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Stray Kids have had a big 2024. Not only did ATE become their fifth No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in August, but they earned their highest entry on the Billboard Hot 100 that month, too, with single “Chk Chk Boom” shooting to No. 49. At the 2024 Billboard Music Awards, the K-pop boy group […]

Last week, Sky Ferreira revealed she was releasing her first song as an independent artist in conjunction with the upcoming A24 drama Babygirl. The reaction was instant, with fans, fellow artists and critics welcoming the news. The new song, “Leash,” serves as a return for the singer-songwriter, whose last album, the acclaimed Night Time, My Time, dropped way back in 2013. “I was already so excited for babygirl but now we get babygirl + a new song from Sky,” tweeted friend and collaborator Charli XCX. “Omg stan mode activated.”

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The fervent reaction — and her involvement in the Nicole Kidman-starring awards season favorite – comes after an admittedly dark time for the artist, during which she endured an acrimonious split with Capitol Records. “There’s a lot of people who are starting to understand the extent of what happened,” she told IndieWire of the period.

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Now, Ferreira finally feels free, and her new song speaks as much to the plot of Babygirl as it does her own career. The singer-songwriter spoke to Billboard about reactions to her song, her creative inspirations and how she’s taken back her professional and creative power.

When all this was announced, the internet went ballistic. What did you make of the reaction?

I’m excited that my fans like it, you know? I always feel weird being like “My fans!” (Laughs) But you know, people that listen to my music often or whatever. But I’m glad that it’s just out now. It was just this thing that I was anticipating. Now I’ve been doing all these interviews and stuff like that, and I haven’t been doing that in quite a while, so I’m kind of adapting to that again. But I’m glad that it has positive feedback, for the most part, from what I’m aware of because (coming out with this song) wasn’t the most conventional choice. I wasn’t really sure how people were going to take it or if they were going to accept it as much.

I think your fans were clamoring for this comeback, redemption arc, or whatever you want to call it. Especially in an era when people are taking charge of their own stuff, whether Taylor Swift or Kesha, artists who are reclaiming their power in their own ways.

Definitely, definitely, and I mean, it does seem like maybe there’s finally some progress in that sense where people are starting to feel more comfortable talking about this without all the repercussions of doing so. I mean, I feel those repercussions a little bit — not as much as I used to years ago talking about it. I don’t feel like I’m just yelling into a void or something.

What do you think changed?

Well, I can’t pretend that misogyny still isn’t rampant by any means, because it definitely is. There’s even moments with this when I’ve noticed it. But for the most part, I feel like people are more aware of this thing, that it happens. It’s not just something that happened in the ‘90s, 80s or ‘70s. I think younger people too, especially artists, maybe are more aware that they’re supposed to have more ownership of not just of their music but their career. They’re aware of the importance of it. I think that makes a big difference. It’s holding some space (for the fact that) the music industry might have to be more accountable for these things now. And someone like Taylor Swift definitely has made a huge impact in a sense, because she’s the biggest pop star on earth. So I think that brought a lot of awareness.

Have you spoken to other artists who have been in vaguely similar situations?

I’ve talked to some people that were older that have been in deals, maybe they were married to someone that they were signed to, stuff like that. But that was a long time ago, that sort of thing. But no, I actually haven’t. And obviously I would like to. I don’t really know that many people. I’ve known people that have been buried for other art, like, other artists, but they weren’t held captive by their label for such a long period of time. I know that happened to JoJo, right? I think she was stuck in her deal forever. But I’ve never really come across anyone that’s had it to the extent where I have, where they just kind of sit on you for years, because I think that’s why a lot of people seem to not believe certain artists or me even. I feel like the common thing is people ask, “Well, why won’t they just drop them?” And it’s not a wise business decision on their part. I think they don’t want you to do better elsewhere. So it’s better to just keep you there, because they don’t want to lose their jobs or something. At least that’s one way of trying to think about it. I’ve gone through so many of the motions of trying to understand why it happened and to the extent that it happened and there’s really no answer that I can think of that makes it seem reasonable.

It’s incredible to think with your own body of work that your last album was released before streaming really kicked into gear. Are you seeing new audiences discover you now that “Leash” is out?

