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New year, new Madonna music! The Queen of Pop took to Instagram on Monday (Dec. 16) to reveal that she’s been in the studio with DJ, songwriter and producer Stuart Price. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “Working on new music with Stuart Price. these past few […]
Songwriter, producer and OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder is set to receive an Honorary Clio Music Award at the 2025 Clio Music Awards at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles on Jan. 30. The award celebrates Tedder’s creative legacy and enduring impact on popular culture.
Tedder has collaborated with such artists as Adele, Beyoncé, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Leona Lewis, Justin Bieber and Lil Nas X. Tedder’s influence also extends to global brand campaigns for Sprite, Hertz and Samsung.
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Tedder, 45, has received three Grammy Awards, all for album of the year, for his work on Adele’s 21 and 25, and Swift’s 1989. He has been nominated for 11 Grammys total so far – 10 for production work for other artists and one as an artist (best pop performance by a duo or group with vocals for Timbaland’s “Apologize,” on which OneRepublic was featured).
OneRepublic has had four top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 – “Apologize” (No. 2 in 2007), “The Good Life” (No. 8 in 2011), “Counting Stars” (No. 2 in 2014) and “I Ain’t Worried” (No. 6 in 2022). In addition, Tedder has had one top 10 hit under his own name, Far*East Movement’s Rocketeer” on which he was featured (No. 7 in 2011).
“We’re thrilled to honor the unparalleled contributions of Ryan Tedder, alongside an exceptional lineup of Grand Clio Music Award winners and special guests,” Michael Kauffman, executive director of Clio Music, said in a statement. “As we celebrate during Grammy week in Los Angeles, it’s the perfect moment to recognize the groundbreaking creativity and cultural impact that drives our industry forward.”
Clio Music, founded in 2014, is one of five verticals developed by the Clios to celebrate creative excellence in a specialized field. The Clios were founded in 1959 to celebrate creative excellence in advertising around the world.
ROSÉ and Bruno Mars’ “APT.” resides in the penthouse of both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts for an eighth week. The song debuted as the stars’ second leader on each survey.
Plus, six seasonal songs decorate the rankings’ top 10s, while ROSÉ adds a second concurrent and third total Global Excl. U.S. top 10 with the debut of “Toxic Till the End” at No. 6. The song is from the BLACKPINK member’s first solo album, Rosie, which launches at No. 3 on the U.S.-based Billboard 200.
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The Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts, which began in September 2020, rank songs based on streaming and sales activity culled from more than 200 territories around the world, as compiled by Luminate. The Global 200 is inclusive of worldwide data and the Global Excl. U.S. chart comprises data from territories excluding the United States.
Chart ranks are based on a weighted formula incorporating official-only streams on both subscription and ad-supported tiers of audio and video music services, as well as download sales, the latter of which reflect purchases from full-service digital music retailers from around the world, with sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites excluded from the charts’ calculations.
“APT.” rules the Global 200 with 147.7 million streams (down 1%) and 18,000 sold (up 4%) worldwide Dec. 6-12. The hit now claims eight of the top nine global streaming weeks among songs released in 2024:
224.5 million, “APT.,” ROSÉ & Bruno Mars, Nov. 2
207.5 million, “APT.,” Nov. 9
176.8 million, “Fortnight,” Taylor Swift feat. Post Malone, May 4
162.2 million, “APT.,” Nov. 16
160.6 million, “APT.,” Dec. 7
149.9 million, “APT.,” Dec. 14
147.7 million, “APT.,” Dec. 21
146.4 million, “APT.,” Nov. 23
132.7 million, “APT.,” Nov. 30
Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” holds at No. 2 on the Global 200. Released in 1994, the song has spent a record 18 weeks at No. 1 dating to the chart’s start (five each over the 2023 and 2022 holidays and four in both the 2021 and 2020 holiday seasons).
Four other carols rank in the Global 200’s top 10: Wham’s “Last Christmas” (11-4), Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (6-5), Bobby Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” (8-6) and Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” (13-10). The songs have hit respective Nos. 2, 2, 4 and 5 highs.
Plus, Lady Gaga and Mars’ “Die With a Smile” dips 3-4 on the Global 200, following eight weeks at No. 1, the most for any song this year, beginning in September. It drew 120.6 million streams (up 5%) worldwide in the latest tracking frame and has tallied over 100 million streams globally in each of the last 15 weeks, the longest such streak since the chart began.
“APT.” concurrently tops Global Excl. U.S. with 129.9 million streams (down 2%) and 12,000 sold (down 3%) outside the U.S. Dec. 6-12.
“Die With a Smile” holds at No. 2 on Global Excl. U.S.. following eight weeks at No. 1 starting in September; Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” repeats at No. 3, having spent a record-tying 13 weeks at No. 1; Wham’s “Last Christmas” keeps at No. 4, after reaching No. 2; and Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” lifts 6-5, following three weeks at No. 1 in August.
