I Reviewed Every Song on My Spotify Wrapped (Part 4/4)

My thoughts on my top 25 songs of 2024

25: Twenty One Pilots- “Routines in the Night”

Perhaps the most pop-friendly of all the songs on Clancy, “Routines in the Night” is a hypnotically catchy ode to late-night rumination. I’ve always been a night owl, the type of person who, unrestrained by schedule, will stay awake until 4 am, and “Routines in the Night” captures the combination of peace and unease that comes with being awake late at night. This song was made all the more special for me when, during a September appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Twenty One Pilots staged their performance of “Routines in the Night” not only in Fallon’s studio, but in the halls at 30 Rockefeller Plaza where I often give tours in my duties as an NBC Page.

24: Bring Me The Horizon- “a bulleT w/ my namE On (feat. Underoath)”

Throughout the NeX GEn album, Bring Me The Horizon imbue their pop metal bangers with a gloomy sense of apocalyptic worldbuilding. This song, which includes co-lead vocals from Underoath frontman Spencer Chamberlain, features a breakneck energy and dark, fatalistic lyrics. In one line that caught the band a decent amount of online flack, Chamberlain screams “if Jesus Christ comes back, we’ll just kill that fucker twice.” This lyric has two possible interpretation. One is an aggressively anti-theistic stance that the singer harbors ill will towards Christianity and would aim to kill Christ himself upon a hypothetical return. The other, though, is one that meshes strongly with the song’s overall dismal view of the violent world we live in, arguing that, were Christ to return, he wouldn’t be met with adulation, but with another crucifixion.

23: Linkin Park- “The Emptiness Machine”

“The Emptiness Machine” was the song with which Linkin Park introduced their new lineup to the world, and with that in mind, it’s not only a catchy, hard-hitting track, but a cannily structured introduction of Armstrong as the band’s new singer. The song’s opening verse and chorus are sung not my Armstrong, but by Shinoda, the familiar voice, in a more minimalistic, pop-leaning style centered on piano and synth, reminiscent of the band’s last album, One More Light. Only then does the full band come in, revealing the song as a return to Linkin Park’s earlier metal-inflected style, before then letting Armstrong take center stage as singer. With its angsty tone and themes of escaping conformity, “The Emptiness Machine” is a brand new piece of classic Linkin Park.

22: Waterparks- “BRAINWASHED”

“BRAINWASHED,” another song from Intellectual Property, works on a couple of different levels. On the surface, it’s just a silly love song, as frontman Awsten Knight sings about an intense infatuation with a new fling, over a bouncy pop-rock instrumental, accented with delightful pieces of twinkly synthesizer and ukulele ear candy. However, a running theme throughout Intellectual Property is Knight grappling with the guilt his Christian upbringing led him to feel around sexuality. Viewed through that lens, “BRAINWASHED” isn’t just a fun metaphor for an intense attraction, but as part of Knight learning to understand that these feelings aren’t some malevolent external manipulation. But even without that context, “BRAINWASHED” is a bop of the highest order.

21: Fall Out Boy- “Pavlove”

“Pavlove” is simultaneously an old and new song. It was first released in 2008 as a part of Fall Out Boy’s album Folie à Deux, but not as a part of the album’s standard track listing. Instead, it was only included on comparatively rare deluxe editions of the CD. For 15 years, fans without one of those coveted CDs listened to “Pavlove” through unofficial YouTube uploads. It was a hidden gem for fans, and was never performed live until the summer of 2023, during a “Magic 8 Ball” portion of the live concert that the band had dedicated to playing a rotating selection of B-sides and other songs that weren’t part of their standard set. Finally, in December 2023, the band made “Pavlove” available on streaming as part of the commemoration of Folie à Deux’s 15th anniversary. It’s a stellar example of Fall Out Boy at their most creative, breaking free from the confines of strict pop-punk to make a version of pop rock that’s wholly their own, with crunchy guitar riffs, soaring energy, and the unique quality generated from the signature interplay of Patrick Stump’s soulful voice and Pete Wentz’s enigmatic, poetic lyricism.

