronx with “Fisherrr,” the monster hit that defined the NYC “sexy drill” movement. Cash and Bay Swag kick filthy quips to crack each other up, until Ice Spice arrives for the remix, with a reminder to eat your oats and vegetables.

Al Green is always a voice I turn to in times of trouble. R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People is an album I turn to in times of trouble. So for reasons my fingers are in no mood to type, I felt Reverend Al’s “Everybody Hurts” deep when it dropped in November (even if my personal mood is more “Ignoreland” these days). The Georgia boys in R.E.M. never could stop raving about idolizing him so it makes beautiful sense for this most spiritual of soul men to turn “Everybody Hurts” into a space-gospel outtake from Side Two of The Belle Album. Lord help us if Rev. Al ever gets to “Nightswimming.”

A decade after Ought made their bones with the radical Montreal postpunk of Today More Than Any Other Day and their anthem “Beautiful Blue Sky” — some of the past decade’s most enduringly passionate music—the key players keep skewering capitalist civilization and its discontents, as Cola. (A corporate soft drink, but it also stands for “Cost of Living Adjustment.”) “Tracing Hallmarks” is a dystopian peak from their superb second album The Gloss, featuring Tim Darcey’s merciless deadpan wit. They bash out a jagged Burma/Fall/PiL guitar clang, as Dracey sneers, “It’s just too good for forever, and that’s an understatement,” with the quiet despair of a man chasing a mirage as it vanishes.

“I chalk it up to ‘it’s all for the better’” — easier said than done. Gracie really came into her own on The Secret of Us, with bad-romance vignettes like “Normal Thing” (“you were all that we hoped but I don’t recommend”) and “Tough Love” (making fun of Boston is so hot right now). But “Blowing Smoke” is the anthem it deserved to be, condensing all the 1989 TV vault tracks into one song.

“A brand new day, it still hurts like hell,” she sings — you can say that again. The guitar legend Mary Timony dropped her first solo album in almost 20 years with Untame the Tiger, with the six-string crunch she pioneered in Helium and Wild Flag. “No Thirds” explores the psychedelic power of grief to warp the brain, after the death of her parents and a relationship. But she faces the future as an open road, with the clear-eyed credo, “Let the sun shine on everything that’s wrong.”  British folk-rock drum legend Dave Mattacks fits right into a groove full of stoic meet-on-the-ledge warmth, so it also feels strangely uplifting. A song about shocking yourself at how tough you can be on your own.

The New York punk-disco trio Fcukers provide an indie-sleaze soundtrack for sweaty summer nights. They have an LCD Soundsystem spirit, born around the time James Murphy was worrying that “the kids are coming up from behind” — the never-ending story of the Brooklynites in little jackets. When Shanny Wise chants her killer hook “I gotcha bon bon” over the bloopity-bloop bassline, she sounds like she’s cannonballing into the pool from the roof without spilling her beer.

Shaboozey ties the record for the longest-running Number One hit ever, with a great American honky-tonk hip-hop drinking song. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” topped the charts for 19 weeks (same total as “Old Town Road”), and when you multiply that by all those whiskey shots, it’s clearly the most alcohol ever consumed in a Number One hit. So many philosophical questions in this song: how long can you keep “getting tipsy” until you arrive at “tipsy”? How long can you linger at the Gates of Tipsy before you naturally pass into the Garden of Just Plain Stinking Drunk? We may never know.

The jewel at the center of Eternal Sunshine, Ariana’s masterful DGAF concept album about breaking up and starting over. She cites the Beatles’ Rubber Soul as her  inspiration, and you can really hear that in the gauzy Sixties guitar shimmer of “Imperfect for You.” Ari looks back at lovers and friends she still can recall, in her life, even though it’s a story where love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight. But she’ll settle for the “happy disaster” of right now.

“Did your boots stop working?” is the country break-up hook of the year. Plus I love how the prediction “in 40 years you’ll still be here, drunk and washed up in Austin” makes him sound like a loser instead of a brilliant real-estate investor. 

