The Best of 2024

Even if Billie Eilish hadn’t released the best album of 2024, you could have easily argued that she’d had a blockbuster year by most standards, thanks in large part to the legend-cementing accolades of Barbie’s “What Was I Made For?” Another Oscar? Yeah, sure, why not. Two more Grammys? Don’t mind if I do. But Eilish did release the best album of 2024. When HIT ME HARD AND SOFT landed in May, it was immediately clear that she—still just 22—had recorded the best music of her life. At turns funny and freaky, vulnerable and bold, it was the sound of a generational artist finding herself, and making a massive leap forward in the process. “I feel like I know who I am now,” she told Apple Music Radio’s Zane Lowe ahead of the record’s release. “I think this is the most me thing that I’ve ever made.” And that’s what made it great. If her 2019 debut WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?—No. 30 on Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums of all time, not sure if you heard—presented her as a teenage phenom, mercurial and moody, making art in (and about) her childhood bedroom, this is the album that signaled to the world that she was here to stay. Since its release, she’s made her presence felt across culture, much like she does in song: quietly. She performed the sleeper hit “BIRDS OF A FEATHER”—her most airy and accessible single to date—while representing her hometown of Los Angeles at the Olympics’ closing ceremony in August. She linked up with Charli xcx for one of the songs of the summer in “Guess,” a sweaty celebration of her newly embraced sexual identity. She played host to recently avowed superfan Madonna at a New York date of her sold-out HIT ME HARD AND SOFT tour, which will extend Billie Eilish’s triumphant year well into 2025. She’s also Apple Music’s Artist of the Year for 2024—the first artist to ever win it twice, having snagged the inaugural award in 2019. Celebrate the occasion by watching an exclusive acoustic performance from Billie in LA, featuring songs from HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. Then jump into a special selection of playlists dedicated to the songs and voices that have shaped the last 12 months.