You know, it’s so weird when people are like, “I was the fifth grade when your album came out!” Like, I’m that old. Like, f–k! It is funny though because there’s young people who don’t realize I’m 32. They see the album cover and think I’m a teenager or something.

Let’s talk about “Leash” which is adventurous, provocative, creative — all of these things you’re known for. Where’d the title come from? Did you feel you were inserting your own experiences in at least the title of the song?

I mean, yes and no. It’s funny; the song was due and it was like, “What do we name this song?” We’re going through titles and “Leash” was the one I liked the most that I wrote down. There were different ones that didn’t capture the energy of the song. I didn’t want it to be too tragic sounding. The title definitely tied in with — I don’t know if you’ve watched the film — but it tied in with this dog that’s kind of like a symbol in the film.

I know you said the song got you out of your comfort zone while you were creating it. How so?

I felt responsible to make something for other people besides me. I don’t make creative decisions based off of other people, like what they would want. And this actually wasn’t a challenge because they gave me a lot more trust and freedom that I didn’t expect. But I was hired to do this thing and serve the film, so I wanted to be in line with whatever the director, the music supervisor and A24 envisioned for it. So I felt responsible to do that while trying to create something that is memorable, but also captures something within the film without being on the nose. I’m not describing anything that actually happens in the film or any of the plot — it’s more of a feeling.

I know you started the song fresh. Why not just get inspiration from your own archives? I’d assume you have a mountain of unreleased material right now.

I think for me, I’m trying to move forward. I wanted to show myself and try new things and I didn’t want to answer to anyone. I didn’t want to have to deal with any of that. It was definitely a therapeutic experience for me, a learning experience. I knew how to do all this and I have been doing it but it was validating. My self-esteem was pretty low after the last year. I had a pretty rough year. I’ve had a pretty rough year for like five years. But it showed that I’m capable of doing this without having to listen to the outside world telling me what I can do, what I can’t do, and what I’m capable of, or worrying what people will think of me. Because when people are saying things already, what more could they say? What more could they do at this point, you know? And it kind of allowed me to kind of deal with a few things to write about, that I subconsciously didn’t realize I was doing at that time. It showed that I don’t have to fully be stuck in my past. Though, I’ve never felt stuck in my past. Like, “Oh, the good old days!” or something like that. I’ve always been trying to make something new and challenge myself in some way. But I wanted something that didn’t carry all the weight because I already carry that.

The idea of putting a countdown in the song before that switch up I thought was really interesting. It reminded me of Madonna. Where did the idea of putting that countdown in there come from?

Well, there were a few things. How I developed writing pop songs and the stuff I generally tend to lean toward pop-wise are definitely more ‘80s and ‘90s music. In a way that’s kind of just where my mind goes. I’m a big Madonna fan and I’m a big Janet Jackson fan. I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t think of Janet Jackson on purpose, but after I did it I was like, “Oh, it doesn’t sound like Janet Jackson, but she I feel like she counts a lot in all of her songs, right?” But also I thought it would be fun to kind of have a little nod to Nicole Kidman somewhere in there. And I was originally trying to find scenes from Eyes Wide Shut, just little clips and distort it and do something like hidden within it and turn it into almost like an instrument within itself. What we ended up with was the counting from the film; I mean, I jumped over it because apparently I could probably get in trouble for that, so it’s my voice counting. I just kind of sat there for like 30 minutes trying to sound like Nicole Kidman. And I actually got pretty close. It was funny. I was like, “Oh, this is what I would sound like if I was more womanly and less, I don’t know, West Side L.A. girl sounding.”

I know you know one of your most vocal supporters has been Charli XCX. She tweeted about the song and you’ve collaborated in the past. What do you make of her success with Brat, from your perspective?

Well, I wasn’t necessarily surprised by it by any means. The only thing I’m surprised by is that it didn’t happen sooner. I’m so proud of her, I’m so happy for her, and it shows that hard work and talent does matter. It’s not just based off of who knows who or whatever. I think she had such a huge following to begin with before this, with her diehard fans and a great body of work. I mean, I can’t really think of anyone else I’d rather see that happen to. She’s always been so kind since I’ve known her for the past 12 or 13 years. I was always expecting it.

