The 25 biggest music moments from 2025

TikTok is always gonna TikTok, pulling viral trends from the most inexplicable of places, ranging from John Hamm dancing with his eyes closed on his show "Friends & Neighbors" to the absurdist "6-7" meme. Yet earlier in the year, it was "Pretty Little Baby", a non-hit for Brill Building singer Connie Francis, that ended up sweeping across socials, its cute little melody line and Francis' lovelorn delivery of phrases like "You can ask the flowers / I sit for hours!" The song soundtracked videos of lovers, videos of pets, and all sorts of cute other moments that felt brighter when backed by Francis's saccharine sweetness. The song racked up an astonishing 20 billion streams across multiple platforms, even reaching the lower rungs of the U.S. charts. Francis, unfortunately, didn't get to revel in the success for long, as declining health soon led to her passing away at age 87 in July. Yet she still was alive long enough to view the trend, even having a TikTok account of her own creation, where she got to thank many people who reached out to her to celebrate her decades-delayed resurgence. TikTok may not get it right every time, but when it finds a gem like this and turns it into a sensation, it's reassuring to know that not all songs are lost to time, and some of them are just waiting for their right moment.

Coldplay have been global superstars for a while now, but their relevance has noticeably waned. While 2024's full-length "Moon Music" was a transatlantic chart-topper, their lead single "Feelslikeimfallinginlove" failed to make an impact comparable to their earlier hits, and pushing strange narratives like their puppet-based personas, The Weirdos only furthered that divide, even as they remained a massive global touring act. On a July 16th show at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass., the "Kiss Cam" lit up the stadium's touring screens, looking for couples in love to have a memorable moment. Andy Byron, the CEO of tech company Astronomer, was spotted in the arms of a woman who was later revealed to be Kristin Cabot. The two are married to different people, and Cabot is the "chief people officer" at the company. When shown, Byron tried to dodge the camera, leading Chris Martin to joke (and he would later find out, correctly) that they were having "an affair." After the moment went viral, Byron and Cabot resigned from their positions. Martin, ever the jester, has since played up the "Kiss Cam," and it was briefly weeks of fodder for talk show comedians. Seems some people took "Feelslikeimfallinginlove" a bit too seriously.

London, England's Sleep Token is one of the most divisive metal bands to emerge in a hot minute, and, for once, it's not due to a controversial incident with a band member. Instead, Sleep Token gets a lot of hate for being soft, for being overdramatic, for using trap beats, for all of the band members wearing masks and made-up names like (like Vessel and II and III and IV), as if copping a move from acts like Gwar and Slipknot and passing it off as their own thing instead of carrying on a great metal tradition. Of course, not everyone feels the same about this, and 2023's "The Summoning" turned out to be a legit radio hit, paving the way to the band's worldwide welcoming party with this year's full-length "Even in Arcadia". Released in May, it felt less like an album release and more like a coronation, shocking the industry by topping the charts globally, rendering them nigh-unignorable. Beyond that, the band even scored three Grammy nominations, fitting into both "Best Metal Performance" as well as "Best Rock Performance." While some may say the hate is forced, their success is very real, and whether some metal heads like it or not, Sleep Token are going to be here for a good while. Don't Sleep on them now.

Doechii's rise through the rap ranks in 2024 was one of the year's wildest surprises. Using non-linear verses and storytelling, she proved she could hold her own against anyone, crafting hits with "Denial is a River" and "Alter Ego" while netting the Grammy for Best Rap Album with her mixtape "Alligator Bites Never Heal". She was on the up-and-up, scoring hits via features on tracks with Jenny from Blackpink. Yet all that changed with "Anxiety", an old mixtape track that was picked up by online heads and eventually reworked for an official release. The problem with the song is the full-bore sample used of Gotye's seminal "Somebody I Used to Know", where new lyrics are placed over a seemingly unchanged instrumental. It reached that strange pop-culture divide, where fans and critics derided it as lazy, but it ended up becoming her first Top 10 hit, even scoring some key Grammy nominations. It doesn't hurt her case that a trend emerged on TikTok where the Gotye version starts playing and people say "Thank god" when it's his vocals that come in. Few people seem mad at Doechii for seizing the moment, but her fans felt they deserved higher-quality material from their new favorite artist.

