Something I dig about country music is that it's one place where grizzled guys over 30 can become stars. And compared to dudes like Chris Stapleton or Jelly Roll, who put in a lot of years in the music industry before they hit it big, Bryan Martin has a particularly hardscrabble biography: an oil rig worker, bull rider and football player who got addicted to painkillers, enlisted in the army, and attempted suicide before "We Ride" became a sleeper hit from an album he released in 2023. Here's the 2024 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month. 

I often find SZA's success more exciting than the music itself, in the sense that it's just cool to see a Black woman becoming a superstar on her own terms after a decade of the industry trying to turn a lot of women into the next Beyonce or Rihanna without either succeeding or allowing them to be their own individuals. And after the protracted saga of SZA waiting years to release SOS and not even getting to choose what songs were on it, it feels like she's finally getting more flexibility to release whatever she want. Right now it's unclear whether "Saturn" is from a deluxe version of SOS or an entire new album called Lana. But it seems like she has a lot of unreleased songs ready to go, and "Saturn" is doing great on pop radio without really feeling like a pop move. 

I love seeing Megan and Glo team up for their recent tour and this song, and it looks like they have another song together on Meg's new album, looking forward to that, they're really leading the charge for women in southern rap these days along with Latto.

My friend Robbie is a huge Joywave fan -- like, it probably would be more accurate than not to say he is Joywave's biggest fan in the world. So when they release new albums I usually check them out based on his enthusiasm, and I like Permanent Pleasure, but especially "Scared," I think it's my favorite single they've released to date. 

I recently wrote a Billboard piece about pop music synchs in television, and unsurprisingly we ranked "Stranger Things" pretty highly for its ability to put old songs like "Running Up That Hill" on the charts. And I have to imagine the show's popularity played a role in actor Joe Keery's musical side project blowing up on TikTok and now pop radio, at this point I wouldn't be surprised if Maya Hawke's album ends up with a hit single too. 

For most of the 21st century, the dominant sound of hard rock radio has been a bland slush of post-grunge and nu-metal. In the last few years, metalcore has emerged as the sound of the moment, although a lot of its top bands kind of sound like a slightly different kind of bland slush. Occasionally, though, a really catchy song emerges out of the metalcore soup, and this year it's been "I Was Alive." 

Bryson Tiller's biggest solo hit since the breakout success of Trapsoul nearly a decade ago was originally released on a Soundcloud mixtape. And unfortunately it sounds like a Soundcloud loosie that was recorded in a tin can, I find this whole trebly wheeze of a song irritating.