Since art can be a necessary distraction, I did not take music for granted this year. Although I spent much of its second half listening to 100 previously unheard albums saved to my streaming library, I also kept up with new releases. To encapsulate 2025, I’ve included selections from all of my top ten albums and fifteen honorable mentions plus twenty more that run the gamut from one-offs (Romy’s declaration of free love, veteran Eurodisco producer Cerrone’s energetic collab with Christine and the Queens) to album cuts (Japanese Breakfast conjuring convincing 90s shoegaze vibes, Alison Goldfrapp leading off her second solo album with her fizziest song in at least 15 years) and isolated miracles like Natalie Bergman’s Nancy Sinatra-meets-Shelby Lynne songcraft or Jamie xx sampling/transforming my favorite old discovery of this year, Terry Callier’s beguiling 1972 gem “Dancing Girl” (itself also featured heavily in the film Sentimental Value.)
The average artist age here likely mirrors my own Gen-X soul, which is not to say I was resistant to the Millennial charms of Chappell Roan’s horny take on Shania Twain, Brooke Combe’s dance apocalyptic or Yves Tumor and NINA (of Bar Italia) aesthetically smashing together to create a joyful noise. Still, when someone as established or venerated (or just plain old) as Tunde Adebimpe (of TV On The Radio), Andy Bell (of Erasure) or even ex-Go-Between Robert Forster puts out a first-rate track, I take notice. You don’t have to be an aging music geek to love Wet Leg’s snark-punk and My Morning Jacket’s gleaming Supertramp pastiche (granted, not everyone will); reheated nachos or not, few could deny the monumental, glorious nonsense of “Abracadabra” as an entirely necessary distraction amidst a world coming apart.
You’ve likely heard the Lady Gaga song without even seeking it out, so instead, I’ll highlight a choice cut from the lead singer of Wilco’s 30-track triple album. I almost can’t not like a song for this title alone but I also love how succinctly it sums up the primal allure of rock (or punk or rap or “insert genre here”) without being pretentious about it. In these messy times, we don’t need reverence or pensiveness but raw, loud, unfiltered emotion and release—“I wanna feel everything,” indeed.
2025: The Dead Don’t Die
- Brooke Combe, “Dancing At The Edge Of The World”
- Wolf Alice, “Wild Horses”
- Cut Copy, “Belong To You”
- Ivy, “Fragile People”
- Stereolab, “Melodie Is A Wound (Edit)”
- FKA Twigs, “Girl Feels Good”
- Lady Gaga, “Abracadabra”
- Romy, “Love Who You Love”
- Mekons, “Mudcrawlers”
- Perfume Genius, “It’s A Mirror”
- Patrick Wolf, “Jupiter”
- Jeff Tweedy, “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter”
- Bartees Strange, “Sober”
- Hatchie, “Sage”
- The Weather Station, “Mirror”
- Jamie xx, “Dream Night”
- Blood Orange, “Mind Loaded”
- Destroyer, “Hydroplaning Off The Edge Of The World”
- Jens Lekman, “With You I Can Hear My Own Voice”
- Japanese Breakfast, “Honey Water”
- Saint Etienne, “Glad”
- Natalie Bergman, “Gunslinger”
- Pulp, “Got To Have Love”
- Andy Bell, “Dance For Mercy”
- Cate Le Bon, “Mother of Riches”
- The Tubs, “Narcissist”
- Matt Berninger, “Inland Ocean”
- Cerrone & Christine and the Queens, “Catching Feelings”
- Maria Somerville, “Stonefly”
- Suzanne Vega, “Flying With Angels”
- Anna Von Hausswolff, “Struggle With The Beast”
- Haim, “Down To Be Wrong”
- David Byrne, “What Is The Reason For It?”
- Yves Tumor & NINA, “We Don’t Count”
- Chappell Roan, “The Giver”
- My Morning Jacket, “Everyday Magic”
- Wet Leg, “Catch These Fists”
- Robert Forster, “Tell It Back To Me”
- Yola, “Amazing”
- Florence + The Machine, “The Old Religion”
- Pearl Charles & Tim Burgess, “Gone So Long”
- Tunde Adebimpe, “Somebody New”
- Alison Goldfrapp, “Hey Hi Hello”
- CMAT, “Euro-Country”
- Doves, “Southern Bell”
Haunted Jukebox 