ROSÉ’s “Toxic Till the End” debuts at No. 6 on Global Excl. U.S. with 50.4 million streams and 4,000 sold outside the U.S. The BLACKPINK member achieves her third solo top 10 on the chart; the quartet and members Jennie and LISA as soloists have each notched four top 10s, while the act’s Jisoo has scored one top 10 solo.
Meanwhile, three more holiday hits make sleigh rides through Global Excl. U.S. top 10: Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (10-8); Helms’ “Jingle Bell Rock” (16-9); and Sia’s “Snowman” (12-10). The songs have reached highs of Nos. 3, 5 and 4, respectively.
The Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts (dated Dec. 21, 2024) will update on Billboard.com tomorrow, Dec. 17. For both charts, the top 100 titles are available to all readers on Billboard.com, while the complete 200-title rankings are visible on Billboard Pro, Billboard’s subscription-based service. For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard will be counting down our editorial staff picks for the 10 Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 all this week — having already revealed our Honorable Mentions, our Comeback of the Year and our Rookie of the Year artists all last week, and our No. 10 Greatest Pop Star earlier today. Now, at No. 9, we remember the year in Billie Eilish — who continued one of the great pop star runs of the past decade with a year that felt like her really coming into her own in particularly new and rewarding ways.
By January 2024, Billie Eilish had already accomplished more in roughly five years than most pop stars do in a lifetime. The numbers spoke for themselves; since her breakthrough in 2019, the singer accrued 7 Grammys, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a No. 1 single alongside four other top 10 hits on the Hot 100, two No. 1 debuts on the Billboard 200 and a sold-out arena tour. By practically every metric, Eilish had more than earned her place in the pantheon of modern pop greats.
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Where others might have rested on their laurels, Eilish spent her 2024 cementing her status as a leading artist of her generation while creating her own version of pop stardom. The scrappy, goth-core teenager who took over the world in 2019 was gone, replaced by a young woman finally starting to find her footing in a turbulent world.
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It helped that the start of her year saw spillover success from an otherwise-quiet 2023. Even in an off-cycle year, the singer-songwriter unleashed the languishing ballad “What Was I Made For?” from the Barbie soundtrack, capturing a world-worn sense of ennui that could have easily eluded a 21-year-old pop singer-songwriter. For her existentialist efforts, Eilish was rewarded, taking home two more Grammys, a Golden Globe and an Oscar in 2024, breaking new records with each respective award.
But Eilish had no intention to spend her 2024 victory-lapping. After spending the better part of two years battling writer’s block with her collaborator and big brother Finneas, Eilish found her sound — not quite the brooding alt-pop experimentation of When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, nor the melodic, torch-bearing introspection of Happier Than Ever, but a nebulous middle ground between the two — and announced the impending release Hit Me Hard and Soft in April. There would be no singles, no previews, no teases: As she told Rolling Stone, “every single time an artist I love puts out a single without the context of the album, I’m just already prone to hating on it.” Instead, she insisted, the fans would just have to wait and listen.
It was clear from that first listen that Eilish’s subversive strategy was paying off. While critics praised both of the singer’s previous LPs for their emotional frankness, Hit Me landed haymakers of honesty across each of its 10 tracks, as Eilish dissected body dysmorphia (“Skinny”), disconnection (“Chihiro”), unreciprocated affection (“The Greatest”) and the obsessive attention of fans (“The Diner”) — all topics she’d touched on before, but never with this level of in-depth self-awareness. Meanwhile, Finneas’ production took everything that worked on her last two projects, blended it all together and added in new shades to create an isolated sonic universe for Hit Me to occupy. There’s a reason both Billie and Finneas compared her album to Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die and Vince Staples’ Big Fish Theory — Hit Me Hard and Soft was, in fact, an “album-ass album.”
From the word go, it became readily apparent that the album hit hard, not soft, with fans. For the first time in her career, Eilish debuted every song from the album on the Hot 100, all of them within the chart’s top 40. She also sold a career-high 339,000 units in one week. Yes, Hit Me did become her first album not to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — but when you consider her competition was Taylor Swift’s monolithic The Tortured Poets Department, still selling 378,000 units in its fifth of 17 total weeks (and counting) atop the chart so far, it becomes clear how huge Hit Me Hard and Soft truly was.
One of the biggest stories to come out of the album’s release week, though, was the official first single announced after its release — the sexy, sapphic “Lunch.” Bearing a similar sonic bravado to her lone Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Bad Guy,” the song’s sweltering bassline kicks up under Eilish’s casually confident croon, as she opines about the pleasures of … well, pleasure. “I could eat that girl for lunch/ Yeah, she dances on my tongue/ Tastes like she might be the one,” she winks on the track. After a rocky coming out in late 2023, here was Eilish taking control of the narrative, setting the record straight (well, you get it) and saying exactly how she felt about the women around her. Plus, the fans were clearly eating “Lunch” up — the song bowed at No. 5 on the Hot 100, the highest debut on the chart in Eilish’s career.
