Photographs in Illustration

Renell Medrano; Charlie Engman; TAS Rights Management; Jenna Murray

• Earl Sweatshirt, ‘Gamma (need the <3)’

  

  “I need the love, gang,” Earl announces in his jovially baked bongo-jam tribute to the family-man life. For a rapper who once called an album I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, it’s a kick to hear him get so inspired by marriage and fatherhood, reveling in his spaciest wordplay.

• Wet Leg, ‘Mangetout’

  

  If you thought Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers might catch a case of the sophomore slump, you guessed wrong. With “Mangetout,” from their excellent Moisturizer, Wet Leg prove they’ve been partying harder, traveling faster, caring less, and meeting sexier idiots. “Mangetout” is a damn-near perfect dance-punk jam, all brazen confidence and raging hormones. “You wanna fuck me? I know — most people do.” Now that’s one way to make a strong introduction.

• Gelli Haha, ‘Pluto is Not a Planet It’s a Restaurant’

  

  A riotously weird piece of disco grandeur from L.A.-via-Boise avant-pop prankster Gelli Haha, the centerpiece of her excellent debut Switcheroo, inviting one and all to hang in outer space (“We’re all out of stardust, tragically”) as if heaven is a place anywhere but earth.

• Olivia Rodrigo and Robert Smith,  ‘Just Like Heaven (Live at Glastonbury)’

  

  Do you get déjà vu? For the heartwarming cherry on top of this year’s total lack of sundae, Olivia Rodrigo teamed up with Robert Smith at Glastonbury to duet on one of the saddest songs in goth history, and Robert was beaming all the way through it. (I have never, ever seen him smile like that. It did things to my teenage heart that I’m still processing.) Olivia did a lot of high-profile duets this year — she did “Buddy Holly” with Weezer, and damn, the sight of O-Rod singing “you need a guardiaaaaan” to Rivers Cuomo is definitely a sign o’ the times — but this one truly deserved to be a single, on vinyl no less. It’s just like a dream.

• zayALLCAPS, ‘MTV’s Pimp My Ride’

  

  I think we’re alone now.

• Noah Cyrus feat. Bill Callahan, ‘XXX’

  

  I definitely did not have this on my 2025 bingo card — a tender love ballad duet between Noah Cyrus and Bill Callahan, the grizzled indie-rock misery goat who released his classic Dongs of Sevotion the year Noah was born. But their voices mesh beautifully, for atmospheric acoustic melancholy. Preach, Bill: “I don’t contain multitudes/I can barely contain anything.”

• Blood Orange with Eva Tolkin and Liam Benzvi, ‘Westerberg’

  

  So much of this year’s deepest music was about grief — the emotion AI can’t feel and the algorithms can’t simulate. After losing his mother, Dev Hynes sings about traveling through time with music, revisiting songs he forgot he loved, to commune with ghosts of his past. “In your ears there’s Paul Westerberg,” he sings, over moody late-night trip-hop keyboards. “I’m in love with that song.” He sings about the Replacements singing about Alex Chilton, turning it into his own deeply personal meditation on those moments when your pain is so raw, a song buried in your memory can sneak up on you and tell you who you are right now.

• Hotline TNT, ‘Julia’s War’

  

  My Bloody Valentine in the streets, Gin Blossoms in the sheets — nice trick. The “na na na na” rocker of the summer. (It makes a neat pair with Horsegirl’s equally great “Julie.”)

• Bryan Ferry, Amelia Barratt, ‘Cowboy Hat’

  

  A strangely beautiful collaboration from the dashing Roxy Music glam-rock legend and the writer/painter Amelia Barratt, inspiring the Divine Bryan to finish his first album in a decade. On Loose Talk, she recites spoken-word vignettes over his music — some of it new, some from demos going back to the Seventies. She visits a tailor in “Cowboy Hat,” over his eerie piano and wordless crooning, as the music travels across the decades and the smoke gets in his eyes.

• JiD with Ciara and Earthgang, ‘Sk8’

  

  The best roller-skating utopia song… ever? JID makes this a heaven-is-a-rink love song to Atlanta’s skating culture, with hometown goddess Ciara listing the names of revered roller palaces like a Homeric catalog, from Skatetowne to the Golden Glide to Cascade to the Sparkles Family Fun Center. (Plus there’s Skate Zone, which she’s never been to, so she ends the song deciding to take the girls tomorrow.) It’s got the ATL love of Metro Boomin’s excellent A Futuristic Summa packed into one song, with a trunkload of bass to remind everyone why Atlanta remains the forever home of forever stories. Pick-up line that would totally work on me: “Girl, you Nineties fine, got me using my Nineties eyes.”

