Last week, Billy Ray Cyrus, of “Achy Breaky Heart” and Gene the pool guy in Mulholland Drive fame, performed at President Donald Trump’s inaugural ball. It was a disaster — so much so that his son, Trace, penned an emotional message on Instagram about (and to) his dad. “The day you adopted me was the happiest day of my life. Sadly the man that I wanted so desperately to be just like I barely recognize now,” he wrote. “It seems this world has beaten you down and it’s become obvious to everyone but you.” Billy Ray allegedly responded to his son’s concern by threatening him with legal action.
Trace’s sister, Miley, is reportedly staying out of the drama.
“Miley used to feel overwhelmed by the family drama. She worked hard to remove herself. She’s not about to get involved again,” a source told People. “She’s in a great place now. She’s thriving and looking out for herself.”
The “Flowers” singer is up for Best Country Duo/Group Performance at the 2025 Grammys for “II Most Wanted” from Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.
Previously, Miley offered a backhanded compliment to Billy Ray, crediting him for her “narcissism.” She added, “Without my dad, I know… who I am as a person wouldn’t exist. Because my dad, as a creative and as an artist, and the way his brain works, has always made me feel safer in my own mind.”
The Philadelphia Eagles demolished the Washington Commanders 55-23 on Sunday afternoon to clinch their second trip to the Super Bowl in the last three years. They will face the Kansas City Chiefs, who beat them in their last Super Bowl appearance and are looking to become the first team to three-peat in the Super Bowl era.
As is the case after every big Eagles win, it was pandemonium in the streets of Philadelphia after they won the NFC Championship, with fans taking over the city to celebrate. If you happened to try to drive through Philly between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. ET, you were almost assuredly going to end up stuck in the masses of Eagles fans partying in the streets. Those who have been in Philadelphia for big Eagles games would know to avoid getting in the car near the end of that game, but this is Paul George’s first year in Philly and he apparently did not know this information.
Fans took videos of George stuck in traffic, and he tried to play it cool but it is pretty clear from the look on his face that he had not hit the streets of Philadelphia to purposefully be part of the celebration.
This is not something PG would’ve encountered at any of his previous stops in Indiana, Oklahoma City, or Los Angeles, as Philly is a particularly unique sports ecosystem, especially when it comes to their beloved Birds. I’m not sure if George forgot the game was going on or assumed things would be contained to down by the stadium, but he has the look of a man who just wants to get home and suddenly has to navigate through thousands of drunk Philly fans. I’d advise George to avoid any trips out late on Super Bowl Sunday, or else he might reach the same fate.
2024 breakout artist and Best Rap Album Grammy nominee Doechii has secured her first solo entry to the Hot 100 with “Denial Is A River.” As the news broke, Doechii shared “a message to smaller artists,” characterizing her first official hit single as “a satire about one of the lowest points in my life.”
“My first solo entry is a satire about one of the lowest points in my life and has no hook,” she wrote on Twitter. “A message to smaller artists: Create whatever art you want, there’s really no rules.”
“Denial Is A River” has peaked at No. 65 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100 in its second week on the chart following the release of its Family Matters-inspired music video. The video is full of cameos from other rappers and comedic actors such as Baby Tate, Earl Sweatshirt, and Zack Fox. Doechii relentlessly promoted the song before that with performances on The Late Show, Genius’ Open Mic series, and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, increasing its popularity.
Thanks to the viral popularity of “Denial Is A River,” Doechii’s debut mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal, landed at No. 3 on Uproxx’s Critics Poll albums list for 2024, and making her one of the standouts of hip-hop for the year. Doechii previously entered the Hot 100 at 29 with “What It Is (Block Boy)” featuring Kodak Black and at No. 56 as a feature on Tyler The Creator’s “Balloon.”
The 2025 Super Bowl is set, and Taylor Swift will presumably be in attendance: Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs are taking on Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia Eagles. The Chiefs aren’t the only team with musical superfans, though: Zach Bryan grew up in Oklahoma, but he’s throwing his support behind Philly, so much so that in celebration of them making the big game, he decided to share “Blue Jean Baby,” a new song.