Taylor Swift spent her last day as a 34-year-old giving back to fans in Kansas City, stopping by a hospital and visiting with young patients on Thursday (Dec. 12).

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Local news network KCTV5 reports that she spent at least an hour meeting children and fans on the hematology and oncology floors of Children’s Mercy Hospital, with some witnesses saying she sang for and with patients in the facility. Pictures of her visit have also started circulating on X; in one photo, the pop star poses with a service dog in a children’s hospital room.

In other pictures, she smiles next to hospital employees and wraps her arms around young patients, at one point laughing while looking at a “Go Taylor’s boyfriend!” Kansas City Chiefs towel. KCTV5 also shared a video of the 14-time Grammy winner exiting the hospital, smiling big and waving goodbye at people watching in the halls.

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Billboard has reached out to Swift’s rep for more details.

The heartwarming visit comes less than 24 hours ahead of the “Karma” singer’s 35th birthday on Friday (Dec. 13) — which it now seems she plans to spend in the city where boyfriend Travis Kelce plays on the Chiefs — and just a few days after she wrapped her two-year global Eras Tour in Vancouver, B.C., on Dec. 8. The trek found Swift traveling through North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia between March 2023 and this past weekend, at one point stopping in Kansas City for two nights at Arrowhead Stadium July 7-8, 2023.

The tight end recently congratulated his superstar girlfriend on the feat, saying on his New Heights podcast, “Shout out to everybody that was a part of that show … Obviously, it’s her music, her tour and everything, but that was a full production, man. That thing was the best tour in the world because of a lot of people, but mostly because of Taylor.”

Swift has visited hospital patients numerous times over the course of her career. She’s also gotten more involved in Kansas City since she started dating Kelce in the summer of 2023, attending the Mahomies Foundation auction in April and donating $100,000 to the family of a local radio DJ who was killed in a mass shooting that broke out at the Chiefs’ victory parade in February.

Adding yet another honor to her Billboard chart résumé, Mariah Carey has now ranked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in a record-extending, and milestone, 20 distinct years. As previously reported, Carey‘s 1994 anthem “All I Want for Christmas Is You” returns to No. 1 for a 15th total week atop the Hot […]

Beyoncé is set to celebrate Christmas onstage, as she’ll be the NFL Halftime Show headliner for the Dec. 25 game between the Baltimore Ravens and Houston Texans — but not for 20 minutes. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The superstar’s publicist, Yvette Noel-Schure, seemingly responded to a […]

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 next week. Before that, we revealed our Honorable Mentions for 2024 on Tuesday and our Comeback of the Year earlier today. Now, we present a salute to the artist to the artist who crashed the mainstream for the first time in the biggest way this year: country singer-songwriter Shaboozey, who seized the spotlight from one of the most crowded pop classes in modern pop history and etched his name into the Billboard record books.

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Can’t say he didn’t call it. Shaboozey’s 2024 album Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going essentially predicted in its title that after a near-decade of struggling to properly break through in the music industry, the hybrid country singer-songwriter was headed for different heights this year. And sure enough, by the end of the calendar, he had one of the biggest Billboard Hot 100 hits of all time, nominations and/or appearances at pretty much every award show you could think of, and the whole world knowing (and sometimes making uncomfortable jokes about) his name. “We in the club now,” he summarized his year to Billboard for his cover story in October – and like his album title, it was true on multiple levels. 

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Of course by the time of Where I’ve Been’s May release, Shaboozey already had major reason to suspect that 2024 would not be like other years of his career. First, he’d made two appearances on one of the year’s biggest releases, by the Billboard staff’s recently named Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century. Beyoncé’s country- and Americana-exploring Cowboy Carter had a loaded guest list, including contemporary hitmakers like Post Malone and Miley Cyrus and genre legends like Dolly Parton and Linda Martell, but the only artist to show up on two (non-interlude) songs on the set was Shaboozey. He was initially invited just to write on the set, before the Queen asked him to also provide vocals on its “Spaghettii” and “Sweet * Honey * Buckiin,” which became the first two Hot 100 hits of his career that April, reaching No. 31 and No. 61, respectively. 