• Tate McRae, ‘Siren Sounds’

  

  Two mismatched lovers in a burning house, but they don’t have the sense to be afraid of the flames — they’re dancing to the siren sounds. This underrated gem should have been a monster hit from Tate’s blockbuster So Close to What, but it didn’t even make the album. It’s a bonus track on the deluxe edition, which is such a bizarre move it just enhances the song’s hot/crazy aura, since hot/crazy is definitely Tate’s musical sweet spot. “Sports Car” is a great hit and I briefly considered listing it here instead of “Siren Sounds,” but it’s not quiiiite as good, and when I slacken my quality standards, who suffers? That’s right — we all do.

• Jeff Tweedy, ‘Feel Free’

  

  I’m the kind of Jeff Tweedy fan who comes for the the endless guitar-solo reveries (“Impossible Germany” at Jones Beach this summer, with the seagulls screeching along — what a moment) and gets around to the verse/chorus/vocal tunes later. So when he dropped a triple solo album I took a look at the track list, and decided to start with the longest song, figuring that must be the guitar epic, then took it out for a walk in the woods. Turns out “Feel Free” was six and a half minutes of Tweedy singing words — not even a guitar solo at all — for a midlife spiritual that’s one of the warmest, funniest, wisest things he’s ever done. Not at all what I was looking for, yet I love it. Good advices: “Feel free/Plant yourself like a seed/And take your time being buried/Feel free.”

• Justin Bieber, ‘Butterflies’

  

  The comeback kid has so many left-field successes on Swag — “Yukon,” “Zuma House” — yet I love “Butterflies” for how it meanders through Nineties yacht-grunge guitar until those massive drums kick in. If I’m not mistaken — and when it comes to Bieber, I usually am — “Butterflies” is his brightest pure pop shot ever.

• The Tubs, ‘Strange’

  

  I’ve been a fan of these Welsh indie kids since their great band Joanna Gruesome, who I saw a million times in the year or so when they were constantly playing New York. But “Strange” is something new, with Celtic dread in Owen Williams’ voice and the folk-punk guitars, like a mix of Richard Thompson and the Wedding Present. He mourns the death of his mother, back when his band was first taking off, facing grief with the baffled chorus, “How strange it all is.” He wonders why he’s still too scared to discuss it, while he feels so helpless to mourn, for a gorgeous elegy. If you’re looking for a lighter lift, the one to start with from Cotton Crown is “One More Day,” with its urgent Hüsker Dü guitar. It’s probably an even better song than “Strange,” and it’s the one I play more often, but “Strange” is such a rare and unexpected gem it’s the one I can’t get out of my head, and for better or worse I already know it’s a song I’m stuck living with from now on. Favorite moment: Some stranger at the wake suggests he could write a song to honor his mother. Williams sings, “Well, whoever the hell you are, I’m sorry, I guess this is it.” How strange it all is.

• Sabrina Carpenter, ‘Manchild’

  

  Sometimes the test of a great singer is how they attack the world “stupid.” Sabrina sings it with a thrilled sense of discovery, like she’s unwrapping a surprise gift. (If you’re a connoisseur of 1980s synth-pop trash, it sounds like Julie Brown in her immortal hit “I Like ‘Em Big and Stupid,” which Sabrina must have studied like a sacred text.) “Manchild” is the Dolly Parton/Mae West fusion we needed, and even though I loved it right away, it just kept growing on me all year long — that Wham! synth intro is such an automatic “hey, this one.” Such a big year for “I choose to blame your mom” songs, as in Jensen McRae’s excellent “Praying for Your Downfall,” where she’s “downing Stellas and blaming your mom.” (But in defense of all these mankids’ Gen X moms, they were probably into Liz Phair and “Whipsmart” is still a hell of a song.)

• Cameron Winter, ‘Love Takes Miles’

  

  A modern standard — hearing a stranger croon this at the karaoke bar was when it really strolled away with my heart. Let’s pray for Willie Nelson to sing this one at least once.

• Amaarae, ‘S.M.O.’

  

  “Scream and shout, slut me out” is the dance-floor chant of the year, over an eruption of Ghanian highlife and Southern African gqom and Nu Shooz synth-stabs and the Black Star’s sultry musings on the erotic taste of Lexapro. If a prospective romantic partner corners you in the club, stares you in the eye,  and says “I wanna meet the god that made you,” you have done at least one thing (and probably only one thing) right with your life.

