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Every Artist Who Earned Their First Hot 100 Chart Hit in 2025

By 11 Mins Read

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In the 2025 calendar year, 711 total songs appeared on the Billboard Hot 100, by 350 different artists. Of those artists, 75 landed on the chart for the very first time.

As has become a Billboard tradition, we’ve been spotlighting these Hot 100 first-timers throughout the year, celebrating their first appearances and sharing their reactions to the news. Now, as we ease into 2026, here’s a look back at all the acts who made their Hot 100 debuts in 2025 and the songs that turned them into Hot 100 hitmakers.

The 2025 class of first-timers was particularly notable: four of the Recording Academy’s 2026 best new artist nominees — Olivia Dean, KATSEYE, sombr and Leon Thomas — earned their first Hot 100 hits in 2025. (Best new artist nominees Addison Rae, Alex Warren and Lola Young charted for the first time in 2024, while The Marías earned their first entry in 2022.)

Dean debuted with her breakout single “Man I Need,” which reached the top 10, and followed with four additional entries. KATSEYE arrived in June with “Gnarly” and scored its first top 40 hit in November with “Gabriela.” Sombr hit the top 10 in November with “Back to Friends,” his first chart entry, and continued his momentum with “Undressed” and “12 to 12.” And Thomas — already a Hot 100-charting songwriter for acts including Drake and SZA — earned his first solo Hot 100 entry and first top 10 as a recording artist with “Mutt.”

Several longtime hitmakers also made their long-awaited Hot 100 debuts. Imogen Heap, whose 2005 track “Hide and Seek” became the foundation for Jason Derulo’s 2009 No. 1 “Whatcha Say,” finally appeared on the Hot 100 under her own name when her 20-year-old song “Headlock” charted following a TikTok revival.

Justice, one of the most influential electronic duos of the 21st century, earned its first entry in February thanks to its collaboration with The Weeknd, “Wake Me Up.”

Cult-rap icon Lil B reached the Hot 100 for the first time via “Dadz Love,” his collaboration with Justin Bieber on the latter’s Grammy-nominated Swag album.

Plus, Tame Impala scored its first-ever Hot 100 hit in October with “Dracula,” and later charted two more songs from its Deadbeat album (“Loser” and “My Old Ways”). The group’s leader, Kevin Parker, previously produced Hot 100 hits for Lady Gaga and Dua Lipa, and several of the band’s songs had chart presence via samples on other songs — Travis Scott’s 2018 hit, “Skeletons,” for example, samples Tame Impala’s “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards.”

Other noteworthy first-timers included members of the KPop Demon Hunters cast, former NBA player-turned-rapper LiAngelo Ball (recording as GELO), 2000s indie-folk duo She & Him (which comprises Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward) and, in one of the year’s quirkiest chart moments, Pharrell Williams’ Louis Vuitton handbag, Speedy. The accessory was credited as a billed artist on Don Toliver, j-hope and Pharrell’s “LV Bag,” making it, yes, the first handbag to chart on the Hot 100.

Following similar first-timer rundowns in 2024 and 2023, below, in chronological order, is a complete list of every artist who earned their first Hot 100 hit in 2025 (encompassing the charts dated Jan. 4-Dec. 27, 2025).

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