He would reach much greater heights on the chart with his next release. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” arrived on April 12, just two weeks after his Beyoncé bow, with his team intentionally pushing up the release of the new song to capitalize on the momentum of Cowboy Carter – which, in addition to its spotlighting of Shaboozey, also helped create a conversation around Black artists in country music, and even offered a streaming bump to some of those newer artists featured on it. In fact, Shaboozey’s team says that it was an early-2024 pre-release performance of “A Bar Song” in California – which was so well received that he ran it back a second time later in the show – that had convinced Ricky Lawson, an A&R on Team Bey who was in attendance, that the ascendant singer-songwriter should be invited to the project in the first place. 

The timing was certainly right for “A Bar Song,” a drink-your-cares-away hoot-along with irresistibly celebratory lyrics, but also just enough melancholy in its capo’d acoustic guitar hook and wailing strings – and profound exhaustion (“Why the hell do I work so hard?”) in its verses – to give the song real emotional heft. The single’s not-so-secret weapon came from an inspired lift of the count-off lyrics and shoutable refrain to rapper J-Kwon’s 2004 crossover smash “Tipsy” – hence the parenthetical – which anchored the song in pop and hip-hop history without overplaying its hand or feeling cheap. The final result landed somewhere in between Zach Bryan and the Black Eyed Peas, and was an immediate success, debuting at No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100, Shaboozey’s first unaccompanied entry as a lead artist. 

The next month, the full Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going followed. Released on independent label EMPIRE, the tight 12-track set presented Shaboozey as a core country artist who was also very well-versed in rock, pop, folk and hip-hop. He sounded as comfortable on the LP doing emotional vocal runs up and down the octave alongside top 40 hitmaker Noah Cyrus on the Kacey Musgraves-like “My Fault” as he did getting faded alongside rising trap star BigXthaPlug on the booming “Drink Don’t Need No Mix,” and the entire set felt as purposeful as its title. Where I’ve Been scored an eye-opening No. 5 debut on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and received uniformly strong reviews from critics, ultimately finishing in the top 20 on the Billboard staff’s list of the year’s best albums.

Before the debut of Where I’ve Been, “A Bar Song” had climbed into the top five of the Hot 100, and Shaboozey was starting to bring the song to platforms across the cultural landscape: CMA Fest, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the From the Block web series. His most interesting appearance that summer came at June’s BET Awards, where he performed his new smash and even welcomed a special guest turn from J-Kwon towards the song’s end. Country performances had been exceptionally rare at Culture’s Biggest Night, but Shaboozey commanded the stage and won new fans in the likes of Quavo and French Montana, who the artist told Billboard gave him shouts following the performance. (“I love hip-hop; I’m a part of their community, too,” he said in the cover story.)

By July, in its 12th week on the chart, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” had finally reached the top spot on the Hot 100. The ear-catching song – which also ruled the Shazam charts for months, as a classic “wait, what is this?” jam to the unfamiliar – had been an instant hit on streaming and even in digital sales, but had taken a little longer to catch on radio. Once it did, though, the airwaves couldn’t get enough, as the song ultimately topped Billboard’s Country Airplay, Pop Airplay and Adult Pop Airplay listings – and even made a quick cameo on R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay – while topping the all-format Radio Songs for the first time in early August, and subsequently dominating it all the way through to December. 

As the song continued to rule the charts, stretching its Hot 100 reign to double-digit weeks as autumn began, it also began to collect accolades. It got nominated for single of the year at the CMA Awards, while Shaboozey himself picked up a nod for best new artist. But he lost in both categories at the November ceremonies, while his stage name – which was already a spin off the way teachers would misspell his real last name, Chibueze – found itself at the center of ba-dum-ching quips made by the hosts and award-winners all night, increasing the feeling of othering for a guy whose insider acceptance in Nashville had already seemed a little touch-and-go. By then, he at least had consolation in the form of five Grammy nominations, including best new artist and song of the year for “Bar Song.” 