Announcing the track on Instagram, Bryan wrote, “BIRDS WIN. OUT AT MIDNIGHT. SEE YALL IN NEW ORLEANS. EP AND ALBUM BY THE END OF THE YEAR.” Then in an Instagram Story, he sought to temper expectations for the track, saying, “also! blue jean baby was a demo turned into a half song that people have been asking for for a long time. Praying no one expects anything more than that out of it. Excited it’ll be out into the world!”
As Bryan indicated in his initial Instagram post, he has a new album coming out this year. Earlier this month, he also enlisted Matthew McConaughey to help him announce Motorbreath, a film about a road trip and the making of “one final major-label album.”
The Kansas City Chiefs punched their ticket to a fifth Super Bowl in seven years on Sunday night, as they beat the Buffalo Bills in yet another thriller between the two AFC rivals. It was as good a football game as you’ll see, with both offenses operating at an incredibly high level, led by the individual brilliance of Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen.
The game ended, effectively, on a failed 4th-and-5 for Buffalo near midfield, when Steve Spagnuolo dialed up a diabolical pressure, faking a double-A gap blitz and bringing two DBs off the right side instead. Both blitzers came free at Allen, forcing him to backpedal and bail off of the orbit motion to the left and heave one downfield to an open Dalton Kincaid, who could not make the diving catch as he came back to the ball. From there, the Chiefs picked up two first downs and put the game on ice with knees.
It was a wonderful game with big plays made on both sides, but one of the talking points that emerged afterwards was the issue of how the NFL spots the football. The reason that came up is a controversial spot on a 4th-and-1 QB sneak by the Bills, who got stuffed a few times as the Chiefs knew Allen would try and go to the left side of the line and walled it off. On this particular play, Allen got extremely close to the line to gain as he got stood up by the pile, and the far side official ran in with a mark that would’ve been a first down, but the play-side official came in and marked him just short. The play-side line judge is the one that gets the final call in officiating mechanics because he had the clearest line of sight — replay from the far side showed that as Allen got close to the line, you could no longer see the ball among the sea of bodies.
Unsurprisingly, the play stood as called on review because there was not a clear angle of the ball, but it remained controversial because, one, the Chiefs were the beneficiaries and, two, it brought up the age-old complaint: why does the NFL not have a better method for spotting the ball than two old guys eyeballing it?
It’s an understandable question, one that pops up every time there’s a controversial spot in the playoffs — with bonus points if they use the chain to measure, which drives people even further insane. Recently, people have been even angrier because the NFL does actually have chips in the ball and uses that data for their Next Gen Stats feature, but does not use it for spotting the ball. So, why does the NFL have the technology to know where the ball is at all times but not use it? Well, there are two major reasons.
The first is, having data on exactly where the ball is only matters if you also can pinpoint when a player is down by contact (and when officials blew the whistle for forward progress). I’ve often asked folks who insist we should use chips to spot the ball how they would address that issue, and none can really come up with a good answer. It’s not something you can solve with sensors or the like, because it’d be impossible to determine what the contact is from — another player, the ground, a teammate, etc — or when the whistle blew without going to video.
That gets us to the second (and most important) reason the league hasn’t gone to spotting the ball via chip, which is it would bring the game to a halt after nearly every single play. If you thought the occasional replay review ruins game flow, imagine if they had to go over the video on every single play to determine exactly when a guy was down by contact, pinpoint the exact spot where the ball is, and then have the official place the ball at that exact location. It would create a slog of a game with various stoppages and would turn into a complete nightmare in hurry-up situations. There would be some easy ones, but if the point of the chip is to spot the ball exactly correct every time, you can’t pick and choose when to use it and only have it be in high-leverage situations.
