I posted the rap, country and R&B lists last week, finishing up the series later this week with pop. Here's the Spotify playlist:
1. Hozier - "Too Sweet"
#1 Alternative Airplay, #1 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #1 Hot 100
My wife is an enormous Hozier fan, and it's been fun to sort of watch his enormous success in 2024 through her eyes. We saw him at Merriweather Post Pavilion in May, a show that had sold out months before "Too Sweet" was even released, so I enjoyed that moment of seeing someone perform their biggest hit right at the moment that it was everywhere, but the audience was still full of longtime diehard fans who loved the album cuts just as much.
2. The Last Dinner Party - "Nothing Matters"
#7 Alternative Airplay, #15 Rock & Alternative Airplay
I like this year's breakout UK indie rock girl group a lot more than their predecessors, Wet Leg, although I think they're doing a pretty similar insouciant self-aware thing, just with a more luxuriant aesthetic. The follow-up single "Sinner" is also really good and was closer to being my top Spotify track for 2024, but I think the guitar solo on "Nothing Matters" puts it a little higher for me.
3. Badflower - "Detroit"
#11 Alternative Airplay, #3 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #5 Rock & Alternative Airplay
I probably note this every year when I do this list, but the 'Mainstream Rock' chart has been ironically named for a couple decades now because it's even more niche and distant from pop culture than the Alternative chart. Some classic household names like Metallica still dominate the chart, but a lot of it is bands you didn't realize still existed like Seether and bands you may have never heard of in the first place like Badflower, who totally blew me away with the best song of their career recently.
4. Sum 41 - "Landmines"
#1 Alternative Airplay, #19 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #2 Rock & Alternative Airplay
The custom for farewells in rock is to generally wait until you're so old you can barely play anymore and haven't written a hit song in 40 years, and do one last tour. The Canadian pop punk band Sum 41 however, decided to go for a farewell album and tour just 20 years after their commercial peak, and the lead single was so good it became one of their biggest songs ever, making a good argument for rock retirement in your 40s.
5. The Marias - "Run Your Mouth"
#16 Alternative Airplay, #27 Rock & Alternative Airplay
It's interesting these days when albums wind up having two hits with totally different audiences in different formats, one for radio and one for streaming. The uptempo lead single for L.A. indie pop band The Marias' second album became their radio breakthrough, but a few months later, one of their quieter tracks, "No One Noticed," took off on TikTok and became their first Hot 100 entry. Personally, I like "Run Your Mouth" more.
6. Billie Eilish - "Lunch"
#8 Alternative Airplay, #9 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #5 Hot 100
Billie Eilish made much ado about not releasing an advance single from Hit Me Hard And Soft, but also wanted to control what was the first single from the album once it did come out. That plan quickly went off the rails as "Birds Of A Feather" became a streaming sensation and eventually dominated pop radio, but the nominal lead single "Lunch" was also pretty great and followed in the footsteps of "Bad Guy" and "Therefore I Am" as an alternative radio hit.
7. Pearl Jam - "Dark Matter"
#6 Alternative Airplay, #1 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #1 Rock & Alternative Airplay
In the '90s, Pearl Jam were a great singles band that acted like they didn't care about being a singles band, and eventually they made enough counterintuitive single choices that they stopped dominating rock radio. They've circled around to having pretty excellent singles on their last few albums, though, especially all three singles from Dark Matter, and the title track became the band's first #1 on Mainstream Rock since "Given To Fly" way back in 1998.
8. Green Day - "Dilemma"
#1 Alternative Airplay, #1 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #1 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Green Day have been a lot more efficient and unambiguously ambitious about keeping their spot at the top than reluctant rock stars like Pearl Jam, but Green Day have really released a lot of mediocre, samey singles over the last couple decades. So "Dilemma" was a pleasant surprise, just a nice hard hitting combination of Billie Joe Armstrong's affection for '50s rock in the verses with a big sludgy '90s chorus.
9. Dexter and the Moonrocks - "Sad In Carolina"
#1 Alternative Airplay, #11 Rock & Alternative Airplay
For the last decade or two, a band I've never heard of becoming suddenly ubiquitous on alternative radio has usually led to a lot of annoyance and disappointment. But Dexter and the Moonrocks, the "western space grunge" band from Texas who recently topped hit #1 with their first song on the chart, seem pretty promising, I hope they continue to thrive.
10. Beabadoobee - "Beaches"
#12 Alternative Airplay, #22 Rock & Alternative Airplay
I really like Beabadoobee's albums, but I had kinda resigned myself to the idea that the time she was sampled on Powfu's hit "Death Bed" was the peak of her mainstream exposure and she'd remain kind of a cult artist. And I was pleased to be proven wrong this year when her Rick Rubin-produced third album This Is How Tomorrow Moves hit #1 on the UK charts and did better on American radio than her previous albums, with a splashy rollout and lots of music videos where Beatrice Laus looked gorgeous.