The 2019 film "Rocketman" (where Taron Egerton plays Elton John) and 2018's "Bohemian Rhapsody" (where Rami Malek won the Oscar for portraying Freddie Mercury) showed that not only was there a cultural appetite for music biopics, but if done correctly, a large commercial one as well. The downside, however, is that Hollywood has taken the wrong lesson and decided to focus less on quality and more on quantity, putting out as many as possible. For every "Elvis" there's a flop like "Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody". For every "Bob Marley: One Love" there's a "Back to Black". The quality varies wildly, to the point where it feels like there are just too many of them. In 2025 alone, we were treated to Jeremy Allen White's take on The Boss with the wildly strange "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere" (where we focus on the creation of his moody acoustic record "Nebraska') to the Hugh Jackman / Kate Hudson flick "Song Sung Blue" where they're not portraying the rise of Neil Diamond but instead a Neil Diamond tribute band. With Antoine Fuqua's Michael Jackson biopic on the horizon and allegedly split into two parts due to legal issues, studios will eventually have to realize they are oversaturating the market. At least Robbie Williams had the idea to make the star of his a monkey...

For the longest possible time, a Clipse reunion was outside of the realm of possibility. Since the group went on hiatus in 2010, Malice & Pusha T went on their own journeys, with Malice's solo music not exactly charting as Pusha T went supernova, tackling everything from a battle with Drake (which he rather definitively won) to releasing the chart-topping album "It's Almost Dry" in 2022. On that latter album, Malice showed up on the closing track "I Pray for You", a follow-up from their surprise 2019 appearance on Kanye West's "Jesus Is King" record. The easing of tensions was a joy to rap fans the world over, but few could've imagined the group would return as loud as they did with "Let God Sort Em Out", a full-length album the public has been waiting over 15 years for. There was a brief moment when it seemed that the album wouldn't come out, as parent company Universal Music Group felt that Kendrick Lamar's guest verse on "Chains & Whips" would garner wrath from the Trump administration, leading the group to buy out their own contract and instead release it on their own. Produced exclusively by the duo's long-standing friend and collaborator, Pharrell Williams, the album hit the Top Ten in multiple album charts worldwide and received nothing short of critical hosannas, including an Album of the Year nomination at the 2026 Grammy Awards. Now that's a rap comeback worth waiting for.

On June 9th of this year, Sly Stone, the legendary band leader behind Sly & the Family Stone, passed away from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 82, and someone responsible for an entire generation of game-changing soul and funk music. Whether it be hits like "Everyday People" or "Dance to the Music", Stone had an imperial period in the late '60s and early '70s that showed he could do almost anything with arguably the first fully integrated, mixed-gender group in rock history. Much has been captured in Questlove's excellent 2025 documentary "Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)", wherein he traces Stone's gradual shedding of his hippie ideals, moving toward a more political, direct vibe, culminating in the 1971 instant classic full-length "There's a Riot Goin' On". While Stone's popularity waned since then (just as his drug use increased), he still was a powerful figure in pop music, and listening to only a few of his songs makes one realize that yes, Janet Jackson samples "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" in "Rhythm Nation" and yes, "Family Affair" is the basis for the Black Eyed Peas track "Weekend". His legacy is etched in pop music history, affecting everyone, including "Everyday People" like you and me.

Since releasing her full-length debut in 2023, British singer-songwriter Lola Young has been on the up-and-up, putting out acclaimed records, including this year's heralded "I'm Only F___ Myself". She guested on Tyler, The Creator's "Chromakopia", collaborated with Lil Yachty, and even booked a few festival appearances. Yet her Coachella performance resulted in her leaving the stage to throw up, and her Summertime Ball appearance at Wembley Stadium had her crying on stage when her in-ear monitors failed. After collapsing during New York's All Things Go festival after only five songs, she canceled all future media appearances. While her team had hired a sober coach, Young's time during recovery has been fruitful, as she has since received Grammy nominations for Best Pop Solo Performance and the coveted Best New Artist. As a major rising star in the industry who has hit a new peak of recognition, there's hope she'll overcome her issues and make a full return to the public.

