The 20 Best Pop Radio Hits of 2023
This is always the strangest of the genre lists I do every year because it invariably contains some of the biggest songs, but I've also subtracted out everything that was on pop radio this year that crossed over from other formats like R&B and country. But I find it interesting that even though there's a lot of "proper pop," there's still an interesting range of music and artists in here, Top 40 radio is a real disparate hodge podge these days. Here's the rap list I posted yesterday and the Spotify playlist for this list:
1. Sabrina Carpenter - "Nonsense"
#10 Pop Airplay, #56 Hot 100
On the fourth single from her fifth album, Sabrina Carpenter says "woke up this morning, thought I'd write a pop hit" with tongue firmly in cheek, and almost by accident ends up with the song that finally did turn her into a star. She's still a long way from reaching the heights of that Olivia Rodrigo song that briefly made Carpenter into the villain in a love triangle pop music soap opera in 2021, but now Carpenter's on her way to something of her own. "Nonsense" was recorded in Nashville with producer Julian Bunetta (Thomas Rhett, Maren Morris) and is full of steel guitar, but it almost feels like nobody has noticed the country undertones of the song. And the dozens of completely new "Nonsense" outros that Carpenter tailored for every concert and TV appearance she did this year just add some fun unpredictability (and lots of dick jokes) to what was already one of my favorite songs in recent memory.
2. Olivia Rodrigo - "Bad Idea Right?"
#11 Pop Airplay, #7 Hot 100
Olivia Rodrigo's producer and co-writer Dan Nigro said he campaigned for "Bad Idea Right?" to be the first single from Guts. And I don't think that would've been a good commercial decision, but I'm still glad it got in there as the second single between two more natural radio singles, it was exciting every time I heard this fast, wound up, oversharing new wave throwback on the radio.
3. Billie Eilish - "What Was I Made For?"
#7 Pop Airplay, #14 Hot 100
I still haven't seen Barbie, I'm looking forward to being able to stream it eventually but I just don't get to the theater often if I'm not taking my kids to see an animated movie. I dig that we got a zeitgeisty blockbuster that really saturated pop culture this year, though, with a huge soundtrack album that spun off three major hit singles (arguably a fourth, but "Speed Drive" was a pretty disappointing song to put Charli XCX back on the U.S. charts). Billie Eilish's placid ballads were usually the parts of her records where I'd kind of get bored and tune out, but this one totally grabbed me from the first listen, a really affecting song even without the context of the film, I hope she gets another Oscar from it.
4. Dua Lipa - "Houdini"
#12 Pop Airplay, #11 Hot 100
I don't particularly like Tame Impala or Caroline Polachek's music, so I kind of roll my eyes at one of the biggest pop stars of the era seemingly pivoting to cater to critics with a lead single produced by Tame Impala's Kevin Parker and Polachek's main producer Danny L. Harle. That being said, Dua Lipa has really not disappointed me once yet, and "Houdini" is no exception, this song kicks ass, she can work with whoever she wants on album #3.
5. Raye f/ 070 Shake - "Escapism"
#6 Pop Airplay, #22 Hot 100
It feels like UK pop acts are thriving in America a little more easily these days than they have in previous eras, between the US breakthroughs of Raye, PinkPantheress, Bakar, and Kenya Grace (plus established acts like Dua, Sam Smith, Adele, and Harry Styles). I just wish that Mimi Webb album got more traction here! "Escapism" was a #1 in the UK that I thought might be a little too British for American radio, or really just too dark and heady. But it really took off and grew on me, and it was a total surprise for G.O.O.D. Music also-ran 070 Shake to wind up on a major hit seemingly out of nowhere.
6. Post Malone - "Chemical"
#6 Pop Airplay, #13 Hot 100
Post Malone's status as one of the biggest stars of the streaming era was solidified this year when he became the first artist with 8 diamond-certified singles. He released a compilation of all of those songs, The Diamond Collection, that included his new single "Chemical," but at this point it seems highly unlikely that "Chemical" will ever go diamond. In fact, Post Malone seems like he's done chasing hits and is ready to just coast with whatever fanbase sticks with him now, but I think "Chemical" is one of the catchiest things he's ever made.
7. Jung Kook f/ Latto - "Seven"
#17 Pop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
K-pop's success in America was so overwhelmingly centered on BTS for so many years that I wondered if it would just kind of vanish from U.S. pop once the members of BTS started entering South Korea's mandatory military service. I started to think otherwise this year, though, since Fifty Fifty's "Cupid" was a huge Top 40 radio hit, and Stray Kids, Blackpink, Tomorrow X Together, and NewJeans all have had #1 albums in America now. On the Hot 100, BTS solo projects still dominated the most, with Jimin and Jung Kook both going to #1, but the latter's single sounded at home among American pop more than any BTS hit to date (thanks in no small part to the army of western hitmakers working on the track: Latto, Jon Bellion, Andrew Watt, Cirkut, and Theron Thomas of R. City).
