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20. Jasmine Amy Rogers “Where I Wanna Be” from Boop!
The theater people really hated this perfectly adorable little musical about Betty Boop, but most did agree on Jasmine Amy Rogers’s performance, which she got a Tony nomination for. I think it was a great, big, splashy musical for tourists and casual fans of theater and I wanted it to run for a billion years.
19. Justine Sky & KAYTRANADA “Oh Lala”
I honestly had not heard a peep from Justine Skye in ages! Then she popped up at the Ladyland Festival this past summer on Cardi B’s night performing this absolute scorcher. Kaytranada does a basement dance party like nobody else.
18. Fade Evare “Sky Writing”
This is Marijuana Music. Fade Evare is a four-piece from Melbourne, Australia doing lo-fi indie pop with some R&B sensibilities and they put me in the mind of early 00’s Wicked Beat Soundsystem, who are also from Australia. I guess when you live on a big island where all the animals are trying to kill you, it makes sense to create music that will relax you instead.
17. Naomi Sharon “Can We Do This Over”
Sade’s Daughter is still at the top of the current class of Light-Skinned Black European Ladies Making R&B. Nobody is seeing her consistency right now.
16. Lambrini Girls “Love”
Phoebe and Selin are the last women standing from the rotating lineup of Lambrini Girls, but regardless of who is in this punk outfit, these Brits are ready to drink, party, and fight. Literally. They popped up on my radar when the UK press was reporting on their opposition to anti-trans efforts around the country, and then they went into an interview telling any TERF to square up and catch a beat down.
15. Maeta “Turn Me On”
Coming from Indianapolis, Maeta is signed to Roc Nation, and since none of the R&B girls really sang anymore, it’s no surprise that she’s right in line with the current crop of whisper-singers. What sets her apart is how rhythm-forward all of her songs are. I don’t know enough about her background, but I would guess she was a dancer from the way she puts a song together. Dawn Richard has that same energy, where you can imagine choreography to every track.
14. JADE “Glitch”
How do you pick a “best song” on the “best pop album” of 2025? Little Mix gave me no hint that Jade has this much creativity lurking under the surface. Every track on her album is an experience. This is a pop singer who grew up on 90s R&B and I finally landed on “Glitch” because, while she has splashier songs, this one is a slow burn that takes a few listens to appreciate the vibe she’s putting down.
13. Say Now “Brick By Brick” (Unplugged)
Speaking of girl groups, Say Now is doing their best to bring us back to the heyday of 90s girl groups, and this unplugged version of their breakout single takes all of its cues from Millennial music video countdown shows.
12. Laufey “Lover Girl”
I don’t know what genre of pop this is. In my mind, this is is French indie pop, like if Lily Allen hopped across the English Channel and set up shop in Paris. Imagine my surprise to find out Laufey is neither French or English. Her mother is a Chinese and her father is from Iceland, where she’s grown up herself. And she’s kind of grown up on TV. When she was 15 she was a finalist on Iceland’s Got Talent, and then at 16 she was a semifinalist on The Voice Iceland. After hopping over to the US and graduating from Berklee College of Music, her last two albums have won the Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, so if you haven’t heard of her yet, you’re probably going to more and more.
11. Jae Stephens “PDA”
Any tumblr fans? I was rocking to a couple of Jae’s songs earlier this year and then came across this little tidbit of information: she’s beyoncebeytwice from tumblr. That explains her aesthetic and why all of her music videos are so good.
Jae has been in interviews saying her goal is to become a pop star, period. Not a Black pop star, not an R&B star who got so big that she was included in the pop conversation — a pop star. And you know what? I’ll say it. If she was white, she would have blown up already, because her entire album is no-skips with magic on every track.
10. South Arcade “2005”
South Arcade was smart to name their last project 2005 because the first time I heard the title track, I thought it was some power-pop that I had missed in high school.
9. RAYE “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!”
Raye wrote the piss out of this song! I love a song where I can’t predict what is going to happen from bar to bar, and combining big band brass with New Jack Swing beats and late 90s Destiny’s Child speed-singing was a stroke of genius. That is three genres of nostalgia that do not go together but it works here, and it gave Raye her biggest single on the US Hot 100 as well as the Global 200. 2026 might be her breakout year.
