2025 continues to bear fruit for the industry’s biggest names, but could social media play and personal listening habits lead to star-making arcs for some more underrated artists? On this week’s edition of Music Daily’s Tracks, Kendrick Lamar and Tate McRae make up the A-list winners, while the likes of Akon and Aphex Twin lurk with their own sustained success.
“luther” Rises To #1
Beginning as it seems we always do, Mr. Kendrick Lamar again looms in this week’s biggest storylines. Even if the Compton MC planned to structure events with a particular eye on never leaving the headlines, it’s hard to imagine things could’ve turned out so well. Going from an album release into the Grammys into the Super Bowl halftime show ensured his name lingering in the consciousness for nearly a third of a year, not to mention the height of the beef that made him 2024’s hottest artist.
The groundbreaking development here is that his “luther” takes over our #1 spot, marking his third distinct track of the year to slide into that spot following “Not Like Us” last week and “tv off” through much of January. Additionally, “All The Stars,” essentially the crux of SZA’s appearance at the Super Bowl halftime show, rockets into the top #10, recapturing the meteoric commercial success it first had during its 2018 original release
Tate McRae Enters The Chat And Akon Steps Back In
On the release radar, Tate McRae and her So Close To What provide the most significant recent addition to the chart, following up the momentum of the singles in its lead-up. Thumbing through its tracklist, nearly a third of the material she served up is represented on our rankings: “Sports Car” at #27, “Revolving Door” at #79, and “Dear God” rounding things out at #10. Note that these songs should continue to rise as our formula fully factors in a week on the shelves for the record, meaning that additional entrants like “I Know Love,” “Miss Possessive,” and “Purple Lace Bra,” currently in “bubbling under” sub-100 spots, could join their ranks this time next week.
With many of the other faces on this week’s rankings holding steady from previous editions, instead we should spend some time with a few tracks that have gone unheralded in our past coverage. Akon and his “Beautiful Day” stand as one of the more shimmering members of that crowd. Despite not releasing an album since 2019, the South African-born singer managed a real surprise hit with “Akon’s Beautiful Day,” first released towards the end of last year but displaying some real staying power. The long-time star lands at #62 on our chart, propelled by a continually stellar performance on Apple Music.
NLE Choppa And Aphex Twin Bolstered By Social Media
From one hitmaker to another one in the making. Despite not hitting traditional markers for chart success, NLE Choppa still deserves his flowers for issuing sleeper hits and summer anthems with extreme consistency. To that point, even if the Memphis product hasn’t yet reached the top 10 of traditional charts, songs like his “Or What” are inescapable on social media feeds and in personal rotations. The Kyle Ricch and 41-assisted cut stands as the second-most used song on TikTok this week, not nearly the first time wide audiences couldn’t switch it off as its pop culture reign seems endless.
Finally, we should spend a moment on electronic indie darling Aphex Twin, a face of the growing trend in bringing artists in the genre only known to the crate-diggers and chronically online onto the masses’ radar. There is no veritable challenge or overall infectiousness to his “QKThr,” which sat at #6 on TikTok usage this week. Instead, it is now part of the SFX-like stable of sounds, almost a go-to for somber or quieted videos. Perhaps it isn’t the mainstream success that the ambient music titan would have dreamed up, but it’s raised his profile among the general public in a way that neither he nor his fanbase could have predicted.
You can catch all of the music featured here included in our weekly Trending Tracks playlist below, or seek them out yourself wherever you stream your music.
