My most frustrating year-end musical recaps are the ones where I come back to a well-trod joke about bad restaurants. In 2025, the portions were still small, but the food wasn’t lousy. The industry’s reliance on streaming didn’t create many more hits than the label/radio pipeline, but those it did often became better radio records. Even if most CHRs would have trouble counting down an entire top 50, I still had to prune Ross on Radio’s Top Songs of 2025 to come out around 100 songs, a challenge I’ve been lucky to have in recent years.
Starting with my top pick, there are a lot of sonic throwbacks here, something that has been hard to avoid throughout the ’20s. “Dancing 2” by Keli Holiday is a song we could have gotten if David Bowie could have made a great single this year. It was the unlikely side project of Adam Hyde, half of the Australian EDM duo Peking Duk, which has appeared on my CHR Big Hits Energy playlist before for remaking Savage Garden’s “I Want You,” also a hit at home. “Keli Holiday” was Mr. Hyde’s fictitious alter ego — an in-joke unto itself — and something that even Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines couldn’t pull off.
If “Dancing 2” comes to America, and I haven’t heard anything to suggest that it is, it will sound great on Alternative radio but might easily be marooned there. In Australia, it sounded great and just-different-enough on CHR. Starting with this dissertation is, admittedly, a potentially distancing choice. But there are ROR readers who follow international CHR more closely than I do and already know this story. If that’s you, let’s both fly across the country and meet for lunch somewhere in 2026.
Similarly, the year ended with two great retro R&B records, the ’60s throwback “Who’s That” by Brother Wallace and the ’70s-flavored “Gas Station Love” by EJ Jones. “Who’s That” is climbing at Triple-A. As the Hip-Hop radio format becomes more R&B-flavored, the latter has become a surprise presence there, not just Adult R&B. You can hear them together, along with the rest of the Top 100, on this playlist.
Because I try not to repeat songs from year to year, there are some 2025 hits that have already appeared in 2024 — “Mutt” by Leon Thomas; “Luther” by Kendrick Lamar & SZA; the unlikely Country No. 1 “Darlin’” by Chase Matthew. There were also older songs — “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan, “Denial Is a River” by Doechii – that I did have to hear as 2025 radio hits to fully appreciate that are included this year. “Denial” is in my top 15, in part for having made a radio hit out of a comedy routine (or a dramedy, anyway).
The Rest of the Top Fifteen
- Disco Lines & Tinashe, “No Broke Boys” — the original made last year’s Top 100
- Jade, “Before You Break My Heart”
- Olivia Dean, “Nice to Each Other” — ratified worldwide shortly before “Man I Need” broke through; hope that America will get to it when it’s done catching up with the other singles
- Raye, “Where is My Husband!” — so happy that the random virality of today’s music might actually give her a hit streak and not one random moment
- Role Model, “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out”
- Sabrina Carpenter, “Tears”
- Sombr, “Undressed” and “12 to 12” — happy that his virality comes with a hit streak
- Taylor Swift, “The Fate of Ophelia” and “Opalite”
The Next Tier
- Alex Warren & Jelly Roll, “Bloodline” — the lyric elevates it beyond the year’s other Mumford-influenced singles
- 803Fresh, “Boots on the Ground”
- Beaches, “Last Girls at the Party”
- Benson Boone, “Mystical Magical” and “Mr. Electric Blue”
- Boy Golden, “Suffer” and “Cowboy Dreams”
- Huntr/X, “Golden”
- Lil Tecca, “Dark Thoughts”
- Mariah Carey, “Type Dangerous” — really should have been held for Dec. 26 this year when people might have been more open to hearing it
- Miley Cyrus, “End of the World”
- Moliy, Silent Addy, Skillbeng, Shenseea, “Shake It to the Max (Remix)”
- Ravyn Lenae, “Love Me Not”
- Renee Rapp, “Leave Me Alone” — released on Memorial Day, seemingly in time for the Song of Summer field and a Gracie Abrams-type “next level moment.” Instead, it’s the song whose hit potential I was most wrong about this year. Or everybody else was.
