Trent Reznor’s Favorite Song of 2024 Wasn’t a Rock or Metal Song

Trent Reznor’s favorite song of 2024 wasn’t a rock or metal song, but it was one of the biggest songs of the year.

Despite fronting one of the biggest industrial bands of all time, Reznor appreciates various types of music, including pop. During an interview at the 2025 Golden Globe Awards with Los Angeles’ alternative rock station Alt 98.7, the rocker shared that his favorite track of 2024 was Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso.”

“I’m going to have to go with ‘Espresso’,” the Nine Inch Nails frontman said, surprising the interviewer.

See the clip below.

As of early December, “Espresso” was the most-streamed song globally in 2024 on Spotify [via Billboard], garnering over 1.6 billion total streams. The track was released in April of 2024 as the lead single from Carpenter’s sixth studio album Short n’ Sweet. It also went viral on TikTok and other platforms.

Though we may not have expected “Espresso” to be Reznor’s top pick of 2024, it was the most-streamed song in the world for a reason. It’s also not the first time the Nine Inch Nails mastermind has praised a pop song.

READ MORE: 10 Rock Artists That Went Pop

Back in June of 2023, the musician admitted during an episode of the Tetragrammaton podcast that he “teared up” while listening to a song by Dua Lipa because he felt that the songwriting was great. He initially thought that pop music sucked and tried to shield his kids from listening to it, but his daughter exposed him to Lipa and he had a change of heart as a result.

“It’s difficult [to write a good song],” he explained. “I don’t know how to do that, because when I’m trying to think of what to say or how to say it, I’m saying it from the unvarnished me, and that requires me thinking about who I am and where my position is now. And all of that together becomes something, feels like the stakes are higher.”

Sabrina Carpenter, ‘Espresso’