
The Year in Music
The Daily- 135 views
- 27 Dec 2024
As 2024 comes to a close, critics, reporters and editors at The New York Times are reflecting on the year in arts and culture, including music.Today, The Times’s pop music critics Jon Pareles, Lindsay Zoladz and Jon Caramanica talk with Melissa Kirsch, the deputy editor of Culture and Lifestyle, about a new generation of women in pop, how the rapper Kendrick Lamar beat Drake in their feud, and why so many pop stars went country.Guest: Melissa Kirsch, the deputy editor of Culture and Lifestyle for The New York Times.Jon Pareles, the chief pop music critic for The New York Times.Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic and host of the “Popcast” podcast for The New York Times.Lindsay Zoladz, a pop music critic and writer of The Amplifier newsletter for The New York Times.Background reading: Best Albums of 2024Best Songs of 2024For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The New York Times app has all this stuff that you may not have seen.
The way the tabs are at the top with all of the different sections.
I can immediately navigate to something that matches what I'm feeling. Play Wordle or Connections and then swipe over to read today's headlines.
There's an article next to a recipe, next to games, and it's just easy to get everything in one place.
This app is essential. The New York Times app, all of the times, all in one place.
Download it now at nytimes. Com/stuff. Com.
Hey, it's Michael. Today, our coverage of the year in arts and in culture continues with guest host, Melissa Kirsch, speaking to Times Critics, reporters, and editors. Take a listen.
From the New York Times, this is The Daily. I'm Melissa Kirsch, Deputy Editor of Culture and Lifestyle. As we close out 2024, I'm talking with my colleagues around the newsroom about what they watched and listened to and read this year about the things they loved and the things they didn't love. Today, pop music critics John Pirellis, John Caramanica, and Lindsay Zolatz on The Year in Music. It's Friday, December 27th. John, Lindsay, John, thanks for being here.
Hi.
Great to be here. Thank you.
Okay, so we're going to take a little trip through the music of 2024, and I thought it would be good to start off with this song.
No style, I can relate. I'll always be the one.
Oh, I'll draw This is 360 from Charlie XXX's album, Brat.
Charlie XXX was one of a bunch of young women who had huge moments in pop this year. John Pirellas, Brat was your number one album of 2024. Tell us why.
Because the music is wonderful, upbeat, electronic, crazy stuff going on in the background, and also an artistic journey through an identity crisis she was struggling as a artist in her 30s who wanted to be bigger, but also wanted to have a life, but also should she have a baby, but also she really likes to party. It was very rich in text, subtext, meta-text and internet interaction. I like the music. I like the attitude. I liked the whole idea of shaking up the culture.
Lindsay, it wasn't just that people loved these songs. Brat became this culture-wide phenomenon, right? How did that happen?
I think a lot of it had to do with Charlie being really savvy about the extra musical aspects of pop stardom these days that had this really bold, eye-grabbing cover with this very distinct slime green that really jumped out at you in this low-res font that just said Brat, and that was endlessly memed, seemed like it was made to be memed, and just set the tone for this essentially marketing campaign that I think really tapped into something effective about the way pop music is consumed in 2024. I'm also a fan of the record. It was, I think, my number three album of the year. Like John, I really think it's a strong collection of tunes, but that there's something else, the meta-commentary and also the meta-commentary about the album rollout, the packaging, the marketing strategy of the album that arguably came bigger than the music itself to talk about the Brat phenomenon were, for better or worse, not just talking about the music.
John Caramonica?
Album-wise, to me, I find Charlie an unconvincing vocalist. I do not enjoy listening to Brett. To me, Charlie is capturing a mood incredibly well, but I don't feel that mood reflected in the songs and the quality of the songs.
She's reflecting a mood very well, but you don't feel the mood?
I think the mood is real, but to me, the songs, if you listen to them purely as art, the songs are not that effective. I never think of Charlie's voice. I think of Taylor's voice often. I think of Beyoncé's voice often. I think of Brittany's voice often. I don't think of Charlie's voice. I think it's just we're bumping up against the outer limitations of a skill set.
You buy Brat as a cultural phenomenon more than you do as a musical phenomenon.
Is this the time to say The Daily is Brat?
I mean- Is this the time? I think this might be the time. Okay, well, then there it is. Lindsay, what does that mean, The Daily is Brat?
