2024 in music: Brat summer and Eras Tour meant it was the year of the female popstar

Eva Osborne

Taylor Swift was recently crowned this year’s global top artist by Spotify with more than 26.6 billion global streams in 2024.

Fans flocked to stream her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, which she released in April of this year. But Swift was not the only popstar enjoying success from her 2024 album, and we'll get to her later.

Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, and Charli XCX all skyrocketed in terms of popularity this year, and Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish appeared alongside Taylor Swift in the top 10 artists streamed globally, according to Spotify statistics.

2024 was undoubtedly the year of the female popstar. Let's talk albums, statistics, and cultural impact - here are five of 2024's biggest singing sensations.

Did you have a brat summer?

Charli XCX called, and she wants to know if you had a brat summer this year.

The English singer is no stranger to the charts, as her hits like 'Boom Clap', 'Fancy', and 'I Love It' earned her global recognition.

She never really established herself as a consistent pop chart-topper however, but this changed when the release of her sixth album Brat rocked the worlds of 20- and 30-somethings everywhere.

Laura Snapes of The Guardian called the album a masterpiece, with Brittany Spanos of Rolling Stone writing that Brat was a "hyperpop rollercoaster of post-Saturn return, early-thirties anxieties, and It-girl bravado".

The lead single 'Von Dutch' was released in February, followed by '360' in May.

The album itself, which was created for summer parties and club nights, was released on June 7th to universal critical acclaim.

It achieved a Metacritic score of 95, the highest for any album released in 2024, becoming one of Metacritic's top 20 highest-rated albums of all time.

As well as achieving chart success, Charli XCX went on to mould the pop culture landscape through 'bratification'.

The album's cover art became a viral trend and received widespread media coverage. It was even used by Kamala Harris in her 2024 presidential campaign.

'Apple' became a viral dancing trend, and her collaboration with Billie Eilish for a remix of 'Guess' debuted on top of the UK Singles Chart, making it her second number-one single after her feature on Icona Pop's 'I Love It'.

Chappell Roan's rise to stardom

Chappell Roan experienced a sudden and sharp rise to fame this year, as her 2023 album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess gained unprecedented attention.

Her single 'Good Luck, Babe!', released in April of this year, made fifth place on Spotify's most viral global songs list.

This year, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess garnered what has been described as a "cult following" and became regarded as a "sleeper hit" after not achieiving immediate commercial success in the year of its release.

Roan's rise to popularity was most definitely influenced by her role as a supporting act on Olivia Rodrigo's Guts Tour.

By June 2024, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess had climbed the charts, peaking at number one in Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK, plus within the top five of the US Billboard 200.

Subsequently, several of its singles ('My Kink Is Karma', 'Femininomenon', 'Casual', 'Pink Pony Club', 'Red Wine Supernova', and 'Hot to Go!') entered the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time since their release.

'Hot to Go!' became Roan's own personal YMCA, after the dance moves for the hit became viral.

She is definitely one to watch, and 2025 will undoubtedly hold more opportunities for her as her fanbase continues to grow, especially as she goes on to headline the Reading & Leeds Festival next summer.

Taylor Swift and The Tortured Poets Department

Swift released her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, in April of this year.

Singles from the album included a collaboration with Post Malone, 'Fortnight', and 'I Can Do It with a Broken Heart'.

On April 19th, The Tortured Poets Department became the first album in Spotify history to have over 300 million streams in a single day, and it became the most-streamed album in a single day in 2024.

Additionally, the album broke another record on release day as 'Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)' became the most-streamed song in a single day in Spotify history.

And finally, on April 22nd, the album became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single week.

She went on to make history and become the most decorated artist at the recent Billboard Music Awards by winning 10 awards.

These included the award for top artist and top Billboard 200 album for The Tortured Poets Department, bringing her total haul to 49.

The success of her latest album combined with the high-profile Eras Tour made 2024 an insanely successful year for Swift, and solidified her spot as one of the most famous popstars of all time.

Sabrina Carpenter and Short n' Sweet

The 25-year-old has been releasing music for years, but her 2024 album Short n' Sweet earned her a place among rising pop royalty.

She released her hit 'Espresso' in April of this year as the first single of the album. It went on to top the Billboard Global 200 and peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Carpenter went on to win the MTV Video Music Award for Song of the Year for 'Espresso', as well as the title of most streamed song globally in 2024 from Spotify.

The second single from the album, 'Please Please Please', was released in June and became her second global chart-topper and her first US Hot 100 number one single.

With these songs, she became the first female artist to hold the number one and two positions on the UK singles chart for three weeks in a row.

Short n' Sweet, her sixth studio album, was released on August 23rd. It debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 with 362,000 equivalent album units sold in its first week.

Every song from the album charted above top 50 in the Hot 100, and her third single 'Taste' released alongside the album debuted at number two on the Hot 100.

This made Carpenter the first act since The Beatles to chart their first three top five hits in the US during the same week.

Billie Eilish hits hard, not soft

Billie Eilish released her third studio album this year - Hit Me Hard and Soft. It received universal acclaim from critics, and topped the charts in over 20 countries, including Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK.

The track 'Lunch' was released as the lead single alongside the album. 'Birds of a Feather' was released as the second single from the album to great commercial success, peaking at number two on Billboard Hot 100 and in the top ten of several charts.

At the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, the album and its songs received a total of seven nominations, including Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

On its release day, Hit Me Hard and Soft received 72.7 million streams on Spotify globally, becoming Eilish's biggest streaming debut on the platform.

It also debuted with over 500 million streams globally on its first week of release, marking Eilish's biggest streaming week ever. In less than two months it surpassed 2 billion streams, becoming her fastest project to cross that mark.

In a five-star review, Helen Brown of The Independent praised how the album "whispers its way through a marvelous maze of music to deliver some big emotional wallops."

Neil McCormick from The Daily Telegraph agreed in his own five-star assessment, opining that the "heartbreak masterpiece" is "rich, strange, smart, sad and wise enough" to stand in comparison with Joni Mitchell's Blue (1971).