I have to be blunt here, this chart sucks ass. Pop music I thought would've bounce back from the slump of last year. But not only is we see even more slump, we see more and more of discourses—sometimes bullshit but sometimes justified—plaguing the popular music landscape. Added with the fact that old music still reigned supreme—I had to use songs at below top 50 that's how stagnant the chart is right now. And also these crop of songs are just awful like the good stuff came from last season. The signs were really there when "Rein Me In" and "Choosin Texas" broke their countries' respective record of longest stay at #1 this week.
Which is a damn shame because pop music outside of the mainstream is having their best year yet this decade. Lots of cool releases from artists like Underscores, Slayyyter, Rebecca Black, Carly Rae Jepsen, and newcomers like Hemlocke Springs. You know the music industry if y'all don't want people to think there's no good pop music anymore, you could've brought these people on the forefront instead of AI which we will get to. It really has been a good time for y'all to listen to new music underground like check out that new Open Mike Eagle album with Kenny Segal as the producer. You know the rules songs that below 30 weeks and I haven't talked about twice are eligible for the list and let's get to the worst artist currently working today...in EDM.
20. Movin To The Sun - HUGEL ft. Imael Angel & Ultra Nate
This song represented everything I loathe in EDM for the past decades or so. Shitty drop, productions that was recorded in a tin can, short run time, and of course the new kids on the block—AI integration! For those who don't know (which is probably most Americans here), HUGEL is a French DJ that became famous because of his remix...of "Bella Ciao" one of the most famous anti-fascist song. And now in 2026 he not only made the laziest song of his career, but he also made this. And yes the basis of this song is AI-generated with Imael Angel being an AI artist. I mean you really can hear the calculated dishwater of the production and the lyrics being nonsense. Really the only reason why people don't know about this is because it hasn't crossed over in America—that's it. We only knew "Rubberz" and Tyga album because Americans covered it. But since this is EU based and Euroids likes EDM Slop here we are I guess. Oh yeah Hugel is also at the second bottom here as well.
19. Jamaican (Bam Bam) - HUGEL & SOLTO
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I have talked about this song last season so my only new observation is that...is this song really that popular that the sampled he lazily used here became repopularized? Like we have two songs charting right now that have the same samples as this one—one that will be on this ranking stay tuned. The other one is "RIKI" by Neton Vega. But yeah even without any AI assistance...well the shaky productions still evoked that, Hugel remained one of the laziest producer working today. His brand of afro-house is just too sanitized that I won't mind if people would calling him culture vulture at this point. Speaking of which...
18. Self Aware - Temper City
This being up from my last ranking doesn't mean that this grew on me. As a matter of fact this has shrunk on me even more. I noticed more and more at how this song just fundementally failed as a song. It's so calculated and very one note in its subject matter that again the AI accusation is peering back in. But there are enough imperfection that I can safely say that this is not AI Generated—something you can't say for HUGEL my number one opp.
A lot of people are currently talking about Stella Lefty and how much of an industry plant she is and nepo baby and all that. I will say that Stella Lefty felt more genuine than this band ever will. For one Stella is probably influenced on making music—specifically country music—from her boyfriend Vincent Mason. Vincent Mason is a country singer with a lot of connection in Nashville. That's why she's making country music even if she's bad at it. But I will say she's more homegrown than Temper City whom they only has two singles so far and this song magically became viral after The Ellisons owned the American version of TikTok. The real sad part is that this song did better worldwide than in America. And people said that they're sick of commercialcore.
17. Earrings - Malcolm Todd
Okay this song is officially in my shit list. I was debating maybe this song isn't that bad like the productions is like Steve Lacy reject, but at least it sounded good. Yeah nah I just thinking about the lyrics and how very narcissistic and childish they are and realizing in horror. This song is like if AJR wrote a Steve Lacy song and I want to commit. Look there are ways making immaturity worked in these type of songs, heck Steve Lacy made that case with Bad Habit. But this one is less immature but petulance and that's exactly why AJR sucks so hard.
