If anyone tells you 2024 was anything less than an absolute win for new music, they clearly spent the year with their head stuck in a bin. While the world outside might have been doing its best impression of a dumpster fire, our headphones have been blessed with an embarrassment of riches. From bright-young-things becoming even brighter to established faves finding new gears, the last twelve months have delivered more golden moments than we can count.
That’s where this list comes in. Over the next few days, we’ll be celebrating the very best tracks 2024 had to offer – from chart-destroying anthems to underground gems that deserve their moment in the spotlight. So grab your party hat, pour yourself something fizzy, and join us as we count down the defining songs of 2024.
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10. Addison Rae – Diet Pepsi
A late contender for catchiest song of the year, when ‘APT’ arrived, it knew it was here to stay. Led by former BLACKPINK member Rosé in an unlikely pairing with Bruno Mars, ‘APT’s sticky clapping-song intro was inspired by a classic Korean drinking game, but takes on a complete life of its own. Having honed her songwriting abilities in between K-pop idol training and rehearsals in her girl group years, and tested the waters in developing her own sound with solo tracks in 2021 and on BLACKPINK’s last album ‘Born Pink’, the hard work paid off tenfold with the Q4 dominance of ‘APT’. Sounding like a concoction of Lolly’s ‘Mickey’ and The Ting Tings, with an extra dash of sugary goodness in Rosé’s delivery and an injection of second-verse swagger from Bruno Mars, you’ll be lucky to get this out of your head in 2025.
9. ROSÉ feat. Bruno Mars – APT.
There’s how to return and then there’s ‘People Watching’. A soaring anthem that even Bruce Springsteen would be jealous of having in the back pocket, it arrived as the perfect reintroduction for Sam Fender – one that lays his intentions for world domination grander than ever. Written about a loved one who found themselves in a care home, everything about it captures what makes Sam brilliant. A chorus built for stadiums. An unflinching portrayal of modern Britain in all its chips and flaws. A sky-high sax chorus. It’s all there and then some. For that, it may sit as one of Sam’s greatest to date – a man of the people anthem for a man many see as the very best doing it right now. With ‘People Watching’, it’s hard to argue against him.
8. The Last Dinner Party – The Feminine Urge
Bringing theatricality back into music in a big, big way, The Last Dinner Party have always stood out in a crowded field. This year, they proved they could handle the hype and stick the landing with their debut album ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’. ‘The Feminine Urge’ is a perfect encapsulation of what makes them so special. All soaring instrumentals and vocals which are pitched somewhere between ABBA and opera. A band who refuse to play the game on anything but their own terms, ‘The Feminine Urge’ defies categorization as anything but a Last Dinner Party song. It’s a perfectly crafted three-and-a-half-minutes which explains exactly why every no-name bore who dismissed them as “industry plants” was completely and utterly wrong (but we knew that already, didn’t we?).
7. Kendrick Lamar – Not Like Us
Hearing Kendrick rap with purpose is like listening to a force of nature. Years into his career, he’s still lyrically unbeaten, but the hunger which punctuated earlier work had, understandably, faded. Enter Drake, about to take part in the most misjudged and mismatched rap beef of all time. To say ‘Not Like Us’ was the kill shot is an understatement – Kendrick basically took Drake’s head clean off. Adding insult to injury, he did it on one of his best tracks in years, with a sparse, string-laden instrumental courtesy of Mustard adding even more heft to his deft lyricism and brutal insults. Drake’s probably regretting trying to take Kendrick down, but really, we should all be thanking him. If eviscerating another artist is what gets Kendrick riled enough to do something as good as ‘Not Like Us’ with enough energy left over to make ‘GNX’, his best album in years, there’s only one question: whose career do we have to sacrifice next?
6. Billie Eilish – Birds of a Feather
‘Birds of a Feather’ is what happens when Billie Eilish and Finneas spend a year obsessing over every single detail until they nearly scrap the whole thing – and then somehow end up with pure pop perfection anyway. It’s a track that feels both retro and totally fresh, while Eilish pushes her voice into territory that makes you wonder what else she’s been hiding. The fact they almost binned it seems ridiculous now – this is Billie at her very best, taking everything that made her interesting in the first place and cranking it up several notches. There’s something gloriously defiant about a pop star who thinks about everything and still comes out with something that feels this effortless. Just remember, when you’re about to delete the whole thing but decide to push through instead – that’s when the magic happens.
5. JADE – Angel of My Dreams
2024 was the year of big, chaotic pop bangers, and no one nailed it quite like Jade. After creating some of Little Mix’s most powerful moments (‘Wasabi’, ‘No Time For Tears’), expectations were already high about what she’d do next. Despite decades of the solo-project after-arena-dominating-pop-group pipeline, ‘Angel Of My Dreams’ still felt like a total surprise.
The urgent, messy track sounds like a bejewelled mash-up of five different tracks, all of them aces. It starts as a glittery ballad before morphing into a scarlet-tinged club banger. From there, it leaps between radio-friendly singalong and wonky cult classic without ever losing that pulsating energy. It’s 197 seconds of thrilling excitement.
‘Angel Of My Dreams’ is utterly bonkers, but Jade’s pop smarts mean the gorgeous, giddy track never feels confused. There’s a real care and passion behind every sudden turn. Brilliant follow-up singles Fantasy and Midnight Cowboy have kept the unpredictable energy going and we couldn’t be more stoked, or unprepared, for where she goes next. It’s iconic stuff.
