Last summer, pop music saw a huge boost in popularity. This was due to the fact that a lot of artists dropped albums last year. Some of those were albums like HIT ME HARD AND SOFT from Billie Eilish, BRAT from Charli XCX, Short and Sweet from Sabrina Carpenter, Eternal Sunshine from Ariana Grande, etc. This isn’t even including the rap sphere that was the entire Kendrick Lamar and Drake feud that also took place last summer that gave birth to Not Like Us from Kendrick Lamar that currently sits at 1.6 billion streams in total. Even country music had its moments with Beyoncé releasing Cowboy Carter which had her end up with her first GRAMMY win of all time.
With a year like that behind us, a lot of people assumed it would follow into 2025. While actually the opposite has happened. 2025’s hits are the songs that had been trending way before that happened to gain popularity again due to apps like TikTok or Instagram that help people push a popular song back into people’s minds again. Songs like “Anxiety” by Doechii, “Ribs” by Lorde, “Headlock” by Imogen Heap, and “party 4 u” by Charli XCX have all been released prior to this year from “Headlock” being released in 2005 and the most recent songs being “Anxiety” and “party 4 u” both coming out in 2020. There has only been one huge pop song this year that really has made its mark this year with 1.1 billion streams and it comes from Alex Warren with his song “Ordinary”. A song that was made by a former influencer who was most known in 2020-2021 from the Hype House. The Hype House has been a content house that multiple TikTok stars had been a part of that eventually became less popular as the early days. Even then however, the song Warren created is very slow compared to everything from the year before. As well as the fact he hasn’t had a charting song previously to this one. Many have speculated as to why he would be getting so big compared to some other female artists who are also hitting the peaks in the pop scene right now, those being Madison Beer and Tate McRae. Something the fact it’s just the fact he’s a wife guy or this is just people choosing which male pop artist will be taking the cake this year.
2025 in all has been a very stagnant year for hit songs. This could be from many reasons with streaming but looking at last year it doesn’t really seem so. 2024 had some of the biggest songs we had seen in a while with many different new artists getting their spotlight most famously that being Chappell Roan. Even then she had 2 songs that have done well this year being “Giver” and “Subway”. So, maybe what Warren is doing is just what people think the sound for this year should be rather than upbeat pop or electronic songs. Social media trends also could be for this, Warren’s song was a popular audio on TikTok and Instagram so it’s not really crazy to believe that it could’ve been that. Overall though, whether you like the song or you hate it the charts this year have been lacking. 2024’s music is a huge reason people were so into music last year because of how many different styles were all thriving all at the same time. All we can do is push the songs we know we want to hear more of and get the recognition they deserve so we are able to have years full of new interesting music once again.
