Asking an AI to predict which songs will matter in twenty-five years is, admittedly, a strange exercise. Music history is littered with massive chart hits that vanished by the following summer, and quiet cult records that only found their true audience a decade later. Timelessness tends to announce itself in hindsight, not in advance.
Still, the question is genuinely interesting. ChatGPT draws on an enormous body of writing about music, culture, and history, which makes it at least a useful thinking partner for the task. When I put the prompt to it, the responses were specific, occasionally surprising, and always arguable in the best possible way. Here’s what it picked, and why each choice makes a certain kind of sense.
Kendrick Lamar – “Not Like Us” (2024)
From diss track to Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the 2025 Grammys, “Not Like Us” earned Lamar a total of five wins, including best rap song, best rap performance, and best music video. That sweep across categories is unusual for a hip-hop track and signals something beyond ordinary chart success.
Kendrick Lamar crafted an anthem so universal that it transcended its origins as a diss track, becoming a celebration of pride and identity. The chopped-up sample is inspired by Oakland’s “hyphy” rap subgenre, while Lamar pays homage to late Los Angeles rapper Drakeo the Ruler – a reminder of California’s historical impact on rap and Lamar’s place within that legacy. Songs that successfully root themselves in a specific place while speaking to something broader tend to last. This one does both.
Beyoncé – “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” (2024)
While Beyoncé is no stranger to chart-topping hits, she made history with “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” as the first Black woman to score a number one on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. That kind of boundary-crossing moment tends to become historical shorthand – a song that stands for more than its melody alone.
Beyoncé made history with Cowboy Carter, winning Album of the Year and becoming the first Black woman to receive the honor in over two decades. Tracks that sit at the center of genuine cultural shifts tend to get pulled back into conversation repeatedly over the following decades. “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” is already that kind of reference point, and it’s only been two years.
Billie Eilish – “Birds of a Feather” (2024)
Nominated for Record of the Year at the 2025 Grammys alongside the Beatles, Beyoncé, Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar, Chappell Roan, and Taylor Swift, “Birds of a Feather” was one of the most discussed songs of its year. Being in that company matters less than what the song actually is: a lushly produced ballad about devotion, spare enough in its emotional core that it doesn’t lean on any era-specific production tricks.
Contemporary neuroscientific research suggests that a song’s longevity is deeply intertwined with its capacity to stimulate the brain’s default mode network, the region associated with self-reflection and autobiographical memory, with tracks that become timeless often functioning as sonic anchors for personal memories. Eilish has a particular gift for that kind of intimacy at volume. This track is perhaps her clearest example of it so far.
Chappell Roan – “Good Luck, Babe!” (2024)
Chappell Roan grabbed the world’s attention with her bombastic interpretation of baroque pop and her knack for highlighting queer romance. “Good Luck, Babe!” carried that energy into one of 2024’s most replayed songs, and it did so with the kind of sharp, committed vocal performance that tends to age better than trend-dependent production.
Some songs come and go, but others stand the test of time, becoming cultural touchstones that resonate across generations – and these timeless hits share certain characteristics that make them unforgettable. What ChatGPT noticed about this track specifically is its emotional specificity. It’s about a very particular kind of denial, and the most enduring tracks often tap into what psychologists term “emotional granularity,” the ability to experience and articulate highly specific affective states. Roan nails that here.
Sabrina Carpenter – “Espresso” (2024)
The singer’s innate ability to craft an earworm is why she’s skyrocketed as one of the biggest pop stars of the new generation, with “Espresso” – the lead single from 2024’s Short n’ Sweet – becoming the unofficial song of the summer. ChatGPT’s case for its longevity rests partly on simplicity. The production doesn’t overreach, the hook is easy to carry in your head, and the lyrical tone is light enough to be rediscovered at almost any point in someone’s life.
Many timeless songs are deceptively simple: a few chords, a clear melody, words that feel conversational, even poetic. These songs don’t rely on production trends or digital wizardry – they rest on strong songwriting and emotional delivery. “Espresso” fits that description almost perfectly, which is exactly why it’s still referenced in conversations that have nothing to do with its original chart moment.
Kendrick Lamar and SZA – “Luther” (2024)
“Luther,” their chart-topping single from late 2024’s “GNX,” pingpongs from one artist to the other as they sing of giving someone the world they deserve – lush and lovely, a true ballad for the ages. There’s a reason Lamar keeps returning to SZA for collaborative work. On this track, the two continue to demonstrate that they are one of the greatest R&B and hip-hop pairings in history.
The soulful spoken opening is lifted from Switch’s “I Call Your Name,” a top ten hit in 1979, and coming on the heels of songs that sampled Al Green, Teddy Pendergrass, and Luther Vandross, “Luther” shows that Lamar is intent on schooling young fans in classic R&B. That kind of deliberate lineage-building tends to deepen a song’s staying power over time. It gives listeners multiple entry points across generations.