How long do we have here? No, I just wanted... One point that I wanted one point that I wanted to respond to what John said. I think Charlie is someone, again, not what we think of as a traditional powerhouse pop vocalist in the way that is getting to the echelon of fame that she, that Brat, has taken her to. Charlie is a vocalist who uses autotune and other filters and vocal manipulations in a way that is artful and interesting, I think, but not the way that we're used to hearing in a top 40 hit necessarily or not a pop hit. I think in a lot of ways, she manipulates her voice more like a lot of rappers do these days.
John Pirela, is there anything to add?
I'm not sure the daily is Brat.
And why not?
Not messy enough, not confused enough, not ambivalent enough. Brat is extremely sophisticated electronically, but also has imperfections and mistakes and edges. I know that all of this is going to get edited out because it's the daily.
Okay, let's hear from another young female artist whose music seemed to be everywhere this year. It's fine, it's cool.
You could say that we're nothing but you know.
Okay, so this is Good luck, Babe by Chapel Roon.
Well, good luck, well, good luck. You know, just like the I didn't know Chapel Roon's name before 2024, and she ended up being one of the artists I listened to the most this year.
Jon Caramanica, can you talk a little bit about where Chapel Roon came from and how she got so big?
Sure. So Chapel Marrone is a great example of an artist who has been kicking around the lower tier of the music business for years. People say overnight success. People say came from nowhere. And of course, that's rarely, if ever, the case. Chapel had a record deal previously. It did not go right. She works with Dan Nigro, who is a producer, also produces Olivia Rodrigo. Last year, Chapel had a couple of songs that got a bunch of attention, Nothing quite as big as what happened this year. But what started to happen last year is people said, Here's someone who has an incredibly sophisticated visual presentation, someone who writes incredibly direct, poetic lyrics about lived experience. Then this year, it all came to a head. I think the reason it came to a head this year is not to go back to Charlie, but I think Chapel Roon is an incredibly strong, traditional song writer. I think the songs are so well-structured. I think at root, they're very studied. That's really why bass-level fans and online fans are into it, but also everybody else was able to find a way into it as well.
Yeah, I think something uniting the breakthroughs of both Chappell and Charlie XXX this year are just this craving for something slightly different from the way that pop has been going, but not so different that it's not still pop and that it can't still be incredibly popular and this mass medium for communication. I think the alternative that Chapel offers is something more Sonic than anything. She's a very strong vocalist. She can belt. If you think about a lot of the way the post Taylor Swift wave of pop music, that there's this whispery, not a variation in the melody, just almost the more like, diaristic, confessional lyrics that Taylor Swift has, and the people in her wake have really tapped into. I think Chapel offers a sonic alternative to that. These are big, almost, Broadway big melodies. These are songs that can be belted on a stage and with big, cathartic emotion.
Well, John Prelis, people really identified with Chapel Roon, the human being, right?
They really connected with her as a person? What do you think it is about her that made people connect with her?
Well, she likes sex, for one thing. Let's put it out there. I mean, these are songs about having sex and enjoying it and unabashedly enjoying it.
What have you done?
You're a pink pony girl and you dance at the club, oh mama. I'm just having fun on the stage in my heels.
No wonder people like it. I think the other thing about Chaperone is she's also very historically aware. There's Kate Bush in her. There's Lady Gaga in her. There's Cindy Lauper in her. I mean, they're All these voices, and there's her own powerful lung power. She's a real strong singer.
It also can't be underestimated that Chapel Roon is singing songs about queer love, queer lust, queer disappointment. These are things that have often been sublimitly encoded into pop music and no longer are sublimitly encoded. I think there's a real power on top of the structure of the songs, on top of the power of the voice. There this added layer to it, I think is speaking very loudly, especially for a younger generation that is ready for that.
I think that's really important. I think people really identify with her as a human being.
I went to see her in Tennessee, and I was blown away by the level of fan identification. The Chaperone audience, it's almost like 5X Error Store in intensity, which is saying a lot.
If we're talking about young women in pop, we can't forget to mention Sabrina Carpenter. The Disney star turned pop phenom. Let's hear Espresso. Thoughts on this John Pirelas?
I was initially resistant to this song because I thought it sounded like pale disco. It grew on me. The comedy factor, the totally garbled and wonderful metaphor, I live on caffeine myself. And the fact that she could do it with such sparkle and such giddiness is what put her across, I think.
Lindsay, you felt like Sabrina Carpenter had some of the defining hits of the year.
