The top-selling album of 2024 was Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, but none of its songs made the year-end top 20. For all of its phenomenal success (juiced by frequent special edition re-releases), Tortured Poets didn’t really break through to the wider culture. If it had, lead single ‘Fortnight’ would be higher than #22 on this list.
At #23 is Luke Combs’ ‘Fast Car,’ the Tracy Chapman cover that reached #8 on the prior year’s list.
SZA holds both the 19th and 20th slots on the year-end Billboard Hot 100. Yesterday’s ‘Saturn’ is followed up by ‘Snooze,’ a hit from her album SOS that was so big it first showed up at #9 on the 2023 year-end list.
At #21 is the second Doja Cat song of the week. ‘Paint the Town Red,’ the lead single from her 2023 album Scarlet, also showed up on that 2023 list, at #52. It was Doja Cat’s first solo #1 hit late that year, and carried that success into 2024.
Male artists might have dominated the top ten of the year-end Billboard Hot 100, but the ladies hold eight of the ten positions in the rest of the top 20.
At #18 is Chappell Roan with ‘Good Luck, Babe!,’ a song I slot just behind Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Espresso’ on my own Song of the Year lineup. And coming in at #19, with the first of two tracks in the top 20, is SZA.
The next songs on the year-end Billboard Hot 100 are a pair of bangers: Billie Eilish’s ‘Birds of a Feather‘ at #15 and Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Please Please Please‘ at #16.
At #17 is the second single from Doja Cat’s 2023 album Scarlet. ‘Agora Hills’ is a sexy love song named for Agoura Hills, the city where Doja grew up. The intentional misspelling is a nod to agoraphilia, the love of public life and crowds, as the song references going public with a love affair.
The week of January 5, 1985, saw two repeats atop the Billboard Hot 100: Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin‘ and Duran Duran’s ‘The Wild Boys.’
At #3 was a song decidedly less emblematic of the 1980s: The Honeydrippers’ cover of the 1959 hit ‘Sea of Love.’
The Honeydrippers was the brainchild of Led Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant, who formed the group in 1981 to play some of his best-loved songs from the 50s. Band members rotated in and out, and included Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.
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