The best, worst and weirdest pop culture moments of 2024

By Leah Asmelash and Scottie Andrew, CNN

(CNN) — Whew.

That’s the way we feel as we round the bend into the final days of the year. We really had it ALL in 2024: Era-defining albums, the Olympics, the return of the blockbuster movie musical, a devastatingly cute pygmy hippo.

You might not remember it all, but we took note of every niche pop culture oddity and TikTok fad. And there were many surprises — perennial history-maker Taylor Swift didn’t even make the cut this year. Helming the highest-grossing tour ever is probably enough recognition.

Go down memory lane with us as we revisit the trends and crazes that got us through this wacky year — for better or worse.

Best Midwesterner: Chappell Roan

The “Good Luck, Babe!” singer’s debut album actually came out over a year ago, but 2024 belonged to Roan, whose fiery hair was outmatched only by her hot songs and piercing candor. She captivated us with lascivious lyrics about loving women, electric live performances that brought drag to festival stages and a refreshing refusal to bow to the demands of an industry that too often wrings its stars dry. Our Midwestern Princess is reforming pop music in her image, and if the new songs she’s been teasing are any indication, she’ll dominate 2025, too.

Best throuple: Tashi, Art and Patrick in ‘Challengers’

Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist vied for Zendaya’s affections in the great tennis romance “Challengers,” starting with a clumsy three-way kiss. Did these characters ever really care about each other? Where did tennis end and sex begin with these three frustrated athletes?! Here’s hoping that, after that cliffhanger ending, this trio made up (and made out).

Silliest Sabrina Carpenter lyric: ‘That’s that me espresso’

Honorable mentions include “I know I Mountain Dew it for ya,” “j**k off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen” and Carpenter’s wish to find “a boy who’s nice that breathes.” On her 2024 album “Short n’ Sweet,” our poet laureate of lust has a great wit.

Best epic film: Jenny Nicholson’s 4-hour opus on Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ hotel

Walt Disney World’s hotly anticipated “Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser” interactive hotel closed with little fanfare in 2023. Luckily for us, YouTube deep-diver Jenny Nicholson performed a thorough autopsy of why the concept flopped, including hilariously dispiriting anecdotes from her own visit. Its failure is a foregone conclusion from the video’s start: The hotel’s experience just wasn’t fun enough to justify its exorbitant cost. Still, the journey to get there with Nicholson is the breeziest four hours we spent online all year.

Hottest ticket on Broadway: Cole Escola’s ‘Oh, Mary!’

The buzziest show of the theatrical season is a farce focusing on a fictionalized First Lady who’s nasty, puerile and absolutely starved for the spotlight. While star and playwright Cole Escola’s Mary Todd Lincoln is not quite historically accurate — Escola’s Mary is a one-time cabaret star who avoids her kids, torments her companions and cares only about returning to the stage — “Oh, Mary!” is certainly the funniest and most fabulous that the Mrs. Abraham Lincoln has ever been.

Best pop manifesto: ‘Brat’

This year, the world finally caught onto what alt-pop fans have known for over a decade: Charli XCX is a star. With “Brat,” the Brit launched a hit album, a color, a presidential campaign and a state of being. To be brat is to be the life of the party while juggling the demands of your career and personal life — to dance into the wee hours and wake up the next afternoon wondering whether you should pause the partying to have kids. By those parameters, we can all be brat. It only took Charli to show us the way.

Funniest trainwreck: ‘Willy’s Chocolate Experience’ in Glasgow

It was supposed to be magical. But the unlicensed “Willy Wonka”-themed children’s event in Scotland failed to deliver on any of its promises. It was staged in a cavernous warehouse with sparse sets. Among its cast was a demoralized Oompa Loompa who had to give out a single jelly bean per child. It inexplicably featured the character “The Unknown,” who appears in no previous iteration of the story. The cast did their best to hold things together, but nothing went right with “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” — except that footage from the event made its way across the pond so that we could all marvel at how hilariously awful it was.

Most impressive practical magic: Pat McGrath’s porcelain Margiela makeup

McGrath is our preeminent makeup sorceress, but her artistry ascended to dizzying heights this year when she transformed the models of Maison Margiela’s couture show into creepy porcelain dolls. Their glassy, opalescent skin inspired countless copycats who almost cracked the code, until McGrath graciously shared her secrets in a must-watch Instagram Live. Among the most surprising ingredients were peel-off face masks sold at drug stores, paired, of course, with McGrath’s line of foundation. High-low art!

Best genre-bender: Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’

Brave to cover a song as iconic as “Jolene” when you are neither Dolly Parton nor her goddaughter, but if anyone is allowed anywhere near the classic, it’s Beyoncé. Billboard’s No. 1 pop star of all time proved her country bonafides on Act II of her planned three-act album cycle. Surely no one would doubt that Bey, a Houston native with a Louisiana Creole background, is “country enough” after the release of this 27-track masterpiece, right? RIGHT?!?!

Most movie of the year: ‘Wicked’

“Wicked” fever swept the world faster than poor Chistery sprouted wings. For us theater kids, its success was thrilling — movie musicals are BACK! Ariana Grande can act! Anthony Bridgerton can dance! Goat professors can be denied tenure! Offscreen, debates over cinematic lighting and color grading are raging! Glinda/Elphaba fanfiction is flourishing! The final scene is being spoiled by fans illegally filming inside theaters! Grande and Cynthia Erivo are holding space for the lyrics of “Defying Gravity”! And we get to do it all again next year for “Part II”!

