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Happy New Year and welcome to a special edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. I’m your host Christopher Verdesi. Now usually on this show, we set our sights on a year in Pop history and culture and count down the top10 hits of the year based on the weekly charts published in Billboard, the music industry’s top trade mag. And as you might’ve guessed, this hour as we get set to ring in 2025, we’re gonna be counting down the top10 from the year just passed, 2024.

Okay, so why call it a “special edition?” Why isn’t it just the 2024 edition of Chartcrush? Well that’s because the way we do our Chartcrush rankings, 2024 won’t really be over until all the songs that were on the chart during the year have completed their chart runs.

Billboard doesn’t do it that way. Every year, they have a cut-off week for their eligibility period or “chart year” for the year-end rankings that’s several weeks before the end of the year on the calendar, and the chart year begins several weeks before the start of the calendar year. And they only count weeks within that time frame. So for 2024, the chart year goes from the week after the end of their 2023 chart year, October 28, 2023, to their cut-off week for the 2024 chart year, October 19, 2024. Again, only chart activity within that period counts toward their year-end rankings.

Now do you see the problem with this? It’s a biggie! Of the top10 hits in Billboard‘s year-end Hot100, only one had its chart run entirely within the chart year. The rest—nine out of the top10—had weeks that weren’t counted toward the year-end rankings. Two were already on the chart when the chart year began, and eight, still on it when it ended. One song with an exceptionally long run had weeks both before and after the chart year!

So what happens with those weeks vis a vis Billboard‘s year-end charts? Right! Not counted, at least for 2024. The ones before the chart year were already factored into their 2023 rankings and the ones after will be factored into 2025’s.

And this is nothing new. Throughout Billboard‘s year-end chart history, especially in the streaming era since 2016 as chart runs have gotten much, much longer, dozens of major hits have had their runs split between chart years, so their year-end rankings totally obscure how massive they were.

And the opposite is true too: songs whose full chart runs fall within a chart year rank higher than they would if every song’s full run was counted.

So why do they do it like that? Well it’s obvious! If they didn’t get their ranking out before New Years, they’d totally miss all the New Years hype and retrospective year-end recaps and reviews in the media. And since 2023 they’ve been timing the release of their year-end charts around their annual awards gala in late Fall, the Billboard Music Awards, generating their own hype.

But that’s where we come in. For our Chartcrush recaps of past years, we get to count songs’ full chart runs and present corrected top10s. Songs never fall through the cracks no matter when they came out during the year; we rank them in whichever year they saw most of their chart action and earned the majority of their ranking points.

Of course, we can’t do that yet for 2024 because, again, eight of the top10 songs in Billboard‘s just-announced year-end Hot100 are still on the charts. The rankings are bound to change, perhaps dramatically, before all is said and done. So that’s why this is a New Year’s Special: a countdown of Billboard‘s year-end top10 for 2024. Think of it as a rough draft for our 2024 edition of Chartcrush.

Honorable Mention: Taylor Swift – Cruel Summer

Which we’re gonna kick off with a bonus cut: an honorable mention from the Artist who just won a record 10 Billboard Music Awards including Artist of the Year and Hot100 Artist of the Year at the big gala December 12 at the MGM Grand in Vegas. Astonishingly though, although she placed five songs in Billboard‘s year-end Hot100, none of them made the top10 on the year, so we’re gonna spin her top-ranking song for ’24.

And speaking of year-straddling hits, it also ranked pretty high on Billboard‘s 2023 year-end recap, #18, having begun its chart run in June of ’23, and it stayed on the chart all the way to the end of May of 2024. But (now get this!) it’s from her 2019 album Lover. Critically praised and a fan fave, but not promoted as a single—until she included it on the setlist of her 2023 Eras Tour and it commenced a 22-week climb to #1.

Billboard‘s #12 year-end Hot100 hit of 2024 based only on its weeks in their 2024 chart year, it’s Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer.”

Now since all of “Cruel Summer’s” four weeks at #1 were in calendar 2023, we predict that once we crunch all the data and compile our 2023 and 2024 Chartcrush rankings, Taylor Swift’s sleeper hit from her 2019 album Lover will land very near the top of our 2023 ranking, not 2024. But we singled it out as an honorable mention here on our 2024 Chartcrush New Years Special because it’s the top-ranked song on Billboard‘s 2024 year-end Hot100 by their just-crowned Artist of the year.