It wouldn’t be the last time Eilish waxed poetic about the art of femme-focused seduction in 2024 either — months later, on a blockbuster remix of Charli XCX’s Brat deluxe track “Guess,” Eilish would double down as she complimented her love interest’s underwear, before slyly looking to her collaborator: “Charli likes boys, but she knows I’d hit it.” Both “Lunch” and “Guess” became key fixtures in what observers referred to as the sapphic pop renaissance of the summer, where women singing about their love for women took over the cultural conversation. As artists like Chappell Roan and Reneé Rapp dominated the festival circuit, Eilish’s odes to flirtation and feasting flitted around the Hot 100’s top 40.
Yet the great benefit of Eilish’s release strategy had yet to fully pay off. As “Lunch” and most of the rest of Hit Me’s songs moved down the charts in the weeks following their release, one song began to slowly glide up the charts. It wasn’t ambient, slap-bass featuring “Chihiro,” the song Eilish had filmed a music video for and signaled as her followup single — rather, the lovestruck, ‘80s-tinged “Birds of a Feather” emerged from the nest, gradually soaring up the Hot 100.
“Birds,” by almost every measure, is unlike other Billie Eilish songs. Over plinking synths and low-key acoustic guitar strums, a smitten Eilish sings about an uncomplicated, eternal kind of love — the kind of love that, in so many of her other songs, had notably eluded her. Gone are the sneaky, off-kilter production tricks from breakout When We All Fall Asleep, now replaced by a simple melody. Even Billie’s vocals evolve throughout the song; her signature airy head-voice shifts down into a stunning, full-throated belt by the song’s conclusion.
Perhaps that’s why fans became so enamored with the track. The song quickly found an audience on TikTok, soundtracking thousands of videos celebrating users’ friendships and relationships, as Eilish’s voice promised that she couldn’t “change the weather,” but that “if it’s forever, it’s even better.” Even though the track wasn’t necessarily intended to be a single, the fans had spoken: by July, the label had officially serviced the the track to radio as the album’s second official single. “Birds” quickly rose to No. 1 on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart in August, where it’s ruled for a combined 18 weeks and counting. After giving a beachside performance of the song for the Olympic handover celebration in August, the song continued climbing up the Pop Airplay chart until it reached No. 1 in September, where it earned an eight-week stay at the summit. After the release of the track’s paranormal video at the end of September, “Birds” reached No. 2 on the Hot 100, become one of Eilish’s career-defining hits.
It’s fitting that Eilish earned her latest breakout track without meaning to – that seemed to be her standard mode of operations over the last year. The singer had insisted since her breakthrough that she had zero interest in being a role model for her fans — after all, she was still figuring out how to live her life, how could she be expected to show others how to live theirs? Even this year, she continued to point out that she will not be the new poster child for mental health issues or queer identity (both more than fair decisions on her part, considering both issues are intrinsic to her private life).
But Eilish did spend much of 2024 making good use of her platform to try and leave the world a better place than she found it. Where the music industry has been found to be extremely lacking on environmental issues, Eilish spoke up about how she and her team placed sustainability at the forefront of her career. The singer called out the industry standard of releasing multiple vinyl variants to drive sales as “so wasteful,” especially with the lack of using recycled materials when it comes to vinyl. When the 2024 presidential election rolled around, Eilish threw her weight behind Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, praising her advocacy not only for the environment, but for women’s issues, LGBTQ+ rights and more.
Even as December rolls around, Eilish is still reaping the rewards of her big year. A July performance of her song “Wildflower” sprouted up all over TikTok, sending the song back into the top 40 before falling off for the holiday season. The album — which remains in the Billboard 200’s top 10 six months after its release — also earned Eilish a massive 7 Grammy nominations for 2025, including album of the year.
Yet for all of her massive career wins in 2024, it’s her personal journey to self-discovery this year that might best reflect Eilish’s place in our current pop culture discourse. For the first time since she blasted into the public eye as the chaotic, feisty, goth girl next door, the singer-songwriter seems to have found the lane that she is most comfortable in — one where she’s not limited by the perceptions put upon her by anyone other than herself. In the choose-your-own-adventure book that is the modern music industry, Billie Eilish finally seems to have found a storyline of pop stardom that she can work best with; it just so happens that she wrote this one herself.
Check back tomorrow for our Nos. 8 and 7 Greatest Pop Stars, and stay tuned all week as we roll out our top 10 — leading to the announcement of our top two Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 on Monday, Dec. 23!
Chappell Roan gave a standout performance on Saturday Night Live when she served as musical guest in November, but according to the pop star, the live showcase was seconds away from a fashion disaster.
While speaking to Nardwuar for a life-spanning interview published Monday (Dec. 16), Roan opened up about the major wardrobe malfunction that occurred just moments before she went on stage at 30 Rock to sing “Pink Pony Club,” for which she wore a custom white-jeweled floor-length gown. The look — which she complemented with her signature drag glam and faux hips — looked flawless on screen, but that’s only because of some quick thinking from the SNL costumers, Roan says.
“It ripped all the way down the back right before I walked on stage,” the “Hot to Go” singer told Nardwuar, pointing to her neck and lower back to demonstrate how long the tear stretched. “I had to have SNL‘s in-house seamstress … I was sewn into the dress because it ripped all the way down.”