16. NORMAL - BTS
Oh look, one of the more mediocre song on the album being pushed as the second singles and I really have to ask one thing here. Do we really need BTS in this day and age? I mean sure I do believe that BTS is forever etched into pop music history. And also they can occasionally make some bangers here and there. But all I hear from Arirang is exhaustion. The fact that some of the members here rejoined the group only a few months after their military conscription ended is just crazy to me. From what I remembered most K-Pop groups are always having to become a legacy acts after their hiatus in the military. And with Normal having this blown out productions and the lyrics about how this shit isn't normal yeah I just tuned out. Can we go back to them doing solo stuff they're at least interesting.
15. Great Expectation - Sienna Spiro
Are we going to have Adele comeback at some point? Because I'm kinda get sick of British singers doing Rnb and Soul but don't have the vocal chop for it. This is definitely one of the best thing I heard from her and yet there are lots of flaws in it. Again it's just Sienna Spiro vocal — while competently produced — can't hide the fact that she's very shaky and can get grating. Some people described her voice as squeaky and I couldn't agree more. Also her melodrama can be grating as well. I know Lana Del Rey "perfected" this formula, but this melodrama felt more forced than anything else. I know she's still young and she has room for improvement, but I need it to be very drastic because this ain't it at the moment.
14. SWIM - BTS
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See this is what I meant by exhaustion because this song is still sloppy and might have gotten a bit worse. Yes we are still in the bad territory here and I don't know if this is an indictment on the music listening public that some of the newer songs I'm ranking are very subpar at best. Anyways these lyrics man. I know they're ESL but can they be very creative with their songwriting? Like the songwriting from the late 90s Max Martin is more colorful and imaginative than whatever they're doing here. That "Splash" and "Drip" sequence is just what are we doing here? So this is gonna be the biggest song of the year huh...very accurate that.
13. Loser - Tame Impala
Spider-man Brand New Day is a great movie and a great way to continue the Peter Parker story post No Way Home. This movie is so successful that it bring with it two songs from the soundtrack onto the chart. And because of that Loser has grown on me a bit. Yeah when I first listened to it I was less impressed by it. Again Tame Impala's productions on that latest album are lumpy and restless without being tight and confident. The amount of reverb here still bothered me. But I will say that when this song was used when Peter stalked Ned all the way to his and MJ's housewarming kinda worked? The tone of the song now made sense to me and that really bumped the song from 3/10 to I guess 5.5/10. Yeah still bleak out here.
12. Nicole Kidman - ADELA
Finally out of the mid now and we have a newcomer finally onto the pop world. Adela is a Slovakian singer who actually was one of the few candidates that came close to win a competition to form a pop girl group but failed at the last hurdle — that group was KATSEYE by the way more of them later. Anyways that fact alone built a bit hype from the pop world especially after she made her EP last year and people already calling her the next Slayyyter and all that jazz.
Well now she's chasing that fame and um...I'm kinda underwhelmed? Well we get to the song that made her famous later but this one is just alright. I love that my tits sitting right line. I mean yeah I do want to pray that my tits are sitting right but that's because I'm on hormones so yeah. I do like the samples she used but other than that this is Doja Cat's formula from Hot Pink and I'd say that this is better than most of Hot Pink. So there's that.
11. Dai Dai - Shakira & Burna Boy
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Honestly, I'm surprised that this is stuck around very long even after the World Cup. Apparently FIFA seeing the backlash of that Jelly Roll song just threw this decent but nothing burger song here. I'd say they're succeeding but at this stage, the chart has been very stagnant that this took advantage of the chart slowed down. Nothing to say really this is just an acceptable World Cup song that will be played for the next few football tournaments for decades to come.
10. Animal - KATSEYE
Okay I know the white ginger elephant in the room here. Yes this song was written by Ed Sheeran and honestly you can hear it. From the melody, to distinct plucky guitar, and the fuckass lyrics. This is Ed Sheeran from Equals era. Having said that, Fuck Ed Sheeran and I'm glad that KATSEYE is the one that performed the song here.
