Tone Stith sang on Camper's "Waiting On You," one of my favorite 2025 R&B hits, and now his solo single "Fly" is getting even more spins. I guess he's been around quite a while and I just never noticed him before, apparently Tone Stith is 30 and over the past decade has written for Chris Brown, glad he's starting to really hit his stride. Here's the 2026 singles Spotify playlist that I add songs to every month. 

We've had big pop stars born in the 21st century like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo for a while now, but it still makes me feel so old to see that one of the newest singers climbing the Hot 100 was born in 2006. "iloveitiloveitiloveit" is pretty much just vocals and acoustic guitar but it just has so much forward momentum that it almost feels like there's drums on it or more instrumentation, very catchy song. 

I love South Carolina, it's weird to realize that it's one of the only states in the deep south that's never really had a big impact on mainstream rap. They've got one with "Down South" though, love the way that Lafayette Afro Rock Band saxophone sample gets chopped differently from the way we've heard it in the past on songs by Public Enemy, Wreckx-N-Effect, and Jay-Z. 

Outside of guesting on Zach Bryan's #1 hit, Kacey Musgraves has really never had much success as a singles artist, relative to her platinum sales and Grammy wins. "Dry Spell" is the first time in a while that I feel like country radio would be stupid not to play her, though, a really witty little song and a bit more overtly country-sounding than her last couple albums. 

Sabrina Carpenter has basically released hit after hit since "Nonsense" broke through three years ago, but I think "When Did You Get Hot" is the weakest link in that chain. So I felt a little vindicated when Carpenter didn't bother to make a video for it and instead made one for one of my favorite songs on the album, "House Tour." 

To his credit, J. Cole has not really patterned his career after Jay-Z's while becoming Roc Nation's biggest rapper, but it still surprised me that he teased The Fall-Off for 8 years and then didn't really seem to have a single that sounded like a single, like The Black Album did what it was supposed to do because you can remember "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" and "99 Problems" today. "Who TF Iz U" is pretty good as a default rap radio single, some of his best bars on the album and a great beat switch, but it's definitely not a career-defining hit that a project like this should have. 

Spotify turned 20 years old last week and shared lists of the most streamed songs and artists in its history. And perhaps the most surprising thing on those lists is The Neighborhood's 2013 hit "Sweater Weather" being the 3rd most streamed song of all time, despite missing the top 10 on the pop charts while every other song with 4 billion plus streams was a #1. The Neighbourhood never really made another song that got remotely that big, but "Hula Girl" was recently their first real alternative radio hit in about a decade, pretty catchy song. 

I included the duet version of "Rein Me In" in my Remix Report Card last year, and as Olivia Dean's career has exploded, it's been cool to see it lift up "Rein Me In" to become Sam Fender's first #1 in the UK and first Hot 100 entry in America. This song is also how I learned that apparently British people pronounce "tinnitus" completely differently from Americans. 

Don Toliver always sounds like Kenan Thompson playing an old man in an "SNL" sketch, and I don't need to hear that over a beat. I never thought a Travis Scott protege would be a major star in his own right with even less interesting music.