The Dublin postpunk jesters had a breakthrough this year with Romance and the hit “Starburster,” all youthful exuberance and hello-spaceboy rock grandeur, inspired by Y2K-era rap metal. (This song is the biggest favor Korn have done the world in a minute.) “Starburster” feels awesomely epic as soon as those big-beat drums kick in (yes, sounds silly, but there really was a genre called “big beat,” and it kicked ass). Grian Chatten vows “I’m gonna hit your business if it’s momentary blissness,” with comic gasps for breath, as he makes J.D. Salinger rhyme with .58 caliber, plus “I’m the pig in the Chinese calendar.”

Domo arigato, “that’s that me espresso.” After all these months of heavy rotation I still love every second of “Espresso,” with its roller-disco bounce and Sabrina’s Rizz Phair poetry. People are taking “I’m working late ‘cause I’m a singerrrrr” and really holding space with that, and I’m one of them. 

The SoCal shoegaze trio score one of the year’s messiest love/hate songs in “Feminine Adornments,” a smoldering grunge slow jam from their excellent debut My Anti-Aircraft Friend. Keyan Pourzand’s guitar tolls like evil bells, while bassist and bad-news girl Alexandria Elizabeth sings about how she’s throwing you out, yet she’s still planning to haunt you forever and ruin the rest of your life. “I’ll come around,” she coos. “I’ll defile, I’ll be clean, I’ll be mean and raw.” The guitars warn you that she’s not bluffing. If My Bloody Valentine tried to rewrite “Silver Springs,” it still wouldn’t sound as scary as this.

A stargazer reincarnated as Scarface. Kendrick made the lucrative choice to spend 2024 on his beef with Drake, punching below his weight for a commercially brilliant grandstand move (“Not Like Us” became his big mainstream crossover hit) if an artistically sludgy one — it’s like if Bob Dylan tried to start beef with Garfield. But he took an untitled snippet from the “Not Like Us” video and turned it into another Number One hit. “Squabble Up” is all ecstatic release in the music, megastar grievance and disco-dust paranoia in the lyrics, while his voice dances back and forth. K-Dot cruises to Miami for Debbie Deb’s Eighties freestyle classic “When I Hear Music,” and smuggles it back to L.A. in time for the Nineties G-funk era.

The London producer A.G. Cook has been a force on the global dance floor since founding the PC Music label a decade ago. He helped put the “hyper” in hyper pop, with Sophie, QT, and Hiraku Utada. But he’s never made a splash like he did this year. Not only is he all over Brat, he came up with a left-field U.K. club banger in “Britpop.” This song has everything: mega-caffeinated synth blips, addictive shiny-shiny beats, Charli chanting “Brit-Brit-Brit-Brit like Britpop!” Also you have to love how Cook reclaims this amusingly endless argument-starter of a catchphrase just in time for the Oasis reunion tour.

Punk rock, what a concept. A hilarious anthem from wiseass guitar boys from the Bay Area in surly indie-brat mode, as they snarl “I don’t care about the future of music” over and over and over. Pardoner go four for four on their excellent Paranoid in Hell EP, but “Future of Music” is the killer, roasting big-city hipsters and fashion-train jumpers. “Who gives a shit that you’re ditching guitars? Maybe the journalists will make you a star?”

One thing never changes: The world will always need slutty Nineties R&B monogamy jams with bubble-bath energy. Enter the Bed-Stuy rapper Lola Brooke, who slides into her self-proclaimed “aggressive Soft Girl Era.” She teams up with Jeremih to turn on the red light special in “No One Else,” as she asks, “Is it the energy or Hennessy that make you wanna be a daddy to a Mini-Me?” Brooke flexes like her Nineties idols Foxy Brown and Lil Kim. (This track would have fit eerily well on SWV’s underrated classic Release Some Tension). And Jeremih is a balladeer who can keep up, in case you forgot “Birthday Sex.” This is what it sounds like when freaks match.