Three cuts from her newest album The Tortured Poets Department also made the 2024 year-end Hot100: “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone at #22, “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart” at #35 and all the way down at #98, an album cut not officially promoted as a single, “Down Bad.” She also re-did a 2014 outtake, “Is It Over Now?,” for her 2023 “Taylor’s Version” of her breakthrough Pop album 1989. That was Billboard‘s #33 song of 2024.

Incidentally, Taylor Swift also won Billboard Artist of the Year and Top Hot100 Artist in 2023 on the strength of “Cruel Summer” plus three songs from her 2022 album Midnights, “Anti-Hero,” “Lavender Haze” and “Karma” featuring Rapper Ice Spice.

Artist of the Year two years in a row, Taylor Swift: first time since Destiny’s Child in 2000 and 2001. And since she also won in 2013 and 2015, her 2024 win also makes her the first to collect four Top Artist trophies since Billboard started awarding them in 1993. Up to 2024 she was tied with Drake at three.

Honorable Mention: Chappell Roan – Good Luck, Babe!

Now before we dive into the countdown we’ve got another honorable mention we’ve gotta put out there because not only is Billboard‘s Top Artist for 2024, Taylor Swift, absent from the top10 songs of the year, so is their Top New Artist of the year!

Actually, that’s happened more often than you’d think in the history of the Billboard Music Awards, since both awards factor other things besides the Hot100 like albums and tours. But we’d be remiss to not recognize the chart newcomer from Springfield, Missouri whose breakthrough took 24 weeks to peak #4 in late-September. But as of mid-December, it’s still on the chart as her fame continues to soar beyond her “fierce, tightknit, largely queer fanbase” as Rolling Stone put it back in March when she was just getting started. Billboard has it at #18 for 2024, it’s Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!”

“Good Luck, Babe!,” Billboard‘s Top New Artist of 2024 Chappell Roan: her ’80s Synthpop-influenced breakout hit, boosted on streaming platforms and the charts by her gig opening for Olivia Rodrigo on her first North American arena tour, February to April.

#10 Hozier – Too Sweet

OK, with those well-deserved honorable mentions out of the way, time to count down the top10 hits of 2024 according to Billboard‘s just-released year-end Hot100 here on our special New Years Edition of Chartcrush.

At #10, an Irish Singer-Songwriter who first got on the radar ten years ago in 2014 and ’15 when his hit “Take Me to Church” racked up 20 weeks in the top10. But just as his momentum was peaking, he took a year off, and although his albums did well, he was a one-hit wonder in the U.S., until this infectious bassline hit the streaming platforms and Pop radio and his teaser clip featuring a coffee-drinking, chain-smoking skeleton went viral on TikTok.

“Take Me to Church” topped out at #2 in ’14 and ’15, but this was his first #1, for a week in April. At #10, Hozier’s “Too Sweet.”

Hozier, “Too Sweet,” #10 here on our Chartcrush New Years Special counting down the top10 from Billboard‘s just-released year-end Hot100 for 2024.

#9 Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves – I Remember Everything

Country, a big story in Pop in 2023 with Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” and Luke Combs’ remake of Tracy Chapman’s 1988 hit “Fast Car” both among Billboard‘s year-end top10. And in 2024 even the Wall Street Journal noticed. Kinda hard to miss when Beyonce is donning red, white and blue buttless chaps and a ten-gallon hat, and climbing on a horse for the cover of her 2024 album, Country Carter. “Texas Hold ‘Em,” #1 for two weeks in March, the biggest hit from that to date.

At #9, a Country Duet, the lead single from the fourth album by Billboard‘s Top New Artist of 2023, the first Country act ever to win that, since the category debuted in 1977. And featured, one of Country’s biggest Female crossover Acts since 2012.

It debuted at #1 on the Hot100 in September of 2023 and just its seven weeks before Billboard‘s October 21 chart year cut-off were enough to make it their #74 song of 2023. But in the 2024 chart year it racked up 17 more weeks in the top10 and stayed on the charts all the way to August, and that makes it Billboard‘s #9 song of 2024. It’s Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves’ “I Remember Everything.”

Zach Bryan, a proud Navy vet from Oklahoma with a Guild acoustic, a raspy voice and an earnest Folkie style who first made the Hot100 in 2022 with “Something in the Orange,” paired with Kacey Musgraves on Billboard‘s #9 song of 2024, “I Remember Everything.”

