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An Abridged Look at the Non-US Hits of 2025

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  An Abridged Look at the Non-US Hits of 2025 Hey guys, it’s Fire from Fire’s Flaming Hot Takes back again to FINALLY send off 2025 with a look at the best and worst non-US hits of 2025!!  As always, what I’m qualifying as a “non-US hit” are songs that made the 2025 year-end list in the UK, Australia, or Canada but NOT the US. So with that in mind, these are the qualifications for the songs that I’m choosing to highlight. As per usual, the songs that are highlighted in this article are the songs that became hits in the UK, Australia, or Canada that would’ve made or seriously contended for my best or worst list for 2025 had they become hits in the US. I will not mention songs that had made a previous non-US hits list nor songs that had made a prior US list - so again, no, you’re not gonna see “Mr. Brightside” here. Also, if the songs are set to become hits in the US in 2026, they don’t count either. Again, there are a few songs that’ll likely straddle this line, but I’ll just s...
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Fire's Chill Pick - February 2026

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  Hey guys, it’s Fire back with the monthly Chill Pick article!! And this month we’ve got something...different, but absolutely worth checking out!! Lorin O’Leary - When It Rains Release: February 7, 2026 Genres: Folk Pop, Singer-Songwriter So this is kinda uncharted territory for me...because I actually know this artist—I’m in a club that she’s an officer for at my college. And she knows that I review music on a blog, though I’m not sure she knows it’s called Fire’s Flaming Hot Takes haha. Either way, this is a review I wanna treat with care, because if she were to find this review and I say something that comes off harsh, that might make things very awkward for us. So I’ll start this review off by saying that Lorin O’Leary is a club officer for a club called the “Songwriters’ Circle”. I joined this club late in 2025 and as a result I think I’ve developed a deeper insight into how challenging the songwriting process can be, especially if you’re like many of the students in that cl...
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Fire's Chill Pick - January 2026

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  Hi everyone, it’s Fire back with the first Chill Pick article of the year!! I hope you guys are having a wonderful 2026 so far! So I think it’s only fitting to kick off 2026 by reviewing one of the best charting songs on the Hot 100 right now! Zara Larsson - Lush Life Release: June 9, 2015 Genres: Dance-Pop, Electropop, Tropical House, Brazilian Bass I remember when I first started chart-watching in 2017 how surprised I was when I found out “Lush Life” flopped in the US despite being a huge worldwide hit. Back in 2016 I remember the song being utterly massive—it didn’t get much radio play where I live but I just felt like it was super widely talked about. It may have been because in 2016 I always confused this song with “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” by Mike Posner haha. Now I’ve always loved “Lush Life” since I first heard it, but the song seeing a huge resurgence in 2026 made me revisit it. And that’s when I realized that even calling it my favorite Zara Larsson song was underrating ...
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Albums Around The Fireplace 2025

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Albums Around The Fireplace 2025 Hey everyone, it’s Fire and I’m back with my biggest article of 2025, Albums Around The Fireplace!! In this article, I’ll be briefly reviewing every single 2025 album I listened to (some of the albums will have longer reviews than others), with a few minor caveats; any deluxe version of an album from a previous year will not be covered here. Any deluxe versions of albums released this year will be covered in the same review. And no albums from prior years here, even if I only listened to them for the first time in 2025. I think 2025 had the most albums I listened to in one year; despite that though, I’ve felt really disconnected from music in 2025. The main reason for that is that since 2023, I’ve had an artist that defined my year, where I had seen them on tour and their album was my personal album of the year. In 2023, it was Taylor Swift and 2024 it was Kacey Musgraves. That said, 2025 was a very dead year for music, especially in the mainstream, so ...
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