20: Bring Me The Horizon- “R.i.p. (duskCOre Remix)”

Central to the genre blend that Bring Me The Horizon has dubbed “future emo” is the blend of electronica and hyperpop elements into their rock sound, and nowhere is this combination more evident than on “R.i.p.” Notably, the song is tagged as a “remix” despite there being no other version of it available. The “duskCOre” moniker is a reference to the production work from Daisuke Ehara, also known as Daidai, of the Japanese electronic metal band Paledusk. A blend of aggressive metal and shiny, dancefloor-ready electronics doesn’t seem like it should work, but it does, and “R.i.p.” is at once a dark, sarcastic kiss-off to an ex-friend and a glittering, ultra-catchy piece of rock that sounds like absolutely nothing else this year.

19: Charli xcx- “360”

Everyone, myself included, had a BRAT summer. Even with my listening habits that, as I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, skew rock-heavy, I was far from immune to the charms of Charli xcx’s club-ready magnum opus. “360,” the opening track to BRAT, is a deceptively simple track, sonically consisting of a repetitive electronic beat that clear the way for Charli xcx’s dryly charismatic vocal delivery, with lyrics that name drop everyone from “it girls” Gabbriette and Julia Fox to A.G. Cook, a hyperpop pioneer who produced the song. At its core, “360” is a work of pure attitude, and a remarkably successful one at that, succeeding at making my consummate wallflower self feel like a reborn club kid.

18: Twenty One Pilots- “Jumpsuit”

After the album Blurryface, with hit singles like “Stressed Out” and “Ride,” made Twenty One PIlots the biggest band in the world, they had every incentive to keep doing more of the same, continuing in that pop-friendly vein. Instead, with their follow-up album Trench and lead single “Jumpsuit,” they did they exact opposite, putting out musical that was their most dense and experimental– and also their most artistically accomplished. “Jumpsuit” is powered by a dark, stampeding energy, pairing a stomping drumbeat with a chunky, distorted bass riff, as frontman Tyler Joseph’s vocals raise from a soft murmur in the verses to a harsh scream in the song’s fiery outro. It’s among the hardest-rocking songs that Twenty One Pilots, not typically a rock act, have in their catalog, and remains a highlight of their live shows.

17: Walk the Moon- “Avalanche”

While Walk the Moon isn’t one of my top ten most listened-to bands, I do have a bit of a history with them. I first heard of them in the summer of 2014, when I saw them as an opening act on Panic! At the Disco’s tour that summer, and, as a part of their set, heard an unreleased song of theirs that would become a smash hit when it came out a few months later– “Shut Up and Dance.” Years later, in the fall of 2021, I ended up with free tickets to a concert of theirs in New Haven– the gig wasn’t selling well and thus it seemed the venue was turning to offering tickets to people who had purchased tickets to other events at the venue. Experiencing the band in concert again, as I submerged myself in their euphoric, colorful, dance-ready indie rock, I gained a newfound appreciation. Their setlist opener that night was “Avalanche,” from their 2014 LP Talking is Hard, a track that reverberates with the band’s signature blend of joy and wistfulness, depicting a feeling of infatuation as a poetic matter of cosmic import. “Shut Up and Dance” was a well-deserved hit, but it’s songs like “Avalanche” that make me wonder how Walk the Moon didn’t become even bigger.

16: Bring Me The Horizon- “DArkSide”

Linkin Park’s return was a musical highlight of the tail end of 2024. Before that, though, I was listening to Bring Me The Horizon do their best Linkin Park impression on “DArkSide.” While Bring Me The Horizon has always taken notes from the Linkin PArk playbook in their crafting of angsty rock anthems that are simultaneously heavy and catchy, “DArkSide” is their most deliberate piece of homage, down to the record scratch accents. Lyrically, the track also features what sound like references to Papa Roach’s “Last Resort,” Nirvana’s “Something in the Way,” and even Fall Out Boy’s “Centuries.” Despite all the tributes to the bands that made them, “DArkSide” transcends status as mere pastiche, standing as an immediate and powerful piece of pop metal.

