Did 2024's Hits Unite Us or Divide Us?
Fewer styles of music comprised America's favorite tunes in 2024. But are those hits bringing us together, or driving us further apart?
The big drama for 2024’s biggest song came down to longevity.
Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” is the winner, according to Billboard’s Year End Hot 100 chart for 2024. It edged out Shaboozey’s "A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which many thought would be 2024’s signature song. If Billboard had a chart for songs folks randomly bust out singing, “Tipsy” would have topped it. Shaboozy even tied Lil’ Nas X’s “Old Town Road’s” 2019 record-setting 19 weeks at number one on the Hot 100.
But what ultimately makes Teddy Swims’ “Lose control” song of the year is the 46 (and counting) weeks it’s been in the Hot 100’s Top 10. Only The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” has more weeks (57) in the Top 10 for the entire Hot 100’s history. Not only did radio stations keep on playing “Lose Control,” Spotify users keep playing it as if it were a only few weeks old.
Additionally, “Lose Control” took 32 weeks to reach number one, the longest climb to number one of any song in Hot 100 history.
Feel smug, you Tortoise and the Hare fans.
When we step back and analyze all 100 of 2024’s biggest songs, what does it tell us about how America’s music tastes evolved?
Below, I’ve coded the genre of every song on the Billboard Hot 100 Year End Songs charts from 2017 through 2024, which covers the time period when Streaming officially overtook iTunes as the dominant way we consume new music:
There were fewer Spanish-language titles in 2024. That category—covering Reggaeton to Regional Mexican—grew big in 2022 and 2023.
We’ve also spent more time with Christmas songs during the Holiday seasons since the pandemic began.
Let’s drill down to the main hit music genres:
Here’s how each major genre trends:
More Pop titles were among 2024’s biggest hits than any year since 2017.
Country remains as big as Pop in 2024. That’s the third year in a row record-setting year for Country.
After massively dropping in 2022, Hip Hop has grown for the second year in a row, but remains well below Hip Hop’s 2019-2021 dominant levels.
Rhythmic Pop and R&B titles are waning, seemingly replaced by Hip Hop.
Rock (and Rock-based Alternative) titles remain almost entirely absent. (The 1 percent in 2024’s biggest hits is for one song, specifically Hozier’s “Too Sweet”.)
Do these findings suggest our hit music is uniting us around universally-appealing hits, or is it yet another factor isolating us in our silos?
Less style variety in 2024
Arguably, 2024 has the least diverse range of hits in recent years. If we consider Pop, Hip Hop and Country as “core” genres and other styles like Rock, Rhythmic Pop, R&B, and all the Spanish-language styles as “flavor” genres, the three core genres account for 90 percent of the top 100 songs of 2024.
Now, you might assume that these three genres—Pop, Hip Hop, and Country, attract completely different fan bases, with fans of one genre having no idea what songs are big in the other two genres. Garth Brooks and The Notorious B.I.G. fans weren’t singing each others’ songs back in the 1990s. Fetty Wap and Sam Hunt fans really didn’t, either, in the late 2010s.
That wasn’t true in 2024.
More Style Mixing in 2024
Consider the top 10 Country titles of 2024. Six out of ten received airplay on Pop formatted radio stations, such as Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) and Adult Contemporary (AC). Some Country hits were bigger among Pop fans than Country partisans. (Also note the #11 song’s colab with an Electronica/Trap DJ.)
Just three years ago (2021), only one of the Top 10 Country songs received even modest exposure on Pop radio (but that one song is still in heavy rotation at the Danville, Virginia Appplebees.)
What about Hip Hop? Half of the top ten Hip Hop titles were hits on Top 40 Pop radio. (It’s six out of ten if we count the modest Top 40 airplay for Future, Metro Boomin and Kendrick Lamar’s Like That.”) Some were songs from very Pop-oriented artists, such as Jack Harlow and Doja Cat. Plus, Eminem can thank nostalgia. However, Kenrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” has unquestionable Hip Hop cred—and Pop radio and Spotify users played it like a Pop hit.
While not as dramatic as Country’s crossover, it’s still an increase from 2021:
2024: Good Year or Bad Year?
On the one hand, 2024’s music was more homogeneous: Pop, Country, and Hip Hop gave us all the hits. Not only were there no new or different styles emerging, the variety of hit music styles narrowed.
On the other hand, there were more Country and Hip Hop titles that became mass-appeal hits beyond their genres. Sure, Beyonce couldn’t pull it off mixing Hip Hop and Country, but she kicked open a door for Shaboozy to stumble through. Jack Harlow has little credibility as a Hip Hop artist, but Kendrick Lamar has so much he can take down Drake—and Top 40 radio played it.
Meanwhile in Pop, while Tennessee is banning drag shows, the year’s major breakthrough artist made it a core trait of her music.
In the end, whether 2024 was a good or a bad year for hit music is one more thing about which Americans can argue.
I’ll continue diving into 2024’s biggest tunes in our next post.
Further Reading
Legendary radio programmer Guy Zapoleon just released his latest update on the Music Cycle, noting that while 2024 gave us hope for rebirth, it ended as a fifth year of The Doldrums: Read it here.
Want insights into your favorite tunes in your inbox? Subscribe to Graphs About Songs’ FREE option by selecting “None.”
Program Pop music professionally? Subscribe to Graphs About Songs’ “Annual” or “Monthly” option for The Hit Momentum Report, my weekly analysis identifying the mass appeal hits in streaming data.
Data source for this post: Billboard Year End Charts - Hot 100 Songs: https://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/hot-100-songs/