The Daily - The Year in Music

Episode Date: December 27, 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.

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 Perelis, John Caramanica, and Lindsay Zolats 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. ["Darling Moves on Me Come Shockula"] So this is 360 from Charli XCX's album, Brat. Charli XCX was one of a bunch of young women who had huge moments in pop this year.

John Pirellas, Bratt 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 so it was very rich in

text, subtext, meta text and internet interaction. I like the music, I liked 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 like culture-wide phenomenon, right? How did that happen? I think a lot of it had to do with Charlie being really savvy about the sort of extra musical aspects of pop stardom these days. That it had this really bold, eye-grabbing cover with this

very distinct slime green that really jumped out at you and this low-res font that just said Brat and that was endlessly memed, seemed like it was made to be memed, and just sort of 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. So 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, sort of the meta-commentary and also the meta-commentary about sort of the album rollout,

the packaging, the marketing strategy of the album that arguably became bigger than the music itself to talk about the Bratt phenomenon were, for better or worse, not just talking about the music. John Caramanica? Album-wise, to me, I find Charlie an unconvincing vocalist. I do not enjoy listening to Bratt. 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 Beyonce's voice often. I think of Britney'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. So 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. Well, Lindsay, what does that mean, the daily is brat? Uh... How long do we have here? No, I just wanted... One point that I wanted to respond to, what John said, I think Charli's someone, again, like, not what we think of

as a traditional powerhouse pop vocalist in the way that is, you know, getting to the echelon of fame that she, that Brat has taken her to. -♪ It's okay to just admit the identity... -♪ fame that she, that Brat has taken her to. Charlie's a vocalist who uses auto-tune and other filters and vocal manipulations in a way that is artful and interesting, I think, but not, you know, the way that we're used to hearing in a top 40 hit necessarily are not a pop hit. Like I think in a lot of ways she's, she manipulates her voice more like a lot of rappers do these days. Jon Perelis, anything to add? I'm not sure that Daley is Bratt.

And why not? Not messy enough, not confused enough, not ambivalent enough. Bratt is extremely sophisticated electronically, but also has imperfections and mistakes and edges. And I know that all of this is gonna get edited out because it's the daily. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Okay, let's hear from another young female artist whose music seemed to be everywhere this year. So this is Good Luck Babe by Chapp Chapel Rhone's name before 2024, and she ended up being one of the artists

I listened to the most this year. John Caramonica, can you talk a little bit about where Chapel Rhone came from and how she got so big? Sure. So Chapel Rhone is a great example of an artist who has been kicking around the lower tier of the music business for years. You know, people say overnight success, people say came from nowhere. And of course, that's rarely if ever the case. Chappell 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, 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. And then this year it all kind of came to a head. And I think the reason it came to a head this year is not to go back to Charlie, but I think Chappell-Rone is an

incredibly strong traditional songwriter. I think the songs are so well structured. And I think at root, they're very studied. And 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 XCX 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 sort of 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. And if you think about a lot of the way, you know, the sort of post Taylor Swift wave of pop music, that there's this sort of whispery, you know,

not a lot of variation in the melody, just almost the more like diaristic confessional lyric that Taylor Swift has kind of, and the people, just almost the more like diaristic, confessional lyric that Taylor Swift has kind of, and the people in her wake have really tapped into. I think Chapel offers a sonic alternative to that. These are big, almost, you know, Broadway big melodies. Like these are songs that can be belted on a stage and with big cathartic emotion. Well, John Perales, people really identified with Chappell-Rone the human being, right?

Like 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. Uh, I mean, 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 Lady Gaga in her. There's Cyndi Lauper in her. I mean, there are all these voices and there's her own powerful

lung power. She's a real strong singer. It also can't be underestimated that Chappell-Rone is singing songs about queer love, queer lust, queer disappointment. Like, these are things that have often been subliminally encoded into pop music and no longer are subliminally encoded. And I think there's a real power on top of the structure of the songs, on top of the power of the voice.

There is this added layer to it, I think is speaking very loudly, especially for a younger generation that is ready for that. And I think that's really important. I think people speaking very loudly, especially for a younger generation that is ready for that. And 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 Chapel Rowan audience is almost like 5X Erastor 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 song, John Perales? I was initially resistant to this song because I thought it sounded like sort of 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, you know, she has this defining summer hit in Espresso and it's out of nowhere, it's kind of quirky and funny and in some ways has the markings of like a potential one-hit wonder song, you know, 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. The one-two punch of those singles showed