The Trump administration's key pushes in 2025 were harsh stances on tariffs and especially immigration. On the former, vinyl and CD manufacturers have been exempted from tariffs, but guitar and pedal makers, especially, have expressed concern given that international tariff rates have changed so frequently. Of the latter, it's been a very different story. ICE has detained everyone from Loose Ends frontwoman Jane Eugene to Tunisian singer Rami Othmane, who was detained despite being married to a U.S. citizen. Other acts were deported from the U.S. or denied entry for festival appearances in the first place, prompting many labels and organizers to reconsider the viability of certain recurring commitments. Between the pardon of NBA YoungBoy and multiple artists contesting the use of their songs in official White House and Defense Department videos, it's clear the artists in the music industry will remain at odds with, and have mixed feelings towards, the government for some time.

When you are an artist as beloved as Swedish pop thought leader Robyn, you are allowed some grace. While she released some fascinating and colorful collaborative EPs throughout the 2010s, the eight-year gap between her iconic 2010 album "Body Talk" and her follow-up full-length "Honey" was long. While she made a few TV appearances here and there, her work since "Honey" has been … non-existent. Sure, she showed up on tracks from the likes of Jónsi and Jamie XX, but fans were ready for any possibility, because if anytime Robyn feels like retiring from the music industry after surviving in it for literal decades, we'd all collectively understand. Imagine our surprise when right out in the Q4 of 2025, we get "Dopamine", the lead single from her yet-to-be-announced ninth album. "Dopamine" is a thrilling track that uses warm, repeating electro-synth patterns that pulse with emotion underneath, picking up right where "Honey" left off, and it's rumored to be a teaser for a full-length album produced by her classic-era collaborator, Klas Åhlund. Sometimes when times are tough, good omens emerge in the most unexpected of places.

Roberta Flack was nothing short of a magician: a keyboardist, a singer, a songwriter, and a producer who could tackle gospel renditions as easily as she could pop tracks. Largely viewed as the mother of the "quiet storm" movement of the '80s, it was her work in the '70s that ended up establishing her as one to watch, with chart-toppers like "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and the legendary "Killing Me Softly with His Song" quickly establishing her as a soul-pop vocal master. Later songs like "Feel Like Makin' Love" and her Donny Hathaway duet "The Closer I Get to You" were highlights of her legacy, and she continued to have hits all the way into the '90s with help from the likes of Maxi Priest. In short, the North Carolina-born Roberta Flack was a national treasure, and in /2020, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammys. In February of 2025, she passed away due to cardiac arrest, and in March, a memorial service was held in March where Lauryn Hill sang some of Flack's iconic hits back to her spirit. She lived to be 88 years old, but has a musical legacy that will outlive most of us.

There had been rumors of Puff Daddy/P. Diddy's nature for years, as the hip-hop mogul and rapper was known for having his infamous "freak-off" parties, wherein multiple people were brought together, and massive amounts of sex were had. It was alleged that these parties were often drug-fueled and likely passed no sniff test for legality. Yet Sean "Puffy" Combs was a public figure who could star in movies and still put out hit records, so most were willing to put up with some unpleasantness at least until the May 2024 release of hotel security footage in which Combs was clearly abusing his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura. Following that very public blow to his media image, the lawsuits started appearing, which were highlighted by the sex-trafficking, racketeering, and prostitution case against Combs that started in 2025. In the end, Combs didn't receive convictions on every charge but was found guilty of enough of them to guarantee a four-year prison sentence. While Combs has been making it clear that he would love to receive a pardon from President Trump, there has been no news of that as of this writing. To many, this was an instance of justice finally being served.