I think something that was really cool about what Sabrina Carpenter pulled off this year was she has this defining summer hit, an Espresso, and it's out of nowhere. It's quirky and funny, and in some ways has the markings of a potential one-hit wonder song. Who is this woman? Fun summer hit. And then she pretty much immediately on the tail of Espresso puts out maybe an even better single called Please, Please, Please, which actually ends up being her first number one, outperforms Espresso on the charts. And the one-two punch of those singles showed that Sabrina Carpenter, from the outset, was I am no one hit wonder. If you like Espresso, there's a lot more to me than that. I think just the way that she rolled out these hits and all showcase different strengths of hers was really impressive this year and made her one of the year's breakout stars.
I have a fun idea, babe. Maybe just stay inside.
I know you're craving some fresh air, but the ceiling fan is so nice, and we could live so happily.
Sabrina Carpenter, Chapel Roon, and Charlie XCX all had massive years, but the number one album of the year by far came from an industry veteran, Taylor Swift.
You left your typewriter at my apartment straight from the Tortured Poets Department.
This is from her album, The Tortured Poets Department. But of all the music we're talking about, it didn't feel like the music from this album defined the year. Do you all have theories as to why?
The Tortured Poets Department, to me, is is the album on which Taylor Swift is writing the enormous success of the Aeros Tour, which began, what, a decade ago at this point?
When I was seven.
Yes. I think that while it was this record-setting blockbuster in terms of sales and fan engagement, the songs didn't have the cultural impact of, say, an Espresso, a Good luck, babe. They weren't the songs that you heard out in the world this year.
She's post-hit. This is really important to understand. Taylor Swift is post-hit. This year was about hits without stars, stars without hits. What that means is the biggest individual songs you heard this year are likely to come from the hit-making ecosystem, which is up from TikTok, slightly unexpected, maybe a little left field. To me, I don't think Chapel and Sabrina fit exactly into that, but I do think that they are the highest profile avatars of that mode of hit creation. Taylor doesn't need that. Taylor has 300 million people who care about Taylor Swift. Now, does that mean that she has a hit? It does not.
I just want to sympathize a little with Taylor Swift because she's got her own eras to compete with. It's harder for her to do a song that she hasn't already done. Part of the letdown of Tortured Poets Department was, this is familiar Taylor. She's done this already. We've heard this sound. We've heard this cadence. We've heard the way she double times into the verse. Everybody else is imitating Taylor Swift, too. She's that influential, and so she's got her own background to compete with. And how does she stay new? I mean, it's time for the reaction against her just because she's so familiar. I laughed in your face and said, You're not Dylan Thomas. I'm not Patti Smith.
Let's take a break and we'll be right back with more of the music of 2024.
Hi, I'm Josh Hayner, and I'm a staff photographer at the New York Times covering climate change. For years, we've imagined this picture of a polar bear floating on a piece of ice. Those have been the images associated with climate change. My challenge is to find stories that show you how climate change is affecting our world right now. If you want to support the journalism that we're working on here on the Climate and Environment Desk at the New York Times, please subscribe on our website or our app.
So We're going to switch gears here. We're going to talk about a pretty major story from the year, the beef between the rappers, Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Can we hear Not Like Us? I see dead people. Okay, so this feud that is still going on between two of the rap world's biggest stars has gotten fairly nasty. John Caramanica, can you briefly summarize what happened this year between Kendrick Lamar and Drake?
Can I start by going back a little bit? Please. It's important to remember before all of this, Drake and Kendrick are generational peers. They are not simply artists of a generation. They are generational peers. They are the same age. They emerged roughly around the same time with two different value propositions for the direction that hip hop should go in. They have worked together in the past, but there has been an icy chill between them for many years. Through the Drake lens, hip hop is a font for melody, for a certain emotional storytelling. It's hop-oriented, both in the nature of the songwriting and also simply because a billion people like it. That's the Drake proposition. I would say that that is the dominant hip hop proposition of the 2010s into the 2020s. Then you have Kendrick. Kendrick is a moralist. He's a lyrical traditionalist. He's someone who grew up and admired the great storytellers of the '90s and sees himself squarely in that tradition and also understands the genre as something that should be protected, something that needs defense. Kendrick the Rapper today is very much the Kendrick the Rapper of 10 years ago, telling stories, complicated double triple entendras, and a stern message that art matters, that Black art matters, that it's inseparable from politics, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
For the last 10 years, those two ideas have run parallel to each other. It has not been a zero-sum game until this year. There's a verse that Kendrick had on a Future in Metro Boomen album where he says, There's no big three, it's just Big Me. There's no Big Three, it's just Big Me. Big Three is a reference to Drake, Jay Cole, and Kendrick Lamar, the generational Titans of the 2010s. Could have just come and gone, and we would have said, Oh, and then it would have just come and gone. But it did not come and go. What followed were about 2-3 months of back and forth songs. Pipsqueak pipe down, you ain't in no big three. Scissor got you white down. I would thought that OVO working for me. Fake bully, I hate bully. She must be a terrible person.
