As 2024 comes to a close, critics, reporters and editors at The New York Times are reflecting on the year in arts and culture, including music.Today, The Times’s pop music critics Jon Pareles, Lindsay Zoladz and Jon Caramanica talk with Melissa Kirsch, the deputy editor of Culture and Lifestyle, about a new generation of women in pop, how the rapper Kendrick Lamar beat Drake in their feud, and why so many pop stars went country.