8. Olivia Rodrigo - "Get Him Back!"
#9 Pop Airplay, #11 Hot 100
The possibility of "getting [someone] back" meaning either revenge or reconciliation is one of those great examples of the malleability of the English language that was just made to inspire a great pop song, and Olivia Rodrigo saw the unexploited potential just sitting there, and ran with it. I love when that happens.
9. Tate McRae - "Greedy"
#2 Pop Airplay, #7 Hot 100
Tate McRae's 2020/2021 sleeper hit "You Broke Me First" made her seem like an offbrand Canadian Billie Eilish, but I liked just about every other single she released over the next two years as she seemed to gravitate towards a more conventional dance pop sound that suited her better. I really thought last year's "Uh Oh" could be the one that broke big, but instead it was "Greedy," with a hilarious video of McRae driving a Zamboni and doing Britney-style choreography all over a hockey rink.
10. Miley Cyrus - "Flowers"
#1 Pop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
I'm always surprised more major stars don't launch a lead single in early January, especially these days, when the Christmas singles clogging up the Hot 100 all December suddenly clear out and leave a ton of space for new songs to thrive. This year Miley Cyrus took advantage of that vacuum and unexpectedly reversed her decade-long commercial decline since Bangerz with the first blockbuster song of the year. "Flowers" definitely suffered a little from being so overplayed for the entire year, but I was still pleasantly surprised that I could enjoy something from her at this point as much as I liked this and the follow-up singles "River" and "Jaded."
11. PinkPantheress f/ Ice Spice - "Boy's A Liar, Pt. 2"
#7 Pop Airplay, #3 Hot 100
It's interesting to me when two artists collaborate for the first time and it instantly makes a bigger impact on the charts than anything they'd done individually. The most dramatic example of that in 2023 was Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves, but PinkPantheress and Ice Spice both seemed to immediately level up after they released this. Weirdly it's one of my least favorite tracks by either of them, but it's grown on me, it's cute.
12. Doja Cat - "Attention"
#39 Pop Airplay, #31 Hot 100
Doja Cat spent a lot of the year deriding the two massive multiplatinum albums that made her into a household name, 2019's Hot Pink and 2021's Planet Her, as mediocre "cash grabs," and generally berating her fans, doing sketchy stuff like wearing a shirt with Sam Hyde's face on it, and so on. Looking back now, after she's gotten another #1 single, successfully released her album Scarlet, and is currently headlining her first arena tour, it doesn't really seem like all that controversy actually slowed Doja Cat down at all. For a few weeks, though, Scarlet's first single "Attention" completely floundered on the charts like nothing else she's released in the last five years, and it seemed like she might really be in her flop era. I guess she just needed that one song to be the sacrificial lamb, I really think it's one of the best songs she's done since Amala, but go figure, Top 40 radio hated it.
13. Taylor Swift - "Karma"
#1 Pop Airplay, #2 Hot 100
Taylor Swift's enormous fanbase never lost faith, but there were a few years there where Swift kind of opted out of playing the radio game while notching a series of purely streaming-driven #1 singles from Folklore, Evermore, and Taylor's Version re-recordings. Then "Anti-Hero" and Midnights brought Taylor roaring back as the queen of pop radio in late 2022, and there was just an insane wave of Swiftie excitement throughout 2023: the Eras tour and movie, two more Taylor's Version albums, the belated chart-topping success of the grating Lover track "Cruel Summer," polar opposite hysteria over the villainous English boyfriend and the heroic all-American boyfriend. It's all been kind of exhausting, like a replay of the first decade of Taylor's career in fast-forward. Amidst all that, I was a little disappointed with how Midnights started to seem like an afterthought, from the perfunctory "well track 1 is getting a lot of streams" single release of "Lavender Haze" to the ill-fitting Ice Spice remix of "Karma" that pop stations wisely dropped after about a day to continue playing the album version.
14. Dua Lipa - "Dance the Night"
#1 Pop Airplay, #6 Hot 100
Mark Ronson was one of many producers Dua Lipa was in the studio with during the making of her second album that wasn't on Future Nostalgia, so I strongly suspect that "Dance the Night" was just a song they had lying around that Ronson decided to make some use of when he was hired to produce the Barbie soundtrack. Either way, it certainly sounds like a leftover from previous record, especially compared to the subsequent reboot of her sound with "Houdini." But hey, I love Future Nostalgia, I'm happy to get one more dose, and "Ooh my outfit's so tight, you can see my heartbeat tonight" is such a cute line, she's so good at this knowingly frothy disco thing.