That would mean reviewing every single play which, at the least, would slow down the spotting process most plays and at times require them to stop the game entirely to figure out exactly where the ball should be spotted — think about how long it takes them to review plays on the goal line, and imagine if that happened once or twice per drive. Perhaps that’s what some folks want, but I do not want every game to become a 4-hour affair with constant stops and starts to spot the ball.
The NFL has clearly looked at ways to make these processes better. They use expedited review now to correct egregious errors in real time, which is an improvement and a good way to use the technology we have without completely disrupting the game. If there were an obvious solution that didn’t completely wreck the rhythm of the game, I promise you the multi-billion dollar enterprise would have made the switch. That doesn’t exist though, so we continue to have a chain gang and officials spotting the ball.
Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.
This week saw Bruno Mars and Sexyy Red get about as raunchy as possible on a new collaboration. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
Bruno Mars promised that his Sexyy Red collaboration “Fat Juicy & Wet” would be a “strip club anthem,” and indeed, it’s a song fit for NSFW environments. Just take a look at Mars’ chorus: “Fat, juicy, and wet / I don’t even gangbang, p*ssy so good / Make me throw up a set, uh / That good kitty-kitty, good kitty-kitty.”
Tate McRae — “Sports Car”
McRae has established herself as one of the modern era’s big pop stars to watch. She’s definitely drawing from the past for inspiration, though: Her latest, “Sports Car,” comes across like a re-work of The Pussycat Dolls’ “Buttons” but modernized and all her own.
Central Cee — “Limitless”
Central Cee’s profile is growing by the day, especially with the release of his debut album, Can’t Rush Greatness. As he’s built a more stable life for himself, he expresses on “Limitless” that he’s not completely sure how to feel about it: “I’m used to fallin’ asleep to the sound of sirens / So I don’t know if I like this change, it’s too quiet / You’ll always think that the grass is greener till you step foot over there and try it.”
Travis Scott — “4X4”
Scott has been teasing “4X4” for a while now with some live performances, but at long last, the track is finally here. The track is more of Scott’s theatrical and atmospheric hip-hop, this time built on a marching band sample.
J Balvin — “Rio”
Balvin goes the personal route on his latest, “Rio.” The tender track seems him reflecting on his happy life with his partner as he sings lyrics that translate to, “Why hit the streets to look for / What is plentiful in my house?”
FKA Twigs — “Striptease”
Early in the Eusexua album cycle, FKA Twigs said the project “isn’t techno but the spirit is there.” Now that the album has been released, we can really hear what she means, and what she said makes sense: Songs like “Striptease” are definitely indebted to the aesthetics and rhythms of the genre, but as tends to be the case with Twigs songs, they also tread new ground that’s distinctly Twigs.
Djo — “Basic Being Basic”
Plenty of actors have vanity music projects, but Stranger Things favorite Joe Keery is the real deal: He was a musician before his acting career took off and he had a billion-stream hit last year with “End Of Beginning.” He’s starting 2025 off strongly, too, with “Basic Being Basic,” which he shared while announcing an upcoming album and tour.
Shygirl — “True Religion” Feat. Isabella Lovestory and PinkPantheress
Shygirl has Club Shy Room 2, a follow-up to her successful 2024 EP Club Shy, coming out soon. In the meantime, she teased the project with “True Religion,” a thumping number that features contributions from Isabella Lovestory and PinkPantheress (the latter being a reunion).
Scowl — “Not Hell, Not Heaven”
Scowl are on Dead Oceans now, which puts them in the indie big leagues alongside labelmates like Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, and Japanese Breakfast. They have a new album, Are We All Angels, on the way soon, and the group sounds like they’re justifying their signing on “Not Hell, Not Heaven,” which has a rock/punk edge that both offset and compliments the honey-sweet, hooky songwriting.
Mereba — “Phone Me”
Mereba describes her latest as “a sisterhood/friendship anthem,” saying she “just wanted a fun, joyful song celebrating my chosen sisters and brothers.” Well, mission accomplished: “Phone Me” is endlessly listenable, a warm- and woozy-sounding vibe that’s sure to soundtrack many memorable moments with pals to come.