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Roan also performed her unreleased song “The Giver” on the John Mulaney-hosted episode. The country track is expected to appear on the VMA winner’s highly anticipated sophomore album, which will follow her Billboard 200 No. 2 breakout LP The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.
While speaking to Nardwuar, Roan also touched on her recent Grammy nominations, growing up in Missouri, giving a guest lecture on queer identity to Harvard medical students and taking inspiration to work with drag queens on tour from Orville Peck. Plus, the “Good Luck, Babe!” hitmaker detailed meeting Billboard‘s latest cover star Tyler, the Creator, at this year’s Austin City Limits, where both artists performed in October.
“He’s awesome,” she said of the “Sticky” rapper. “He was hiding in the shadows as I got offstage. He was just kind of lurking over in the corner, and my tour manager was like, ‘Hey, Tyler wants to meet you.’ He gave me a lot of good advice about paparazzi — I don’t have paparazzi, but when I do — I took notes. And he thanked me for speaking up about some stuff that I spoke up on.”
Watch Roan’s interview with Nardwuar above.
For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard will be counting down our editorial staff picks for the 10 Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 all this week — having already revealed our Honorable Mentions, our Comeback of the Year and our Rookie of the Year artists all last week. Now, at No. 10, we remember the year in Jelly Roll — a late-blooming country superstar whose compelling hits, winning personality and relatable story helped him become one of the most unavoidable artists of 2024.
When he wasn’t taking his now-famous daily cold plunge in an ice bath, Jelly Roll was everywhere in 2024.
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Even if you can’t hum “I Am Not Okay,” which reached No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was the closest Jelly Roll got to a pure pop hit this year, you’re still likely aware of the gregarious rapper-turned-country artist through his sheer ubiquity. Jelly Roll, who turned 40 on Dec. 4, performed on no fewer than 10 collaborations from across the musical spectrum in 2024, alongside the wide-ranging likes of Eminem, Falling in Reverse, Jessie Murph, OneRepublic, Machine Gun Kelly, Halsey, Post Malone, Dustin Lynch and Brooks & Dunn. He also landed three No. 1 songs on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart for the second year in a row, and topped both the Hard Rock Songs and Mainstream Rock Airplay charts.
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Here’s what it was like to be Jelly Roll in 2024: During one weekend in early February, he paid tribute to Bon Jovi at the 33rd annual MusiCares Person of the Year gala, followed by performing at the illustrious pre-Grammy gala hosted by Clive Davis the next night. And then to cap off the weekend, he also sang at the Grammy Awards, where he was nominated for two trophies and met his longtime crush, Taylor Swift.
Or fast forward to September, where in one four-day span he played his first-ever (sold-out) show at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The next day he headlined the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park in the afternoon and was the musical guest on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. Then two nights later, he not only performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, but he also got coveted couch time on the late night show, an indicator of his celebrity status.
Jelly Roll scored wins across the board as an entertainer in 2024. He may not have taken home any Grammys in February (he’ll get more chances in 2025 after being nominated for two Grammys in November), but the 2024 People’s Choice Awards named him male country artist of the year in February. In April, he snagged both best new artist (pop) and best new artist (country) at the iHeart Awards, and in April, he was the big winner at the CMT Music Awards, winning all three awards he was nominated for, including video of the year (“Need a Favor”)
The winning streak continued in May, two weeks after he had played Stagecoach for the first time (and paid tribute to Toby Keith by performing “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” with T-Pain), when he took home music event of the year for “Save Me” with Lainey Wilson at the ACM Awards. “This song saved me,” he said during his acceptance speech, which reflected his painful past. “I was in a dark place. I thought I would die and go to jail, and I’m standing here today an ACM Awards winner.”
He also won on the health front, losing 100 pounds in a journey he documented on social media (including the daily plunges), and undergoing major dental surgery. It felt like everything he did – no matter how large or small — made the news, from testifying before a Senate committee on the fentanyl crisis and revealing that he and wife Bunnie XO were trying to expand their family via IVF to announcing he regretted getting most of his plentiful tattoos or surprising kids running a lemonade stand with a $700 donation.
He also made musical strides on both the large and small screens, contributing “Dead End Road” to the Twisters: The Album and “Run It” as the only original song in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, the third installment of the popular franchise. Meanwhile, new song “Get By” became the ESPN college football anthem for the 2024-25 anthem and “Dead End Road” and “Liar” served as the official theme songs for the WWE SummerSlam, with Jelly performing the atter at the event.
When it seemed like it couldn’t get better, Jelly Roll performed with his hero, Eminem in June at Live From Detroit: The Concert at Michigan Central. They sang “Sing for the Moment,” and a month later, Jelly Roll appeared on “Somebody Save Me” on Eminem’s The Death of Slim Shady album.In September, he joined Eminem (via projection) to help open the VMA Awards when the rapper performed a medley of “Houdini” and “Somebody Save Me.”