4. Charli xcx feat. Lorde – Girl, So Confusing
Charli and Lorde’s ‘Girl, So Confusing’ remix turns perceived rivalry into the kind of pop collaboration that makes you believe in magic again. What started as a voice note evolved into something far more interesting – two of pop’s most distinctive voices finding common ground in uncommon territory.
The original track from Charli’s ‘Brat’ album was already a banger, but this remix takes things somewhere entirely unexpected. When Charli’s auto-tuned confessions meet Lorde’s raw admissions, it creates the kind of chemistry that makes you wonder why they didn’t do this sooner. “Sometimes I think you might hate me / Sometimes I think I might hate you” hits differently when both artists are in the room, turning theoretical tension into pure pop catharsis.
Lorde’s addition brings new layers of brutal honesty. It’s the kind of vulnerability that pop music usually tries to polish away, delivered over production that somehow makes emotional excavation sound like the best party in town. It works because it keeps both artists’ signatures intact while creating something entirely new. Charli’s maximalist pop instincts crash beautifully into Lorde’s more contemplative approach, creating a remix that feels less like a feature and more like a genuine conversation between two artists at the top of their game. It’s proof that pop can take drama and let the music do the talking. When two artists decide to turn perceived rivalry into creative gold, everybody wins.
3. Sabrina Carpenter – Espresso
‘Espresso’ by name, ‘Espresso’ by nature. Sabrina Carpenter’s proper breakthrough hit came just when music needed her; an early summer jolt of pop caffeination blasted into your brain and straight up the chart, heralding the return of fun, peppy pop music. In the UK, it kicked off her mammoth reign at the top of the singles chart, but it wasn’t limited to these shores; ‘Espresso’ finally gave us Sabrina Carpenter, Main Pop Girl. That spot was getting a bit dusty waiting for her to take it, but Sabrina fills a long-empty gap in the main pop girlies lineup; she’s an artist whose lyrics and delivery are so cheeky and charming you’d be daft not to fall for them. The magic of ‘Espresso’ isn’t just that it bottles exactly all of the things Sabrina does best, but it’s also so impossibly simple, it’s mad no one else has done it yet. It’s what makes Sabrina Carpenter a critical figure in pop right now, because it’s one thing to write a track that’s just three minutes of the sentiment “A crush? On me? Obviously…”, but it’s quite another to come up with the line “That’s that me espresso”.
2. Chappell Roan – Good Luck, Babe!
One song. That’s all Chappell Roan put out in a year she’s completely dominated. ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ isn’t just the song that started it all, but thank god it did. A clip of the Coachella performance of this, at the time, freshly dropped single did its rounds online, the song’s streams steadily increasing by the day. But for Chappell, the hard work was basically already done; she didn’t need to worry about following up the hit; new listeners were already knee-deep in last year’s album ‘The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess’. Instead, the hard work came with the festival run that would send Roan stratospheric. Of course, none of this wouldn’t have happened if the song was pants, and since its release has proven a standout moment in those live sets that’d go on to draw record-breaking crowds. ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ feels just as at home in Robyn’s playbook as it would in Kate Bush’s, but has a Roan edge to it that’s distinctly her, whether that be the storytelling – the lesser-discussed-in-big-ticket-pop subject of lesbian situationship turmoil – or the falsetto choruses, character-filled verses, and that outstanding dramatic bridge with the incredible high note. All eyes are on Chappell’s next move, but if it’s anything like ‘Good Luck, Babe!’, it’ll be huge.
1. Fontaines D.C. – Starburster
Remember when post-punk meant dowdy colour schemes and an aggressive form of cool? Fontaines D.C. just threw that playbook into a particle accelerator. ‘Starburster’ emerges from the collision like a beautiful mistake, atoms of neon green splintering into fragments of drum & bass, techno, and something entirely undiscovered.
The catalyst? A panic attack on a train platform. Grian Chatten turned that moment of pure fight-or-flight into something that makes anxiety feel like a superpower. The Mellotron doesn’t just loop – it stalks the track like a hungry ghost, while beats that would make Aphex Twin nervous slice through what used to be verse-chorus-verse certainty.
This is the sound of a band realising the template had become a ball and chain around their ankle. So they’ve melted them down, forged new weapons. Chatten’s voice morphs from tense whisper to battle cry to prayer; each gear shift feeling like another lock picking itself. The production wraps around his words like mercury – fluid, beautiful, probably toxic.
On ‘Romance’, their fourth album, ‘Starburster’ is the moment mutation becomes evolution. It’s got ‘Akira’s’ nuclear glow but Ballard’s concrete poetry, spinning past familiar signposts at dangerous velocities. You can hear decades of electronic music education being compressed into five minutes of glorious rebellion.
Every element feels like it’s trying to escape the song but somehow can’t – or won’t. That tension creates something new: post-punk for a world where genre is just another system begging to be dismantled. This isn’t about breaking rules – it’s about proving they never existed.
‘Starburster’ doesn’t just suggest post-punk can evolve – it grabs it by the throat and drags it into tomorrow. Some bands change their sound; Fontaines D.C. just changed the game’s genetic code.
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