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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Billboard’s 2025 Year-End Hot 100 was led by “Die with a Smile” by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. This ranking covers the year-end chart’s Top 10—not every song that reached No. 1 on a weekly Hot 100 during calendar 2025—and orders those songs by our own editorial judgment rather than Billboard’s chart positions.
What were the biggest Billboard Hot 100 hits of 2025?
Billboard’s Year-End Hot 100 counts chart activity from October 26, 2024, through October 18, 2025, so its “2025” list does not cover the full calendar year. The chart combines performance across sales, radio airplay, and streaming; it measures popularity, not artistic merit. Billboard’s year-end chart is the performance baseline for the list below.
The ranking here reverses none of Billboard’s findings: it uses the same ten songs, but assesses them as songs, weighing songwriting and melodic distinction, vocal performance, production, emotional or cultural resonance, and replay value. Those judgments are subjective, and the chart position does not determine the order.
2025’s Year-End Hot 100 Top 10, ranked worst to best
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“A Bar Song (Tipsy)” — Shaboozey
Shaboozey’s country-rap blend has an immediately memorable hook and an easy communal energy. Its greatest strength is also its limitation: the song is built around a single, repeated party scenario, with less melodic or emotional development than the entries above it. It is an efficient singalong, but a narrower one.
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Billboard Greatest Chart All-Stars Instrumental Solos for Strings: Top Performing Songs and Artists from the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard Hot 200 ... years, Book & CD (Instrumental Solos Series)- Format: Book & CD
- Instrumentation: Cello
- Instrument: Cello
- Genre: Pop
- Category: String Series
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“I Had Some Help” — Post Malone featuring Morgan Wallen
The duet gives a breakup complaint a bright, conversational country-pop setting. Post Malone and Morgan Wallen make the back-and-forth feel natural, and the chorus lands quickly. The polished arrangement keeps the track buoyant, though its familiar blame-and-heartbreak premise leaves less of a distinctive imprint than the songs ranked higher.
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“Beautiful Things” — Benson Boone
Boone’s vocal performance supplies the drama: the song moves from restrained gratitude into a full-throated plea not to lose what matters. That escalation is potent and easy to remember. At times, the production’s push toward a huge climax feels more familiar than the vulnerability at the center of the lyric, but the contrast makes the chorus hit.
Rank #2
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Billboard Greatest Chart All-Stars Instrumental Solos: Top Performing Songs and Artists from the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard Hot 200 over the Past 50 years, Book & CD (Instrumental Solos Series)- Format: Book & CD
- Instrumentation: Horn in F
- Instrument: Horn in F
- Genre: Pop
- Category: Instrumental Series
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“Ordinary” — Alex Warren
“Ordinary” turns devotion into an expansive pop ballad, with Warren’s earnest delivery carrying a clear melodic line. Its appeal lies in the directness of the sentiment and the scale of the arrangement. The familiar language of love elevated beyond the everyday keeps it from feeling as singular as the top entries, but the performance gives the song real warmth.
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“Birds of a Feather” — Billie Eilish
Eilish makes a pledge of lasting love sound intimate rather than grandiose. The bright, clean pop production gives the song lift while leaving room for her close, distinctive vocal. Its melodic ease and emotional clarity reward repeat listens; it feels both light on its feet and sincere without having to announce its seriousness.
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First Hot 100 Of The '60s / Various- The First Hot 100 of the '60s
- Product type: ABIS MUSIC
- Brand: Acrobat USA
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“Lose Control” — Teddy Swims
Swims brings a rough-edged, soulful intensity to a song about dependence and emotional upheaval. The vocal is the center of gravity: it turns the lyric’s instability into something the listener can feel, while the production steadily builds around it. The arrangement occasionally leans hard on familiar power-ballad scale, but the performance makes the feeling convincing.
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“APT.” — ROSÉ and Bruno Mars
“APT.” is a tightly built pop collaboration whose chant-like hook and crisp momentum make its playful premise instantly legible. ROSÉ and Mars bring complementary energy, and the production keeps the track moving without obscuring its central refrain. Its lightness is a deliberate strength: it understands that a compact, infectious idea can be enough.
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“Pink Pony Club” — Chappell Roan
Roan turns a vivid setting into an exuberant story of self-discovery and belonging. The theatrical pop arrangement gives the song room to grow, while its chorus feels like an invitation rather than a mere payoff. The combination of narrative detail, vocal character, and communal release makes it one of the list’s most fully realized songs.
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“Luther” — Kendrick Lamar and SZA
Kendrick Lamar and SZA make a restrained, romantic collaboration feel rich through contrast: Lamar’s measured presence and SZA’s supple vocal meet in a warm, unhurried arrangement. Rather than chasing a maximal chorus, the song draws strength from atmosphere, phrasing, and the chemistry between its performers. Its subtlety gives it staying power.
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Billboard Magazine Hot 100 50th Anniversary Songbook: Piano/Vocal/Chords- Used Book in Good Condition
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“Die with a Smile” — Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars
The best song in this editorial ranking is also the year-end chart’s No. 1. Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars shape a classic-feeling duet around clear melodic writing, expressive vocals, and an arrangement that gives both singers space to meet and answer each other. Its emotional premise is sweeping, but the performance keeps it human. The result feels polished without losing its sense of urgency.
What was the No. 1 song of 2025?
“Die with a Smile,” by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, topped Billboard’s 2025 Year-End Hot 100. That means it led the year-end performance chart; it does not, by itself, mean it was the only song—or even the song with the most weekly No. 1 weeks—among songs that topped individual weekly charts during calendar 2025. The year-end chart and the weekly chart answer different questions.
How the year-end chart differs from a critical ranking
Billboard’s order reflects combined chart performance across sales, radio airplay, and streaming, not a critic’s assessment of composition or performance. The Top 10 also spans collaborations and solo performances across different pop, country, and hip-hop contexts; comparing them on one artistic scale is necessarily interpretive.
For a different kind of year-end judgment, the Associated Press published a 2025 best-songs selection explicitly in no particular order, using critical discussion rather than the Hot 100’s performance sequence: AP’s 2025 best songs.
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