Continuing my personal 2024 Oscar nominations, today I will be writing about the race for Best Supporting Actress.
I had fewer candidates for this category than for Supporting Actor, and my list ended up having significant overlap with the Academy’s — three out of five. Nice to see them get it mostly right for a change.
Continuing my countdown of 2024 notable album releases by women…
The Ladies of 2024
#3 – Ariana Grande – Eternal Sunshine
This was the first album to drop of all the ones I’m featuring, and though it has faded from the conversation, it remains one of the year’s best new releases.
Ariana Grande’s seventh album is 35 minutes of pop heaven, and maybe the breeziest album ever inspired by a divorce.
At #3 this week is the second single from Ariana Grande’s album Eternal Sunshine. I wrote briefly about the album a couple of weeks ago after listening to it once. Since then I’ve played it multiple times and liked it more each time through. This may well be her finest work yet.
‘We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love)’ is a splendid song, and already her second #1 hit from this album. The song debuted in the top spot, giving her the most number one debuts by any woman in history (with seven). Only Drake (nine) has more.
In the mid-2010s I was briefly an Ariana Grande fan. I was particularly enamored of her 2014 album My Everything and its follow-up, 2016’s Dangerous Woman. Dangerous Woman, in particular, is a stellar pop collection.
Then, between 2018 and 2020, Grande put out three straight albums that left me cold. Sweetener was fine but unremarkable. Thank U, Next, despite its massive sales and trio of hit singles, went in a direction I just couldn’t follow. I barely listened to Positions. I pretty much wrote her off.
Returning to my look at a recent edition of the Billboard Hot 100, today’s track is a collaboration between The Weeknd and Ariana Grande that sits at #6.
‘Die For You’ is a perfect example of how TikTok has reshaped the music industry. This song first appeared on The Weeknd’s 2016 album Starboy and was released as that album’s sixth single. It peaked at #43 on this chart back then and had seemingly run its course.
Meet Me In Montauk 