The rumors are true: Rilo Kiley are reuniting. Jenny Lewis, Blake Sennett, Pierre de Reeder, and Dave Rock will play their first show together in over 15 years at Just Like Heaven, the single-day festival held on Saturday, May 10, at Brookside at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. The lineup also includes Vampire Weekend, Empire Of The Sun, Bloc Party, and the similarly-reunited TV On The Radio.
“We are so very excited to come back together for Just Like Heaven in Pasadena, California — Los Angeles,” Rilo Kiley wrote in a statement (they also released a teaser). “As a band, we began here, and we feel so fortunate to return among so many artists and friends, to this community we hold so dear, in such a beautiful and meaningful place.” Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig added, “I went to Just Like Heaven for the first time last year and loved it. Great vibe, great line-up. Honored to be a part of it.”
Tickets for Just Like Heaven 2025 go on sale on Friday, January 31, at 11 a.m. PT. GA passes start at $175 and VIP passes begin at $399, while children between the ages of 5 and 10 are admitted free of charge when accompanied by a pass-holding parent or guardian. You can find more information here.
Check out the full lineup for Just Like Heaven 2025 below.
Just Like Heaven 2025 Lineup
Beach Fossils
Bloc Party
Chris Cruse
Courtney Barnett
Empire Of The Sun
GROUPLOVE
Hercules & Love Affair (Live)
Panda Bear
Perfume Genius
Peter Bjorn And John
Ra Ra Riot
Rilo Kiley
Slowdive
The Drums
The Sounds
Them Jeans
Toro Y Moi
TV On The Radio
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Vampire Weekend
Wild Nothing
The annual Uproxx Music Critics Poll for 2024 is here, with nearly 300 critics from across the music landscape participating for the 7th edition. Chart performance and award recognition are useful metrics to use when trying to determine who’s the best of the best, but there’s also significant insight to be gleaned from critics, the discerning, passionate media pros who marinate in music every day, from 9-to-5 and beyond.
Hip-hop and pop frequently dominate mainstream music conversations these days, but indie is well-represented in the latest Critics Poll: Albums, songs, music videos, and album covers by guitar wielders beat out some year-defining pop and hip-hop works. So, let’s take a look at a few of the indie acts who ultimately owned the space in 2024. And, once again, check out the full poll here.
Cindy Lee
Canadian musician Patrick Flegel had an esoteric release strategy for his latest Cindy Lee album, Diamond Jubilee: It was released via YouTube or as a direct download from an antiquated-looking website, before eventually making it to Bandcamp and physical formats. It’s still not available on streaming, but none of that stopped it from becoming one of the year’s most esteemed indie projects. Our pool of critics liked it, too, ranking it as one of the year’s top albums (No. 8) and album covers (No. 15).
The Cure
It’s not surprising that The Cure can still make a solid album given their track record, but they did shock the world a little bit with just how great Songs Of A Lost World ended up being: Indiecast co-host Ian Cohen thinks its among the best projects of their storied career. In the poll, the record ended up finishing with near-identical rankings to the Cindy Lee project: No. 9 album, No. 18 album cover.
Fontaines DC
Elton John-approved Irish favorites Fontaines DC have been critical darlings since their debut album, and they continued to please with Romance. The album also finds the band reaching new commercial heights: Aside from landing the group their first placement on the Billboard 200, it also spawned two singles that wound up being top-20 releases on the US rock charts. One of them, “Starburster,” fared well on the Critics Poll, too, coming in at No. 12. The album also garnered plenty of votes and finished near the top of both the album (No. 14) and album cover (No. 12) categories.
MJ Lenderman
Lenderman crushed it in 2024, and he didn’t just lean on the strength of one song, either: Manning Fireworks ended up as one of the top-5 albums in the Critics Poll (the highest-ranking indie album at No. 4 overall), but Lenderman also has an impressive two songs in the top 20 (three if you count the Waxahatchee collaboration “Right Back To It”; more on that in a second). Charli XCX and Kendrick Lamar, arguably the two biggest artists of 2024, are the only other acts to pull that off this year, which surely means Lenderman is also brat and/or beefing with Drake.