Country radio was slow to embrace Bryan, who didn’t come up through traditional Nashville channels; and it’s never really embraced outspoken Progressive Kacey Musgraves, who hadn’t cracked the top10 on the Country chart since 2014. But “I Remember Everything” was the first #1 for both of them, not just Country, but on the Hot100 and Hot Rock and Alternative charts too. Simultaneously! A Billboard first. Yes, outsiderdom sometimes has its perks!

#8 Tommy Richman – Million Dollar Baby

Next on our special Chartcrush New Year’s countdown of Billboard‘s top10 for 2024, a fluke of a hit, if there even is such a thing since MySpace, then YouTube, then Vine, then Instagram, then TikTok became so key to chart success. There’s been at least one of those every year since “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” in 2007, and at #8, 2024’s biggest, teased in a short TikTok vid April 13 and released two weeks and over 10 million views later, whereupon it debuted at #2 on the Hot100 May 1: the highest debut by a chart newcomer since Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” in 2023.

And it didn’t leave the top10 ’til September, 17 weeks and over 200 million Spotify streams later. It’s previously unknown Virginian Tommy Richman, strong contender for Song of the Summer, “Million Dollar Baby.”

Just to make sure he wasn’t jinxing himself or overthinking things, Tommy Richman also released what he called the “VHS version” of “Million Dollar Baby” that has the distorted blown-out bass sound in the amateurish teaser vid that earned him nine-and-a-half million views on TikTok before he dropped the “official version” we just heard at #8 here on our Chartcrush New Years Special: Billboard‘s top10 songs of 2024.

#7 Sabrina Carpenter – Espresso

Now Taylor Swift may not have a hit in the top10, but over the years she’s demonstrated a definite knack for launching her opening acts onto the charts—or picking winners, depending on how you look at it.

Ed Sheeran on her Red Tour in 2013; Shawn Mendes on her 1989 Tour in 2015. “Havana” by Camila Cabello hit #1 in January 2018 before she opened for Taylor on her Reputation Tour, but the follow-up, “Never Be the Same,” made the top10 in May just as the tour was kicking off. And most recently, Gracie Abrams on the final leg of Swift’s Eras Tour in 2024: her “That’s So True” just became her first charting hit as a Lead Artist and her first top10 in November.

Well our act at #7 also opened 25 shows on the Eras tour in 2023 and ’24, but not in North America; in Latin America, plus Australia and Singapore. Right after that, the advance lead single from her new album debuted at #7, was her first top10 in April, and stayed in the top10 for basically the rest of the year, 31 weeks, peaking at #3. And her next single “Please Please Please” debuted at #2 in June and became her first #1 a week later. At #7, that first top10, which was still in the top5 at the end of Billboard‘s 2024 chart year, October 19, it’s Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso.”

The “Espresso” Sabrina Carpenter’s talking about? Herself! That’s that me espresso, keeping the boy up nights obsessing. And if that doesn’t do the trick, she’ll Mountain Dew it for you cuz it’s all about the caffeine, get it?

“Espresso,” Billboard‘s #7 song of 2024 and Best Song at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards in September that had to be pushed back a day because of the Donald Trump/Kamala Harris Presidential Debate. When Carpenter’s album Short ‘n Sweet dropped in late August, all 12 of its songs made the Hot100, but it was her sixth album since her days as a Disney kid in the ’10s starring in Girl Meets World, and only her first to sell a million. She was definitely due!

#6 Kendrick Lamar – Not like Us

Now I mentioned the election talking about how the MTV VMA’s had to be rescheduled because of the Trump/Harris debate in September. The back-and-forth got pretty harsh in politics in ’24, but if you thought that was bad, Hip-Hop saw maybe its most acrimonious year since Kanye vs. 50 Cent in the mid ’00s; maybe since East Coast-West Coast/Biggie-Tupac in the ’90s, as the long-simmering beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar boiled over.

Things happened fast. Drake upped the ante first on May 3 with his 1,700-word seven-and-a-half minute diss track “Family Matters,” and within an hour, Kendrick’s 1,300-word six-and-a-half minute “Meet the Grahams” was on YouTube. But the last word dropped the next day, May 4, what Vibe‘s Marc Griffin called the “knockout punch” in the feud. It debuted at #1 on the Hot100 (Lamar’s fourth career chart topper), broke the record for most weeks atop Billboard‘s Rap chart with 25, and Drake’s only response to date? Take it to court. At #6, Kendrick Lamar’s “Not like Us.”