8. Simone Haaland & Victoria Spandow “Best Part” (The Voice Norway)
I don’t even watch these singing competition shows anymore, and I definitely have no reason to know what is going on with The Voice in Norway of all places. That is the beauty of the internet. This cover of “Best Part” by Daniel Ceasar and HER made its way around the singing corners of social media and it immediately went onto my list.
7. DAMEDAME* “PROMISE”
Barbara and Shiloh are in-demand producers in the UK being tapped by artists like Jorja Smith and Wizkid. But they’re also singers. So far, they’ve just dropped a handful of singles here and there with no full project seemingly in the works. “Promise” doesn’t feel like a leftover that they couldn’t shop to any other artist though. This is first-rate, beat-first R&B.
6. Kassi Ashton “The Straw”
Kassi Ashton has been signed to MCA Nashville since 2017 and still hasn’t hit the mainstream. She co-wrote this ballad with country vet Lori McKenna for her debut album in late 2024 and it’s just flat-footed southern singing. Imagine having this much passion for music while spinning your wheels on a record label for 7 years without an album.
5. Cardi B “Imaginary Playerz”
Jay-Z does not readily clear his music to be sampled, so when the industry heard that he approved Cardi’s version of his iconic “Imaginary Players” from his second album, everybody sat up straight a little bit.
Cardi had gone 7 years without an album, and even though she steadily notched hit singles afterward, many (most?) music critics still thought of her as party rapper making stripper music. With this single dropping during the run-up to her second album, Cardi was announcing herself as a serious musician, taking the braggadocious flow from Jay in the 90s and updating it for women in the 2020s.
The vibe is immaculate, the rhymes are intricate, and anyone who can drop “gloryhole” in the middle of a bar is going on my list of greats. And Cardi is the only rapper who could make this song or this video — she filmed it during her couture fittings for fashion week, cementing her status as the It Girl that designers still clamor to work with.
4. Borderline “When It’s Raining”
Sometimes simple is all you need. New Zealand outfit Borderline built this entire song on a single piano note repeated over and over on the beat. As the song goes on, you get a few more chords, more guitar here and there, a bit more percussion, but it never overwhelms to initial motif. These lifelong friends have found a sweet spot between mainstream pop and indie rock, and I do mean lifelong. They grew up as children in the same neighborhood.
3. ROSALÍA “Dios Es Un Stalker”
Rosalia’s album is meant to be consumed from beginning to end. It’s not an album for shuffling. It’s a genre-less masterpiece of culture, history, and storytelling broken into operatic movements, and the whole project has more in common with classical music than it does current pop. If it was made by anyone other than a pop star, it wouldn’t even be considered pop.
That said, “Dios Es Un Stalker” is a banger that you can pull out and add to any playlist. The original version is longer, with multiple key changes, and the percussion is further in the background. We love an artist who can edit though, so she shortened it, simplified it, brought the beat to the front, and that’s the version we end up with on the album. Listening to both is like a small window into her process, but she never misses with the final project.
2. No Guidnce “Lovers to Enemies”
These kids give me so much New Edition energy!
Any group with four lead singers is going to make me take notice, but a group with four lead singers who can also blend seamlessly together in intricate harmonies is going to make me take notice, stand up, and do a praise dance. This is the pop sensibility of Backstreet Boys with the contemporary R&B flavor of Day26 with a little bit of Dru Hill’s street edge and the vocal blend of New Edition.
In their short career, they’ve already lost and replaced a member, but we don’t even need to talk about that first iteration, because this is the correct foursome. It’s like, who remembers the original “C” in TLC anyway? When it works it works, and these four boys from London really work.
1. Remember Monday “Prove Me Right”
Back in 2019, Jennifer Hudson threw a shoe at these girls during their audition for The Voice UK, and while they didn’t win the competition, they’re the only ones from that season that anyone still remembers. Fast forward to 2025, and they were the first girl group to represent the UK at Eurovision since 1999.
The world is sleeping on them but they’re finally waking up! Remember Monday feels like what would have happened if Wilson Phillips went to theater school, which does not sound like something I should be into, but when they let loose and start belting perfectly balanced three-part harmonies? It’s over.
I think if they really want to make it as a girl group, they do need to lean into more of the adult contemporary exemplified by this song as opposed to the country music of their other releases. The fact that “country music” automatically means “US country music” is already troublesome, and country artists from the UK don’t really make it to superstardom. Hopefully this song is a step in a new direction.
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