2024 in Music: Adele exits the stage | The Excerpt
On Sunday’s episode (first released on December 15, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: Who is 2024’s artist of the year? We all have our favorites, but you may recall Apple giving the early nod to Billie Eilish. The longest-running number one song of the year? "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" by Shaboozey is not only the longest-running number one song of the year, but also of the decade. Madonna and Bad Bunny took the top spots on Pollstar’s list of the highest grossing tours of the year, but where did Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour land? A decade from now, what will we remember about 2024’s year in music? Paste BN Music Reporter Melissa Ruggieri joins us on The Excerpt to break down some of the biggest music stories of the year.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, December 15th, 2024. Who is 2024's artist of the year? We all have our favorites, but you may recall Apple giving the early nod to Billie Eilish. The longest-running number one song of the year? That would be A Bar Song (Tipsy) by Shaboozey. It's not only the longest-running number one song of the year, but also of the decade. Madonna and Bad Bunny took the top spot on Pollstar's list of the highest-grossing tours of the year. But where did Taylor Swift's Eras Tour land? A decade from now, what will we remember about 2024's year in music? Here to break down some of the biggest music stories of the year is USA Today music reporter Melissa Ruggieri. Thanks for coming back, Melissa.
Melissa Ruggieri:
Any time. Great to see you.
Dana Taylor:
This year a diva decided to exit the stage. Adele took her final bow following a hugely successful Vegas residency. Is this it for her?
Melissa Ruggieri:
I think it is for a while. She made no bones about saying when she did a show in Germany over the summer that once her residency ended, that was going to be the last that you saw of Adele for a while, and I think she really just wants to go off and relax and nurture her relationship with Rich Paul and maybe have another kid. And so, I do think that as much as she seemed to enjoy this residency, especially for somebody who does not always enjoy performing live as she has admitted, because she gets stage fright, I think she feels like she did it, she could move on now, and she could come back in a year or two, maybe even three years, and then people are going to be even hungrier for her return.
Dana Taylor:
Speaking of Adele, her residency was in the 4,000 capacity Caesars Palace, which had previously been the space designed for Celine Dion's residency. There was this really touching moment when Celine Dion went to Adele's show. What can you share with us about that?
Melissa Ruggieri:
I thought that was really one of the biggest moments in pop music this year actually. If you saw the video of Celine attending one of Adele's last shows, I think it was like the last month or so of her shows sitting in the VIP box, I think Adele is always aware of who might be coming to the show, but during the portion where she walks out into the crowd when she sings When We Were Young, and she talks to some fans, she just made eye contact with Celine, she walked over to her, they were both crying. Celine took Adele's face in her hands, and I just felt like for Celine, that had to be just such a poignant moment to see someone that she admires, because she's spoken about her admiration for Adele, but then also in the place that really will always be the palace of Celine Dion.
Dana Taylor:
Of course, we saw her at the Summer Olympics in Paris where she closed the opening ceremony and was just spectacular.
Melissa Ruggieri:
She really was, and some people were saying, "Oh, well, the music was pre-taped or the vocals were pre-taped." Well, of course they were, so were Lady Gaga's and so was anybody else's who performed at the Olympics because of the weather. You never know what you're going to get. She's at the top of the Eiffel Tower. I mean, you have to anticipate things going wrong, but the vocals she was singing to were her own that she had recorded, and that coupled with the documentary that she released this year where you really saw the effects of the stiff person syndrome that she's been suffering from for years, she actually has one of the attacks on camera.
The camera crew just happened to be there when it happened and when she saw the final cut, she said, "Do not take that out. I want people to see what this is like," and it's so heartbreaking to see just the way she's literally paralyzed, both in body, her voice, she can't speak, and it happens for about 15 minutes. It's not something that just passes really quickly. So, I think if people see that, they will understand why we haven't yet seen Celine come back on stage in any full capacity. Although from what I understand, the dates at Resorts World where she was supposed to start her next residency are still always on hold for her whenever she says the word, they're ready to go.
Dana Taylor:
2024 was also the year of the fall of P. Diddy. It may have been the most shocking story in the music industry this year. What do we know about the allegations against him and do you think the music industry will have a reckoning akin to the one that Harvey Weinstein brought out for the film industry?
Melissa Ruggieri:
What is happening with P. Diddy is probably a long time coming and I think the number of allegations against him, you can't really argue that something bad was happening and he was not treating people appropriately, whether it was in his personal life, or at parties, or whatever. And for all the times that he's tried to get out on bail, and the judge has always negated that, I think that also shows that while he might not be a threat to society, that he is in jail right now for very specific reasons, and that trial's going to start in May. So, I think that's going to be a long process, I think, to see how that plays out.