• Snocaps, ‘Wasteland’

  

  The Crutchfield sisters — Katie from Waxahatchee and Allison from Swearin’ — reactivate their wonder-twin powers for Snocaps, the first project they’ve done together in years, in a delightful surprise album, with MJ Lenderman and Brad Cook as (mostly) silent team players. “Wasteland” is an adult break-up song with years of anguish behind it. They played one of the year’s best gigs in NYC, dipping into songs from their teen years when they were playing DIY gigs as P.S. Eliot.  “We’d like to take it back to the days of 2012,” Katie said, adjusting her guitar. “The higher the capo, the older the song.”

• PinkPantheress, ‘Illegal’

  

  The summer she turned “Born Slippy.” Pink pops that vintage Underworld techno-perv loop into the CD changer — “Dark & Long (Dark Train),” from the druggiest scene in Trainspotting — and presses play, panting and puffing and twirling across the beats, capturing a late night in the club that turns into something more, as she dances with the ghosts of raves past and future. Tell her why her heartbeat’s in a rush?

• Dijon, ‘Yamaha’

  

  The year’s most reliable “today sucked until I put this song on” song. Like everything Dijon did all year long, “Yamaha” can disorient you and caress you at the same time, especially when he croons, “Baby, I’m in love with this particular emotion.” He manages to pack the entire Side Two of Sign o’ the Times into one song.

• Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band, ‘New Threats From the Soul’

  

  A reading from the gospel according to Ryan Davis: “I left my wallet in El Segundo/I left my love in a West Lafayette escape room.” The mangy underdog Kentucky rogue travels the dirt roads of American country-rock, finding losers and drifters down every byway, in a nine-minute travelogue full of twisted poetry. He does right by the legacy of the Silver Jews’ late great David Berman, baptized in the same American water.

• Addison Rae, ‘Headphones On’

  

  Ever have one of those “nobody in this world understands me except Addison Rae” moments? Yeah, me neither, except OK, maybe every single time she modulates to the chorus of “Headphones On” and deals with emotional turmoil the only way she knows how: She listens to her favorite song. (It’s always cool when the pop girls sing about their headphones — here’s a shout-out to Stacey Q’s Eighties new wave classic “Walkman On.”) Addison whispers “come and put your headphones on” to the mirror, dancing with herself, loving this song more than she’ll ever love that backseat boy from “Diet Pepsi.”

• Kehlani, ‘Folded’

  

  Love, lies, and laundry. A misty-blue break-up slow jam where Kehlani can’t decide if the door is locked or open for another shot (“I’ll let your body decide if this is enough for you”) but always leaves you wondering what happens next.

• MJ Lenderman, This Is Lorelei, ‘Dancing in the Club’

  

  Rock-a-bye, Sweet Baby Jake. MJ Lenderman keeps singing “I’m my own worst enemy,” but nobody understands him except his guitar, and in this song, even his guitar has doubts. He takes a great This Is Lorelei song and transmutes it into a stoner-country ramble, with the honey-slides ache in his voice and the mellow-gold dirtbag soul of his guitar. One of the millions of things I love about “Dancing in the Club” is how it goes on so long — it starts out as a stranger on a barstool telling you his story until you’re looking around for the exit, then you realize there is no exit because it’s your story too. Thanks Nate Amos for this immortal couplet: “I was singing Steely Dan, crying ‘shake it’ in the wind/A loser never wins and I’m a loser, always been.”

• Taylor Swift, ‘Elizabeth Taylor’

  

  “She was, in short, too bloody much.” That’s what Richard Burton said the night he met Elizabeth Taylor. No wonder Taylor Swift can relate — just her kind of girl. This is the kind of ingeniously crafted melodramatic bombshell that Swift specializes in, serenading the Hollywood legend she calls “the ultimate quintessential showgirl,” an orchestral torch banger about a movie star living the sequins-are-forever lifestyle. The showgirl yearns for true love, but on her own fiercely independent terms, with tears in her violet eyes, ice in her veins, and a cloud of scandal swirling around her. (Great line: “They call me bad news, I just say thanks.”) The louder the song gets, the lonelier it sounds. It’s a garish mess of a song, but I love the bombast of it, the sparkly overkill of it, the too-bloody-muchness of it. That’s what Taylor Swift was born for. Tell me for real, do you think it’s forever?