Kendrick Lamar performs during Outside Lands Music Festival in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on Aug. 11, 2023. Matt Pang/STAFF.

Back in 2018, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I listed my top five or so songs from every year since 1967 in this column. I then went on to add 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 at the end of each respective year to keep the list current. New music and I don’t always get along, so it’s occasionally a struggle to pick five songs I want to sign off as the best of the year.

This year, though? Somehow, musicians have already released five songs I like. Impressive, I know. So as a note to myself, so I don’t forget, here are the current top five contenders for Best Songs of 2024. Odds are at least one of these won’t make it, and it’s possible all five won’t. But if there are five songs better than “RATATATA” in the next five and a half months, I’d be shocked.

Beyoncé — “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM”

Cowboy Carter came out in late March; I wrote this in mid to late July, and I totally forgot it came out this year. I thought it was a 2023 song at the latest! Good job to me for keeping this record. Country music can be really good if you don’t let country musicians make it. While Nashville pop country is locked in a tiny box of jangly guitars and jingoism, artists like Beyoncé and Lil Nas X are free to break free of those limits and make good music. So we should just let them do it exclusively.

Future, Metro Boomin and The Weeknd — “We Still Don’t Trust You”

Drake is not on this list, and yet Drake inspired 40 percent of it.

The feud between Drake and basically everyone else in all of hip-hop has resulted in some of the best music of 2024. Future and Metro Boomin did two entire diss albums targeted at Drake—two whole albums—and they’re all good! Then (spoiler alert) Kendrick Lamar’s loathing produced, among others, the song of the summer.

I’m not sure how Drake will recover from this, both in terms of reputation and mental health, but it’s been great for music fans.

Kendrick Lamar — “Not Like Us”

Imagine, for a moment, someone accusing you of being a pedophile. Bad, right? Imagine if they wrote a whole song about it. That’s worse. Now imagine if it was written by a Pulitzer-Prize-winning lyricist. Then that song became the hottest song of the summer, inescapable across the world, so popular it was performed five times in a concert that united the Bloods and the Crips in Los Angeles over a shared hatred of you, specifically.

That is Drake’s actual life right now.

Being something of an anti-muse that inspires some of the best musicians working right now to do some of their best work is probably not a comfort. To have Tommy the Clown in a video where someone Crip-walks on a tightrope, all in the name of calling you a pedophile… Kendrick Lamar is truly the world’s leading hater.

Also, the line “trying to strike a chord and it’s probably a-minor” should win Lamar another Pulitzer all by itself.

BABYMETAL and ‪Electric Callboy‬ — “RATATATA”

As I’ve expressed over and over, I love Babymetal. The trio started as a novelty act but has turned into one of the best metal bands out there. I haven’t talked about it nearly as much, but I also love Electric Callboy, whose aggressively upbeat persona and weird blend of German electronica and metal is a refreshing break from pretty much the rest of music.

Together, though? Good Lord. This is the catchiest song I’ve heard in a long, long time, and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it for like two months. As good as Kendrick’s obliteration of Drake is, I don’t know how this isn’t the song of the summer. These two bands need to collaborate on a whole album, or possibly merge into one superband.

Seriously, way better than the last collaboration between Germany and Japan.

The Offspring — “Make It All Right”

When better songs come along, this will probably be the first to miss the cut, possibly in favor of The Offspring’s next great song in October.

I’m really enjoying it at the moment, though! I love The Offspring, and it’s great to hear the band return to form after a fairly long period of mediocre albums. In a year as bad as this one has been so far in a multitude of ways, new music from a band I loved in high school that sounds like the music they released when I was in high school is pretty great.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and send column ideas to him at @bayareadata.press on BlueSky.