Dana Taylor:
Melissa, we can't name all the artists who've contributed to the world of music that we lost this year: Liam Payne, Kris Kristofferson, Frankie Beverly. It is unfortunately a very long list, but I do want to talk about a giant in the industry, Quincy Jones. What a legacy he leaves behind. The first thing that came to mind for me was the album Thriller. What about you, Melissa?
Melissa Ruggieri:
Absolutely, I was just listening to a Donna Summer song the other day that Quincy produced, and it just reminds you as soon as you hear anything that he had his hands on, that he had such a distinctive sound that he brought to Michael Jackson, and especially in The Wiz and all the things that he was involved in during his immense career. And one of the great privileges of my life was being able to talk to him several years ago. I did a phone interview with him and it was one of those, "Quincy's going to call you at 8:00 PM." Okay, it's not normally when we do interviews, but okay, it's Quincy Jones.
And I had told my husband, "Okay, I'm going to be late for dinner or whatever. This'll be 20 minutes, 30 minutes." We were on the phone for almost an hour, maybe even more than an hour, and it was the kind of interview where I was sort of like, "Okay, sir, well, thank you for talking to me. I guess I should let you go now." But he really loved talking about music and he loved talking about all of the artists that he worked with.
Dana Taylor:
We're going to talk about Kendrick Lamar and we're going to talk about Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Kendrick first though, he had an outstanding year with more to come in 2025, right?
Melissa Ruggieri:
He sure does. He has the Grammy nominations, he has the Super Bowl performance, he just dropped a new album, a surprise album a couple of weeks ago. Kendrick is such an interesting guy because he really does things on his own terms, and there aren't a lot of people in the industry who are able to do that, but I guess when you've won a Pulitzer Prize and you're renowned as one of the greatest rappers of your generation, then you're able to do that. And Kendrick takes full advantage of that as he of course should, but when he was announced as the Super Bowl halftime performance, there were differing camps on that, because I think a lot of people who don't follow the rap industry really weren't sure who he was and are thinking, "Is he mainstream enough to carry off a Super Bowl performance?"
And my argument was, "Yeah, this is a guy who's the biggest in his field, and he absolutely deserves to have that platform." And I think he's going to surprise a lot of people, especially when they not only see what he could do, but what they hear what he can do. Because when you listen to his lyrics, that's what sets him apart from everybody else, because the guy is just so smart and so clever, and his wordplay is tremendous, and you hear that on every song that he does. So, I'm looking forward to seeing what he's going to put together production-wise, at least for the Super Bowl show.
Dana Taylor:
I mentioned this musical beef, a rap battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Out of that came this massive hit from Kendrick, a song basically dissing Drake called Not Like Us. Drake is taking legal action, but it doesn't have anything to do with the content of the song. What's going on there?
Melissa Ruggieri:
It's such a crazy story. It's been going on all year. It's started in the spring of this year, and actually the Kendrick and Drake beef goes back to 2013. So, they've always had issues you could say with each other, but then for some reason earlier this year about March, April, they started trading diss tracks basically, and they escalated in their intensity of what they were accusing the other of doing. So I mean, these are two guys who clearly do not like each other. And in Not Like Us, Kendrick does make some references to Drake being someone who likes young girls, illegally young girls, and things like that. So Drake, obviously upset about this, he is now suing Universal Music Group, which is the umbrella company of both of their record labels. So, they both belong under the UMG umbrella, and Drake is contending that UMG was paying Spotify and using bots to boost the popularity of Not Like Us, because it's had almost 1 billion streams by now, and that it's defaming him, that it's harmful to his reputation, and that he has lost income since all of this started happening.
Dana Taylor:
Charli XCX owned the summer of 2024, which became Brat Summer. Did you have a Brat Summer, Melissa? I missed the boat on that. What did that entail?
Melissa Ruggieri:
I had a hot summer, I don't know about a Brat Summer, but Charli XCX, she's been around for a long time. She had a hit a decade or so ago with Boom Clap, and then she worked on Fancy with Iggy Azalea, and people knew who she was, but again, she was someone who was really more in the background as a songwriter who poked her head out occasionally, and then just exploded this year with Brat, and then with the dance craze on TikTok, and everything that came along with that, everybody changing their backdrops on their social media to the Brat green color, including Kamala Harris when she was running for president. I mean, everybody kind of seized this term as we tend to do, especially in the summer, because we always have to have some tag that goes along with a summer song, right? It has to be the summer of something.
