Is it me, or does Christmas seem light years ago?
Even with the piles of snow that loitered for longer than me around a burger van at a music festival, and the odd set of twinkly lights still in evidence on our street, the season of eggnog lattes and too much Mariah feels ages ago. That said, I'd best give you the top five most played songs on UK radio during 2024, since we covered numbers six to ten last week.
At number 5, it's Shaboozey's A Bar Song (Tipsy), which I'll dedicate to my mate James, who has just celebrated his two year 'soberversary'. If you're currently doing 'dry January', you haven't got all that long to go. I'm a big supporter of anyone who's trying to live a healthier life, but I subscribe to the 'everything in moderation' school of thought (leaving aside a particularly boozy one in Castleford last weekend).
Anyway, back to Shaboozey, and this is a countrified reworking of a 2004 hip hop track by J-Kwon. Much like Beyonce's Texas Hold 'Em, it's set in a dive bar, and the song's party atmosphere was created by a bunch of his friends who gatecrashed the studio. It's a song made for playing on the radio, and although it only reached number 3 in the UK, I think we'll be hearing it for years to come. Shaboozey also makes a couple of guest appearances on Beyonce's Cowboy Carter album, which includes her genius cover of Jolene.
Up to number 4, and you'd have struggled to listen to the radio for long in 2024 without stumbling upon Dasha's Austin (Boots Stop Workin'). Will the country bubble burst in 2025? Only time will tell, but I'm told by the cool kids that this song 'exploded on TikTok' before making its way up the hit parade. The song was a global smash in 2024, and filled dancefloors as well as inspiring social media dance performances.
Number 3 is Benson Boone Beautiful Things, which was streamed over 219 million times in 2024. It may not have made the top ten in the UK, but it stayed in the chart for most of the year, and was not far from most radio stations' playlists. Mellow and catchy, but not my fave, if I'm honest!
Number 2 see's Noah Kahan get away with mentioning Christmas all year, as Stick Season stuck around for pretty much the whole of 2024. It was a track inspired by a long distance relationship that didn't work out during the pandemic, and there's even a reference to 'Covid on the plane' in the lyrics. Kahan wrote the track himself, and it comes from his third album. In case you're wondering, Stick Season refers to the period between fall and the snow", Kahan told NME and it sold a lot of copies on vinyl, which did its sales figures no harm at all.
So what was 2024's most played song on the radio? Step forward Teddy Swims with Lose Control, seeing off all challengers. He had big hits with The Door and Bad Dreams too, and his voice is pretty stunning, to be honest. It was co-written with Mikky Ekko, who previously worked with Rihanna on her 2013 worldwide smash hit Stay, and was penned during a writing camp on the lawn of an Airbnb.
I've written a little previously about the 'science' of deciding what we play on Tameside Radio, but really the aim is to give you a really good mix of songs that lift your day a little bit. After all, who wants to switch on the radio and feel sad? There's enough in the news to make us all feel anxious and cross, so I hope we succeed to lifting your mood with our variety of music.
As a kid, I used to read the Guinness Book of Hit Singles for fun, so it's pretty wild that I now get to put together playlists for Tameside Radio. I'm fairly sure a careers teacher at school once advised me I should get a proper job, but with the rise of AI, we might all be able to leave the robots in charge of our work whilst we head down to the pub. Is it just me who feels worried about allowing them too much control? I still thank my Alexas whenever I ask them to do anything, and figure if they do all replace us one day, they might give the polite humans something meaningful to do.