that Sabrina Carpenter from the outset was like, 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 showcased different strengths of hers was really impressive this year and kind of made her one of the year's breakout stars. Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Rhone, and Charli XCX all had massive years, but the number one album of the year by far came from an industry veteran, Taylor Swift. 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 sort of the album on which Taylor Swift is writing the enormous success of the Arrows Tour, which began, what, a decade ago at this point? When I was seven. Yes. And so 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. It didn't... 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. And 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 this sound, we've heard this cadence, we've heard the way she double times into the verse. And 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. Let's take a break and we'll be right back with more of the music of 2024. 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? Psst. I see dead people. ["I See Dead People"] ["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're the same age. They emerged roughly around the same time with two different value propositions for

the direction that hip-hop should 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 kind of emotional storytelling. It's pop oriented both in the nature of the songwriting and also simply because a billion people like it. That's the Drake proposition. And 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 Kenrick the Rapper of 10 years ago, telling stories, complicated double-triple entendres, 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 Boomin album where he says, There's no big three, it's just big me. Big three is a reference to Drake, J. 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. And what followed were about two to three months of back and forth songs.

Pimp squeak pipe down, you ain't in no big three, SZA got you wiped down. to three months of back and forth songs. Songs of a shockingly personal nature, with heinous accusations leveled in each direction. In total, I think damaged Drake's stock. And elevated Kendrick's stock. Dear Adonis, I'm sorry that that man is your father, let me be honest. And elevated Kendrick's stock. 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. And that's beating Drake at his own game. In the dyad, Drake is the hit maker. And Kendrick took that from him 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. You know, the refrain of you're not like us, you know, 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 kind of made that song, you know, the anthem of 2024 for better and for worse. Let's take another little break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about how country music took over pop. It felt like everywhere I turned this year, there was another pop musician going country. Can we hear Texas Hold'em by Beyoncé. So this song is from Beyoncé's album Cowboy Carter.

This album featured appearances by famous country artists Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, but Beyoncé herself said, it's not a country album, it's a Beyoncé album. John Perelis, 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 confining it is. So the message is sort of right out there on the surface of this album. Beyonce's saying, you know, 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 Rhiannon Giddens 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 Beyonce, it can't be ignored. I mean, I think that's what makes it a Beyonce album is it can't be ignored. She's too big. Beyonce 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 wanna signify that they like 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 like, you know, want to support country music with an asterisk. Cowboy Carter is the album to get behind if you feel that way. And I think almost to a fault, it's a record that feels very thesis driven to me and I think. Homeworky. Yeah and 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 Beyonce is having through her music with her most dedicated listeners about, in this case, the role of black Americans in shaping popular music. And I think as to your point about thesis, it does feel like there is a lesson in this. And 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 Shaboozy. -♪ One, here comes the two to the three to the four bar song tipsy by Shibuzy. Lindsay, this song was inescapable last summer.

Talk to us about Shibuzy. Still inescapable as we're entering winter. It, I believe, 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 don't... I... help.

This is one too where like I'm open to theories because I truly do not understand why this song is as popular as it is. ["Tish"] Everybody at the bar get tish. 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 Shaboozy 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 Shibuzy song is based on an interpolation of J. Kwon'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 Shaboozy 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. And those people maybe are not represented in mainstream media, but they exist. They're real. And the success of these songs indicates to me that we are in a maturing of 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 Perales? Well, I think, you know, Shaboos 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. And 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. And I think there's gonna 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 kind of a barrier to this hybrid, but Tipsy broke through. So I think more of that's going to be happening. Unlike Beyoncé, who had to go around country radio, Tipsy got played. And 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 Wallin. This is from Post Malone's country album, F1 Trillion. Morgan Wallin is a huge country artist, Post Malone, not traditionally a country artist, but he went to Nashville and made this album.

John Perales, 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 Combs, 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 sort of singer-songwriter-y phase, and 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 like 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.

And why are we seeing so many pop stars going country? I think there's a couple 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. No person under 30 genuinely thinks that or genuinely feels that that's like a generational problem that people older should work through. So there's that. I also think country music is big business.

Country music is very popular. That is a huge audience. And it is an audience that maybe is a little bit, if any audience is cloistered, maybe the country music audience is cloistered. So Post Malone didn't say, unlike Beyonce, he didn't say, I wanna make a concept art piece about what it means for me,

an interloper to make a country album. He just said, he picked up 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. Ooh. Baby, you blame me and baby I blame blame you. Oh, that ain't the truth.

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 Doar with production support by Franny Carr-Toth and original music by Diane Wong. It was engineered by Daniel Ramirez. Special thanks to Sia Michael, Sam Sifton, Karen Gans,

Lauren Manley, Alicia Baitup, Sarah Curtis, Alex Barron, Tina Antolini, Elissa Dudley, Paula Schuman, and Sam Dolmik. That's it for The Daily. I'm Melissa Kirsch. See you on Monday.