Waxahatchee
Waxahatchee truly did it all as far as the Critics Poll goes: Thanks to the all-around effort that is Tigers Blood, Katie Crutchfield is the only indie artist to rank in the album, song, music videos, and album cover categories. The MJ Lenderman collab “Right Back To It” managed to secure the No. 3 spot on the songs list, while Tigers Blood finished at No. 5 on the album ranking (right below Lenderman at No. 4). Things like music videos and album covers might be considered afterthoughts by some artists, but Waxahatchee put care into the whole Tigers Blood experience, and people noticed.
2025 Grammys
Many of the indie acts that ranked high up in our poll have gotten some serious Grammy consideration for the 2025 awards: Waxahatchee is up for Best Americana Album, while Fontaines DC are nominated for Best Rock Album and Best Alternative Music Performance (for their aforementioned works). As for a sampling of other artists who made the Critics Poll lists but didn’t get mentioned here, Adrianne Lenker is competing for Best Folk Album with Bright Future, Jack White’s No Name is up for Best Rock Album, and St. Vincent has four nominations connected to her album All Born Screaming. Inversely, some artists on our poll who didn’t get the same Grammy love despite being eligible for this year’s ceremony include Cindy Lee, The Cure, and Jessica Pratt.
Surprises
There are no real unexpected works that managed to make the top 50 or 20 in the four Critics Poll categories: Everybody on the list deserves to be there and was voted in for a reason. That said, it might be a bit surprising to run down the lists and not see some specific artists and projects represented. Looking at Uproxx’s own list of 2024’s top albums, for example, we liked some projects more than our Critics Poll respondents did, including albums from Being Dead, DIIV, Faye Webster, Hovvdy, and Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds.
That said, it’s worth checking the extended “Other Albums” and “Other Songs” Critics Poll lists to see if your favorite artists and works made the cut there.
Check out the full Uproxx Music Critics Poll results for 2024 here.
Hip-hop is well-represented in the 2024 Uproxx Critics Poll, in a year defined as much by conflict as anything else. This is the 7th annual version of the poll, in which nearly 300 music critics from across the industry weighed in.
The conflict between Drake and Kendrick Lamar produced no fewer than four of respondents’ top songs of the year, while Kendrick’s combative surprise release GNX only fell short of the top favorite because Charli XCX’s Brat had a whole summer to stick in the collective consciousness.
2024 was the year the popular and critical consensus dovetailed, but it was also a year of unexpected breakouts, sharp stylistic swings, and the resurgence of regional aesthetics in rap. You may notice that the Los Angeles area returned to widespread prominence with an insular, exclusive approach redolent of the “for us, by us” philosophy. If “Not Like Us” was the prevailing sentiment in hip-hop, it was a sentiment everyone could get behind; community over commerce, authenticity over mass appeal. The real is back.
Be sure to check out the full poll here, and below, explore some of the artists who stood out the most this year.
Kendrick Lamar
Yeah, I know: Obvious, right? But remember: at the beginning of their tiff, any number of fans believed that Drake had a chance, that he’d learned his lesson from the embarrassment he’d suffered five years before at the hands of Pusha T. Even then, Pusha’s follow-up album barely moved the needle on the charts. Kendrick, on the other hand, turned his victory lap against Drake — who he’d pretty soundly buried in one flurry of back-to-back disses traded in a single night — into a year-long celebration of West Coast dominance, a revitalization of LA hip-hop culture, and a slew of catchphrases that have reverberated through pop culture ever since. That’s why he’s all over the list, placing at No. 1 on the songs list with “Not Like Us,” with additional appearances at No. 5 and 10 for rough-and-ready tracks “Euphoria” and “Like That” to go with a No. 2 for GNX on the albums poll.
