TikTok has published a list of the most popular songs and artists, based on user activity in 2025, and all those catchy tunes that became meme soundtracks made it into the top charts.
Yes, they are all here: Taylor Swift, Doechii, KATSEYE and many others.
Although the track that took first place on TikTok in 2025 was somewhat unexpected:
The song “Pretty Little Baby” by Connie Francis was first released in 1962, but has been reborn on TikTok, where it has become the soundtrack to countless videos.
According to TikTok, “Pretty Little Baby” was used in the app more than 28.4 million times this year alone, “as the perfect soundtrack for heartfelt videos about family, pets, relationships and flowers, leading to more than 68.6 billion views.”
TikTok continues to raise awareness of great musicians from the past. Fleetwood Mac also received a huge boost in royalties when their 1977 song “Dreams” became a viral hit in the app in 2020 (more precisely, the relative increase in payments went to the record label BMG, which owns the track, but still).
TikTok has also helped many artists achieve massive popularity through trends, making it a key tool for all record labels. For those who want not only to follow the hits but also to build sustainable growth for their own profile, the practical breakdown How to get views on TikTok: Working strategies for growth is useful.
Indeed, its impact on music culture as a whole is reflected in the list of its top artists:
Given the role the platform now plays in music discovery and pop culture in general, TikTok’s top track and artist lists are worth paying attention to, as they highlight the app’s cultural influence. You can also take a separate look at how exactly videos are boosted in the first hours and days after publishing, which is covered in detail in How fast views grow on TikTok.
At least for now.
Technically, TikTok is still banned in the U.S. and is only available to Americans at the moment because U.S. President Donald Trump instructed regulators not to enforce the ban in order to give his team more time to organize a sale deal.
So far, Trump has used executive orders four times to extend the TikTok sale deadline, with the current exemption period set to expire on January 23.
This could mean that its influence on music trends, at least in the form in which they originated in the U.S., could be very different next year, although the White House is still expected to reach some sort of agreement that will allow TikTok to continue operating in the future.
However, progress is moving more slowly than expected, and since September, when the White House said the deal was almost completed, we have heard almost nothing about the sale of TikTok.
It will be interesting to see how much the lineup of leading TikTok artists changes if the app does end up being banned in the U.S., although at this point such an outcome seems unlikely.
You can see the full list of TikTok’s top tracks of 2025 here.