15: blink-182- “Dammit”

Hailing from the 1997 album Dude Ranch, “Dammit” was blink-182’s breakthrough hit, and 28 years later, still stands as a towering work of pop punk. Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, and original drummer Scott Raynor transform three basic power chords and a pounding drum beat into something universal and timeless. Hoppus, his voice harsher than usual from strain and cigarettes, sings about a bittersweet encounter with an ex in a mode that’s immediately relatable to anyone who’s ever been through the complicated feelings of a breakup and its aftermath. The song’s iconic refrain “I guess this is growing up,” at the time of the song’s writing, came from the perspective of a twentysomething guy trying to be more mature than he’d been as a teen. As the band sings it decades later, Hoppus now aged 52, it’s an ode to how far the band and its fans have all come, still growing up together.

14: Hamilton Original Broadway Company- “My Shot”

We’ve been through enough Hamilton discourse cycles, the praise, the backlash, the backlash to the backlash. It’s 2025, Hamilton’s been around for a decade, cringe is dead, and I’m not ashamed to admit that “My Shot” is a banger, and one of the best songs written by the most famous guy that I inexplicably went to the same high school and college as. “My Shot” serves as a perfect introduction to the main cast, themes, and dynamics of the musical, from the titular character’s ambition to his ragtag group of revolutionary allies to the cautious attitude of his lifelong nemesis, Aaron Burr (Leslie Odom Jr.). Particularly in online circles, much has been made of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s particular vocal quality, but as a composer and songwriter, he’s unmatched in craft, astutely aware of his own strengths, and he perfectly embodies the nervous energy of “My Shot.”

13: Twenty One Pilots- “Vignette”

Twenty One Pilots are far from strangers to discussing life’s hardships in their music, but rarely have they been as raw and straightforward as on the songs from Clancy. “Vignette,” with its vivid, metaphorical discussion of addiction and the struggle to break free from bad habits and vicious cycles. The song’s most powerful lyrical moment comes in its stripped back bridge, where Joseph repeats the excuse “no, not me, it’s for a friend” before cutting himself off, saying “denial,” making subtext the text, as the instrumental swells into a transcendently groovy synthesizer solo. Propelled by off-kilter percussion, staccato stabs of piano, and a vulnerable falsetto from Joseph, “Vignette” is perhaps the most sonically accomplished track on Clancy.

12: Bring Me The Horizon- “Top 10 staTues tHat CriEd bloOd”

Beyond being one of my favorite song titles that has absolutely nothing to do with the lyrical content of the song, Bring Me The Horizon’s “Top 10 staTues tHat CriEd bloOd” is one of my favorite songs of the past year to listen to time and time again. Throughout NeX GEn, Bring Me The Horizon lace their catchy blend of pop metal with electronic and hyperpop flourishes, and nowhere are these little details more evident than on this track. At its core, “Top 10 staTues tHat CriEd bloOd,” is an incredibly catchy, forceful, energetic pop-punk track. But Sykes along with producers Zakk Cervini and Dan Lancaster decorate that foundation with dozens of sonic accents, a colorful buffet of the kind of details producers call ear candy. This includes everything from moments of rapid drum n’ bass percussion, high-pitched computerized vocals, the sounds of lasers firing, warbling finger-picked guitar riffs, twinkling synthesizer riffs, and chiptuned video game-esque effects that all give a bright counterpoint to the track’s darker and heavier elements.