This one hurts. Brian Wilson, the founder of The Beach Boys and one of the most celebrated pop songwriters in all of history, passed away this year in June following complications from "long Covid." Where does one even begin to describe their influence? As a California-based group who initially had hits about surfing, The Beach Boys' early pop hits afforded enough stability for Wilson to try out new sounds, new experiments. While hits like "Fun, Fun, Fun" had their place in the bubblegum stratosphere, it was singles like "Sloop John B",  "Wouldn't It Be Nice" (both from their seminal 1966 masterwork "Pet Sounds"), and "Good Vibrations" that hid profound themes behind their daring production that truly changed the rock landscape. The group would have hits throughout the years, but their '60s period is what is most revered. Wilson's 2004 release "Brian Wilson Presents Smile" – a recording of his legendarily abandoned and overambitious follow-up to "Pet Sounds" – ended up securing him the best reviews of his career and even netted him his first-ever Grammy Award. Yet accolades are one thing, and the songs that soundtracked our lives and changed our moods are another. Brian Wilson led a life worth living, and we now have countless albums to go back through and celebrate his genius.

While "KPop Demon Hunters" ruled the airwaves, the theaters, and your local streaming device all summer, the start of this year featured yet another music-based story about demon slaying, but of a slightly different iteration. Ryan Coogler's "Sinners", starring Michael B. Jordan, was an absolute sensation, turning a massive profit off the story of vampires who view music as a powerful spiritual element that can cut through the planes that separate the living from the dead. They are drawn to a naturally gifted young boy who is protected by a pair of rabble-rousing brothers named Smoke and Stack. The soundtrack to this Mississippi Delta-set film plays into this beautifully, using Miles Caton's "I Lied to You" as the Blues-stomp centerpiece, wherein his performance is so powerful he conjures decades of other musical styles into the ether, ranging from '80s drum machines to '70s rock guitar to any other number of genres in the Black tradition. It's a trip of a song, and is on the same set list as a shockingly out-of-tradition Rod Wave title track. Jack O'Connell's demonic jig "Rocky Road to Dublin" is another highlight, but the whole of the soundtrack is a vibe, and remains one of the year's most delightful musical surprises.

There were doubters. There were haters. There was worry that after the success of her 2020 album "Chromatica", her move into leading actress territory meant she would abandon the sound that made her famous in the first place. While her "Harlequin" soundtrack album to the notorious flop film "Joker: Folie à Deux" was certainly filled with choices, it was 2025's "MAYHEM" that gave us the straight-up injection of "classic Gaga." From the thudding lead single "Disease" to David Bowie cosplay like "Zombieboy", she twists and turns her sound, remaining fundamentally Gaga while pivoting to everything from Michael Jackson-isms ("Shadow of a Man") to sparkling contemporary pop ("Perfect Celebrity"). It was an astonishing comeback that reminded her fans why they stan her in the first place, and a nice world tour and "Wednesday" tie-in Deluxe Edition felt like well-deserved victory laps.

At the start of the year, Bad Bunny released what may very well be his masterwork. "Debí Tirar Más Fotos" is a striking album that we've already highlighted in our Best Albums of 2025 rundown. It's emotional, it's clubby, and it's deeply in love with its home country of Puerto Rico. The deeply emotional title track "DtMF" became a viral hit for all the right reasons, as everyone took to socials to share montages of lost family members and passed pets to really sum up the song's translated title of "I Should've Taken More Photos". Now, after an alleged disagreement about performance fees to get Taylor Swift to perform at the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny was selected to instead. It makes sense given that Bad Bunny is one of the largest streaming artists of all time and knows how to command a stage. This will be one of the first Super Bowls to have a performer whose songbook is almost entirely not in English, but if Kendrick Lamar's Half-Time show was any indication of what is possible now, we fully expect there to be indelible moments.

For all divisive critical reception that both 2022's "Midnights" and 2024's "The Tortured Poets Department" received (to say nothing of the fan reaction to the re-record of her beloved pop benchmark "1989"), some were quick to write the obituary for Taylor Swift's dominance as a pop icon, noting she would forever be one of the world's best-selling artists but would be done in by too much overexposure. Yet "The Life of a Showgirl" showed that, once again, conventional metrics and expectations don't apply to her and likely never will. Moving a record-breaking, unfathomable four million units in its release week, "The Life of a Showgirl" reversed her narrative, proving that, in fact, she was more popular than she had ever been before. The reviews from both critics and fans were another matter (Rolling Stone would give a perfect score to her chewed gum if they could), but in terms of continuing to terraform the pop culture landscape in her own image, it's Taylor's stage and the rest is just parking.