On Aug. 27 in Salt Lake City, Jelly Roll kicked off his first headlining arena tour. The Beautifully Broken show was part concert/part gospel revival and fully sold out. The tour perfectly set up the Oct. 11 release of his album of the same name, the follow up to 2023’s Whitsitt Chapel, which came out through a new partnership between BMG and Republic. Like its predecessor, the set examined issues close to his heart, including addiction and mental health, that resonated with his growing millions of fans. His hard work paid off: Jelly Roll landed his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 and Top Country Albums, with sales of 161,000 units sold moved in its debut week,, according to Luminate.
Two nights before Thanksgiving, Jelly Roll wrapped his tour, which grossed $79.3 million and sold 685,000 tickets over 56 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore. Without even pausing to indulge in some turkey, two days later, Jelly Roll crashed Lainey Wilson’s halftime performance at the Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving, for a powerful take on their Country Airplay-topping duet, “Save Me.”
Just as he was seemingly everywhere, Jelly Roll and his music were seemingly for everyone — especially anyone who has ever felt alone or desperate and yearning for redemption. Even The Rock declared that Jelly Roll’s music had helped him through rough times. Though his upbeat demeanor shone through every viral interaction, Jelly Roll’s music was still infused with a questioning darkness that lingers from his teens and 20s spent incarcerated and his 30s struggling to break through musically. But far from being depressing, it’s music that looks at frailties and imperfections not as weaknesses, but part of what makes us gloriously human and unites us.
Though it hardly feels possible, next year seems like it could get even bigger for the country superstar, as he ascends to festival headliner and stadium tour status. Already on the books: he will headline Stagecoach in April and then head out on The Big Ass Stadium Tour with Post Malone. In other words, look for Jelly to keep on rolling in 2025.
Check back for our No. 9 artist, to be revealed later today, and stay tuned all week as we roll out our top 10 — leading to the announcement of our top two Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 on Monday, Dec. 23!
Mariah Carey‘s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” crowns the Billboard Hot 100 for a 16th total week. The song matches her longest command on the chart, first set by “One Sweet Day,” with Boyz II Men, in 1995-96.
The carol, which tops the Hot 100 for a second consecutive week this holiday season, also ties for the third-longest total domination in the chart’s 66-year history, after only the 19-week No. 1 runs of Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” this year and Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, in 2019.
Notably, with “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and “One Sweet Day,” Carey has logged the Hot 100’s two longest-leading No. 1s by a woman artist. She’s also tied for the third-longest reign among women, thanks to 14 weeks at No. 1 for “We Belong Together” in 2005.
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” additionally leads the Streaming Songs chart for a record-tying 20th total week, equaling “Old Town Road” for the longest No. 1 stay dating to the chart’s 2013 start.
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” was originally released on Carey’s album Merry Christmas in November 1994 and, as streaming has grown and holiday music has become more prominent on streaming services’ playlists, it hit the Hot 100’s top 10 for the first time in December 2017, and the top five for the first time in the 2018 holiday season. It led at last, prior to the past two weeks, over the holidays in 2019 (for three weeks), 2020 (two), 2021 (three), 2022 (four) and 2023 (two).
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” became Carey’s 19th Hot 100 No. 1, the most among soloists and one away from The Beatles’ overall record 20. It also made Carey the first artist to have ranked at No. 1 on the chart in four distinct decades (1990s, 2000s, ‘10s and ‘20s).
The Hot 100 blends all-genre U.S. streaming (official audio and official video), radio airplay and sales data, the lattermost metric reflecting purchases of physical singles and digital tracks from full-service digital music retailers; digital singles sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites are excluded from chart calculations. All charts (dated Dec. 21, 2024) will update on Billboard.com tomorrow (Dec. 17). For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
‘Christmas’ Streams, Airplay & Sales
This year was largely defined by pop stars who rewrote the rules, genre outlaws who succeeded in new territory and a rap beef that gave us a unifying anthem. But throughout the year, a handful of artists were enjoying their own major milestones — ones that not only defined their year, but their career.
From award recognition to chart firsts to major synchs and more, artists including Victoria Monét, Gracie Abrams, Natasha Bedingfield, A. G. Cook, Carín León, and Tems reflect on their defining moments of the year.
Gracie Abrams
Gracie Abrams
Abby Waisler
Last year, every single time I watched The Eras Tour — which was every time I opened — never once did it feel like there was going to be an end. When we were asked to come back, knowing that it would be to close it out, I immediately felt so nostalgic for the experience. Over the past few challenging, strange, scary years, Taylor has been a source of light for people who desperately needed it, and for developing artists, the tour has been an unimaginably significant springboard. For my career, it’s been undeniable. It’s hard to make sense of streaming numbers on your phone — I’m not someone who’s ever really been super tapped into that data — so to track the difference in audience reception quite literally in front of my eyes on The Eras Tour has been mind-blowing. I thought I was hallucinating when I first heard [Swifties] singing my lyrics back.