11: Porter Robinson- “Knock Yourself Out XD”

Porter Robinson’s new album, SMILE! :D is a masterwork of irony, spinning darkly upbeat tunes about the downsides of fame through the lens of braggadocio. Case in point: “Knock Yourself Out XD,” the LP’s second single. In the song’s lyrics, Robinson paints a tongue-in-cheek portrait of himself as a “soulless,” out-of-touch celebrity, the kind of brags that he “wouldn’t know how to brush [his] teeth without asking [his] team.” He exceeds the typical territory of celebrity boasts, escalating to proclaiming that his watch costs “100 million,” that he literally is Taylor Swift, that he’s literally “everything you talk about.” On a sonic level, the song is utterly addictive, a light, ethereal pop track centered on a minimalistic riff that’s simultaneously an instant earworm and mildly abrasive in a way that’s reminiscent of a dial-up tone. Yet the song’s candyfloss production hides a dark edge, a sense of an inner sadness concealed by these insincere boasts. While on a genre-front, SMILE! :D’s pop-forward sound marked new ground for Robinson, he continues to prove himself a master of sentimental soundscapes.

10: Elvis Presley- “If I Can Dream”

This song is another one that made its way into my most-listened by virtue of the fact that I spent much of my year learning to sing it. In contrast to the tenor-favoring contemporary pop landscape, many of the popular singers of the mid-20th century have lower ranges that better suit my voice, Elvis chief among them. Admittedly, I’m not the biggest Elvis acolyte; most of my knowledge of the man, his music, and career comes from watching Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla in the last couple of years. But “If I Can Dream,” a 1968 single that Elvis debuted during his famed televised comeback special, was among the most memorable songs of his that I’ve heard and was my immediate first choice when my voice teacher asked me to find an Elvis song to work on. The song’s hopeful, yearning tone was crafted in response to the turmoil of the late 1960s, particularly the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy shortly before Elvis debuted “If I Can Dream.” Its lyricism references the former man’s famed “I Have a Dream” speech, and that lofty tone, combined with the song's melding of rock and roll with gospel, all elevated by Elvis’s passionate vocal performance creates a song that’s as grand and powerful as the day it was released.

9: Twenty One Pilots- “Shy Away”

Scaled and Icy, the 2021 album by Twenty One Pilots, is actually my least favorite from the band. As a whole, I find its attempts at chipper, upbeat pop to ring hollow, and a misuse of the band’s talents. That being said, that album’s lead single “Shy Away” is an exception to all of my criticisms, and stands alone as a classic of the band’s discography. A thoughtful rumination on the creative process and the struggle to open up emotionally and express oneself in art, “Shy Away” is a mature evolution of the band’s early keyboard-accented pop style, elevated by a propulsive energy and granted rich texture by the band’s embrace of guitars, a sonic element they had long shied away from. Its passionate, lyrical chorus stands as among the best in the band’s discography, and nothing else in their catalogue matches the song’s particular synth-rock energy.

8: Bring Me The Horizon- “LosT”

Bring Me The Horizon began life as a metalcore band, and throughout their numerous sonic evolutions, they’ve nearly always retained a foot in the world of metal, whether it’s heard in harsh screamed vocals, chugging guitar riffs, or a pounding, double-time kick drum.But on “LosT,” they wholeheartedly embrace another style of rock: early 2000s pop-punk and emo pop. The track takes a page out of the My Chemical Romance playbook, with angsty, over-the-top lyrics about isolation and being unlike others, alongside catchy guitar riffs, and a huge, anthemic chorus. These themes, which could come off as generic, are given a more personal touch, with lines that reveal the song is inspired specifically by Sykes’s struggle with ketamine addiction, alongside excellent one-liners like “the next time that I open up to someone will be my autopsy.” However, Bring Me The Horizon are never satisfied to let a song stay a single genre, and “LosT” is peppered with hyperpop-inspired electronic production touches. The song’s exciting bridge melds glitchy electronics, whirring synthesizers, and vocoded vocals with an intense metal breakdown, blast beats and and all.

