Billboard Staff’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2024: No. 8 — Post Malone
For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard will be counting down our editorial staff picks for the 10 Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 all this week — having already revealed our Honorable Mentions, our Comeback of the Year and our Rookie of the Year artists all last week, and our No. 10 and No. 9 Greatest Pop Star on Monday. Now, at No. 8, we remember the year in Post Malone — who resumed his old winning ways with a turn towards an entirely new genre.
When Post Malone rang in 2024 with an appropriately 24-song set at a Las Vegas New Year’s Eve concert, he pulled out his biggest hits – the ones that made him a superstar in the late 2010s by crisscrossing genre lines from hip-hop to rock to pop and beyond – including the Hot 100 No. 1s “Circles,” “Sunflower,” “Rockstar” and “Psycho.” But you had to look beyond the setlist for a forecast of what was to come this year. At Fontainebleau’s BleauLive Theater in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2024, the clearest sign of Post’s creative direction was twofold: his outfit choice of jorts, paired with a tank top, and the red Solo cup that rarely left his hand that night. Yes, Post was about to go country.
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The Texas native had flirted with the genre in the past — making his Country Airplay debut on a posthumous duet version of Joe Diffie’s “Pickup Man” last year and performing the song alongside Morgan Wallen and HARDY at the 2023 CMA Awards. At those awards, Access Hollywood asked backstage if he had his own country project in the works and Post answered, “I think so…yes.”
The first true hint that said project was actually arriving in 2024 came in February, when Post shared a snippet of a Luke Combs collab that would become “Guy for That.” That was followed by a turn on Beyoncé’s own country project Cowboy Carter in March, with the twangy midtempo duet “Levii’s Jeans,” then a surprise Hank Williams cover at a benefit concert at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium in April. But everything kicked into overdrive later that month at the Stagecoach Music Festival, when – following his own 11-song set of country covers, some including assists from the original artists themselves (Brad Paisley, Dwight Yoakam, Sara Evans) – Post popped back up onstage with headliner Morgan Wallen to debut a brand-new duet called “I Had Some Help.” From fan-shot videos of the Indio, California, performance, it hardly seemed like your typical new-song-at-a-festival response; by the second chorus, the crowd was singing every word as if the track had already been all over country radio.
And then it was. “I Had Some Help” officially arrived on May 10, and that cusp-of-summer release served it well, as the breezy bro duet went on to soundtrack countless pool parties and backyard barbecues, debuting at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in an incredibly crowded pop landscape (Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” were all in the top 10 that week) and holding the top spot for a robust six weeks. It also scored seven weeks at No. 1 on Hot Country Songs and four atop Country Airplay, on its way to being crowned Billboard’s 2024 Song of the Summer in September. The month-plus chart-topper ended a bit of a commercial cold spell for Posty, whose solo No. 1s had all come last decade and who hadn’t found a hit of this size since well before the pandemic.
But “Help” was just the start of Post’s country coup. In June, he announced that his first all-country album F-1 Trillion would arrive in mid-August – and released the second single from the project, a sudsy dive-bar duet with Blake Shelton called “Pour Me a Drink” that would become his second Country Airplay No. 1. In July, he unveiled the full track list, which included a who’s who of honky-tonk heavy-hitters. Only three songs on the 18-track standard album didn’t include features, and it appeared that everyone in Nashville – Dolly Parton, Hank Williams Jr., Tim McGraw, Chris Stapleton and (of course) Jelly Roll – was beyond happy to team up with the congenial hitmaker.
F-1 Trillion debuted atop the Billboard 200 following its Aug. 16 release and spent six weeks at No. 1 on Top Country Albums, with Post landing 18 songs on the Hot 100 from the project during release week. One of the many keys to the project’s colossal success appears to be the way Post fully immersed himself in the country world this year, between performing at both the ACM Awards in May and CMA Awards in November; playing Nashville’s vaunted Bluebird Café in June; and making his Grand Ole Opry debut in August, flanked by Vince Gill, John Michael Montgomery, Lainey Wilson and more country all-stars. He’s been utterly enveloped into what can sometimes be an insular space, proving yet again what a genre chameleon he can be when the musicianship, strong songwriting and love for the craft is so clearly there.
And this could have been a massive year for Post Malone even if he hadn’t successfully ingratiated himself into yet another new genre. Back in February, a day after Taylor Swift had surprise-announced a brand-new album called The Tortured Poets Department, she unveiled the project’s track list – including album opener “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone. It ended up not only being the opening track, but also the lead single, arriving alongside the album on April 19 with a cinematic black-and-white music video starring Swift and a tattoo-free Malone as ex-lovers. Post gushed about the experience on Instagram, writing, “It’s once in a lifetime that someone like @taylorswift comes into this world. I am floored by your heart and your mind, and I am beyond honored to have been asked to help you with your journey.” The song spent two weeks atop the Hot 100, and the duo accepted the video of the year prize together for “Fortnight” at September’s 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, where Malone was Swift’s right-hand man for her latest VMAs victory lap.
Malone’s awards journey might just be getting started too, because in November, he earned seven new Grammy nominations – a tie for the second-most this year – that span both his country album and his collabs with Swift and Beyoncé, and have him in good shape to finally take home his first-ever statue in 17 career tries. Next year will also mark Post’s biggest tour yet: After playing a 21-date mini-tour around F-1 Trillion this fall, the star announced the aptly titled Big Ass Stadium Tour in November, set for next April to July.
Oh, and Post accidentally let a couple of other dates slip when he made the announcement, sharing a poster that included April 13 and 20 stops in Indio, California, with Coachella confirming the next day that Post would be back in the desert to headline alongside Lady Gaga, Green Day and Travis Scott next spring. After 2024 headlining slots at Bonnaroo, Rolling Loud, Governors Ball, Global Citizen Festival and Outside Lands that all skewed heavily toward his earlier, non-country material, it will be interesting to see what kind of similarity the Post Malone who shows up at Coachella will bear to the one who showed up at the same grounds for Stagecoach a year before.
Post Malone isn’t just diversifying when it comes to genre, either; he also made inroads in Hollywood this year, including a bloody boxer role in the Jake Gyllenhaal-starring Road House remake in March and a cheeky cameo as himself in the new Jack Black Christmas movie Dear Santa. In other big accomplishments: His 2018 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse smash “Sunflower” with Swae Lee became the first-ever double-diamond single in RIAA history in February, meaning it’s reached an equivalent of 20 million sales; that same month, he performed “America the Beautiful” ahead of the 2024 Super Bowl, which reached a record 123.7 million viewers; and he came face-to-face with his very own wax figure backstage at Gov Ball in June (even mistaking it for a real person).
As Malone wraps his epic year by dotting 2024 best-of lists (including both our best albums and best songs staff rankings), his country project ends on a high, celebrating platinum certification from the RIAA for F-1 Trillion and five-times platinum status for “I Had Some Help,” as of Dec. 12. It once again seems like everything he touches turns to gold (or, really, platinum), so as Post’s 2024 turns to his 2025, keep your eyes peeled for any wardrobe clues that might signal which part of the top 40 world he has his sights on taking over next.
Check back later today for the reveal of our No. 7 Greatest Pop Star, and stay tuned all week as we roll out our top 10 — leading to the announcement of our top two Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 on Monday, Dec. 23!
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