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What was most exciting about my own headlining tour was that I had made [2024 second album] The Secret of Us with my live show in mind. I’ve had the most fun performing “us.” in particular because on the days I’m not singing it with Taylor, it becomes this duet between all of us onstage and everybody in the crowd. And it was nominated for a Grammy! The whole reason Taylor and I wrote it in the first place was we’d just come off a dinner where she’d very sweetly said we needed to celebrate my first Grammy nomination [for best new artist in 2023]. The full circle of it all is hard for me to wrap my head around.
The Secret of Us has had the most traction out of any of the projects I’ve put out before, and there are milestones that are fun to acknowledge. When “I Love You, I’m Sorry” ended up being the song that took off the most, I felt like it was — not that we needed it — permission to allow acoustic guitar to remain the driving force behind “That’s So True,” which came from the feeling of living with a burning, fiery rage of jealousy. Seeing the life that song is having right now is psychotic to me. The audience’s engagement has only felt stronger as these rooms have continued to, by some miracle, expand. But what I clock as my metric for success is how it feels to create a thing and then sing it with a group of people who resonate with it. I just can’t believe any of it is real.
Natasha Bedingfield
Natasha Bedingfield
Cameron Jordan
Last year, my publisher reached out and I recognized the name [in his pitch]. I was like, “Ah, [filmmaker] Will Gluck! I remember him.” My song “Pocketful of Sunshine” was a big part of his [2010] movie, Easy A. He seems to use my songs in things and they resonate. So when I wrote back [about using “Unwritten” in his new film], I said, “A hundred percent yes.”
I went to the premiere [of Anyone but You], and the actors were like, “They just kept making us sing your song!” I think he made them sing it in every scene. I remember my publisher being like, “They’re really using it a lot.” And they even came back after they edited the movie and said, “We actually want to give you a bit more money because we ended up using the song even more.” We were really blown away by how it was used and how funny it was. There’s a moment where Sydney [Sweeney] is looking up at [Glen Powell’s] butt, singing, “Reaching for something in the distance.” I mean, that’s the kind of humor that I love.
People watched the movie and they left singing the song, and then they filmed themselves singing it and put that up on TikTok. And I got a call from Will saying, “Because the song is trending on TikTok, it’s making more people go see the movie.” So it was this really amazing thing that kind of served each other.
It feels like “Unwritten” has been one of the songs of the year. I feel really touched by this, and I couldn’t have anticipated it. Last year, I was thinking, “We need to do something for the [20th] anniversary! Let’s celebrate. Let’s put music out.” And then this happened without me. It was outside of my control, and it’s just been wilder than I could have imagined.
I think it’s everyone’s song, but nobody knew that until Anyone but You. What’s so poetic about this is that “Unwritten” itself is a song that’s changing and growing, and the story about it is evolving. When I was writing it, we imagined the arenas and the stadiums and the crowd singing it. And when we were producing it, I remember being like, “How do we pick sounds that aren’t going to be dated?” “Unwritten” is like my baby, and I hope it keeps shape-shifting.
A. G. Cook
A.G. Cook
Henry Redcliffe
Charli and I were talking about doing remixes almost from the beginning. I was really pushing this notion that I have about music in general in the post-streaming era. I like that music doesn’t have to completely end at the album release; the masters that get uploaded to streaming aren’t necessarily the final version.
What’s been so nice about brat is that even the way it was rolled out, the Boiler Room set happening early on and so forth, it’s holistically been about there being different versions. We’d sometimes even talk about remixes while working on the tracks themselves. There was always this notion that at some point, there would be a high-effort extension of the album. Thematically, brat is so interesting in how it is pure Charli, not using features. But obviously there’s all that energy building up for actual collaborations to happen. We knew while making it that if we wanted to collaborate, that would go on the remix album, but we’d also give collaborators agency to make songs even more in their image.
The original tracks were operating in real time, so it was no surprise that the remix album just continued that experience [by reflecting on] those months [after brat’s release]. The confessional nature of brat also provoked a lot of the remix collaborators to match that. Especially the [“Girl, so confusing” remix with Lorde], because it was conceived right as the album came out. That set the tone for the remixes to be actual conversations.
For [the “Mean girls” remix with Julian Casablancas], we wanted to make sure he could really make it his own, that it wasn’t just “Julian’s going to jump on for a verse.” That would have felt wrong for everyone. Charli and I wanted to demonstrate, like, “We’re not precious. We’re fine to dismantle it.” There are some remixes that didn’t happen simply because we sent it to people and they didn’t know where to start or were uncomfortable making a completely different genre. But the “Mean girls” remix is a good example of making sure it didn’t just feel like a feature, but an amalgamation that would then challenge Charli and I to also put ourselves on it.
The original songs are as clubby as DJs want to make them, or not. There’s so much ammo in brat, so many intriguing moments that could be looped, taken apart. I’ve already heard people do so many of their own remixes. There are funny ones where Charli is interviewed and is like, “Yeah, I love dance music, but I don’t really like drum’n’bass.” Then there’ll be like 10 drum’n’bass remixes, almost as like a “f–k you.” I think that’s the most fun part.