Oh, we've all seen the gif. The moment when it was announced, the rare moment when Beyoncé forgot she was Beyoncé. When she won the Grammy for Best Country Album, as read aloud by none other than Taylor Swift. This clip is often misconstrued for later in the evening when she won Album of The Year after a shocking four previous nominations (five if you count her nod for being featured on Lady Gaga's "The Fame Monster"). It seemed like a pipe dream, like the impossible had finally happened. While some called "Cowboy Carter" overlong, its effect on pop culture was unquestioned. Chart-toppers like "Texas Hold 'Em", a dynamite duet with Miley Cyrus, a sign-off from Willie Nelson, fan favorites like the Beach Boys-quoting "Ya-Ya" -- it may have been overambitious, but its effect was undeniable. Beyoncé had earned her flowers, and a brilliant meme was born out of the most wholesome of reasons.

A lot of people sleep on the fact that Rosalía is a true student of Latin music history. Her debut album, 2017's "Los Ángeles", was a full-length where it was just her voice and a flamenco guitar, going through covers and highlighting her gorgeous vocal training. While she became a Latin-pop superstar along the way, it was 2022's iconic "Motomami" that found her redefining every notion of what a chart hit could sound like, pushing well beyond established norms and boundaries to become the name on everyone's lips. Fans who followed Rosalía's socials were familiar with the teases and the hints of a new project in 2025, but no one was ready for the epic drop of "Berghain". The lead single to her fourth full-length album, "Lux", Rosalía blew the minds of anyone within earshot with this album of breathtaking ambition. Shifting her focus to contemporary classical, "Lux" finds Rosalía singing lyrics in 14 different languages, using everyone from the London Symphony Orchestra as her backing strings, Pharrell Williams as a producer, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo as composers, and so much more. It was ornate, it was powerful, it was fully unexpected from one of the hottest names in contemporary pop music. It's a daring work that defies all pop star logic, charming critics and fully rewriting her trajectory. It must be heard to be believed.

Check in on your parents, if you can. The advancement of audio AI has advanced to such a place that some older adults think they are on phone calls with famous actors or political figures and are willingly handing over cash to what are clearly scammers on the other end. The cons are getting realistically good just as AI technology becomes readily available. For musicians, now multiple apps allow you to plug in a couple of keywords and a "preferred style" to get your own professional-sounding custom track in minutes. This has lead to "artists" like Breaking Rust and Broken Veteran breaking into the viral Spotify charts with surprising ease. The line between what's real and what's fake is becoming increasingly fuzzy, and now there is debate on whether new acts like Velvet Sundown can translate their viral success into, say, touring, which they obviously cannot, given the AI limitations. A Deezer survey of 9000 people showed that 97% of listeners could not distinguish AI music from songs recorded by in-the-flesh musicians and producers, which why tracks like "Predador De Perereca" – an '80s-sounding Brazilian hit where no records of the band behind are available prior to 2025 – had dominated the viral social media space with few being able to call it out for what it is. Remember: everything leaves a digital footprint, and knowing what is and is not real will become helpful given how many more advances this technology will make in the coming months.

In his astonishing and legendary career, D'Angelo only put out three albums: 1995's "Brown Sugar", 2000's heralded "Voodoo", and his seminal 2014 release with his band The Vanguard: "Black Messiah". While the Virginia-born D'Angelo had a few radio hits over his career, what he truly had was influence, as each one of his albums had a devoted fan base to the point where many began to refer to him as the father of the neo-soul movement that took over the late-'90s/early-2000s. D'Angelo made no bones about his difficulty with the industry, from slimming down to a muscled ab god for the legendary "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" video to his multi-year wait between albums 'cos he was a perfectionist in a machine that always strikes while the iron is hot. He always stuck to his guns and was allegedly working on a fourth album prior to his October passing from pancreatic cancer. Whether or not that fourth record comes out is irrelevant, as D'Angelo was one of the most rightly-revered geniuses of his time, and one who managed to make not a lot of music but instead consistently great music. He may not have moved the most units, but the most impactful songs don't need to. We truly lost a legend with D'Angelo.