Charli leaves that voice note, and Lorde works it out on the remix. This surprise duet could have been just a celebrity stroke session, but it’s a lot more, with so much resonance in their emotional call-and-response. Charli and Lorde go deep in a dialogue about self-loathing and jealousy and body image, as Lorde confesses, “Your life seemed so awesome/I never thought for a moment my voice was in your head.” It raises questions of modern identity — how much of our lives do we devote to envying strangers? Or making strangers envy us? But CharLorde make it a one-of-a-kind summit. If you’ll forgive the Beatle-geek analogy, it’s like if Paul did a 1971 remix of “Dear Friend” that ended with John singing a verse about how Ram hurt his feelings. (“I was lost in my head, scared to be in your pictures” is the new “I was feeling insecure, you might not love me anymore.”) So confusing, for real.

Between “Diet Pepsi” and “Nasty” it was the best year for songs about making out in cars since Bob Seger was working on his night moves, trying to lose those awkward teenage blues. Addison Rae sings about fogging up the windows in the parking lot like nobody ever thought of this idea before. Also love how she gets hot for the least erotic kind of soda pop (guess Lana beat her to the most sensual root beer). Here’s to these crazy young lovers, though if they think the back seat is the venue to negotiate a “don’t ever leave” agreement, they might want to consult the Meat Loaf estate’s lawyers about adding a “praying for the end of time” clause.

The year’s most reliable “today sucked until I put this song on” song. Let’s be honest here: how could anybody match Tinashe’s freak? “Nasty” was one of the most indelible hits of summer 2024 — a pop summer that was not exactly skimpy on indelible hits — making everyone walk around for months with the “I’ve been a nasty girrrrl” hook stuck in our skulls. “Nasty” opened up a new audience that is just now catching up with slept-on Tinashe albums like Nightride and Joyride, as well as her indie gems like Song for You and BB/Ang3l. It’s a long-overdue payback for one of the most unmatchable freaks in the game.

Chappell summed up the hot-not-pretty mess that was 2024, and “Good Luck, Babe!” was her victory lap after the rise-rise-rise of her Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. This could be Chappell’s song to her younger self, a warning of how wrong things can go when you lie to yourself about who you are. But it’s also a delectably nasty kiss-off to a sexually explicit kind of hate affair. She’s already gloating over how miserable she hopes her ex’s life will be be, wife-shaming and all. Has there ever been a more awesomely insincere “I hate to say I told you so”? She loves that “I told you so” way more than she ever loved her ex. Chappell brings so much George Michael synth-pop energy — “Good Luck Babe” taps into the Wham! George, not the solo George of Faith. But it also feels like a hit that could have been about George Michael, and the whole lineage of closeted pop stars (and fans) who helped inspire Chappell’s extremely uncloseted artistry. You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling.

A pretty little song that wants to fuck up your life. Taylor’s got so many bombshells buried all over The Tortured Poets Department, but “The Prophecy” is the most dangerous. It’s one of her quietest tunes, yet one of her creepiest and most dramatic. Taylor never raises her voice, just her and Aaron Dessner’s acoustic guitar, three hushed minutes, a woman who has stayed up too many nights, begging on her knees in the dark, praying for a dream that didn’t come true. She has a simple question: “Who do I speak to about how to change the prophecy?” There’s been some kind of mistake in how her life was supposed to go. But hey, she’s ready to negotiate. She’s willing to make a deal. Let’s be reasonable here? It sounds like she’s on hold with the universe’s customer-service line. *Please stay on the line. Your anger over your wasted youth is important to us. Please hold and your miserable ballad about how life has betrayed you will be answered by the next available who gives a shit.*

There’s something so disturbing in the calm desperation of Taylor’s voice, until she starts howling at the moon in the bridge. If you’re ever in the mood to focus on Taylor the Singer, not the songwriter or icon or celebrity, just forget everything else you know about her and listen to how she slips on the line “I feel unssssstable” — a tiny detail, less than a second, but once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. Another singer might have milked the moment a beat longer, maybe built the song around it, but she leaves it there for you to stumble over. At the end, she’s still on hold, still waiting for her answer. What a song.