7: blink-182- “Feeling This”

Despite their reputation as the quintessential pop-punk band, blink-182 have also put out plenty of work that stretches the boundaries and tropes of the genre. On their untitled 2003 album, from which “Feeling This” is the lead single, you can hear the band, at every turn, experimenting with songwriting, structure, and genre, while never losing their signature energy. “Feeling This,” as band lore goes, was part of a songwriting exercise wherein DeLonge wrote the song’s verses in one room while Hoppus wrote the chorus in another. In the final product, the contrast is evident, but without feeling disjointed– the verses feature frantic drum and guitar work alongside manic, lustful lyrics from DeLonge, while in the chorus, things become more stripped back, as Hoppus makes the tone more wistful and romantic. Things fully gel together in the song’s bridge, after which the intense energy of the DeLonge portions is blended with the gloomy rumination of the Hoppus portions, leading to a masterful outro with rich multipart vocal harmony. “Feeling This” may just be blink-182’s masterpiece, a sub-three-minute distillation of everything the band does well.

6: Porter Robinson- “Cheerleader”

Porter Robinson’s “Cheerleader” was my song of the summer. Sonically, it’s a masterful evolution for Robinson, who began on dancefloor-ready EDM bangers before transitioning to vocal-forward synthpop. “Cheerleader” is, in its songwriting and construction, pure pop, with a fizzy, bittersweet emo-tinged pop-rock style that blends guitars and synthesizers, but its detailed production also belies an acumen that comes from Robinson’s electronic background. The song’s central synth riff is an instant knockout, immediately catchy, familiar yet like little you’ve heard before, with a texture that scratches my ears in just the right way. Emotionally and lyrically, “Cheerleader” is fascinating. On its face, it’s an obsessive love song, detailing an intense, controlling love interest who tells Robinson things like “if you’re not mine, I’d rather see you burned alive.” Taken another level, though, it’s clearly not about a relationship with an individual, but an expression of Robinson’s fears surrounding the ills of intense fandom, of obsessive stans who think that, because they enjoy Robinson’s artistic output, they know him or even own him. Yet as much as he may fear this dynamic, he can’t withdraw from it wholesale, he also needs his fans to be able to live as an artist. Despite this complicated emotional brew, though, “Cheerleader” is, before it’s anything else, an absolute blast to listen to.

5: Twenty One Pilots- “Midwest Indigo”

Last year, when I wrote up my personal ranking of Twenty One Pilots albums, I remarked that, despite my appreciation of their 2013 album Vessel, the album’s production sounded cheap, and that those great songs might benefit from a re-recording. On “Midwest Indigo,” we get a hint of what such a song might sound like. In its chirpy synthesizer riff and overall pop-minded songwriting centered on piano, synth, and drums, “Midwest Indigo” is, perhaps more so than anything else Twenty One Pilots has released in the decade-plus since, heavily reminiscent of their classic Vessel style. But Joseph, alongside producer Paul Meany, a Twenty One Pilots collaborator since Trench, add depth and richness to the sonic blend, allowing “Midwest Indigo” to hit all the harder. Lyrically, “Midwest Indigo” centers on a simple yet effective metaphor, describing a melancholic mood in terms of the deep blue of a Midwestern winter sky, speaking to such a mood in the second person in lines surrounded by frosty winter imagery. But rather than the melodramatic tone of the band’s earlier work, “Midwest Indigo” takes on these feelings with maturity and experience, a knowledge that you can’t run from your troubles nor can you defeat them in a dramatic display, you’ve got to wrestle and live with them.

4: Bring Me The Horizon- “AmEN! (feat. Lil Uzi Vert and Daryl Palumbo of Glassjaw)”

“AmEN!” is a thrilling roller coaster ride of a song. It opens with a jolt, immediately diving into distorted, guttural screams and harsh guitar riffs, but before you get a chance to catch your breath, the song swerves into a towering, melodic chorus, revealing itself as not simply a work of punishing intensity, but a stadium-sized pop metal anthem. The second verse reveals both of the track’s guest vocalists, Daryl Palumbo, the singer of post-hardcore band Glassjaw, and the rapper Lil Uzi Vert, the former of whom delivers an emotive scream, the latter of whom brings a modified rap cadence to a chant-along techno-infused pre-chorus. The bridge is a heavy, cathartic release of energy, before finally anchoring the song in one more chorus, then exiting on a fire-breathing, speaker-smashing outro. It’s the entire Bring Me The Horizon package, darkly kaleidoscopic, in a powerful three-minute microdose.

