Again within the day, you knew a music was a success while you heard it in all places. Properly, at what handed for in all places again within the day: blasting from open home windows, backyards, automobiles, shops, boomboxes, possibly transistor radios (bear in mind these?). And when it made the bounce to your youthful sibling or cousin’s Walkman, that was the true certification.
Today, issues are each the identical and really totally different: The general public performs a much bigger function than ever not solely in making songs into hits, however getting them into the mainstream within the first place. It’s just like the previous metaphor a couple of butterfly’s sneeze being the spark that results in a hurricane hundreds of miles away: One individual places a music on a TikTik video — new, previous, area of interest, or an previous hit our mother and father or grandparents rocked to on a Walkman or transistor radio — and it strikes and strikes till even the old-school gatekeepers have to concentrate as a result of it’s about to be the most important music within the nation.
Consequently, for the previous few years, the charts have been all about new artists and large songs, and that pattern was larger than ever in 2024. Are you feeling so tipsy you’re about to lose management earlier than you get some assist to search out lovely issues? (OK, we’ll cease.) Sure, Shaboozey, Teddy, Tommy and Benson lit up the highest finish of the charts, however Kendrick, Publish, Sabrina, Zach, Hozier and Future + Metro got here in robust as effectively, making for a stylistically various Prime 25 with various artists, songs and conditions we definitely wouldn’t have seen coming a yr in the past (like a Kendrick-Drake beef?). Greater than most years, 2024’s Prime 25 makes for an superior, odd and awesomely odd playlist.
The chart knowledge comes from the very best supply — our colleagues at Billboard and Luminate, with particulars under the chart — however the different choices are ours, primarily based on analysis, conversations and arguments masquerading as conversations. As this chart and these honorees present past any doubt, it was an ideal, nice yr for music.
