Greatest Pop Stars Podcast: 2024 Nos. 10-7: Jelly Roll, Billie Eilish, Post Malone & Beyoncé
Our latest episode covers the first four artists of our top 10 countdown for one of the most packed years in pop stardom history.
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This week on the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, we have begun unveiling the top 10 of our Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 list — and already, we have some absolutely iconic artists with truly unforgettable 2024 runs to talk about, even in the lower stretches of this list.
Host Andrew Unterberger is joined by Billboard senior director of music, Jason Lipshutz and Senior Charts/Data Analyst Eric Frankenberg to run through the 2024 cases for our Nos. 10 through 7 artists, which we unveiled Monday and Tuesday (Dec. 16-17) this week. We start with Jelly Roll, a country hitmaker whose presence on a Greatest Pop Stars list might admittedly be a little unexpected. We run down the case for him being taken seriously as a 2024 pop star and why we ultimately felt he had to be on our list, while also recalling some of the unlikelier places popped up this year and why we feel like the biggest is still yet to come from Jelly Roll.
Then (at 21:30), we get to the year in our No. 9 Greatest Pop Star, Billie Eilish. We start by covering the fundamentally obvious: that it’s kinda insane and maybe indefensible that a pop star as transparently great (and who had as huge a 2024) as Billie Eilish could end up so low on this list. Nevertheless, we get into the factors that led to her appearing so early in our rollout, and discuss whether Eilish — who has never been named our No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of a given year — might someday capture that crown.
Next (at 38:00), we cover Post Malone‘s 2024 as a rebranded country megastar. We discuss whether or not Post essentially needed a year as big as this after a relatively slower commercial start to the decade, then get into “I Had Some Help” and F-1 Trillion and the things that made his year so massive. We also debate what it is about him that keeps the other biggest pop stars in the world keep reaching out to him for key collabs, and whether he should stick around in country for a little longer in the years to come — or try his hand in yet another new genre.
Finally (at 59:30), we take on the year in Beyoncé, our staff’s recent pick for the Greatest Pop Star of the entire 21st Century so far. We examine how the Queen was able to keep raising the bar for both herself and for all of pop stardom in 2024 with her Cowboy Carter project — and debate whether there’s any merit to the idea of the album being a bit of an underperformer by her standards, either in commercial returns or replay value — and also remember how Bey dominated the year’s headlines for what she didn’t do as much as what she did. Then, we look forward to her upcoming performance on Netflix during NFL Christmas halftime, and (maybe) make some Grammy predictions.
Check it all out above, and be sure to check back on Friday as we recap the artists that finished in our Nos. 6 through 3 spots — some absolutely heartbreaking calls to make there — before revealing our brutally difficult decision for the top two Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 on Monday, Dec. 23.