KATSEYE are not having a good year in 2026. From the injury report like they're playing for Tottenham, to songs after songs just did not work, and just a certain discourses from the band that ranged from reasonable to downright lunacy. This song was tauted as the the worst one they released this year and I have to disagree with that. Firstly Internet Girl exist and that song is the one truly hot garbage KATSEYE song. On the other hand, I think this song played to KATSEYE strength because of the strong melody and lyrics that don't wanna gouge my eyes out. Yeah decent song this one.
9. SaWaDiKa - LISA
What LISA music lacked last year was fun and this song is really fun. Yeah the hook can be grating but LISA actually have a good performance overall. This is one of her best perfomance as a rapper and I love the added Thai cultural stuff here — wish there were more to be honest. And I will say that the productions here slap so hard. Finally someone mixed the percussion properly this time. And I love the build up before the hook. It's just a fun turn-off-your-brain song that I wouldn't mind being played on the radio.
8. Hate That I Made You Love Me - Ariana Grande
So I heard the album yes and I will say that as someone who have heard all of the Ariana Grande albums — she never made a bad album by the way, This one is probably the one that "bored" me the most. Now it's still 7/10 to me, but this album pulled from a lot of places but never made it cohesive. The best songs here are like this song in that Ariana mined a bit of her fame and tabloid drama here and played it gracefully. And also the productions here is full and also have room to breathe instead of the hazy style of the other songs here. Petal the album is alright by me but damn the title track shrunk on me a lot what a trainwreck that was.
7. Ain't In LA - Adela
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I love the settiment of the song here more than I like the song as a whole. The main sentiment of "the baddest bitch ain't in LA" is kinda poignant and I think is very iconic. Yeah no wonder Adela went viral with this song because really it has never been more fashionable to not being American. Heck even Americans are now listening to this song and more UK acts as you can see from this year in particular.
One funny thing about this song is that I was there when this singles got released. This was requested in a New Music Friday stream on WillTalksMusic channel and back then a lot of people knew who Adela was from last year's EP. It's kinda cool to say that I was there when this song which is a throwback to the mid to late 2000s pop RnB sound — complete with the chopped and screwed vocals dropped. Another hipster moment from me I guess (even though my first impression is still this song but shhh).
6. Drop Dead - Olivia Rodrigo
Finally we are in the 8/10 and higher territory and we started off with Drop Dead. Drop Dead sits in the weird spot for me because this song is great in context of the album as the first time we picked up with Olivia and how she's in this very wispy relationship that she likes—borderline stalkerish. But whenever I listened to this song lonesome with the context, it's kinda hampered by the productions. Dan Nigro is a good producers, but I do think the guitar should be more meaty and that the gloss should be turned up a bit. Still this is a good song but definitely would get less backlash than putting Choosin Texas at my top 5.
5. Choosin Texas - Ella Langley
The discourses surrounded Ella Langley has been exhausting and a little insulting to me. As someone who actually have listened to country music especially in the mainstream, seeing so many people actually proud to have never listened to Ella Langley when she got the biggest song of the year is just infuriating. A bit disingenous to do that tired rant about pop music when last year Morgan Wallen newest album nuke was on circulation.
But I get why this happened and it all stemmed back to my theory that Americans are living in two different planets. America one is the online realm and the ones that still haven't left twitter while America two is the real world stuff where the America one claimed that they're bots or something like that. Ariana Grande is in America one while Ella Langley is America two. So when these two crossed paths, one is bragging about not listening to Ella while the other one would preferred Ella over Ariana and it gets exhausting.
But even the hard data in the Global chart that excluded the US numbers is enough for this song to be in this ranking. You really can thanked UK and Australia for this by the way since this song hit #1 there as well. Again less competition this year it's to be expected. And honestly I still love the song. But that love will always get cloudy now with more tweets about Ella Langley and I just need to move on. Go listen to Dandelion and while you are at it listen to Emily Scott Robinson as well.
