Pop-music doldrums are usually particularly frustrating because there’s always perfectly good hit music that Top 40 could be playing but does not. How different 1980-82 would have been if “Rapper’s Delight” and “Super Freak” had been more than grudgingly acknowledged, or if “Tainted Love” and “Mickey” could have happened sooner, rather than each needing six months and the extra support of MTV.
As Classic Hits programmers try to triage the ’90s, at least a few of the songs they’re going back for now are the Alternative and Hip-Hop records that Top 40 never quite played proportionately during the near-collapse of the format early in the timespan, whether it’s “This Is How We Do It” or “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” As with a decade earlier, there was always a feeling of another format having the better records; that lasted even longer with R&B and Hip-Hop, which wasn’t fully back until “No Scrubs” at the end of the decade.
As we take a look at the “Songs That Made a Difference in 2025” — never a mere list of the biggest hits, but those songs that portended change in their various formats — it might seem strange to start with two songs that CHR has also struggled with. But they are, again, examples of seemingly mass-appeal records that are taking place just out of reach at adjacent formats, or on international charts, or now on streaming.
I can’t promise you that “Sugar on My Tongue” by Tyler, the Creator or “Shake It to the Max” by Moliy x Silent Addy f/Shenshea will be played at your grandkids’ weddings in a generation or so, but as former No. 1 Rhythmic CHR hits that have taken an unreasonable amount of time to reach the lower teens, they certainly give the impression now that a better party is taking place in the adjacent function room. (“Shake It” was also No. 1 at Hip-Hop/R&B radio, which, curiously, never embraced “Sugar on My Tongue.”)
In fact, the simultaneously encouraging and frustrating thing about Top 40 right now is the number of potential hits being left on the buffet table, or at least just sitting there until programmers go back for seconds. (That is literally the case with songs like “Opalite” by Taylor Swift, “When Did You Get Hot?” by Sabrina Carpenter, or the pair of Sombr hits — “Back to Friends” and now “12 to 12” that all have to wait their turn, at least on the airplay charts, until a previous single has peaked.)
Sombr’s “Undressed” might have been one of those songs, too, but getting what used to be called a “before-the-box” add from WHTZ (Z100) New York forced radio to deal with it. But as radio and labels try to figure out whether singles should be simultaneous or sequential, that also meant that many stations were one song behind. It was also a statement when Z100 and its iHeart brethren recently decided to support Benson Boone’s “Mr. Electric Blue,” released on a more typical third-single schedule.
In the moments before a hit-music resurgence, there are always international hits hiding in plain sight as well. “Mickey” took six months to become a U.S. hit. So did “Wannabe.” We credited MTV with boosting unlikely songs, but often all it did was bring proven hits to America. The same can be said for TikTok, YouTube, and streaming.
Raye’s “Where is My Husband?” may not have languished for six months, but it’s been a proven hit for me for months. Olivia Dean ticks (and tocks?) both the boxes — “Man I Need” is the worldwide hit that was already proven when it came to us. “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” is another ratified hit that is being held in the wings, although radio could use it now.
Raye was significant in another way. She was, at least in America, in the company of numerous artists for whom virality had created a big moment but not a sustained career, sometimes with labels deciding to not even bring a follow-up song to radio. It was also encouraging that Sombr also broke that jinx several times. I also liked that he gave us accessible indie pop that happened to be radio-friendly, along with “Love Me Not” by Ravyn Lenae and “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out” by Role Model. I hope we have more of that as well in 2026.
Other trends worth acknowledging this year:
In Country, virality did what a decade of discussion had not, forcing a greater presence for female artists (as did a big year for Lainey Wilson). There were hints of it two years ago when a Megan Moroney album cut briefly became a TikTok phenomenon, or last year with Ella Langley & Riley Green’s “You Look Like You Love Me.” This year, it was both Moroney’s “Six Months Later” and Langley’s “Choosing Texas.” The latter pulled off the Morgan Wallen trick of a Country hit that streams like a pop song (it was also a throwback along the lines of “7 Summers,” streaming’s Country beachhead of five years ago).
I said that the radio bias against K-Pop should have ended with Rosé’s “APT” last year, but “Golden” by Huntr/X has eventually demolished any argument about it being “stans-only” or “kids-only.” At the end, it was a major-market power record. And with “Gabriela” by Katseye as a hit, perhaps we’re also at the end of “well, we can’t play two at a time.”
“Luther” by Kendrick Lamar & SZA, “Nokia” by Drake, and “Anxiety” by Doechii were, ultimately, easy(ish) for CHR to acknowledge. Between them we had two established hitmakers and two well-loved samples. Doechii’s “Denial Is a River” was the more typical case study, the top 10 Hip-Hop record that peaked at No. 18 pop. As a whole, though, it was nice to hear more Hip-Hop at CHR and more multi-format hits at Hip-Hop/R&B radio.
A lot was made of the lack of top 40 Hip-Hop songs on the Billboard Hot 100 in October, and while a lot of that reflects the vagaries of that chart, as much as multi-format success, it is also true that Hip-Hop/R&B radio is more R&B-ballad focused than at any time since 1990. But it was good to hear “Mutt” by Leon Thomas on multiple formats, and I’d hope to see “Folded” by Kehlani make the transition to CHR as well, this time without having to lag a year behind its streaming story.
The convergence of Hip-Hop and Country that we saw last year with Shaboozey was years in the making. So was the breakthrough of “Southern Soul,” which this year propelled 803Fresh’s “Boots on the Ground” to a surprise hit at both Adult R&B and Hip-Hop radio. Southern Soul has echoes elsewhere, too. There are hits at both R&B (EJ Jones’s “Gas Station Love”) and Triple-A (Brother Wallace’s “Who’s That?”) that both, literally, sound like ’70s hitmaker Johnnie Taylor.
For a minute, “Sunday Best” by the Surfaces looked like another not-to-be-repeated web unicorn. Then frontman Forrest Frank became a breakthrough at Christian AC and the defining artist for Christian CHR and Hip-Hop outlets by creating an accessible indie-pop sound similar to Sombr/Role Model/Ravyn Lenae at CHR.
At Active Rock, there were the twin No. 1 Billboard 200 debuts for Ghost and Sleep Token. The latter’s “Emergence” also found a home at Alternative, as did a greater rock presence overall from acts both veteran (Linkin Park, Papa Roach) and newer (Badflower, Turnstile).
Like it or not, we are in an ongoing discussion at every format about not only “what constitutes a hit?” but “when?” For the time being, my answer is still “grab what you can,” because no current-based format really has enough. For radio, music enterprise has now become not finding the hits but triaging them faster and making sure that none are left behind. I hope we do a better job of that. Then I hope the success emboldens us to find some songs of our own in 2026.
For a look at the most-requested songs of the year, check out Mason’s Observations this week.