Doechii
It took a few years, but the inevitable breakout I predicted for Doechii back in 2021 finally arrived — and did so in force, thanks to a cavalcade of imaginative visuals and a fiery, yet relatable rollout full of nods to Black girl magic, putting Alligator Bites Never Heal at No. 3 on the albums poll. Meanwhile, in typical Top Dawg fashion, her label went all out on its awareness campaign, ensuring that not a single week went by after the release of Doechii’s debut mixtape without a live performance, music video, or viral moment, locking her in as the breakout artist of the year.
Tyler The Creator
Prior to the blitzkrieg release of his eighth studio album Chromakopia, Tyler had been something of a known factor. Or, at least, that’s what the rap establishment had convinced itself. Leave it to the Odd Futurian to hit a grand slam for the umpteenth time in his increasingly unlikely career of home run hits. Tapping back into his roots — both those forged from his parental heritage and his upbringing on the South LA streets — allowed Tyler to present some of his most personal and weirdly accessible material to date, which wound up with placements at No. 7 on the albums poll, and No. 13 for “Noid” on the music videos.
GloRilla
If GloRilla wasn’t the breakout artist that Doechii was, it was only down to the fact that she’d had her own breakout a year before. But rap is a “what have you done for me lately” sort of business, and for a bit, it looked like the streets (i.e., the rap literati on social media) had turned their collective back on the Memphis upstart. But then, she dropped “Yeah Glo!” (No. 20 on our songs poll). Then, “TGIF.” Then, “Whatchu Kno About Me,” featuring her ostensible replacement Sexyy Red. It became abundantly apparent that Ms. Gloria Hallelujah Woods was here to stay. THEN, she dropped her debut album, Glorious which is the 25th favorite album in our poll, just a few months after fan-favorite mixtape Ehhthang Ehhthang. Maybe that’ll teach the skeptics to give praise where it’s due.
Surprises:
Among the surprises in this year’s poll were Drake not utterly flopping and LL Cool J overcoming hip-hop’s inherent ageism.
In Drake’s case, you might have thought that after such a complete thrashing by Kendrick Lamar, he wouldn’t have shown up at all — especially since none of his post-“Not Like Us” releases resonated much with fans. However, “Family Matters,” the final gasp in Drake’s war of words against his lyrical better, eked onto the list at No. 18 (well after all of Kendrick’s entries, mind you). Give the man some credit, he went down swinging — even if it did look a little like Batman’s first bout against Bane.
Meanwhile, in a year when rap elders like Common and Eminem failed to make an impression on critics, LL Cool J claimed a relatively solid showing at No. 42 in our ranked-choice poll. It’s kind of fitting that the whole reason hip-hop even has so much disdain for aging rappers (shout-out to Kool Moe Dee) deftly dodged the consequences of the convention he kicked off himself more than 30 years ago. It helps that he sent himself to rap boot camp; if he couldn’t keep up with modern trends, he’d prove that he remains one of rap’s most virtuoso performers.
Grammys 2025
Meanwhile, there were some key differences in our critics poll results and this year’s Grammy nominations, highlighting how “the industry” and “the streets” can sometimes disagree.
While Eminem and Common were nominated for Best Rap Album, they didn’t crack the critics poll at all on the music front, with Em’s nostalgic video for “Houdini” (at No. 16) and album cover (at No. 19) as his sole representation. This seemingly highlights the Academy’s propensity for rewarding familiarity and consistency over innovation. For example, Schoolboy Q and Vince Staples didn’t get nominated for any rap awards despite being in the top 6 rap albums in our poll (Nos. 15 and 26, overall, respectively), and garnering a warm reception from both fans and critics — if not commercial highs. Another example is Rapsody being nominated despite being overlooked by critics. And while respondents barely acknowledged Kanye West at all after his antics firmly alienated him from their graces, if not from fans, it seems the Grammys are willing to overlook a little bad behavior as long as there is some commercial merit behind the argument.