4. Stupid Song - Olivia Rodrigo
Still kinda bummed that a lot of songs on this top half are the ones I have talked about last season. Again pop music is having a really awkward period where we don't know what to do anymore. The fracturing streaming market, radio consolidation, and lots of discourses really does hampered popular music a lot. It's a dam shame since this year is probably one of the best for pop music. If only the music industry capitalized on the dying market of pop last year and took notes. But, what we got is AI music charting...anyways Stupid Song is great.
3. Superestrella - Aitana
Last year I was worried at the state of latin music and my fear was warranted because this has been the driest year for latin music in sometimes. When one of your biggest artist this year is Omar Courtz...yikes. Though good news are coming since we not only have some latin music representatives this season, but also both songs slapped so hard. Let's start with this one and it's just a great synthpop song by a Spanish artist Aitana. Yeah we have Spanish artist from Spain here making a glossy synthpop song with the forward momentum and a great bassline. I do think it needs less reverb, but overall it's fantastic for a moving on anthem. Oh speaking of Spain.
2. BbY WOW - Karol G ft. Judeline & Rusowsky
It's funny how Karol G just dropped this album only a few weeks after her lead singles "Matadora" went nowhere, and then she got one of her bigger hits of her career. What made it even funnier is the fact that this is the one that became popular—a hookup song that sampled the drums from the famous sampler that was used for "Move Ya Body" by Nina Sky and the song we talked about earlier Jamaican (Bam Bam). And when you factoring the featuring artists here and the fact that there's Drake and Bruno Mars collaborations. It's definitely one of the surprised hit of the year and the one I'm the most excited. I really hope with this song, latin music will be back stronger next year and hopefully I'm right with this optimism.
1. The Cure - Olivia Rodrigo
Olivia Rodrigo is a generational talent. When we looked back at 2020s, I really hope that we all examined Olivia Rodrigo in the same way as those 90s rockers. Olivia to me has earned a lot of her accolades within or outside music. Last week she just started her first leg of the tour and it is already going great. But what caught a lot of people's attention was the performance of this song where she wore a disintergrated dress and then water showered her to removed the dress revealing another outfit under that dress. I love the fact that she used that performance for The Cure because it's exactly how Olivia felt like in this song. It's all a facade and when the climax hits, the mask slipped and it showed how devastated she was. Again I will go in-depth with this song later in the year, but I just want to say that if she doesn't win any Grammys next year I will riot.
I'm actually gonna take the honorable mentions here to talk about some songs that I haven't already mentioned that deserved some love and also have hit 100 million streams on Spotify this year so let's go!
Talk To You - ANOTR ft. 54 Ultra
Probably one of the funkiest songs to came out this year. I just love the bassline and the guitar in this one. This slice of disco house has just gotten better and better as I listened to it more and I just enamoured by this song and the vibe it has.
The Great Divide - Noah Kahan
Noah Kahan has one of the biggest album this year and the title track is a highlight on the album. If you know about Sam Fender's "Seventeen Going Under" then this is Noah Kahan's version of that song but with even more swagger but also just the same heartbreaking lyrics about his sibling's and friend's fuck up. The framing of empathy by him is what glued the song together and of course that guitar just rips. The album might be just fine but this one is just generational.
maggots for brains - Olivia Rodrigo
Yup I think I should've mentioned this song last season. But man when you have Robert Smith on your album, you have to show your credential and this is just that. A great borderline post-punk song about how the love is so good it rots your brain. It's one of the few tracks before the second part where we see the red flags in the love that Olivia projected onto this guy and it's glorious while also very terrifyinga at the same time. And that guitar solo oh my god one of the best of the year.
Cha Cha Cha - Bruno Mars
The Romantic might be a Grammy contender, but you can hear that this album is kinda like a reject of Silk Sonic. But if there's one song I would recommend from the album is definitely this one. He interpolated Juvenile's only number one hit "Slow Motion" and made it work in this bossa nova style song that's I think on par with Silk Sonic stuff.
2 Hard 4 The Radio - Drake
Honestly the fact that Drake might released four albums this year should deter me to put this song here. But I have to be truthful to myself and the fact that when Drake locked in, he could make a banger pop song and this is one of them. Not much to say really it's a good slice of west coast rap that I like and would probably took away my cred.
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