The 50 Best Songs of 2024 (So Far): Staff List

Wow there are a lot of songs already this year, huh? A facile observation, of course — there are literally millions of new songs uploaded to streaming every year, if not every month — but this year, well, it just feels like there are more. Certainly on the Billboard charts, and certainly compared to other recent years, when it often seemed like we barely got any new songs at all the first few months, and mostly had to make do with leftovers from the year(s) prior. This year, it’s been one full meal after another of oven-fresh, piping-hot new jams — ones actually from 2024 — to make it very likely the most memorable first half of the year for new music so far this decade.

All the big albums from reliable A-listers that we’ve gotten have helped a great deal there, of course. But beyond those, we’ve also gotten breakout hits from brand new pop superstars, burgeoning radio fixtures and streaming success stories in the making. We’ve gotten comebacks from old favorites, who have re-crashed the charts seemingly through the collective force of will of them and their rabid fanbases. And of course, we’ve gotten some of the fieriest, most vicious (and most playlist-sticking) diss tracks of our lifetimes, which have been raising the temperature in hip-hop and pop since the coldest months of winter.

It all adds up to a first six months of songs that have left us more fed than we can remember being at this point in the year in a long time. Here’s our favorite 50 so far — songs that either were released or peaked on the Billboard charts in 2024 — and we can’t wait to see what’s still left on the menu from here.