Charli XCX, Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and Ariana Grande were among the frequent favorites for the nearly 300 music critics who voted on last year’s top albums, songs, album covers, and music videos. These are the honest results from the experts thinking about music “365” days a year. We’ve also included breakouts for certain artists and pop-specific surprises, as well as analyzed the overlap between the critics’ picks and the 2025 Grammys nominees.
It’s the next best thing to getting credit for the Word Of The Year by a literal dictionary: Brat by Charli XCX is the No. 1 album on Uproxx’s Music Critics Poll for 2024. Charli was all over the results with multiple entries in the top 20 for songs, led by the Lorde remix of “Girl, So Confusing” at No. 4, and music videos, including “360” at No. 6. The album’s deceptively simple, instantly iconic green square cover also was collectively voted the year’s best (shout out to Pantone 3507-C). For years, Charli XCX was hailed as the future of pop music. The future is now, and it sounds like Brat.
Beyoncé
“This ain’t a country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.” That’s how the one and only Beyoncé announced Cowboy Carter, the second installment in a planned trilogy — and her first to fully embrace her yeehaw Texas roots. The album could earn the “Texas Hold ‘Em” singer her first (and long overdue) Album Of The Year at the Grammys, but for now, it had a strong showing in our poll: No. 6 album, No. 16 song (fittingly, “16 Carriages”), and No. 2 album cover.
Sabrina Carpenter
Sabrina Carpenter had the Song Of The Summer in “Espresso,” but she’s no one-hit wonder. The first single from Short N’ Sweet was followed by “Please Please Please” and “Taste,” all equally irresistible — and all represented in the Critics Poll: “Espresso” at No. 8 song and No. 20 music video, “Taste” and “Please Please Please” at No. 2 and No. 17 music video (If there was a Best Songs That Should Have Been Released As A Single category, “Juno” would have been a lock.) It took nearly a decade since her debut album came out, but Sabrina Carpenter is finally — and deservedly — the world-famous pop star she was born to be.
Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish’s career accomplishments are too numerous to name them all… but here’s a few: millions of albums sold, billions of streams, two-time Oscar winner, and sweeping the Big Four at the Grammys. Eilish also went four for four in our Critics Poll for Hit Me Hard And Soft: No. 16 album, No. 6 song, No. 11 music video (and No. 8 for “Guess” with Charli XCX), and No. 9 album cover. Not bad for someone who is still, somehow, only 23 years old.
Jade
After a decade with Little Mix, Jade Thirlwall dropped her surname and became, simply, Jade. She was calling her shot, Babe Ruth-style, and with her first single as a solo star, she hit a home run. If the rest of her eventual debut album is as good as the bold and ever-shifting “Angel Of My Dreams,” which placed at No. 14 for songs and No. 9 for music videos in our Critics Poll, it will be on the albums list, too.
Biggest Surprises
The biggest surprise among the pop picks was the lack of the year’s biggest album: Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department. We really liked it (especially songs like “Guilty As Sin?” and “The Black Dog”), but some voters might have been turned off by the hefty tracklist. It’s also surprising that neither Rosé’s drinking game anthem “APT.” or Lady Gaga’s dreamy “Die With A Smile,” both massive singles featuring Bruno Mars, failed to make the cut. Oh, and in case you’re wondering about Chappell Roan: “Good Luck, Babe!” was the only song she “officially” released this year; The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess came out in 2023, and was therefore not eligible.
Grammys Overlap
All three of the pop albums in the top 10 — Brat, Cowboy Carter, and Short N’ Sweet — are up for Album Of The Year at the 2025 Grammys. There’s also a lot of pop overlap between the critics’ picks and Record Of The Year (“Birds Of A Feather,” “Espresso,” “360,” and “Good Luck, Babe!”) and Song Of The Year (“Birds Of A Feather” and “Good Luck, Babe!”). The biggest difference is which Beyoncé song is represented: it’s “16 Carriages” on our poll, and “Texas Hold ‘Em” for the Grammys. But here’s the thing: they’re both great.
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