Kendrick Lamar’s “Not like Us” at #6 on our Chartcrush New Years Special counting down the top10 from Billboard‘s just-announced 2024 year-end Hot100 recap chart. Produced by Mustard, formerly DJ Mustard, who in the early ’10s pioneered “Ratchet Music” out of L.A., one of the few new street Hip-Hop styles to get chart traction during the EDM-Pop-Rap wave of the early ’10s. “Rack City,” a #7 hit for Rapper Tyga produced by Mustard in 2011. Which had critic Katherine St. Asaph calling “Not like Us” Mustard’s biggest hit since the Obama administration in the internet magazine Stereogum.

#5 Jack Harlow – Lovin on Me

Sticking with Hip-Hop for Billboard‘s #5 hit of 2024, the only song in the countdown whose chart run fell completely within Billboard‘s 2024 chart year. As I talked about in the intro, every other song had weeks of chart activity before and/or after Billboard‘s 2024 eligibility period that, when all the data is in and we compile our Chartcrush rankings based on songs’ full runs, will alter the rankings, perhaps dramatically.

It debuted at #2 in late November of ’23, like “Million Dollar Baby” we heard at #8, just weeks after a teaser vid for the song went viral on TikTok. A week later it was #1, then surged back to #1 in early ’24 for another five non-consecutive weeks. At #5, it’s newly mulleted White Kentucky Rapper and 2021 Billboard Top New Artist Nominee Jack Harlow, his third #1 and fifth top10 and since his pandemic breakthrough “What’s Poppin’” in 2020, “Lovin on Me.”

Jack Harlow’s biggest hit to date, “Lovin on Me,” six weeks at #1, passing his 2022 hit “First Class,” which had three, the #5 hit on Billboard‘s 2024 year-end Hot100 we’re counting down the top10 from here on our 2024 Chartcrush New Years Special.

#4 Post Malone featuring Morgan Wallen – I Had Some Help

Now just scanning the artist names in the year-end top10 for 2024, you might think the song at #4 is yet another Hip-Hop hit. Nope. It’s another Country hit, but by an Act who made his name in the late ’10s mostly as a Rapper. And as late ’10s names go, four years running, 2017 to 2020, his was in the top10 on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100; twice in ’18 and ’19.

And here he is again in 2024 repping a completely different genre, Country, with an assist from Morgan Wallen, the Singer who just scored the biggest Country crossover hit of all time, “Last Night,” Billboard‘s #1 song of 2023. The song at #4 debuted at #1 on both the Hot100 and Country charts and stayed on top on both for five weeks, a first. It’s the lead single from Post Malone’s 2024 album F-1 Trillion, “I Had Some Help.”

“I Had Some Help,” Post Malone featuring newly-minted Country Superstar Morgan Wallen at #4. It wasn’t just a one-off Country detour for Posty. As the Pink Floyd-worthy album cover of a pickup truck over a serene lake, impossibly balanced front-first on the water’s surface (or about to plunge in) proclaims, his 2024 F-1 Trillion album is a headfirst dive into Country.

After his 2023 album with no collaborators, F-1 Trillion‘s track list reads like a Nashville Hall of Fame: Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley, Luke Combs, Chris Stapleton, Hank Williams Jr. Even Dolly Parton! Clash critic Robin Murray called the album “a love letter” to Country.

All 18 tracks charted when the album dropped in late August, including the three advance singles already in the top40 with “I Had Some Help” in its 14th week in the top3.

#3 Benson Boone – Beautiful Things

Well we’re counting down the top10 hits from Billboard‘s just announced year-end Hot100 for 2024 here on our special New Years edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show and we’re down to #3, a Singer whose impressive following on TikTok got him recruited to audition for Season 19 of American Idol in 2021. But after wowing all three judges and adding hundreds of thousands more followers, he was MIA at Hollywood Week, poached by Imagine Dragons front man Dan Reynolds for his Warner-affiliated label.

His first single “Ghost Town” only grazed the Hot100, but his second did a little better and at the end of 2023, sporting longer hair and a new ‘stache (those were back big in ’24) he teased snippets of his upcoming debut album’s lead single on TikTok and Instagram and racked up 130 million views.