Carín León
Carin León
Carlos Ruiz
Being at the Grand Ole Opry was culturally very significant. As a Latino, as a Mexican, as a fan of country music, to go to the capital of country and play inside the temple of country music meant a lot to me. I think we made our mark.
I’ve always been close to country music, listening to Johnny Cash, George Strait and the newer generation of artists who are so good and are breaking parameters and doing things differently, just as we are with Mexican music. I love what artists like Luke Combs and Post Malone are doing, but if I had to choose a single country act, it would be the great Chris Stapleton. He’s given us a lot of love.
In fact, the last time we performed in the South, we sang “Tennessee Whiskey,” and I said, “Respectfully, for me, the best country singer, technically and artistically speaking, is Chris Stapleton.” Then we realized his wife was there, and she got up and came to the stage to see us. It made me realize music really has no borders. We have a country project set for next year, mostly in English, with a lot of collaborations.
We’ve been making other inroads with country music this year, and one day my manager, Jorge Juárez, and I were on a flight and he said, “We’ve just been confirmed for the Grand Ole Opry.” As if this was normal. My first words were “You’re kidding me!” Because I know how hard it is to play there. Many American artists never get to do it. It felt like confirming the biggest stadium ever.
It was the culmination of all those dreams I had as a kid of playing in a mythical and legendary space. Playing there allowed me to be me and to be that person that since childhood has loved country music, especially because our Mexican music is so influenced by country. I think it’s the only place where I’ve cried onstage. It’s something money can’t buy — and a memory I’ll take with me till the day I die.
Victoria Monét
Victoria Monét
Dalvin Adams
I really liked the process of getting into the Grammys. I was doing a lot of prep physically, like watching my food intake, lots of workouts. A really special moment happened where I took [my daughter] Hazel with me to a fitting with Versace. It was my daughter’s first time on a red carpet, and she [was going to] be matching with me. Versace allowed us to pick a specific brown and bring that theme of [my album] Jaguar to life.
[Winning the best new artist Grammy] was one of the biggest goals that I had for the year. You know how much it takes to get recognition in this industry or bring a vision to life and what kind of marketing it took to get there, what kind of focus and dedication and sacrifice. [But I have this] yin-yang mentality like, although this means the world to me and I appreciate it, I can’t make it my be-all and end-all to determine whether or not I’m good — because the other [nominees] were also amazing and they didn’t get it, and they’re going on with their lives and doing amazing, incredible things.
I have [my Grammys] on a banister upstairs; it’s kind of become an awards banister. There are a few plaques there and a framed tweet about the Grammys that I tweeted in 2015, almost like a manifestation. It puts a pep in your step to know that you did the right thing, but also you have so much more work to do, so just keep going and remain grounded and know that all of these things are a blessing.
You want to continue to do what you love even if the accolades don’t ever come again. There were many years where I thought I was great and I didn’t have those awards on my banister. It was just knowing, because of my work ethic, greatness comes that way. And when the recognition and attention come, you want to make sure that doesn’t become your driving force. Those are extras, but it does feel really nice.
Tems
Tems
Adrienne Raquel
Once I have a vision, I’m always trying to do everything to put my vision in place. But that can also sometimes turn into perfectionism, which I learned to let go of while [making my debut album, Born in the Wild]. You [have to] be as authentic as possible and allow yourself to flow in the music — letting go of anything that you think you’re supposed to do, be or show.
I’m not thinking too much about genres or rules: “Oh, you have to make Afrobeats.” My “why” is different. My “why” is to release my thoughts. It’s an honor to be able to make music that you want to make and for people to be able to connect to it — and for someone to recognize that is also really great.
[At Coachella], Wizkid was around and we asked him if he’d come out [to perform “Essence”], and he was really down. Justin [Bieber] happened to also be around. He hit me up that morning and said he’s down to come out if I needed him. And I was like, “Yes!” It was amazing. Everybody was going crazy. The crowd was screaming, the floor was shaking. It was a vibe, like a huge party.
[In November], we had just arrived at midnight in Melbourne, Australia, so I wasn’t thinking too much about the Grammys. I was extremely tired, so I went to bed hoping to get a little bit of rest before my show the next day. Around 5 a.m., my phone started vibrating on my bed. It’s calls and people shouting, “Oh, my God. Congrats!” I’m like, “Bro, what’s going on?” They’re like, “Bro, three Grammy nominations!” It was worth being woken up for, especially for the people that have worked on this album — not just me, but my friend and my producer [GuiltyBeatz], [and] Spax, [who] also engineered it.
There are so many people that worked sleepless nights and really did their best to help me out, and it’s beautiful to see them have the recognition. All it takes is a Grammy-nominated project that you were a part of for your life to change. That’s what I really care about the most.
This story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.