Best get-rich-quick scheme: Movie sequels

Whatever happened to originality? Nine of the 10 highest-grossing films of 2024 were sequels (the only outlier is “Wicked,” an adaptation of a musical based on a book based on another book, with a sequel on the way next year). Gru’s minions are still banana-crazed, Kung Fu Panda is still kickin’, Joy of “Inside Out” is still underestimating Sadness. Business as usual in Hollywood.

Best sneak attack: AI

AI was already all the buzz last year, but somehow we weren’t expecting it to integrate itself into our lives so quickly. From suddenly making regular Google results obsolete, to quickly escalating greenhouse gas emissions and becoming an “extinction-level” threat to humans, according to the State Department — we just didn’t think AI would take us out THIS quickly. The sci-fi movies warned us, but we didn’t listen. Well played, AI, well played.

Most smoosh-able face: Moo Deng

While little baby Haggis almost usurped her crown, Moo Deng reigned supreme this year. From her chubby little cheeks to her propensity for biting, it’s no wonder the little pygmy hippo went viral this year, dominating the media cycle for MONTHS. We couldn’t get enough of her. Who hasn’t been annoyed and wanted to bite someone’s knee? She’s a pygmy for the people.

Best public execution: Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar

Drake has had a hard year. It’s tough when your industry nemesis (Kendrick Lamar) drops a flurry of diss tracks essentially calling you a fraud, one of which (“Not Like Us”) went triple platinum at many a summer kickback. In a final blow, the NFL named Kendrick as next year’s Super Bowl halftime show, effectively cementing him as the winner of the (somehow still ongoing) feud. Drake’s attempt at a legal battle only makes the whole affair that much harder to watch, a last-ditch effort by a man who knows he’s already lost. Womp womp.

Best sidekick: The Rizzler

They’re Costco Guys — of course they’re playing boom or doom with their 8-year-old sidekick the Rizzler, chomping down on chicken bakes and double chunk chocolate cookies. Didn’t understand a word of that sentence? Probably for the best.

Best definitely not overused catchphrase: ‘Very demure, very mindful’

You see how we’re writing this pop culture year in review? You see how nicely edited it is, not a punctuation mark out of place? Very demure, very mindful of us!

Best industry plant: Glen Powell

Oh, so we’re just supposed to believe that a 6-foot-tall man from Texas with the sharpest jawline we’ve ever seen and a fluffy little dog named Brisket just came through Hollywood organically, and somehow captured the nation’s collective heart in a year full of upheaval???? Puh-lease. We loved him in “Twisters,” but we’re no fools.

Best Hollywood obsession: MILFs

“The Idea of You.” “Babygirl.” “A Family Affair.” “Between the Temples.” In the grand scheme of things, four movies all on the same subject might not seem like much. But that all four have something to do with older women going after younger guys? All released this year? Hmmmmmm. Hollywood, what are you trying to tell us?

Best soap opera: Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck

From including Ben’s love letters in a critical flop of a movie in February, to a highly public divorce filing in August, Jennifer Lopez has had one wild turn of the heart this year. And, for better or worse, we’ve been privy to all of it. Now, somehow Jennifer Garner (Ben’s ex-wife) is catching strays, Jenny from the Block is making headlines for her revealing fashion choices, and we’re all stuck in a trance, watching the mess at home from our screens.

Best 15 seconds of fame to actual fame leap: Hawk Tuah Girl

After going viral for giving an honorable oral sex tip (“You gotta give ‘em that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thang”), Hailey Welch leapt to podcaster, social media influencer, dating advice guru — and even threw a first pitch at a New York Mets game. All in about six months! But fame has its downsides. In pendulum swing, she’s now facing questions after her crypto currency, HAWK, skyrocketed and plummeted within minutes of it’s launch — in what crypto insiders are alleging was a scam and a “pump-and-dump” scheme. Oof. That’s showbiz, baby.

Best main character: The Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games

Pommel Horse Hero. Raygun. That French pole vaulter and his you-know-what. Even Flavor Flav! Let’s face it, this summer, these athletes, and so many others, were the only things anyone was talking about. Did anything else happen between July 26 and August 11? We have no idea. Time stood still. We were hypnotized via pommel horse.

Best culture upending saga: Reesa Teesa’s ‘Who TF Did I Marry?’

This was a level of cultural obsession we haven’t seen in years. Decades even! Everyone was watching this TikTok epic; for weeks, we heard Reesa Teesa’s tale of heartbreak via (alleged) scammer across social media, around the office, and even streaming out of car stereos. Now, there’s set to be a TV adaptation starring our longtime fave (as real readers of this review will know) Natasha Rothwell. Next time our hearts get broken, we will definitely be letting Netflix know.

Best way to ditch the dating apps: Celeb lookalike parties

Swiping is sooo 2023. Put your phone down and take to the streets! Looking for a Jeremy Allen White look-alike? What about a Dev Patel copy-and-paste? Zendaya more your thing? Timothée Chalamet? Aforementioned industry plant Glen Powell? Whatever you’re searching for, there’s a lookalike contest for you.

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