Sabrina Carpenter, Benson Boone, Shaboozey, Teddy Swims and Billie Eilish have one thing in common: they each had the same songs appear on Variety‘s Hitmakers 2024 and 2025 lists. From “Espresso” to “Beautiful Things,” these tracks maintained momentum far past their release dates to dominate the airwaves and playlists throughout this year. Variety takes a look back on the repeat offenders from 2024 and how those hits were assembled.
Teddy Swims, “Lose Control” (No. 6)
In April, Teddy Swims made history when his single “Lose Control” broke the record for longest-running song in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100; it bested the Weeknd’s 57-week stronghold with “Blinding Lights.”
But it didn’t stop there. In July, the ballad became the first song in the history of the Hot 100 to secure 100 weeks on the chart. “‘Lose Control’ is the first time I really hit the mark,” Swims says about crafting the tune. “I used to think that it wasn’t enough to have a good song anymore. Now I disagree with that.”
“Lose Control” has had a steady rise to the top since Swims came up with the song during a four-day writing camp in Palm Springs. Swims (aka Jaten Dimsdale) teamed with Julian Bunetta, Ammo, Infamous and Mikky Ekko to create a song he wanted “catchy enough for everyone to want to sing, but not everyone can.”
“He’s singing from his chest,” Ekko says. “He had so much going on in his life that it really all came down to personal experience.”
Their session yielded what became the signature track off 2023’s “I’ve Tried Everything but Therapy (Part 1),” which Swims followed with a sequel at the top of this year. The success of “Lose Control” helped land Swims a nomination for best new artist at the Grammys in February, plus nominations at the American Music Awards and the Brit Awards.
“‘Lose Control’ has given me a taste of what’s possible,” says Swims, “and now I’m so hungry for more. I want the whole pie.”
Songwriters Julian Bunetta, Mikky Ekko, Marco “Infamous” Rodriguez, Teddy Swims
Producers Ammo, Julian Bunetta (co-producer: Infamous)
Label Swims Int./Warner Records
Hitmakers Ammo, songwriter; Julian Bunetta, songwriter and producer; Luke Conway, manager; Mikky Ekko, songwriter; Sean Stevens, VP, A&R, Warner Records
Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” (No. 7)
If 2024 was the night when everybody at the club was getting tipsy, then this year saw the party raging into the entire next day. Shaboozey’s breakthrough hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” managed to continue its hot streak through 2025 after spending 19 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 and persisted as a streaming giant, surpassing 1.4 billion Spotify listens in the summer.
For the country star, it all began during a songwriting session with producers Nevin Sastry and Sean Cook. Shaboozey was interested in sampling an old hip-hop hit and landed on J-Kwon’s 2004 single “Tipsy.” “I wanted to revisit my formative years, when you’re learning who your favorite artists are,” he previously told Variety.
After getting a stamp of approval from J-Kwon himself, Shaboozey debuted the tune at a showcase in January 2024, where he performed “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” for an audience that included one of Beyoncé’s A&Rs and led to two features on her Grammy-winning “Cowboy Carter.”
Then marketing came into play. “We scheduled the song to come out two weeks after the Beyoncé album,” his co-manager Jared Cotter says. Not long after, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” made chart history by reaching No. 1 at four radio formats and helped earn Shaboozey five Grammy nominations, including song of the year and best new artist.
More recently, Shaboozey expanded his chart presence with “Good News,” which became his second Top 10 after “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” on Billboard’s Country Airplay tally. “Hopefully, this sets me up for life and gives me that freedom to have fun in the studio,” he says. “But there’s still more hits on the way.”
Songwriters Sean Cook, J-Kwon, Joe “Capo” Kent, Nevin Sastry, Shaboozey, Mark Williams
Producers Sean Cook, Nevin Sastry
Label American Dogwood/Empire
Hitmakers Sean Cook, producer and songwriter; Jared Cotter, manager director, Range Media; Ghazi, CEO, Empire; Abas Pauti, manager, American Dogwood; Nevin Sastry, producer and songwriter
Benson Boone, “Beautiful Things” (No. 10)
Since releasing his smash “Beautiful Things” in January 2024, Benson Boone has kept the backflips coming. In April, he shared the stage with Queen’s Brian May at Coachella. In June, he dropped his sophomore album, “American Heart.” And a few months later, he embarked on a sold-out headlining arena tour.
But Boone can’t handspring away from the continued success of “Beautiful Things.” “I have so much trouble processing it all right now,” he says, “because I’m trying to stay on top of it and make this moment bigger than just ‘Beautiful Things.’ But when I look at what’s happening, it truly blows my mind.”