It starts out slow, but wait! It’s a “sledgehammer ballad” according to Variety Senior Music Writer Stephen J. Horowitz. At #3, Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things.”

Originally two different songs, combined at the urging of a collaborator into that dynamic two-part emotional wallop, “Beautiful Things.” Benson Boone at #3 as we count down Billboard‘s top10 songs of 2024 on a special New Years Chartcrush.

In late June, Boone opened for Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium in London, but “Beautiful Things” had already been in the top10 for 14 weeks by then so we can’t add Benson to the list of “Taylor made” stars that I recapped earlier. It sure didn’t hurt though!

It topped out at #2 on the Hot100 but was #1 on Billboard‘s Global 200 for seven weeks. That’s the power of a strong social media following!

#2 Shaboozey – A Bar Song (Tipsy)

Hey, have you ever heard of Woodbridge, Virginia? Population 45,000 20 miles south of DC? Well in a strange twist, two of Billboard‘s top10 hits of 2024 are by chart newcomers who are from there, and they debuted on the Hot100 within two weeks of each other: Tommy Richman with our #8 song “Million Dollar Baby” on May 11, and our act at #2 two weeks earlier on April 27.

Coincidence? Well it seems so. No one including the local papers were wise to any magic fairy mist wafting in off the Potomac in the Spring, or any connection between the two Artists whatsoever prior to making the charts.

Both had Rap aspirations coming up but Richman, a White dude with formal Opera training into Punk, and our #2 act, a Black Nigerian immigrant, five years older, channeling his dad’s love of Country.

Now Pop fans will recall that the last time a Black aspiring Rapper crossed over to the Country charts it broke the Hot100 record for weeks at #1, 19, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” in 2019. Well this past year, our Nigerian immigrant tied that record with his Country-Rap hybrid. At #2 it’s Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”

Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” at #2 on our Chartcrush New Years Special counting down the top10 from Billboard‘s hot-off-the-press year-end Hot100 for 2024. 19 weeks at #1, tying Lil Nas X’s record from 2019 with “Old Town Road.”

But it was still #1 at the cutoff for Billboard‘s 2024 chart year eligibility period, as it turns out, with five more weeks at #1 still to go before the songs from Kendrick Lamar’s new album GNX knocked it off its perch to #6 on December 7. Then Holiday songs hit the top5 the next week and nudged it down even further, to #8.

Will it rebound back to #1 in January? Well we’ll see, but either way, when all 2024 songs have run their course and we compile our 2024 Chartcrush rankings, with a total of 19 weeks at #1, it’s hard to see how “A Bar Song” won’t come out on top.

#1 Teddy Swims – Lose Control

But as of that cutoff date, October 19, a different song was coming up tops on points for Billboard‘s year-end 2024 ranking, and of course, that’s #1 on our countdown. It only had one week at #1, but was in the top10 basically all year, from January 20 to November 30, except for the week Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department album dropped in May and all its songs charted.

It debuted at #99 at the end of August 2023 and didn’t even crack the top40 until Thanksgiving. After the holidays, though, it shot into the top10 and just stayed there. At #1 it’s yet another chart newcomer, Teddy Swims, “Lose Control.”

Billboard‘s Katie Atkinson said Teddy Swims benefitted “from an overall mainstreaming of growly Country voices” in 2024 including Zach Bryan, whose duet with Kacey Musgraves “I Remember Everything” we heard back at #9.

And if there’s a top headline for American Pop music in 2024, maybe that’s it. More broadly, the raw authenticity of the year’s top hits also comes across, not just voices but actual played instruments. If that remains a Pop priority going forward, 2024 will go down as a definite pivot point. Time as always will tell.

And as the clock ticks us into 2025 here in a few days, hours, minutes or seconds (depending on when, exactly, you’re listening to our special Chartcrush New Year’s countdown of Billboard‘s top10 for 2024), I hope you’ve enjoyed our first draft hot take on the year just passed.

I’m Christopher Verdesi, Creator and Host of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show and as always I want to thank you for listening. On our website at chartcrush.com you’ll find a written transcript and a link to stream the podcast version of the show you just heard, plus all our regular episodes, each counting down the top10 hits of a different year. And you’ll also find plenty of other fun and informative goodies. Again, that website: chartcrush.com. Check in and leave a comment if you like, and be sure and tune in again next week for another edition of Chartcrush.

Happy New Year, folks!

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