My favorite 50 songs of 2025

and a brief and chaotic list of the best of the rest of the year

Happy Boxing Day.

This year was both very bad (you already know the microscopic instrument) and very wonderful, which I guess is most years (to varying extremes on either end). I don’t know if anyone wants another list but this one is here should you desire it. Desire, incidentally, is not a virtue, nor is ambition (something I wish some filmmakers realized, just leaving it at that!).

With the caveats that a) I have something akin to light amnesia and b) there are a lot of things I haven’t seen or heard or read (barely read anything that wasn’t for the pod actually, need some new novel recommendations please) this is my personal 2025 best of.

In no particular order! With no explanation! Bonj:

• These 50 songs (my personal Festive 50 2025, apologies to John Peel)

• Sorry Baby, directed by Eva Victor

• Pluribus on Apple TV

• Task on HBO

• The Pitt on HBO

• Oasis at Wembley

• The branzino at Unidos wine bar, a newly opened spot in Studio City

• The Testament of Ann Lee, directed by Mona Fastvold (kind of cheating bc this came out fairly limited on Dec 25th but I saw it in August and just absolutely loved it)

• Hanif Abdurraqib’s Instagram stories (he writes more beautifully and provides more fascinating music-related information there than I ever will in any form in my life probably)

• Department Q on Netflix

• The Lilith Fair: Building A Mystery documentary

• Cameron Winter live at the Palace Theater in Los Angeles (recency bias maybe)

• Rosalia on the Fashion Neurosis podcast

• I Regret Almost Everything by Keith McNally

• Charlotte Gainsbourg’s haircut

• Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately? documentary directed by Amy Scott on HBO

• So Young Records’ whole deal

• The Jeff Buckley episode of Bandsplain (is this allowed).

• Houston’s Pasadena (evergreen)

• I don’t remember anything else!

  

  xx