And to think, the massive “Beautiful Things” can be traced back to a few sleepless nights at his then-new home in L.A. After toiling with the verse and chorus at his grandmother’s piano, Boone brought the two ideas into a session with his regular collaborators, Jack LaFrantz and Evan Blair, who helped sew them together. Once released, it caught fire on TikTok, where it has since been used in 4.5 million videos, and became a chart mainstay, logging 89 weeks on the Hot 100 and topping the Adult Contemporary chart.
All of this has become background noise for Boone, who launched several more hits —“Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else” and “Mystical Magical” — from “American Heart,” on top of the ongoing success of his biggest track yet. “I’ve been doing a better job at focusing on what I have to offer and doing my best on what I can do for this song,” he says, “and letting the rest be other people’s choice.”
Songwriters Benson Boone, Evan Blair, Jack LaFrantz
Producer Evan Blair
Label Night Street/Warner Records
Hitmakers Evan Blair, producer and songwriter; Jackson LaFrantz, songwriter; Jeff Burns,
manager; Jon Chen, Warner Chappell Music; Jennifer Fierman, Selector Songs; TJ Landig, SVP, Marketing Operations and Strategy, Warner Records; Jeff Sosnow, EVP, A&R, Warner Records
Billie Eilish, “Birds of a Feather” (No. 12)
“Birds of a Feather” arrived like the rest of the singer’s third album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft” — as part of a full body of work without any pre-release singles. But “Birds” quickly poked its beak out when it landed in May 2024, swiftly becoming one of her biggest hits thus far.
This year, “Birds” stretched its wings even wider as it maintained its stronghold on the charts, with a peak at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. After the track became the most streamed Spotify song of 2024 and earned Eilish her first leader on the Billboard Global charts, she picked up song of the year and favorite pop song for “Birds” at the American Music Awards in May. She also made her way around the globe on her “Hit Me Hard and Soft” tour from September 2024 through November of this year.
As with the rest of her catalog, Eilish collaborated with her brother, Finneas, to craft “Birds,” a gentle tune that didn’t exactly have “hit” written all over it. “The truth was, it’s an outlier,” Finneas says. “So the fact that it has gone on to have this insane life is such a thrill. We loved making it, but it’s extra validating to have something blow up like that without pushing it as a single.”
Eilish is closing the year with another career milestone: The track passed 3 billion Spotify listens. “What a rewarding experience,” adds Finneas. “It means we get to keep making music the way we want to.”
Songwriters Billie Eilish, Finneas
Producer Finneas
Label Darkroom/Interscope Geffen A&M Records
Hitmakers Chelsea Dodson, VP, pop/rock visual creative, Interscope Records; Hannah Gold, VP, marketing, Interscope Records; Justin Lubliner, founder, Darkroom Records
Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso” (No. 25)
Even though Sabrina Carpenter is already on to her next album, “Man’s Best Friend,” the buzz hasn’t yet worn off “Espresso.” The snappy tune, which released in April 2024 and reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, steamed its way through the following year on the back of a Grammy win for best pop solo performance and another for its parent record “Short n’ Sweet,” which took home best pop vocal album.
But it all could have gone a different way. “I was completely alone in wanting to release ‘Espresso,’” Carpenter previously told Variety. “Not from my immediate team. But when it came to ‘the powers above,’ [they questioned] whether it made sense. But they trusted me in the end, and I was happy I believed in myself at that moment.”
Carpenter developed the idea for “Espresso” while on a break from opening for Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour,” collaborating with Julian Bunetta and Amy Allen at a studio in France. Bunetta notes that it was the perfect time for Carpenter to release the song, fresh off her fifth album, “Emails I Can’t Send.” “From ‘Nonsense’ into ‘Feather’ becoming a No. 1 song, there was a lot of momentum,” he says. “You felt that the next song that was released was going to get high playlisting on the DSPs, and there’s a lot of eyeballs that watched all the ‘Nonsense’ stuff and saw her on Taylor’s tour. Everyone was in the rhythm of working together.”
So much so that “Espresso” is still Carpenter’s best-performing single, with more than 2.6 billion Spotify streams. And with the second leg of her “Short n’ Sweet” tour wrapped, it keeps getting sweeter for the pop star.
Songwriters Amy Allen, Julian Bunetta, Sabrina Carpenter, Steph Jones
Producer Julian Bunetta
Label Island Records
Hitmakers Amy Allen, songwriter; Julian Bunetta, producer and songwriter; Steph Jones, songwriter; Island Records; Volara Management
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JEM ASWAD, THANIA GARCIA, MIKE WASS AND CHRIS WILLMAN
