Why Are So Many Songs From 2024 in the 2025 Year-End Chart?

Data from the music industry's primary analytics firm, Luminate, which powers the Billboard charts, reveals a chart landscape dominated by yesterday's hits. As of late November, only seven songs released in 2025 have cracked the year-end Top 25. The overwhelming majority—16 slots—are held by tracks that first emerged in 2024. This carryover is so pronounced that four of the current top 10, including Benson Boone's "Beautiful Things" and Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us," are repeats from last year's chart peak.

The phenomenon goes beyond mere endurance. For some artists, such as Gracie Abrams, 2024 releases only found a mass audience this year. In a more extreme case, Chappell Roan's 2020 single "Pink Pony Club" has outperformed her own 2024 hit in 2025 streams. This shift prompted Billboard to officially shorten the eligibility window for a "current" song on the Hot 100. Analysts point to a sparse release calendar from top-tier artists in early 2025 and a fragmented streaming ecosystem where listeners easily default to familiar favorites as key reasons for the slowdown.

Jaime Marconette, Luminate's Vice President of Music Insights, cites two interconnected causes. The first is the unprecedented staying power of the 2024 pop cycle, a year marked by major breakthroughs for artists like Sabrina Carpenter and Charli XCX. "The cultural footprint of last year's hits is historic," Marconette explained. "We're seeing record-breaking chart runs that create a long shadow for new music." Indeed, Teddy Swims's "Lose Control" has now spent over 92 weeks on the Hot 100, dethroning Glass Animals' "Heat Waves" for the longest chart run in the streaming era.

The second driver is a listener trend toward nostalgia and escapism, which Marconette links to broader societal uncertainty. This has fueled a resurgence of what he calls 'Recession Pop'—optimistic, danceable hits from the late 2000s, like Miley Cyrus's iconic 2009 track "Party in the USA." This pattern of seeking comfort in familiar music mirrors behavior observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. "During unstable times, audiences often gravitate toward music that offers a reliable emotional release, whether it's from last year or last decade," Marconette noted, suggesting this psychology has extended the life of 2024's anthems.

A turnaround may be imminent, however. The latter half of 2025 has seen a concentrated influx of major releases, including new music from global icon Justin Bieber—whose 2021 album *Justice* was a global smash—and the highly anticipated K-pop group TWICE. This wave appears to be finally shifting the dynamic. "The impact of new pop records was delayed until the third quarter, which is atypical," Marconette concluded. The release of the blockbuster *K-Pop Demon Hunters* soundtrack has further energized the charts, signaling a potential return to a cycle where current releases can reclaim the spotlight.