And in November, the Hot 100 reign of Shaboozey’s breakout hit turned from jaw-dropping to downright historic. Despite brief interruptions to its run from Kendrick Lamar and Morgan Wallen, “A Bar Song” had held proven magnetic to the top of the Hot 100, and on the chart dated Nov. 30, it ruled for a 19th non-consecutive week – tying the all-time record set a half decade earlier by another artist mixing country, pop and hip-hop in Lil Nas X, with his Billy Ray Cyrus-featuring “Old Town Road.” By then, Shaboozey also had a new single: “Good News,” a slightly more dejected-sounding spin on the end-of-the-work-week anthem form he’d perfected with “Bar Song,” which also debuted at No. 71 on the chart. In early December, he brought both singles to his first performance on Saturday Night Live, with the two songs shooting to the top two of the iTunes real-time chart shortly after – suggesting he may have another big hit on his hands in 2025. 

Whether or not “Good News” immediately deads the “one-hit wonder” talk or it takes him a little longer to get out from underneath the shadow of one of the biggest hits in Billboard chart history, Shaboozey is here now, and he’s proven that he’s got the talent, the drive and the songs to stick around – and maybe even continue to grow. For his own part, he sees “A Bar Song” not as an albatross to be shed, but simply as a door-opener taking the heat off him moving forward. 

“I feel like I can really get out there and start making music without pressure,” he told Billboard in November following his Grammy nominations. “A lot of people work to get a No. 1 song. Being able to knock that out at this point in my career, I can start focusing on making the music that really matters to me.” Where he is isn’t where he’s been, but where he’s going from here could be absolutely anywhere. 

Listen to our Greatest Pop Stars podcast tomorrow, as we recap our 2024 Honorable Mentions, Rookie and Comeback of the Year — and check back next Monday as we get our top 10 countdown underway!

If you didn’t get a chance to catch Charli xcx and Troye Sivan‘s SWEAT tour in person, you can still “feel the rush” and soak up the Brat Summer vibes at home. The superstar duo’s tour is making its way to virtual reality, Billboard can exclusively reveal, thanks to iHeartMedia and Meta and produced alongside OBB Media.
Charli xcx & Troye Sivan Present SWEAT in VR will be available exclusively on Meta Quest devices starting Dec. 27 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. The show was filmed during one of Charli and Troye’s performances at the KIA Forum in Los Angeles in October.

“The LA shows were incredible because of the energy in the crowd — it was especially good on night 2,” Sivan tells Billboard exclusively. “Having friends and family in the audience made it more special, too. It felt like a celebration with everyone I love and admire right there in the room.”

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He continues: “The SWEAT tour was one of the best experiences of my life, and I wanted to immortalize it in a way that felt as immersive and special as it was for me. iHeart, Meta and OBB have been able to make this come to life in VR and it’s the perfect medium to capture the intimacy, the energy, and the joy of those nights so that people at home could truly feel like they were there, or relive it.”

“Performing with Troye every night on the SWEAT tour was truly iconic and I’m so excited for fans to now be able to experience it at home,” Charli xcx added in a release announcing the news.

The 22-date nationwide tour wrapped in October and featured both artists taking turns performing high-energy hits, including Charli’s Brat hits like “360,” “Von Dutch” and “Girl, So Confusing,” as well as Troye’s fan-favorite jams including “My My My,” “Rush” and “One of Your Girls.” The concert, which is available for free in Meta Horizon Worlds Music Valley, will give fans a front-row seat to all the fun with 180-degree views of the show.

“She brings such an insane energy to the stage, and those performances felt like pure magic,” Sivan shares of his onstage partner. “I can’t wait for fans to relive or experience those moments for the first time.”

Charli xcx & Troye Sivan Present SWEAT in VR is executive produced by iHeartMedia’s John Sykes, president of entertainment enterprises, and Bart Peters, senior vice president of production and development; as well as Michael D. Ratner, Scott Ratner, Anthony Anchelowitz, Simone Spira and Kfir Goldberg for OBB Pictures, the Film & TV division of OBB Media; with Glenn Stickley, co-executive producing for OBB Media.

“Charli xcx, Troye Sivan and their teams have built something electric and singular with this show,” Ratner said of the SWEAT tour. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to partner with Meta and iHeartMedia to share this experience with fans around the world.”

Sykes agreed, saying in a statement: “Partnering with Charli xcx and Troye Sivan and with Meta gives us a unique opportunity to offer our millions of listeners the chance to experience two of the most talented artists in music performing on the most exciting new visual platform today.”

