My Favorite Songs of 2024

On Spotify Wrapped and my ACTUAL fave songs

• Frank is having a holiday sale! All paid subscriptions are 25% off for one year (offer only available through 12/31!). Paid subscriptions are how I sustain this newsletter of pop culture musings (and now, Real Housewives recaps for paid subscribers) and how I’ve been able to support myself financially this year. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed!

• My debut essay collection Pure Innocent Fun will be published on February 04, 2025. Consider buying it for yourself or as a holiday gift for the pop culture fan in your life! Some advance praise for the book:

“This is the most fun I’ve had reading all year. Like Chuck Klosterman before him, Ira Madison III takes seriously and analyzes the pop culture detritus that took up hours of our lives as byproducts of the late 1900’s. From Coldplay to Family Matters to Passions and everything in between, It feels like Ira has taken apart every dumb thing I’ve obsessed over and put it back together again—all my ‘roman empires.’ I laughed and cried and felt so, so seen. Buy it and KEEP IT.” — Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony award-winning creator of Hamilton and NYT bestselling author of G’morning G’night

“Ira’s wit, intelligence, and reverence for pop culture is on full display in this fantastic essay collection. What a pleasure to read.” — Phoebe Robinson, award-winning comedian and NYT bestselling author of You Can’t Touch My Hair

“If you’re old enough to have typed A/S/L in AOL chat rooms this will unlock so many core millennial memories. If you don’t know what that means, this book will help you talk to your boss at work!” — Cody Rigsby, NYT bestselling author of XOXO, Cody

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Spotify Wrapped dropped today. Your Instagram feed is probably full of your friends posting their results. The thing about Spotify Wrapped though, is it’s like watching RuPaul’s Drag Race without watching Untucked — you’re only getting half the story. Spotify tells me I listened to 44,379 hours of music this year. That’s roughly 31 total days. I’m not shocked. I retreated to music this year more than anything. I read fewer books, and watched less movies and TV shows. I listen to music when writing at home, when heading anywhere on the subway, or even just dashing across the street to the bodega. But I also tap into Bluetooth in long car rides with my friends, at house parties, or afters. So my “most played” songs aren’t even necessarily my favorite songs, they’re just the songs I played the most all year.

I’d say Spotify is mostly on the money — my top artists of the year are Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Charli XCX, Billie Eilish, and Kali Uchis. My top songs are “Espresso,” “Bodyguard,” “II Hands II Heaven,” “IIgual Que Un Ángel,” and “Juna.” Those are all in my top ten, mostly. For my list of favorite songs I only allowed myself one track from each artist. But like I said, I listened to a lot of music this year. There’s a ton of artists I loved this year whose songs didn’t make my Top 25 — Justice, Audrey Nuna, Liam Benzvi, Selena Gomez, JT, GloRilla, Katseye, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa¹, MJ Lenderman, Troye Sivan, beabadoobee, Lorde, Ella Mai, DJ Lycox, Gavin Turek, Mustafa, and of course, Charlie Puth.

You all know how much I love Charlie Puth. One of my favorite music moments of the year was when Taylor Swift said, “We declare Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist” on The Tortured Poets Department.² My honorable mention for my favorite song this year is Puth’s “Hero,” a song that I replayed constantly like Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile.” They’re just out of my Top 25, but they’re both gentle, harmonious earworms with soaring hooks that I’ve gone to bed thinking about and woke up with them still bouncing around my skull. Also, just edged out of my Top 25 is another Puth song — “PerkySex,” one of two songs he produced for Lil Uzi Vert’s album Eternal Atake 2. I like him in his hip-hop bag, he should just make a hip-hop-inspired album, tbh.

But enough yapping. Here’s my 25 favorite songs of the year.

25. “Cherry on Top,” BINI

This was a great year for East Asian pop (or adjacent music, a la global girl group Katseye). I’ve loved tracks from Aespa, NewJeans, LE SSERAFIM, Lisa, and more. But the track I keep coming back to is from the P-pop girl group BINI. This summer, they became the first Filipino act to top Spotify’s Philippines Daily Top Artist chart — they beat Taylor Swift! Of course, she’s the top artist in the Philippines, lol. Her dance moves wouldn’t be out of place amongst the robot, arm-movement-friendly dances in the P-pop musical Here Lies Love by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. The song has the buoyancy that I love about this genre. It’s music for a dance floor, but a dance floor at a teenage girl’s birthday party or a pregame with gay men in arrested development.

24. “High Beams,” Body Meat

“High Beams” sounds like a video game. It sounds like hyperpop. It sounds like a sweaty club. This is everything MDMA, sunglasses, a water bottle, athletic shorts, and sneakers were made for. My bestie Ted sent me Starchris, the debut album of NYC-based musician Chris Taylor’s project Body Meat, late this summer. I wasn’t in the headspace to listen to it then. I was on a break from the club as I was deep in book revisions. But the second I found myself at Basement, Papi Juice, Zero Chill, or any of my other fave NYC parties this fall, Body Meat crept back into my brain. And then it seeped into my body.