I'm only watching silence. The famous actor we once knew us looking paranoid and now spiraling. You're moving just like a degenerate.
Songs of a shockingly personal nature with heinous accusations leveled in each direction. You are a dog and you know it, you just play sweet. Your baby mama cash is always screaming, Save me. You did it dirty all your life, you're trying to make peace. In total, I think damaged Drake's stock.
Dair Adonis. I'm sorry that that man is your father, let me be honest.
And elevated Kendrick's stock.
I'm going to pass on this body, I'm John Stockton.
The reason that Kendrick came out on top is because he made a hit. It is the biggest diss-record hit, I think, in hip hop history. That's beating Drake at his own game. In the diad, Drake is the hitmaker, and Kendrick took that from this year.
My number one song on my list was Not Like Us because I thought that really did sum up the whole 2024 mode of tribalism and contention and general nastiness.
The refrain of You're not like us, resonates, I think, even outside of the world of hip hop beef, of music, and into something more primal in our culture right now. Beyond the musical realm, there was a spirit of just nastiness, and nastiness against people who don't think the way that you do or come from where you do. That made that song, the anthem of 2024, for better and for worse. They're not like us.
They're not like us.
They're not like us.
Let's take another little break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about how country music took over pop.
You think that they're going to let you disrespect pop?
I think that open show going to be your last stop.
They're cold foul. I don't know why you still pretend. What is that?
It felt like everywhere I turned this year, there was another pop musician going country. Can we hear Texas Hold 'Em by Beyoncé?
This ain't Texas, ain't no hold them.
So lay your cards down, down, down, down.
So this song is from Beyoncé's album, Cowboy Carter. This album featured appearances by famous country artists, Dolly Parton, Willy Nelson. But Beyoncé herself said, It's not a country album, it's a Beyoncé album. John Pirellis, what does that mean?
It means whatever Beyoncé wants it to mean. Beyoncé on this album has people talking directly about what genre is. She has Linda Martell, who's one of the earliest Black country stars, talking about genre and how can finding it is. The message is right out there on the surface of this album. Beyoncé saying, I'm from Texas. I heard a lot of country. I can sing country. It belongs to her. It comes after a lot of ferment in the country music world about how Black artists were marginalized, sidelined, ignored, and worse. One thing about this album is she has a lot of Black country guests on this album. She has Rhianne Giddon's playing Banjo at the beginning of Texas Hold'em. She's making an alliance with a lot of musicians who have been trying to get into country for years, Black musicians who have been pretty much ignored and sidelined. She put them on the album. So this album puts it out on the table. And because it's Beyoncé, it can't be ignored. I mean, I think that's what makes it a Beyoncé album, is it can't be ignored. She's too big.
And I make down Sean Caramanica.
Beyoncé has been on this long run of making historically-minded albums that restore Black contribution in different corners of American pop to the center of the discourse. She did it on Renaissance, and now she's doing it on Cowboy Carter.
Lindsay?
I think in some ways, Cowboy Carter is like an album for liberals who want to signify that country music, but that they have some problems with the racial representation of Nashville, how country music radio doesn't like to play women and things like that, that want to support country music with an asterisk. Cowboy Carter is the album to get behind if you feel that way. I think almost to a fault, it's a record that feels very thesis-driven to me. Homeworky. Yeah. There are parts of it that I think are wonderful and some really sublime runs on this very epic album. But it's also an album... I think it's an argument more than an album sometimes.
It is a part of an ongoing conversation that Beyoncé is having through her music with her most dedicated listeners about, in this case, the role of Black Americans in shaping popular music. I think as to your point about thesis, it does feel like there is a lesson in this. If people who are outside of The Hive seek to learn from that lesson, all the better. But it is also consistent with how Beyoncé has been presenting her music for the last few years with a variety of styles.
Okay, I'd like to talk about another artist who went country this year who was also featured on Cowboy Carter. Let's hear a bar song, Tipsy, by Shibuzi.
One, here comes the two, to the three, to the four.
Tell them, bring another Lindsay, this song was inescapable last summer.
Talk to us about Shibuzi.
