This year brought us new albums from some of the biggest artists in the world: Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift all put out music that thrilled fans.
And yet some of the most impactful pop music of 2024 came not from Tay or Bey, but from three rising pop stars whose songs took us out to the clubs (Pink Pony and otherwise) and back home to the bedroom. They embraced romantic ugliness and cutting self-reflection — and pushed pop forward.
The year arguably belonged to Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter.
The year saw Charli, a boundary-pushing yet oft-overlooked pop veteran, finally escape what the New York Times once called “pop’s middle class” with her defiant, sweat-soaked, goopy-green opus, “Brat.”
This year, Carpenter went from a supporting act on the highest-grossing tour in history to a leading lady herself, with her endearingly silly, sexy songs topping the charts. (Here’s where she’d make a sex joke.)
And it was the year when everyone wanted to take things H-O-T T-O G-O, dance in the Pink Pony Club and wish their exes good luck, babe. Roan’s debut album came out over a year ago, but it rapidly grew an audience this year as she took her act on the road and won us over.
We loved this trio of stars because they weren’t impenetrable like Beyoncé or as towering as Swift. These artists were accessible to us, interacting with fans online and touring prolifically. Their music was personal and specific, with confessional lyrics about self-hatred, unrequited love and lust.
It helps, of course, that their music is exciting and compulsively listenable, said Mike Errico, a musician and visiting assistant arts professor at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, who teaches songwriting.
None of these women became stars overnight — they’ve been recording music since they were teenagers, steadily building an audience who jibed with their unique sound. Their music doesn’t reinvent pop. But by adding their unique flavors to a well-trodden genre that’s been stuck in a rut of sameness, they’re forcing it into a looser, freer future.