And Brat was really just an attitude is really all she was promoting with that. And you saw the word of the year this year is demure, and I guess you could take demure and Brat and combine them, and you have a Charlie XCX type of personality who just seems to just not care what people think of her. And it's really just sort of the attitude of doing your own thing, instilling confidence in yourself to be who you are and be brash about it, and just be cool about it, too. So, I think that's what the essence of Brat is, whether I had one of those summers? Yeah, debatable.
Dana Taylor:
I know that I didn't, now that you've described it, I know that I didn't. This was also the year that Beyonce went country or country plus with Cowboy Carter. Where has she seen support for her foray into the world of country music and where has the reception been more lukewarm?
Melissa Ruggieri:
The pop industry has always been more willing to embrace country artists, and the country industry has been willing to embrace pop artists. And I think that's a lot of what happened with Beyonce, because you look at someone like Post Malone who 10 years ago was doing songs with rap artists, and now he's gone full-fledged country. And Jelly Roll, who sort of arrived as this hybrid of country, rock, rap, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and they seem to be fine doing whatever they do.
But for some reason with Beyonce, and I've heard some people in the country industry say, "Well, she proclaims right off the top of that album that this ain't a country album. So, if she's saying it's a kind of country album, why should we in the country community accept it as a country album?" But I think those of us who have listened to the album deeper and understand where Beyonce was coming from, yeah, it's not a country album in the vein of Luke Bryan, but it is a country album when you look at the roots of country music and where everything came from and some of the artists that she even has on the record with her.
And I think the fact that the CMAs just completely shunned her existence in the country realm, and yet the Grammys have given her the most nominations of any artist this year, shows you exactly where loyalties lie and who's willing to embrace what. And I do think that this is the year that... 2025 will be the year that we see Beyonce get her Album of the Year Award at the Grammys, because I really don't think there's any way that they can overlook what she did with Cowboy Carter and just really what an amazing piece of music work that it is.
Dana Taylor:
Women continue to dominate pop music. Does Sabrina Carpenter win the award for making this year fun and spicy?
Melissa Ruggieri:
She kind of does. It's really funny when you look back at this year, because not only were women at the forefront for the first time in a very long time, and predominantly so, a lot of them are women who again, have been around for a while and just sort of broke out this year. I mean, Short n' Sweet is the sixth album from Sabrina Carpenter, and people knew who she was, especially people who grew up seeing her on TV.
But for the most part, no one really knew that much about her musical background. And she had a couple of minor hits over the years, but yeah, I mean, just the way that that album took off this year, and then you had Billie Eilish as you mentioned. I like that album. I think it is fun. She's gotten a ton of hits off of it and for good reason, because it's just nice, fun, light pop music, but it's also got a little bit of spice to it, like you say, because if you listen to some of the lyrics, that's really what she's getting at. You know who she doesn't like if you're listening to the lyrics, but musically-wise, it's just a really fun pop record.
Dana Taylor:
And finally, I mentioned the highest-grossing tours of the year. It'd be impossible to do any sort of music wrap-up and not mention Taylor Swift. Did she work this year, Melissa?
Melissa Ruggieri:
She did a little bit of work. I think we could say Taylor got out of bed and did something. Truly, it's amazing what she accomplished since the Eras Tour kicked off in 2023. Every show is almost three and a half hours long. It is an incredible production. She managed to tweak the show after she released her album in April, The Tortured Poets Department. She needed to add some of those songs to the show, so she was giving fans in the US when she came back in October, another opportunity to see the show that might be a little bit different than what they may have seen if they caught her in 2023. So, the fact that she is always evolving even in real time, basically, and that's not an easy thing to do with a production like that. And she really does have the highest-grossing tour of all time, no question. She doesn't release her numbers to Pollstar like pretty much every other artist does because she's Taylor and she doesn't have to.
I mean, it is an alternate thing. You don't necessarily have to release your tour numbers, but from reports in economic magazines and Forbes, and some of these places that have really done the math, she's grossed probably more than 700 million just from ticket sales alone. And if you have gone to any of these shows, you know what those merchandise lines look like. She's making probably close to 13, 14 million a night, but that's gross. When you take into account what the production costs, her band, her dancers, everything, the setup, the drivers, I mean, you got to think about all that, too.
Dana Taylor:
She's still doing okay, Melissa, happy New Year and thanks for being on The Excerpt.
Melissa Ruggieri:
Thank you. Same to you.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.