Still inescapable as we're entering winter. It, I We've tied the record for the longest Hot 100 number one song ever. That's a huge, huge, huge hit. 19 weeks. 19 weeks. I don't really get it. I have to say. Not my favorite song of the year, but clearly a song that resonated with a massive amount of people. It... Yeah, I help. This is one, too, where I'm open to theories because I truly do not understand why this song is as popular as it is.
A bar song simply puts together two great tastes that, in fact, taste great together. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the song that Shibuzy tied for longest run at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 is Lil Nas X's Old Town Road. Another hip hop country hybrid. What this tells me is, number one, these are both two very effective pop songs. Also, the Shibuzi song is based on an interpolation of J. Kwan's Tipsy, which is an incredible song from the early to mid 2000s. Maybe the hardest beat of that year. And a great catchphrase structure that Shibuzy then took and put into this, so it has familiarity. There are millions and millions of people who do not think it's strange to listen to hip hop and listen to country. Those people maybe are not represented in mainstream media, but they exist. They're real. The success of these songs indicates to me that we are in a maturing of a generation that accepts that pop music is not simply pop, and you do not have to say, I listen to everything but country, I listen to everything but hip hop. It's that all of these things are part of the larger popular music discourse, and it is not unusual to have hip hop and country not simply sit next to each other, but sit on top of each other.
That's what the success of these two songs tells me.
Thank you.
Thank you. Nailed it. John Porelis?
Well, I think Shibuza is from the south, and this is a natural sound for him. This is not some stunt. It's not some experiment. It's music he's grown up on, country and hip hop. He's made a fusion of them in his head and in his production. It's like the Lil Nas X record. This music is happening in this generation. I think there's going to be more of this music. There's an audience for this. There are people who are receptive to it. But also, Tipsy was a number one hit on country radio. Country radio has been a barrier to this hybrid, but Tipsy broke through. I think more of that's going to be happening. Unlike Beyoncé, who had to go around country radio, Tipsy got played. Then you have Post Malone, who went straight down the middle, mainstream country.
Yeah, let's hear Post Malone, another pop artist who had a huge country moment this year. Let's hear I Had Some Help featuring Morgan Wallen.
This is from Post Malone's country album, F1 Trillion.
Morgan Wallen is a huge country artist. Post Malone not traditionally a country artist, but he went to Nashville and made this album. John Prelis, talk to me about this song.
I mean, it's not just this song, it's the whole album. He got every name brand Nashville songwriter. He got Tim McGraw, he got Hank Williams Jr. He got Blake Shelton, he got Luke Holmes, he got Brad Paisley, he got all of the big names. And Post Malone is a real genre chameleon. He fits in wherever he wants to fit in. For a while, he was rapping. Then he made a singer-songwritery phase. This country phase is him fitting in with typical mainstream arena scale country. In a way, I felt like this album was almost a parody of current country. It felt like, I'm going to study up and I'm going to write songs that fit so squarely into your genre that your radio people will not think twice about playing them.
My only note on the Post Malone album is Post Malone made a rap album. It's just a country album. But structurally, it's a rap album. It's packed with guests. It's packed with the hit-making producers and songwriters of the day, except everything on it is country.
Why are we seeing so many pop stars going country?
I think there's a couple of reasons. One, those lines between genres that I think, especially in the '80s and '90s, we were so preoccupied with. If I'm for indie rock, I must be against hip hop. If I'm for country, I must be against rock. That doesn't matter anymore. No person under 30 genuinely thinks that or genuinely feels that. That's a generational problem that people, older, should work through. There's that. I also think country music is big business. Country music is very popular. That is a huge audience. It is an audience that maybe is a a little bit, if any audience is cloistered, maybe the country music audience is cloistered. So Post Malone didn't say, unlike Beyoncé, he didn't say, I want to make a concept art piece about what it means for me, an interloper, to make a country album. He just said, he checked on the phone and said, Who can make hits? I want some country hits. And he got one. It takes two to break a heart in two.
John, Lindsay, John. Thank you so much for being here today, and thank you so much for helping us make sense of the year in music.
Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.
Thanks.
Today's episode was produced by John White with help from Kate Lopresti. It was edited by Wendy Dore, with production support by Franny Khar Toth, and original music by Diane Wong. It was engineered by Daniel Ramirez. Special thanks to Sia Michael, Sam Siffin, Karen Gans, Lauren Manley, Alicia Baetup, Sarah Curtis, Alex Baron, Tina Antalini, Elissa Dudley, Paula Schumann, and Sam Dolmick. That's it for Daily. I'm Melissa Kirsch. See you on Monday.