“For ‘A Bar Song’ to still be doing what it’s doing is insane,” an awestruck Shaboozey told Billboard in November about his breakout song’s then-16-week-long run atop the Billboard Hot 100. “[It’s] crazy how much the song carried on its own. We don’t even do anything and it’s like, ‘Hey, you’re aiming for a 17th week now!’ ”
Of course, monthslong No. 1 smashes don’t just happen on their own — but “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which has achieved 19 weeks at No. 1, wasn’t the only country single to reach the peak this year. Between Post Malone’s Morgan Wallen-assisted “I Had Some Help,” Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ’Em” and Wallen’s own “Love Somebody,” country has topped Billboard’s all-genre singles chart more than any other genre this year. Shaboozey’s and Post Malone’s smashes are the only 2024 releases to log more than three weeks atop the chart — a notable feat, considering that the former is a country newcomer and the latter is a pop/hip-hop crossover star.
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“I Had Some Help,” which arrived in April and debuted atop the Hot 100, marked the first major release of Post Malone’s country music foray, which Grammy Award-nominated producer Louis Bell describes as a “natural transition” from the singer-songwriter space of the artist’s 2023 Austin album. “We want each project to flow into the next,” he tells Billboard.
Posty’s pop-country jam started with massive streams and sales, perfectly setting the stage for the arrival of the album F-1 Trillion, which opened in the penthouse of the Billboard 200 (dated Aug. 31) with 250,000 units, according to Luminate. All 18 songs from the album’s standard edition reached the Hot 100, including 15 collaborations with country powerhouses like Dolly Parton, Brad Paisley and Chris Stapleton — a testament to the Nashville goodwill that the Grammy-nominated pop star had accrued during his formal entry into the country space.
Historically, country music has been vigilant about newcomers immersing themselves in the genre’s roots, and Post got his boots dirty to prove his bona fides. He and Bell, who co-produced every track on F-1 Trillion, began working on it in November 2023 in Nashville right before the Country Music Association (CMA) Awards — foreshadowing the four nods that “I Had Some Help” would earn at the awards show the following year.
The two collaborators worked on the first few songs of the F-1 Trillion sessions with country superstar Luke Combs. “Post started saying that it [made] sense to collaborate on a lot of these records because he wanted to show Nashville how much he loves country and shine a light on the people who are in the city that inspired him,” Bell explains. “That was always the vision from the top down.” By inviting Nashville heavyweights such as Tim McGraw to collaborate in person, Post made sure that “word spread pretty quickly of how legitimate [he] was and how much he knew about the genre.”
To fully transition into the new style, he and Bell also implemented a new approach to their creative process: mulling over stories and concepts at the onset of a session instead of building out beats and melodies they had already been tinkering with.
The month before “I Had Some Help,” Post covered Hank Williams at Nashville’s iconic Ryman Auditorium, and in the months following the song’s release, he performed his first songwriter’s round at the Bluebird Cafe, played a set of classic country covers at Stagecoach 2024, made his Grand Ole Opry debut and brought out Blake Shelton as a surprise guest at his first-ever stadium show.
While Posty had to overcome his pop profile in his quest for crossover success, Shaboozey, a newcomer to the mainstream, had to establish who he was. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” served as the fourth single — but was the first to get a radio push — from his third studio album, Where I’ve Been Isn’t Where I’m Going, which topped the Folk Albums and Independent Albums charts. With no major country collaborators, Shaboozey’s project didn’t come with the overt approval of the Nashville establishment — but it did arrive on the back of two appearances on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter in March, helping to spur eye-popping early consumption for “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” now nominated three times over at the 2025 Grammys ceremony.
“It was a bit of a fast and furious [situation],” says Heather Vassar, EMPIRE senior vp of operations, Nashville. Country radio programmers “were already familiar with Shaboozey’s name, but we had a very global, multiformat approach. When we decided to launch at country radio, we made sure they understood him and the whole project. The more authentic conversations we had, the more receptive they’ve become, and they’ve been incredible.”
Harnessing the power of his interpolation of J-Kwon’s 2004 Hot 100 No. 2 hip-hop smash, “Tipsy,” Shaboozey was able to expand the reach of “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and tap into more diverse segments of country’s listenership. The track’s whistling instrumentation kept it squarely in the country genre, while its rap-sung flow and Birkin name-check kept it accessible for hip-hop and top 40 audiences — and those who had been newly corralled into the post-Cowboy Carter country wave. Shaboozey also made his Nashville rounds, playing The Nashville East and Spotify House at CMA Fest.
“The beauty of our country ecosystem — outside of select playlists — is that genre lines have been less of a concern,” Spotify country editor Claire Heinichen says. “Pop-country was the dominant subgenre for most of the 2010s. We knew the audience would really resonate with [these] songs. The data spoke for itself.”
It will be difficult for country songs to replicate the Hot 100 dominance of “I Had Some Help” and “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” without the boost of 2024’s larger paradigm shift. Yet Posty’s emphasis on adhering to country traditionalism and Shaboozey’s plays to more underserved country music listeners provide equally strong blueprints for future crossover hits.
This story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.
While they’re not back together, Cardi B and Offset were spotted in the same Miami nightclub making it rain over the weekend. The Migos rapper made a guest appearance during Don Toliver’s Rolling Loud set and celebrated his 33rd birthday in South Beach. Cardi pulled up to support her baby daddy, but she remained in […]