15. Olivia Rodrigo - "Vampire"
#2 Pop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
I prefer Olivia Rodrigo's rockers, but I like how "Vampire" was sort of a hybrid ballad/rocker, was probably smart to launch the album by splitting the difference between "Drivers License" and "Good 4 U." My local station usually played the clean edit that simply snipped out a beat to turn "goddamn" into "damn," effectively giving a massive pop hit one random measure in 7/8 in the middle of the chorus, which was really weird and funny.
16. Dominic Fike - "Mona Lisa"
#15 Pop Airplay, #89 Hot 100
A few years ago, Columbia put all its chips on Dominic Pike being the next zoomer alt-pop superstar, but his first album didn't do much. And casting him in "Euphoria" backfired hilariously when the show's entire fanbase revolted when several minutes of a season finale were taken up by Fike's character singing a lousy song. Still, I'll take a catchy song no matter where it comes from, and I was pleasantly surprised by Fike's first solo Hot 100 entry, "Mona Lisa," a song with 5 producers that include beloved underground rap guy Kenny Beats and the members of the Norwegian hit factory Stargate.
17. Rema f/ Selena Gomez - "Calm Down (Remix)"
#1 Pop Airplay, #3 Hot 100
Selena Gomez has been failing upward for a long time, she's the most-followed woman on Instagram and has one of the most forgettable #1 songs of an era full of forgettable #1s. Now, she's weirdly tolerable in a hit show with Steve Martin and Martin Short, and the Top 40-friendly remix accessory that has made "Calm Down" the most successful Afrobeats song of all time. It's a shame that "Calm Down" even got a remix, since plenty of Afrobeats songs have gotten played on U.S. R&B radio without American guest stars, but Gomez is a relatively unobtrusive presence on the track.
18. Doechii - "What It Is (Block Boy)"
#3 Pop Airplay, #29 Hot 100
20 years ago, there was a ton of R&B on pop radio, but it really disappeared as white pop stars started making increasingly club-friendly music. In 2023, it felt like that trend started to reverse at least a tiny bit, though, between the revival of Miguel's "Sure Thing," the continued ubiquity of The Weeknd, SZA's big crossover success, and her TDE labelmate Doechii's breakthrough. "What It Is (Block Boy)" was very clearly made with R&B radio in mind, with the Kodak Black guest verse, Trillville interplation, and lyrics about bandos and lemon pepper wings. The song stalled out at #16 on R&B radio, though, while it just kept growing on pop radio once TDE wisely released a solo version without the Kodak baggage. I guess it makes sense, there is something very bubblegum about "What It Is," and it's expertly put together, that session bassist is really going in on the bridge.
19. Doja Cat - "Paint The Town Red"
#1 Pop Airplay, #1 Hot 100
I didn't like the Scarlet single that hit as the one that missed, "Attention." But I enjoyed the use of the Dionne Warwick sample, and even if it wasn't intended as a Burt Bacharach tribute, it was cool that a song with a Bacharach writing credit went to #1 just 7 months after he passed away (and just a year after Doja had a top 10 hit with a Leiber & Stoller writing credit -- what an unlikely torchbearer for the Brill Building greats!).
20. Sam Smith - "I'm Not Here To Make Friends"
#24 Pop Airplay, #71 Hot 100
If you played the singles from Sam Smith's Gloria for someone who'd never heard them, I don't think they'd ever guess that "Unholy" was the song went to #1 around the world and "I'm Not Here To Make Friends" is the one that languished in the lower reaches of the charts. Maybe it was just too different from Smith's latest hit, maybe it would've hit bigger back when "I'm not here to make friends" was a newer catchphrase, but I don't know, I thought this was an excellent single that deserved better.
The 10 Worst Pop Radio Hits of 2023:
1. JVKE - "Golden Hour"
2. Miley Cyrus - "Used To Be Young"
3. NF - "Happy"
4. David Kushner - "Daylight"
5. Nicki Minaj - "Last Time I Saw You"
6. Melanie Martinez - "Void"
7. Charlieonnafriday - "Enough"
8. Meghan Trainor - "Mother"
9. David Guetta, Anne-Marie and Coi Leray - "Baby Don't Hurt Me"
10. Jax - "Cinderella Snapped"
Previously: The 20 Best Pop Radio Hits of 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.
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on Wednesday, December 06, 2023 at 7:34 AM.
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