23. “Broom of Wind,” Mount Eerie

My friend Ted and I have an almost daily ritual of sending one another a new song we’re listening to. When I was making this list, I went through our messages for the year and plucked out the songs that we couldn’t stop talking about. I remember when I came across this song, I sent it to him immediately, and he was shocked that I was even listening to the album. Phil Everum’s music had mostly gone unnoticed by me, but I couldn’t have picked a better album to dive into than Night Palace. The album feels soothing, healing almost. Its sparse production and poetic lyrics feel perfect for a late-night drive or long subway ride from Brooklyn back to my Manhattan apartment. Mount Eerie was my gateway into MJ Lenderman, who I also fell in love with this year (“Wristwatch” is a jam). It reminds me of falling in love with Arcade Fire and the New Pornographers in college.

22. “Tell Me Ernest,” Original Cast of Death Becomes Her

Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard, and Christopher Sieber are so fucking fantastic in Death Becomes Her, the new musical based on the 1992 film. The musical itself is about a B as far as musicals go — the rest of the songs are mostly forgettable. The show really shines from the three leads and the INSANE stunt choreography that’s worth the price of admission. But this song is the best in the musical. It’s funny, it’s quick-witted, and it reminds me of one of my favorite shows, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Try not to laugh at Hilty flirting with plastic surgeon Sieber with lines like: “Tell me Ernest… how much have you seen of me? Cinematically?”

21. “Love Goes,” Mayer Hawthorne

I’d love Mayer Hawthorne even if he and his wife didn’t also listen to Keep It. I’ve been a fan since I first heard the song “Henny and Ginger Ale.” He’s managed to take the yacht rock aesthetic and take it through several evolutions. Angry with love, falling in love, and now married life romance. This great single dropped a few months after his fantastic 2023 album For All Time.

20. “Hustle That Cat,” RuPaul

Believe it or not, RuPaul’s catalog has bops. I’m not just talking about “Supermodel.” At any gay gathering, you’re likely to hear one or two RuPaul songs featured heavily in one of the runways of RuPaul’s Drag Race. “Sissy That Walk” and “Call Me Mother” get a lot of spins from Drag Race fans, for instance. So liking this song wasn’t a surprise, but how good it is was. Producer Frederick Minãno delivers a slinky R&B track that sounds simultaneously like a throwback and something that might appear on a FLO or Shygirl album. If you’ve never heard it, I guarantee the auto-tuned opening chant is going to be stuck in your head for the next 24 hours.

19. “Things Behind Things Behind Things,” Bon Iver

From Taylor Swift (“Exile” and “Evermore”) to Charli XCX (the remix of “I Think About It All the Time,” my fave on the Brat remix album), Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon has been supporting the pop girls as of late. SABLE, came as a surprise EP drop, but it feels like classic Bon Iver. The sparse production, with just a few gentle guitar, plucks, accompanied with some of his most directly emotive lyrics. Dabbling in pure pop music has rubbed off on him. The entirety of SABLE, explores loneliness and self-regret, but this track in particular is about looking at yourself in the mirror and hating what’s swirling in your mind. A song about intrusive thoughts never sounded so beautiful.

18. “Nissan Altima,” Doechii

After a back-and-forth with Azealia Banks on Twitter, where she was accused of copying Banks’ flow (and even more absurdly, being ugly), Doechii shut down all the chatter when I saw her live at Paper’s 40th Anniversary Party. She spit her buoyant new track “Nissan Alimata.” It’s as funny (“I'm like Carrie Bradshaw with a back brace on / I been carrying you bitches now for way too long”) as it is propulsive. The face card was flawless. She wore a pantsuit with heels, serving executive realness and she ripped off the blazer and spit effortlessly in a sexy, form-fitting white button-down. It was finally Doechii season.

17. “Good Luck, Babe!,” Chappell Roan

Chappell Roan’s debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess wasn’t an immediate commercial success but after opening for Olivia Rodrigo on her Guts tour and dropping “Good Luck, Babe!” before her Coachella performance, she ratcheted to superstardom. It helped that this song dropped on the same day as Jojo Siwa’s “Karma.” Roan hopped on social media to chat about her own song, but ended up stumbling across Siwa’s song and being stunned at what she was witnessing. Her impromptu dragging of Siwa’s song was incredibly funny and signaled that she wasn’t just some random pop girl, she had a personality too. Roan’s candidness on social media would lead to problems for her later that year, but it also led to sold out shows (an understatement, her shows were oversold this year), her album peaking at #2 on Billboard, a slew of Grammy noms, and a billion streams for “Good Luck, Babe!” Keep talking your shit, girl!