3: Twenty One Pilots- “Next Semester”

My top three songs, unsurprisingly, all hail from Clancy. It was, without a doubt, my album of the year, a refreshing, rich return to form from one of my longtime favorite bands. “Next Semester” is a fascinating track for Twenty One Pilots, as it’s one that sees them break new ground both sonically and lyrically. On the musical front, “Next Semester” has a punky garage rock sound with pervasive guitar riffs and a scuzzy bassline, anchoring the track deeper in rock than any of the band’s other work, which often leans away from rock and into electronic, pop, and hip-hop elements. The energy rises and falls, opening on a driving rock drumbeat while also dipping into more reflective piano and ukulele-driven interludes. Lyrically, the song appears to narrate a mental health episode from Joseph’s youth, the lyric “start fresh next semester” from which the song draws its title seemingly placing it in either high school or college. The lyrics of the song describe feelings of intense, paralyzing anxiety, as well as flashing, partial memories from what sounds like a suicide attempt; Joseph standing in the middle of the street, hoping the headlights of an oncoming car signal the release of death, before he is snapped out of his state by a driver shouting “hey, kid, get out of the road!” It’s a raw, confessional moment from Joseph, who’s long discussed topics of mental health in his music but rarely with such personal frankness and specificity, packaged in a song that captures the intensity of the emotions it describes.

2: Twenty One Pilots- “Navigating”

In spite of everything I just wrote about “Next Semester,” “Navigating” might actually take the cake for the hardest-rocking song in the Twenty One Pilots oeuvre. Lyrically, it tackles familiar territory for the band, with Joseph singing about the struggles of “navigating” everything that’s going on inside his head, made out to be an ever-shifting labyrinthine journey. Sonically, “Navigating” swerves into the frantic, energetic territory of post-punk revival, reminiscent of acts like Two Door Cinema Club or Bloc Party, with rapidfire drums and piquant guitar riffing that recalls the urgent keen of an alarm. These spitfire bursts are counterbalanced with moody synth and bass-driven verses, where the emotion in Joseph’s moody vocals shines through. The entire track vibrates with a tense energy and intensity that, in a live setting, makes it the only Twenty One Pilots song I’ve seen result in a mosh pit.

1: Twenty One Pilots- “Overcompensate”

It’s no surprise that, with Clancy being my top album of the year, my top song of the year was said album’s lead single. Yet with coming up on a year’s hindsight on its release, “Overcompensate” is also a remarkably offbeat song for the band. Coming into the Clancy album cycle, fans were breathlessly anticipating a sequel to the alternate universe storyline from Trench; Clancy is even the name of the fictional character at the center of the story, which paints Joseph’s mental health struggle as the journey of a man to escape from a dystopian city. The song opens with a moody soundscape, centered on piano and foreboding synthesizers. A voice intones “welcome back to Trench,” explicitly returning fans to that world, and a sample from “Bandito” repeats the lines “I created this world to feel some control, destroy it if I want.” Then, the switch-up hits. 90 seconds into “Overcompensate,” the drumbeat switches from the driving, foreboding sound to a playful, skittering hip-hop-leaning beat (a truly groovy and impressive work of percussion from drummer Josh Dun). Rather than flesh out the lore of the fictional world, the lyrics seem to lean more into describing Joseph’s creative process, how he’s overcome his fear of taking risks and of swerving between styles, each new album “overcompensating” for what he felt was lacking about the last one. Indeed, it may even be taken as a cheeky reference to the album itself. Clancy, it turned out, was largely a more down-to-Earth, personal album, not an elaborate rock opera-esque narrative. The bait and switch of the album’s opening 90 seconds can be read as almost a parody of fan expectations, overcompensating for the rest of the LP’s lack of resemblance to Trench by literally name-dropping the album and sampling one of its songs. Beyond its existence as a piece of commentary, though, “Overcompensate” is, on its own terms, an exciting, fun piece of music, and one I’m proud to have as my top song of the last year.