- Renforshort, “On My Way” and “Feeling Good” – Canadian CHR hitmaker who, again, has not one but two records the U.S. needs
- Sabrina Carpenter, “When Did You Get Hot?”
- Tyler, the Creator, “Sugar on My Tongue”
- Wet Leg, “Mangetout”
Other Hits (In Various Formats, Countries)
- Alex Porat, “Face Like Yours”
- BBNO$, “Check” — Canadian hit that samples “Low Rider”
- Beaches, “Can I Call You in the Morning”
- Blackpink, “Jump”
- Calvin Harris, “Blessings”
- Chris Brown, “Holy Blindfold”
- Chris Young, “’Til the Last One Dies”
- Djo, “Basic Being Basic”
- Drake & Central Cee, “Which One”
- Ed Sheeran, “A Little More”
- Fionn, “Blow” — Canadian Alternative #1; the just-released “I Put My Makeup On” will probably be on the list next year
- Guns N’ Roses, “Nothin’” and “Atlas”
- Haim, “Gone”
- Jane Handcock & Anderson.Paak, “Stare at Me”
- Katseye, “Gabriela”
- Kehlani, “Folded”
- Lord Huron, “Watch Me Go”
- Louis Tomlinson, “Lemonade”
- Lucy Dacus, “Best Guess”
- Megan Moroney, “6 Months Later”
- Milky Chance, “Camouflage”
- Parmalee, “Cowgirl”
- Piece the Veil, “So Far So Fake”
- Preston Cooper, “Weak” — boosted by the starmaking performance of CRS 2025
- Rosé, “Toxic Till the End” — “APT” made the 2024 top tier
- Sarah Reeves, “Cloud Nine”
- Selena Gomez & Benny Blanco w/Gracie Abrams, “Call Me When You Break Up”
- Sonny Fodera, DOD & Poppy Baskcomb, “Think About Us”
- Sublime, “Ensenada”
- Tame Impala, “Dracula”
- Tiesto f/Oaks, “I Follow Rivers”
- Tim McGraw f/Parker McCullum, “Paper Umbrellas”
- Tonio Armani, “Country Girl”
- Turnstile, “Never Enough” and “Look Out for Me”
- Vance Joy, “Fascination in the Dark”
- Wolf Alice, “White Horses”
- Xania Monet, “How Was I Supposed to Know” — another throwback climbing at Adult and Mainstream R&B
Have You Heard?
- Amanda Reifer, “Rudumb?”
- Avery Cochrane, “Shapeshifting on a Saturday Night”
- Buckingham/Nicks, “Don’t Let Me Down Again” — a companion to Fleetwood Mac’s superstardom of both 1977 and 2025
- CID f/Taylr Renee, “Fancy $hit”
- Dawn Carroll, “Super Heroes”
- Dead Outlaw, “Killed a Man in Maine” — looking to bond with any ROR readers who can guess what obscure(ish) early ‘80s AOR riff I heard
- Dexter & the Moonrocks, “Ritalin”
- Donna Fargo, “You Can Count on Me” — makes me as happy to include this as I would be about a new Dolly Parton single
- Fake Shark, “Bang Bang Bang”
- Ghost, “Satanized”
- Giovanni & Hired Guns, “Quitter”
- Glorious Sons, “New Plan”
- Greenwing, “All Hard Feelings”
- Joylon Petch & Tanya George, “Linger” — his Australian record of the year a few summers back was a remake of “Dreams”; this is the Cranberries song
- Kane Brown, “2 Pair”
- Keri Hilson, “Again”
- Margo Price, “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down”
- Michael Franti & Spearhead, “Break Up With Everything”
- October London, “Touch on Me”
- Sparks, “Porcupine”
- Shoreline Mafia, “Rockin’”
- Sidepiece, “Cry for You (2025)” — the September song, because we haven’t heard it in a Weill
- Thundercat, “I Wish I Didn’t Waste Your Time”
- Tucker Wetmore, “Brunette”
- Waiting for Smith, “I Like Life”
- Wallie the Sensei f/Ty Dolla $ign & Blxst, “Dip”