16. “Britpop,” A.G. Cook

Charli XCX’s chopped vocals on the title track of A.G. Cook’s sprawling, 24-track hyperpop club album are so addicting you’ll hear her chanting “Brit Brit Brit Brit Brit like Britpop” in you head all day. Or the rest of the year, if you’re me. When Cook played this track at his recent Knockdown Center show, the crowd went up almost as much as they went up for “Vroom Vroom.”

15. “Angel of My Dreams,” JADE

The final member of Little Mix to drop a solo track, Jade Thirlwall came out the gate SWINGING. This song reminds me of Nicki Minaj describing “Massive Attack” when it dropped.

The quote has become a meme since, but it’s applicable to “Angel of My Dreams.” It truly sounds like it’s from another planet. And I want to live there.

14. “Like Him,” Tyler the Creator featuring Lola Young

Chromokopia is a fantastic album. I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind since it dropped. There’s the massive banger “Sticky,” of course, but “Like Him” is such a moving song about Tyler the Creator’s relationship with his dad. I’m sure this song hits the same for anyone with similar feelings for their father (you can find a whole essay about those feelings in my book).

13. “B.O.A.T.,” Camila Cabello

I was as shocked as anyone when I actually loved C,XOXO. Camila Cabello turned on the Miami sleaze and churned out a pretty fucking good pop album. What seemed like it was going to be a Charli XCX knockoff turned out to be something else entirely. I’ve been obsessed with “Dade County Dreaming” because of the City Girls rap and “DREAM-GIRLS” because of the sick The-Dream interpolation, but this song hits. I want more like this from her.

12. “Squabble Up,” Kendrick Lamar

Leave it to Kendrick Giselle Knowles-Carter to drop an album out of nowhere and have it be one of his career’s best. His previous album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, was too dense, too esoteric to really jive with. It was a big depature from Damn that I respect more than I ever want to listen to again. GNX on the other hand is an incredible listen from start to finish and a perfect summation of the wild year he’s had obliterating Drake³. This album feels like Yeezus⁴. Culturally relevant and maybe just a little… gay? You can thank the Debbie Deb sample that’s not just for the clubs, but for the gworls. And of course, SZA is all over the album.

11. “Walk Like This,” FLO

If you’re not listening to FLO, what the fuck is wrong with you? The British R&B group has teased us for about three years now, doling out jams produced by MNEK, and finally dropped their debut album Access All Areas this November. The album is full of mid-tempo tracks reminscent of Destiny Fullfilled or SWV’s It’s About Time. My fave single since it dropped earlier this year is “Walk Like This,” a sassy track about banging so hard you can hardly walk after. Ariana Grande’s “Side to Side” finally has a worthy successor.

10. “Masquerade,” Original Cast of Stereophonic

The theatre kid jumped out of everyone when Wicked debuted, but I already exhibiting signs this summer when I kept playing tracks from the Broadway show Stereophonic at parties. Lucky for me, this isn’t traditional musical theatre shit. Stereophonic is a show by playwright David Adjmi with music from Arcade Fire’s Will Butler. The cast (Tom Pecinka, Sara Pidgeon, Juliana Canfield, and Will Brill) sings and plays their own instruments in the show and on the cast recording. The show is loosely inspired⁵ by Fleetwood Mac’s recording of Rumors but the music is a mash-up of Fleetwood, Zepplin, Arcade Fire, and a host of other ‘70s influences. When I played this and “Drive” at parties, non-theatre folks just thought I was playing a ‘70s rock song they’d never heard before.

9. “Don’t Wanna Break Up Again,” Ariana Grande

Though the end of this year has been dominated by Ariana Grande’s turn as Glinda in Wicked, I was pleasantly surprised to see Eternal Sunshine on so many friends’ Spotify Wrappeds this morning. This album, and specifically this song, had a chokehold on me in early 2024, only broken by the the releases of Brat and Cowboy Carter. It’s deeply personal, moving, and just as listenable as the rest of her catalog. I could see Eternal Sunshine being someone’s favorite album of hers in about ten years or so.

8. “Diet Pepsi,” Addison Rae

First of all, y’all weren’t with me when I stanned “Obsessed” in 2021. Yeah, Addison Rae was the TikTok girl, but the song was a banger and the video was hot. I’m not surprised that she became the pop star on everyone’s lips, I knew she had it in her. But I am surprised that she finally allowed it to happen, after a detour into acting that I’m sure we’d all love to forget⁶. “Diet Pepsi” is pure pop. It’s Lana. It’s Charli. It’s 2024. I prefer Coke Zero, but as long as I don’t have to drink it, I stan “Diet Pepsi.”

