On the charts, 2025 was a year that often felt like flipping TV channels to find a new episode to watch and coming across nothing but reruns. On our just-published year-end Hot 100 chart, 11 of the top 12 songs were released before 2025, and over half of them even hit their peak on the listing for the first time in 2024. So cluttered was the party with guests who arrived early and then wouldn’t leave that we changed the recurrent rules at Billboard to help clear some additional space for the future — but for 2025, the number of big hits that made a totally new impression felt unusually small.
But that also made the new big hits that we did get feel more special than ever — whether that was R&B veterans Ravyn Lenae and Kehlani experiencing long-overdue first true crossover moments, or newer pop-rock artists Sombr and Lola Young scoring chart hits that would’ve felt impossible a half-decade earlier, or even long-established superstars like Drake and Lady Gaga featuring new hits big enough to shift their career momentum. And then lower on the Hot 100 (or just off it altogether), there were still artists like PinkPantheress, Role Model and Laufey percolating just enough to command our attention, with songs that felt like they portended bigger breakouts still to come.
Find our favorites below from a year that still found its way to its own identity and greatness — with both songs that were initially released in 2025, and songs that peaked on the Billboard charts this year included (as long as they weren’t already included on our favorite songs of 2024 list). You can also find our staff’s best albums of 2025 picks here, and stay tuned for our Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 list to come in January.