There was a minor controversy when Kendrick Lamar was picked to do the Super Bowl halftime show in New Orleans over Lil' Wayne, the latter of whom both had a catalog of hits but was also a native son of NOLA. Kendrick addressed much of that minor drama on his hit 2024 album "GNX", putting out a record full of hits right before he would take the Super Bowl stage to perform them. The capper to his seemingly endless victory lap in his feud with Drake, Kendrick took over the stadium to perform his own medley of hits (like "All the Stars" and "Luther", both of which were with SZA, whom he would tour with after). While cameos from Samuel L. Jackson and Serena Williams were lovely, the question he teased throughout the performance was whether or not he'd perform his chart-topping knockout "Not Like Us" -- and he did. It was an iconic moment when Kendrick had an entire stadium chanting along to the memorable punchline "a minorrr" right after he flashed a devilish smile at the camera to his rival over the past year. It was instantly iconic. No wonder Drake sued his record label (which Kendrick is also signed to) right after.

On July 5th at Birmingham, England's Villa Park, Ozzy Osbourne and the rest of Black Sabbath performed the "Back to the Beginning" concert, a send-off to their shared musical legacy. The venue was chosen specifically because it was located close to where they started in Aston back in 1968. While groups like Mastodon, Slayer, Lamb of God, Metallica, Guns N' Roses, and Alice in Chains all showed up to perform short sets sprinkled in with covers from both Osboune's solo career as well as Black Sabbath's, the highlight was seeing Ozzy and the band perform legendary renditions like "Crazy Train", "War Pigs", and "Iron Man". Osbourne had lost his ability to walk following his diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, so he primarily sang from an ornate throne on stage. Yet playing his hits, leaning on his mic to get into his words, and seeing the parade of acts prior that had given him tribute was a heartwarming feeling. After all, Osbourne and Black Sabbath were one of the most influential metal bands ever to exist, so this felt like a fitting send-off. Yet 17 days after that show, Osbourne passed away, dying of a heart attack while at home with his family. It was beautiful that he knew his time was coming and planned a ten-hour concert to give proper tribute to his contributions. The world has lost a bit of its grit without him here.

Following their 2024 biopic where the band all played themselves, Irish hip-hop group Kneecap were on the rise, seeing their international profile grow to the point where they could be booked for a slot at 2025's Coachella. During their festival performance, they flashed messages showing support for Palestine and made no bones about their feelings toward Israel. In quick order, the band lost their U.S. booking agent, were pilloried by the right-wing talking head contingent, and soon were in an online feud with Sharon Osbourne. At another festival appearance (Glastonbury), it was the rap-metal duo Bob Vylan who expressed similar sentiment about the Israeli Defense Forces and soon found not only that their agency UTA decided to drop them but also that the U.S. State Department had canceled their visas. While neither act had made huge commercial inroads in the U.S., both acts' political posturing ignited all sorts of online debates regarding free speech for musicians in the modern era.

It has been known that Sony Animation felt dicey about the theatrical box office potential of a movie with an admittedly absurd title like "KPop Demon Hunters", so they hedged their bets and sold it to Netflix. This may go down as one of the biggest financial blunders in history, because with this incredible piece of pop culture, Netflix finally had its "Frozen" moment: a film that even adults could love, an unmissable soundtrack that spawned multiple hits, a star-maker for the long-running writer and performer EJAE, and one of the year's most popular Halloween costumes. A multi-Grammy nominee and (as of this writing) a shoo-in for an Oscar nod only showed that this had become nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. Artists and producers from a variety of big Korean labels worked on it, effectively sharing the wealth and lifting all boats (we see you, Twice). It is the biggest K-pop event to happen in the Western world since BTS, and unsurprisingly became Netflix's most-watched film of all time. Its popularity may very well change the whole of pop music, as Sony sits there and wonders how they could miss an opportunity so "Golden".