Charli XCX – “360” (2024)
The 2025 Grammy ceremony reflected a powerful shift in the industry, recognizing bold artistic voices, increased genre fluidity, and deeper social impact. Charli XCX’s “360” sat at the center of all three of those things. In 2024, the song of the year was so undeniable and inescapable that it barely needed naming – and brat as a cultural moment was inseparable from “360” as its centerpiece.
Songs become cultural staples when introduced to younger generations by parents, movies, television, or viral moments on social media, ensuring their continued relevance. “360” already has that quality in early form. Its self-referential wit and sharp production feel precisely dated in a way that could easily become nostalgic – the kind of nostalgia that brings songs back around every decade or so.
Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars – “Die With a Smile” (2024)
Somehow held for the Brighter Days Ahead reissue of Ariana Grande’s 2024 Eternal Sunshine, “Twilight Zone” is perhaps Grande’s most affecting single of the decade – but ChatGPT pointed to “Die With a Smile” as the power ballad of the era most likely to outlast its moment. The pairing of Gaga’s theatrical range with Mars’s old-soul sensibility landed on something genuinely classic-sounding.
Timeless songs connect with listeners on a deep emotional level, evoking feelings of joy, sadness, love, heartbreak, or nostalgia. Songs like “Someone Like You” by Adele and “Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton resonate because they tap into universal emotions, making them relatable across different eras. “Die With a Smile” slots into that tradition deliberately and without apology – which, oddly enough, may be exactly why it works.
Doechii – “Anxiety” (2025)
Doechii’s “Anxiety” remains one of 2025’s most adventurous pop songs, sampling Gotye and Kimbra’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” while crossing multiple lands from rap to pop to classical and back again. Technically created in 2019, it served as the cherry on top of Alligator Bites Never Heal, bringing her to the Hot 100’s top ten for the first time.
What makes it a strong timelessness candidate is the combination of emotional rawness and structural originality. The qualities that allow a song to transcend its era – cultural resonance, emotional authenticity, and historical serendipity – are precisely those that elude quantitative measurement. “Anxiety” has all three in abundance, and its layered construction rewards repeated listening in a way that single-listen hits rarely do.
Taylor Swift feat. Post Malone – “Fortnight” (2024)
Held for the Brighter Days Ahead reissue of Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine, but more relevantly here: the woozily twinkling synths of “Fortnight” give the song both a delicacy and a poignancy, furthering the impression that nothing here is necessarily as it seems. Swift’s track works in the space between memory and invention – which is where a lot of truly lasting songs tend to live.
While producers can optimize for sonic clarity, structural coherence, and lyrical accessibility, they cannot engineer the cultural moment that transforms a track into something more. A song’s journey into timelessness requires both internal excellence and external circumstance: the right piece of music meeting the right historical moment with sufficient cultural force to propel it across generations. “Fortnight” has the internal excellence part down; whether cultural circumstance carries it forward is, genuinely, an open question.
Beyoncé – “Cowboy Carter” Album Era and “II MOST WANTED” (2024)
Beyoncé and Shaboozey were pushing country boundaries while taking on staples like Kacey Musgraves for some of the night’s most prestigious awards. Among the tracks from the Cowboy Carter era, ChatGPT flagged the album’s broader cultural statement as potentially more enduring than any single cut – but “II MOST WANTED,” her duet with Miley Cyrus, stood out for its warmth and craft.
Many timeless songs reflect the cultural, social, or political climate of their time while remaining relevant to future generations. Songs like “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye address social issues that continue to resonate today, and songs with a powerful message often gain lasting significance. The Cowboy Carter project took on questions of belonging, heritage, and genre gatekeeping. The songs at its center carry that weight without being crushed by it.
The Limits of Prediction – And Why That’s Part of the Point
Writing a hit doesn’t guarantee that a song will be listened to for decades. Yet, Spotify’s catalog playlist data can help uncover what factors shape a song’s lasting impact. At the same time, AI is data-driven and tends to repeat patterns based on the inputs it receives, which can make it harder for smaller or emerging artists to break through. ChatGPT’s picks here are, predictably, mostly artists who already occupied a lot of cultural space in 2024 and 2025.
A track may check every box on the industry checklist and still fail to connect, while an idiosyncratic bedroom recording can unexpectedly capture the global imagination. This unpredictability stems from the fundamental difference between statistical correlation and causal mechanism. In other words, the AI can identify songs that have the right ingredients. It cannot manufacture the accidents of timing, context, and memory that actually make something timeless. That part still belongs to listeners – and to time itself.
Asking ChatGPT what will last until 2050 is ultimately a useful provocation more than a reliable forecast. The songs it picked are real, strong, and already carrying cultural weight. Whether any of them will still be playing at a wedding in 2047 is something no algorithm, however sophisticated, can honestly guarantee. That uncertainty is, arguably, what makes music worth caring about in the first place.