11. The Cure - "A Fragile Thing"
#15 Alternative Airplay, #16 Rock & Alternative Airplay
A lot of people were blown away by "Alone," The Cure's first new song in 16 years, partly because it was a slow 8-minute behemoth that was so outwardly unconcerned with radio airplay. When I wrote about Songs of a Lost World, though, the second single "A Fragile Thing" appealed to me a lot more, and I'm glad it's done better than I expected on the radio. Yesterday I had to drive to work at 5:30am, and "A Fragile Thing" was the first song that came on the radio after I got in the car, sounded really good in that weird context.
12. Djo - "End of Beginning"
#4 Alternative Airplay, #5 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #11 Hot 100
The last season of "Stranger Things" had a powerful effect on the charts, launching Kate Bush and Metallica tracks from the '80s onto the charts. and this year one of the actors on the show wound up with a fluke viral sensation on TikTok that also became a fairly major Hot 100 hit. Joe Keery doesn't seem to be very overtly trying to parlay his TV fame into a Don Johnson-style music career, but this song is good, I wouldn't be mad if it did turn him into some kind of radio fixture.
13. Jack White - "That's How I'm Feeling"
#1 Alternative Airplay, #21 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #2 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Since the end of the White Stripes, Jack White has done a pretty good job of maintaining his status and maybe the biggest rock star under 50 (at least until next year), but it wasn't until he surprise released his sixth solo album, No Name, that he hit #1 on alternative radio for the first time since "Icky Thump." "That's How I'm Feeling" hits some familiar marks, playing the same riff for most of the song, first quiet and then really really loud, and it's extremely satisfying to blast on a car radio.
14. Beartooth - "I Was Alive"
#1 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #13 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Hard rock radio has been a bland slush of post-grunge and nu-metal for a couple of decades, but at some point someone decided to brand that stuff as "metalcore" and it's very, very popular. Most metalcore bands cannot write a song to save their lives, but "I Was Alive" is a good one. I can still imagine it being way better with less bland production and possibly a more expressive singer, but as is, it's still a really catchy standout song in a scene that I have very little time for.
15. Myles Smith - "Stargazing"
#1 Alternative Airplay, #2 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #20 Hot 100
We've had feelgood folk pop hits like this every few months for the last 10 years or so, and "Stargazing" comes from Myles Smith, a Black Brit from a Jamaican family. I haven't listened to any of his other songs yet, but I could definitely see him sticking around and being as big as the Lumineers, if not Ed Sheeran.
16. Blink-182 - "All In My Head"
#7 Alternative Airplay, #8 Rock & Alternative Airplay
After Blink-182's Enema of the State-era lineup reunited, they released a couple of singles I hated that veered chaotically from puerile ("Edging") to maudlin ("One More Time"). With "All In My Head," however, I hear some recognizable remnants of the songs I loved by the band from 2003.
17. Future Islands - "The Tower"
#33 Alternative Airplay, #26 Rock & Alternative Airplay
Future Islands have stuck to their guns with a deeply unique sound for over 15 years now, and I love that a band from Baltimore's 2000s DIY scene can still have a foothold in the mainstream today, just awesome brilliant dudes.
18. The Black Crowes - "Wanting And Waiting"
#15 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #14 Rock & Alternative Airplay
More than most other Gen X retro rockers, I really think the Black Crowes' early albums have aged well and those guys can really play. So I was happy to see the Robinson brothers work things out and make a new album with probably my favorite producer working today, Jay Joyce.
19. Good Neighbours - "Home"
#8 Alternative Airplay, #10 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #77 Hot 100
Alternative radio has kind of become the de facto home for a lot of moody, quirky and/or atmospheric songs that blow up on TikTok but aren't bit and bright enough to be pop hits. Sometimes those songs are a little too bland to stick in my head, but "Home" is a a pretty strong example of whatever you call this genre of viral songs.
20. Linkin Park - "The Emptiness Machine"
#1 Alternative Airplay, #1 Mainstream Rock Airplay, #1 Rock & Alternative Airplay, #21 Hot 100
The first time I did this list in 2012, the #5 song was "Weatherman" by Dead Sara, an absolute scorcher that instantly made Emily Armstrong one of my favorite rock singers. Dead Sara made three albums but never managed to get any further than the modest success of "Weatherman." Now, though, Armstrong is the new lead singer of one of the biggest bands in the world, a kind of bizarre and surreal position to suddenly be thrust into that has made her the object of a lot of positive and negative attention. I still love her voice and she has some great moments on the From Zero, but I kinda wish it was the debut album by a new band, it is a little weird to think of Linkin Park existing without Chester Bennington.
The 10 Worst Rock/Alternative Radio Hits of 2024:
1. Shinedown - "A Symptom of Being Human"
2. Artemas - "I Like The Way You Kiss Me"
3. Hardy - "Psycho"
4. Pierce The Veil - "Karma Police"
5. Royal Otis - "Sofa King"
6. Honestav f/ Mod Sun - "I'd Rather Overdose"
7. AJR - "Yes, I'm A Mess"
8. Glass Animals - "Creatures In Heaven"
9. Imagine Dragons - "Eyes Closed"
10. Black Keys - "Beautiful People (Stay High)"
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