Every year I like to make a little playlist of songs I couldn’t stop replaying, the ones that worked their way into my days no matter what was happening. This list isn’t exhaustive, definitive, or objective. It’s ten tracks that stuck with me in 2025, the songs I kept returning to, a snapshot of my year in sound.
10. “The Ghouls,” by Midlake
This one got in my head this year and would not let me go.
There’s nothing crazy about it. It’s simply a quality rock-and-roll tune performed with skill and produced with atmosphere, a song that doesn’t disappoint from start to finish, with a melodic theme that is a pleasure to hear every time it repeats, from its opening notes on the piano to its repetition on multiple guitars and doubled on the bass. It’s Midlake doing their finest work in 20 years.
09. “Turbulence & The Night Rays,” by Goose
Off the Chain Yer Dragon album, “Turbulence & The Night Rays” plays like a typical rock and roll tune for most of it, but the last three minutes of this nine minute tune are a mid-tempo, smooth guitar-led jam that builds to a satisfying crescendo, the kind that makes you look down at your screen to see if you’re listening to Phish.
I mean that as a compliment because Goose is able to do what Phish has often failed at: capturing, in the studio, the ecstasy of the live crescendo.
If you’re one of those folks who don’t like Phish because they’re way too geeky, Goose might be the jam band you’ve been looking for.
08. “Anxiety,” by Doechii
I’ve fallen in love with Doechii’s music, sparked by her incredible appearance on Late Night with Stephen Colbert. And while the appearance was…well, incredible…I was equally impressed by her rhyming skills, and I quickly devoured her stuff.
Doechii originally released “Anxiety” on YouTube in 2019, but when it started to gain traction on TikTok, she re-recorded the tune and released it in March 2025 to the streaming services, which is where I found it (being an old man who doesn’t have TikTok). The song samples Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know, which, in turn, samples a Brazilian artist’s tune from 1967, but Doechii uses it to rap and sing about her mental health, layering in her voice in several different registers, each one hitting a different part of your brain and your taste. Which is why it’s my favorite pop song of the year.
07. “Keep Me Satisfied,” by Jungle
This one requires the video, because while the song is a delightful dance tune, the magic of it really shines when the music is accompanied by beautiful choreographed dancers performing in a warehouse. Keep your eye out for the gentleman who is more portly than your typical music-video dancer. He makes me feel seen.
While I first added the song to my library because of the video, I’ve since listened to it a bunch without the joy of the choreography. There’s something about that bass line that just makes me feel happy, and I love the little guitar that comes in on the chorus. I played this one a lot this year.
06. “Diyanya Ko,” by Orchestra Gold
Orchestra Gold plays Afro-funk with fuzzy psychedlic guitars played atop Mali traditions and supported by horns.
The first time I put this song on (and it opens the album), my head started bobbing immediately, and I thought, “Oooh, this is interesting.” But then, about halfway through, the song takes a turn and my head bobbing became head banging.
The guitar solo in the outro is pure Hendrix, fuzzy and gorgeous with an incredible, angry, raw bass line behind it. Then the guitar hooks up with the horns for the last few notes, and it’s like, “Orchesta Gold, how the fuck do you have the cojones to do what you do? What a pleasure to meet you!”
05. “Theme de la couleur de la mer (In Session),” by The Offline
One of my favorite bands right now, The Offline is a sextet that plays hip-hop influenced, heavily-melodic, soundtrack-style jazz. “Theme de la couleur de la mer” is beautiful tune that rolls like the sea and captures the magic of the band in one song. It slides so nicely into the background of whatever you’re doing, while also rewarding close listening.
If you’re not closing your eyes in appreciation of that first guitar-led chorus, then I simply don’t know what you’re doing listening to music in the first place.
04. “One Tiny Flower,” by Jeff Tweedy
The first song on Jeff Tweedy’s epic solo album, Twilight Override, “One Tiny Flower” displays Tweedy’s skills and musical ear at their best. At nearly six and a half minutes long, it has his half-mumbled voice singing a perfectly depicted poetic scene — “The grass is growing all over town / from the cracks in the sidewalks / where the shops shut down / one tiny flower, I’m jumping over”…end of story.
Except not the end of the song. The story is told within the first minute or two, and while there’s a slight second verse and we’ll hear “One tiny flower, I’m jumping over” sung dozens of times, the song will bend and collapse and grow and bend and collapse and grow, again and again, just like that one tiny flower facing life on a decaying street.
The sound is a dark, autumn afternoon before the gloom sets in, and it’s so fucking good.
03. “Embrace,” by Levitation Orchestra
Levitation Orchestra is a 14-piece London jazz collective whose album, Sanctuary is a banger from start to finish.
My favorite, “Embrace,” starts out as a gentle, calming jazz tune, but about halfway through, it takes a turn. The percussion becomes a flood of monsters that can only be chased down by a saxophone doing its best.
Then, about two-thirds of the way through, a skittering of scat comes crawling out of the sewer drains, matching the pace of the horns and winds before everyone settles down to catch their breath beneath a lonely streetlight next to a playground.
Just a holy shit of a tune.
02. “The Goon Show,” by Tropical Fuck Storm
It’s the golden age of arseholes and the triumph of disgrace
Howling winds turn cornfields into rags.
Yeah, I’ve seen the cellphone footage
And its raining cats and dogma
You can rob a bank, but you don’t really rob the bank
Because if they lose, they win
And all they need’s the wind that blows
Where people wave their flags at people waving flags
…
But I’ll grab some pepper spray from K-Mart
Chuck a ski-mask in by bag and then scream an incantation
Change the colour of the sky
On “The Goon Show,” the Australian post-punk juggernauts, Tropical Fuck Storm, mimic the atmosphere of the world’s decline into right-wing corporofascism. Lyrically, it’s devestating, but it’s supported by a cold, hard marching beat, a distant thunder of digitally-effected toms, fuzzy guitars, and synthesizers, but about halfway through, the song descends into a riot of noise before returning to the chorus.
To me, “The Goon Show” sounds like what Antifa, on its best day, looks like.
01. “One of the Greats,” by Florence & The Machine
“I crawled up from under the earth,
broken nails and coughing dirt,
singing out my songs so
you could sing along, oh.
And with each bedraggled breath
I came back from the dead
to show you how it’s done
to show what it takes to conquer and crucify
to become one of the greats,
one of the greats.”
This might be my favorite song of the year. The lyrics are gorgeous; the instrumentation is haunting; and her voice…my word, her voice.
But it’s what she does with that voice. There are dozens of divas with powerful voices, but Florence Welch brings a raw femininist fury to her poetry:
“You’ll bury me again.
You’ll say its all pretend.
That I could never be great being held up against such male tastes.
‘Cause who really gets to be one of the greats,
one of the greats?
But I’ve really done it this time.
This one is all mine.
I’ll be up there with the men and the ten other women in the The 100 Greatest Records of All Time.
It must be nice to be a man
and make boring music
just because you can.”
So freakin’ bad ass.
That’s the list, for better or worse. The ten songs that shaped the musical landscape of my 2025. I hope you’ll listen to a few of them all the way through, especially the ones that seem a little outside your usual taste. That’s how I do it. Keep my ears open for sounds, songs, and singers that are new, different, and strange.