Sarah Malkin, director of Metaverse Entertainment at Meta, added, “The SWEAT Tour is the latest in a long lineup of incredible performances that we’ve brought to Music Valley. “Connecting fans to their favorite artists in a totally unique way through virtual reality extends the joy and excitement of concerts to even more people – and we couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with iHeart, Charli xcx and Troye Sivan to do that with this show.”

After the show, fans can catch free concerts from more artists in Music Valley, or experience the thousands of apps available in the Meta Horizon Store. Meta Quest 3S retails for $299, and features 128GB of storage, but you can upgrade to the 256GB device for $399.99. Meta Quest 3S is available at major retailers such as Amazon, Target, Walmart, Best Buy and Meta.com.

The 2024 Billboard Music Awards are right on the horizon, with several of music’s biggest names set to perform some of the year’s most essential hits at the ceremony taking place Thursday (Dec. 12). The latest act to be added to the lineup is Linkin Park, with the band’s recently announced performance at the BBMAs […]

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 top 10 pop stars of 2024 all next week. Before that, we revealed our Honorable Mentions for 2024 on Tuesday — and now, we present a salute to the artist with the most impressive comeback this year: Irish singer-songwriter Hozier, who took his slowly built cult stardom back overground with one of the year’s defining pop hits and his biggest year of touring and live appearances yet.

Hozier — yes, the guy that sent a soulful rock ballad about a romantic relationship thriving in the face of religious discrimination to No. 2 on the Hot 100 back in 2014 — could have made 2024 a well-deserved victory lap after dropping a chart-topping album and embarking on a packed arena tour in 2023. Instead, he spent 2024 securing a commercial re-peak that he earned by spending the past decade growing his cult fanbase, even without further post-“Church” crossover success. 

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At the top of the year, all was well with Hozier and his fans. Unreal Unearth was a smashing success — topping three genre charts (folk, rock and alternative), reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and spawning his first Hot 100 entry in nearly a decade (“Eat Your Young,” No. 67) — but there was the pesky issue of the Grammys. He’s never been a Recording Academy darling (his sole nod was in song of the year for “Take Me to Church” back in 2015), but a complete shutout for Unreal Unearth and its singles despite formidable commercial success and critical acclaim felt particularly painful. 

Nonetheless, Hozier & Co. barreled onwards. After spending most of 2023 touring the U.S. and Europe, Hozier added over 50 new shows across North America, alongside headlining slots at several music festivals, including Boston Calling, Hinterland, and Railbird. From the intimacy of his most heart-wrenching ballads (“Cherry Wine”) to the arena-rocking riffs of his most vibrant bangers (both parts of “De Selby”), Hozier’s engaging stage show reminded longtime fans why they first fell in love with him and converted legions of new fans to his kingdom.  

As his tour captivated multiple continents, footage from his shows helped Hozier pick up a devoted TikTok fan base who turned him into something of a heartthrob. They were enamored by his vulnerability, long flowing hair and signature “growl”; Hozier had entered his “Forest Daddy” era, and the world was thirsty for whatever that entailed. His newer TikTok audience was also drawn to his brand of folksy alt-rock that had a resurgence over the pandemic and the years immediately following, perhaps best exemplified by the breakout success of Noah Kahan. At the end of 2023, Hozier and Kahan joined forces for a duet version of the latter’s “Northern Attitude,” earning the Irish rocker his first top 40 appearance since “Church” and setting the stage for his 2024 commercial comeback. That level of fanbase-priming all helped result in the eye-popping streaming and sales debut of “Too Sweet,” the song that cemented Hozier’s mainstream commercial resurgence. 

Hozier first teased Unheard as a standalone EP comprised of songs that did not make the final Unreal Unearth tracklist. In his TikTok announcing the project, the Irish singer-songwriter used a snippet of “Too Sweet,” setting the stage for the song’s official TikTok sound to collect over 42,000 posts on the platform. “Too Sweet” debuted at No. 5 on the Hot 100 (dated April 6), marking both Hozier’s first song to debut in the top 10 and his first top 10 hit since “Take Me to Church.” Three weeks later — thanks to over 35.6 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate – the sultry pop-rock tune reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 (dated April 27), marking his first U.S. chart-topper. Though “Too Sweet” only topped the Hot 100 for one frame, it managed to do so in a week where he was competing with singles from longtime stars Beyoncé and Ariana Grande, as well as historic pop breakthroughs for Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter, and Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song.” 