7. “Everything is Romantic,” Charli XCX

Brat was massive. The remix album is even better. “Girl, so confusing” is atop everyone’s best of 2024 lists, and the song is great, but to me this song feels timeless. Charli XCX has always been great at songs about longing and “Everything is Romantic” manages to be simultaneously melancholy and energetic. The lyrics are pure Charli. “Fall in love again and again” could be about finding the person you’re going to spend your life with or the realization that you keep fumbling again and again. But all of it’s romantic.

6. “Espresso,” Sabrina Carpenter

I remember mornings this summer when I would put “Espresso” on repeat and let it play while I showered. The song is goofy and infectious, which is everything you want in a pop song. Imagine not loving a song with the lyrics, “I know I Mountain Dew it for ya?” When Sabrina Carpenter says “now he’s thinking bout me every night,” she means me. Before this song become a massive hit, before it belonged to the throng of teenage girls at Carpenter’s concerts, this was a bop that she dropped before her Coachella set and I got to enjoy it with molly swirling in my body, a vodka cranberry in my hand, and my best friend singing along with me after only learning the lyrics that morning. Of course it was a hit.

5. “Nasty,” Tinashe

Thinking about “Nasty” now makes me upset. This song lit up the summer in the same way Brat did. And yet, where are Tinashe’s flowers? Where were the Grammy noms? Unfortunately, I think this all comes down to Tinashe’s team. “Nasty” was the moment and it was never fully seized. The video is unfortunate. The album is good, but it doesn’t sound at all like “Nasty” aside from “No Broke Boys.” My other fave track, “When I Get You Alone,” probably should’ve been on her previous album alongside “Needs.”

This could’ve been Tinashe’s year that catapulted her into the pop pantheon. Sadly, it wasn’t. But we’ll always have “Nasty.”

4. “II Hands II Heaven,” Beyoncé

Beyoncés genre-defying eighth album Cowboy Carter wasn’t for everyone. Some people found it too long. Some people were turned off by its country vibes. At first, I found it dense, impossible to ascertain any feelings about it after first listen. Or second. Or third. But soon enough, the cacophonous album began to settle in mind and I embraced the entire arc of the album.

“II Hands II Heaven” comes along in the album’s second half, where the blend of r&b, pop, country, and folk music have all blended together enough to leave just one genre: Beyoncé. This song is as rambling as the rest of the album. She’s never sounded more divine when the song crescendos into vocal bliss.

3. “Wildflower,” Billie Eilish

I wrote this about “Wildflower” in May: I can’t think of a song in recent memory that has hit me as hard as this one. Not even “II Hands II Heaven,” my fave off Cowboy Carter, hit me immediately. But this song is beautifully evocative of the complex emotions in falling in love with someone who once dated someone you’re friends with. I’ve only experienced this once in my life, I have the scribbled journal entries that I’m sure will become a play or screenplay to prove it, but I’ve never acknowledged out loud to either party either of those emotions. Does love trump feelings of betrayal or vice-versa? My 22 year-old Sagittarius sister Billie Eilish has tackled these emotions better than my mind was able to in my actual lived experience.

2. “Igual Que Un Ángel,” Kali Uchis

Kali Uchis’ Red Moon in Venus was my favorite album of 2023. Her fourth album, Orquídeas, dropped in January of this year and managed to remain one of my faves over the next twelve months. The fact that this song is #4 on my Spotify Wrapped shows how much I couldn’t stop listening to this hypnotic blend of pop and r&b with English and Spanish lyrics. Not to be a cliché music writer, but there’s no other way to describe Uchis’ music beside haunting. Like Nicole Kidman in The Others when she finds out she was the ghost all along kinda shit. Once you’ve heard it you’ll never remember what music was like before.

1. “Juna,” Clairo

2024 is the year I became Clairo-pilled. Her lush, dreamy, ‘70s-inspired album Charm has been on repeat in my home since its July release. In a year dominated by Brat memes, I’ve been fond of “Clairo shade” jokes and TikToks joking that she opened her show with rap songs. But the thing is, the album has that energy. Several songs on Charm would fit on Solange’s last record. That’s less of Clairo’s music sounding like a copy of Solange’s than it is a testament to how fucking cool she is.

1. I liked that damn album, shut up.

2. An album that grew on me, btw! Her anti-obsessive Swifities anthem, “But Daddy I Love Him,” would be on here if I extended the list to a Top 30.

3. This is the first year Drake hasn’t made a single appearance on my Spotify Wrapped.

4. Two of my fave electronic producers, Gesaffelstein and Hudsown Mohawke are on Brat. I first discovered them on Yeezus.

5. Loosely to avoid a lawsuit. But while Stevie Nicks didn’t even know about its existence until after it won Tonys, original Rumours sound engineer Ken Caillat settled a lawsuit yesterday for similarities between the show and his memoir Making Rumours.

6. Okay, she’s good in Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving.