Billboard Staff’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2024: Rookie of the Year — Shaboozey
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 next week. Before that, we revealed our Honorable Mentions for 2024 on Tuesday and our Comeback of the Year earlier today. Now, we present a salute to the artist to the artist who crashed the mainstream for the first time in the biggest way this year: country singer-songwriter Shaboozey, who seized the spotlight from one of the most crowded pop classes in modern pop history and etched his name into the Billboard record books.
Can’t say he didn’t call it. Shaboozey’s 2024 album Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going essentially predicted in its title that after a near-decade of struggling to properly break through in the music industry, the hybrid country singer-songwriter was headed for different heights this year. And sure enough, by the end of the calendar, he had one of the biggest Billboard Hot 100 hits of all time, nominations and/or appearances at pretty much every award show you could think of, and the whole world knowing (and sometimes making uncomfortable jokes about) his name. “We in the club now,” he summarized his year to Billboard for his cover story in October – and like his album title, it was true on multiple levels.
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Of course by the time of Where I’ve Been’s May release, Shaboozey already had major reason to suspect that 2024 would not be like other years of his career. First, he’d made two appearances on one of the year’s biggest releases, by the Billboard staff’s recently named Greatest Pop Star of the 21st Century. Beyoncé’s country- and Americana-exploring Cowboy Carter had a loaded guest list, including contemporary hitmakers like Post Malone and Miley Cyrus and genre legends like Dolly Parton and Linda Martell, but the only artist to show up on two (non-interlude) songs on the set was Shaboozey. He was initially invited just to write on the set, before the Queen asked him to also provide vocals on its “Spaghettii” and “Sweet * Honey * Buckiin,” which became the first two Hot 100 hits of his career that April, reaching No. 31 and No. 61, respectively.
He would reach much greater heights on the chart with his next release. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” arrived on April 12, just two weeks after his Beyoncé bow, with his team intentionally pushing up the release of the new song to capitalize on the momentum of Cowboy Carter – which, in addition to its spotlighting of Shaboozey, also helped create a conversation around Black artists in country music, and even offered a streaming bump to some of those newer artists featured on it. In fact, Shaboozey’s team says that it was an early-2024 pre-release performance of “A Bar Song” in California – which was so well received that he ran it back a second time later in the show – that had convinced Ricky Lawson, an A&R on Team Bey who was in attendance, that the ascendant singer-songwriter should be invited to the project in the first place.
The timing was certainly right for “A Bar Song,” a drink-your-cares-away hoot-along with irresistibly celebratory lyrics, but also just enough melancholy in its capo’d acoustic guitar hook and wailing strings – and profound exhaustion (“Why the hell do I work so hard?”) in its verses – to give the song real emotional heft. The single’s not-so-secret weapon came from an inspired lift of the count-off lyrics and shoutable refrain to rapper J-Kwon’s 2004 crossover smash “Tipsy” – hence the parenthetical – which anchored the song in pop and hip-hop history without overplaying its hand or feeling cheap. The final result landed somewhere in between Zach Bryan and the Black Eyed Peas, and was an immediate success, debuting at No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100, Shaboozey’s first unaccompanied entry as a lead artist.
The next month, the full Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going followed. Released on independent label EMPIRE, the tight 12-track set presented Shaboozey as a core country artist who was also very well-versed in rock, pop, folk and hip-hop. He sounded as comfortable on the LP doing emotional vocal runs up and down the octave alongside top 40 hitmaker Noah Cyrus on the Kacey Musgraves-like “My Fault” as he did getting faded alongside rising trap star BigXthaPlug on the booming “Drink Don’t Need No Mix,” and the entire set felt as purposeful as its title. Where I’ve Been scored an eye-opening No. 5 debut on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and received uniformly strong reviews from critics, ultimately finishing in the top 20 on the Billboard staff’s list of the year’s best albums.
Before the debut of Where I’ve Been, “A Bar Song” had climbed into the top five of the Hot 100, and Shaboozey was starting to bring the song to platforms across the cultural landscape: CMA Fest, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the From the Block web series. His most interesting appearance that summer came at June’s BET Awards, where he performed his new smash and even welcomed a special guest turn from J-Kwon towards the song’s end. Country performances had been exceptionally rare at Culture’s Biggest Night, but Shaboozey commanded the stage and won new fans in the likes of Quavo and French Montana, who the artist told Billboard gave him shouts following the performance. (“I love hip-hop; I’m a part of their community, too,” he said in the cover story.)
By July, in its 12th week on the chart, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” had finally reached the top spot on the Hot 100. The ear-catching song – which also ruled the Shazam charts for months, as a classic “wait, what is this?” jam to the unfamiliar – had been an instant hit on streaming and even in digital sales, but had taken a little longer to catch on radio. Once it did, though, the airwaves couldn’t get enough, as the song ultimately topped Billboard’s Country Airplay, Pop Airplay and Adult Pop Airplay listings – and even made a quick cameo on R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay – while topping the all-format Radio Songs for the first time in early August, and subsequently dominating it all the way through to December.
As the song continued to rule the charts, stretching its Hot 100 reign to double-digit weeks as autumn began, it also began to collect accolades. It got nominated for single of the year at the CMA Awards, while Shaboozey himself picked up a nod for best new artist. But he lost in both categories at the November ceremonies, while his stage name – which was already a spin off the way teachers would misspell his real last name, Chibueze – found itself at the center of ba-dum-ching quips made by the hosts and award-winners all night, increasing the feeling of othering for a guy whose insider acceptance in Nashville had already seemed a little touch-and-go. By then, he at least had consolation in the form of five Grammy nominations, including best new artist and song of the year for “Bar Song.”
And in November, the Hot 100 reign of Shaboozey’s breakout hit turned from jaw-dropping to downright historic. Despite brief interruptions to its run from Kendrick Lamar and Morgan Wallen, “A Bar Song” had held proven magnetic to the top of the Hot 100, and on the chart dated Nov. 30, it ruled for a 19th non-consecutive week – tying the all-time record set a half decade earlier by another artist mixing country, pop and hip-hop in Lil Nas X, with his Billy Ray Cyrus-featuring “Old Town Road.” By then, Shaboozey also had a new single: “Good News,” a slightly more dejected-sounding spin on the end-of-the-work-week anthem form he’d perfected with “Bar Song,” which also debuted at No. 71 on the chart. In early December, he brought both singles to his first performance on Saturday Night Live, with the two songs shooting to the top two of the iTunes real-time chart shortly after – suggesting he may have another big hit on his hands in 2025.
Whether or not “Good News” immediately deads the “one-hit wonder” talk or it takes him a little longer to get out from underneath the shadow of one of the biggest hits in Billboard chart history, Shaboozey is here now, and he’s proven that he’s got the talent, the drive and the songs to stick around – and maybe even continue to grow. For his own part, he sees “A Bar Song” not as an albatross to be shed, but simply as a door-opener taking the heat off him moving forward.
“I feel like I can really get out there and start making music without pressure,” he told Billboard in November following his Grammy nominations. “A lot of people work to get a No. 1 song. Being able to knock that out at this point in my career, I can start focusing on making the music that really matters to me.” Where he is isn’t where he’s been, but where he’s going from here could be absolutely anywhere.
Listen to our Greatest Pop Stars podcast tomorrow, as we recap our 2024 Honorable Mentions, Rookie and Comeback of the Year — and check back next Monday as we get our top 10 countdown underway!
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