Hozier’s “Sweet” success wasn’t just a well-deserved celebratory moment following his robust 2023, it was also a feat that culturally positioned him as one of the sonic forefathers of Top 40’s larger alt-rock resurgence in 2024. Notes of Hozier’s brand of big-voiced, guitar-backed rock anthems with a pop edge can be found in a number of 2024 Hot 100 hits, including Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” (No. 1), Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” (No. 2), Myles Smith’s “Stargazing” (No. 20) and Michael Marcagi’s “Scared to Start” (No. 54), and, of course, Kahan’s “Stick Season” (No. 9). All of those artists made their Hot 100 debuts this decade, but Hozier has been riding this formula to hits for a decade now – it was only right he finally got a chart-topper of his own.  

Now his longest-running Hot 100 hit behind “Church” (37 weeks), “Too Sweet” topped three Billboard airplay rankings (pop, rock and adult pop) and became his first song to top Streaming Songs and the all-genre Radio Songs chart. What’s most remarkable about “Too Sweet,” is how little in-your-face promotion the song required to connect with consumers: All Hozier really needed was a good song and a TikTok post – no dance trend or star-studded remix or virality-seeking music video necessary.  

A few months after “Too Sweet” hit the Hot 100’s summit, Hozier headlined the first night of Lollapalooza 2024 (Aug. 1). During his set – in which he debuted “Nobody’s Soldier” – the routinely outspoken artist called for “peace and safety and security for everybody in the Middle East… which of course would mean seeing Palestine free from occupation and free from violence.” In an era where many of music’s biggest stars have seemingly forgotten or undervalue the edifying, unifying and liberating aspects of the artform, it was incredibly refreshing to hear Hozier wax poetic about the innate interconnectedness of global liberation movements at his shows around the world. 

Unaired arrived a little over two weeks after Hozier’s headlining set (Aug. 16), with “Nobody’s Soldier” serving as the focus track. Following the uptempo blueprint of “Too Sweet,” “Soldier” missed the Hot 100 entirely, but still managed to become Hozier’s fifth consecutive No. 1 single at Adult Alternative Airplay (AAA). With “Soldier,” “Sweet” and his Kahan-assisted “Northern Attitude,” Hozier became the first soloist in history to score three new AAA No. 1s in a single year – and he’s just one song away from tying U2 for the all-time record of most consecutive AAA chart-toppers (six).  

By the end of the year, Hozier combined his two new EPs into one sprawling deluxe album titled Unreal Unearth: Unending. To cap off his 2024, Hozier will perform as the musical guest for the upcoming Dec. 21 episode of Saturday Night Live – his first appearance on the show since post-“Church” in 2014. 

It’s not often that an undeniable commercial resurgence occurs alongside a revival in cultural prominence, but Hozier pulled it off this year. With “Too Sweet” Hozier placed himself at the center of one 2024’s defining musical styles and returned to the awards conversation, picking up his first two MTV Video Music Awards nods in 10 years – though that Grammy remains out of reach, as he was shut out again in the 2025 nominations. Not only did he top the pop charts with new solo music, but he also re-established himself as a bona fide superstar. Whether he was flexing onstage banter or speaking truth to power, people hung on to his every word – especially the non-musical ones.  

Few could have predicted that Hozier would score a No. 1 single a decade after his “Take Me to Church” breakthrough, but, then again, few expected “Church” to be as massive as it was a decade ago. If ever there was a shining contemporary example of a mainstream musician consistently serving and nurturing their fan base, and reaping handsome (if long-delayed) returns for those efforts, it’s Hozier. 

Check Billboard later today for the reveal of our 2024 Rookie of the Year, and come back next week as we start the countdown of our top 10 Greatest Pop Stars of 2024!

Billie Eilish is currently touring through arenas and stadiums, but she’s also making time for smaller venues — tiny ones, you might say. On Thursday (Dec. 12), the 22-year-old superstar’s appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk web series went live on YouTube, showing Eilish, her brother and producer Finneas and a few band members cramming into […]