the music makes the year
It's Christmas but I don't really have a sense of what day of the week it is, nor do I really care. It is the time of year where everything blends together anyway and all routines are disrupted. The snow is blowing outside my window and I am online once again, tapped into the big world through my screen. I wanted to write a top ten albums list of 2025 to share here but I think I've found this is not so much a top ten list as it is more of an excuse for me to blabber about the significance of music in my life. 2025 was a great year for having ears that can hear stuff. Here are all the new albums that dropped this year that I loved:
You can hear how big Big Thief's heart is in every corner of this album. It sounds like sitting around a campfire and telling stories while your friends bring out their guitars. It sounds like learning to live with memories that can't really ever be replicated (and knowing that is the beauty of them). Los Angeles is one my favourite Big Thief tracks ever (which is saying a lot for a band that has an impeccable discography), in no small part because of its divinely placed timing in my life. This year was about reconnecting with so many beloved old faces. I am thankful for the connections to my past that have been fortified, and grateful for another opportunity to be in the presence of the people I love who too often are very physically far from me. I can't tell you how many different people run through my mind as I listen to Adrienne Lenker singing "Feels like it's been ten years, has it only been two years? / Two years feels like forever / But I know you without looking." Incomprehensible is another strand-out track in a year where I felt very old and grown-up and spent no small amount of time driving through multiple provinces. To drive exactly where Adrienne once drove, singing, "The pine trees are narrow, a billion broken arrows / The ravens and the crows, robins and the sparrows / All across Ontario, static on the stereo / Went swimming in the lake, Old Woman Bay." It all feels very significant indeed.
Marie Davidson's City of Clowns
In a year defined by a new wave of Canadian cultural sovereignty, it is a small comfort to know that my personal, favourite, most bestest album of the year was indeed created by a Canadian. I'm actually a little upset this album even exists because I wish I could have made it myself. There are no filler tracks on the entire album, it's dripping in satire and bass-deep beats that you will feel in the pit of your stomach. Literally impossible to listen to without nodding your head. The whole thing is an overaching critique of the age of the internet that we're in, and a woman's place in it. So many great and funny quips that I've already clipped to mix into future dj sets, from Demolition, "By the way / I don't want your cash now / All I want is you / I want your data / Data, baby!", from Push Me Fuckhead, "Who are you? / What's your type? / Are you on the spectrum?"
In my own selfish way I am glad that Davidson finally made a more commerically accessible album than what I'm used to from her. There are a select few people that I have recommended Working Class Woman to, because despite how awesome it is, I am aware that it might be a bit too experimental for the average person's taste. Finally - City of Clowns, I can recommend without complaint or restraint. Also - go see this live!!! I saw her in April in a 300-person venue it was one of the absoute most fire performances I have ever seen. A perfect encapsulation of everything I love about dance music and the beautiful women that make it. Inspired to the max.
In some ways I grew up with Lorde. I was a young teenager when Pure Heroine came out, and I remember blasting it for hours and dancing around my room, thinking about how special it was that an artist could make an album this close to my heart. I have to be very honest that this new album did not click for me immediately. I listened to the lead single on the album, What Was That, and quickly dimissed this as yet another vapid pop star leaning into the LA influencer crowd, singing about doing MDMA and finding out that dance music was really cool. How wrong I was!!!!! After Leon got me a ticket to go see Lorde at Centre Bell I knew I had to revist this album and give it a proper chance and complete listen through.
Lorde is earnest - perhaps overly so, borderlining on cringe-worthy. Maybe part of my fascination with her music is that I truly think anything worth doing in life with your full heart must be at least a bit cringe-worthy. The rawness of her open heart on this album is apparent on every single song - yes even the one about doing MDMA in the back garden. Watching her belt these songs live made me sob harder than I have in a while, and made me feel so much remorse for the ways that people (especially young women) shove themselves in little boxes and put up with so much in badly balanced power dynamic situations for little payoff. In her live show, Lorde gets off the stage and walks through the crowd while David plays, the video screen on stage flipping back and forth between the live camera feed and a pre-recorded video in the empty stadium. The people around her in the GA section are sobbing as they try to touch her while she floats past them and sings "Why do we run to thе ones we do? / I don't belong to anyone / I made you God 'cause it was all / That I knew how to do." Absolute waterworks. One of the best endings to a show I have ever seen. Do not sleep on this album, even if it takes you a few tries.
I heard Cinderella on my Spotify shuffle earlier this year and had to stop what I was doing just to get the full impact of hearing that song for the first time. This album is noisy, it's angry, it's hot, it will make you want to wear lace under the biggest leather jacket and boots you can find. I read that the band members found their lead singer when they watched him perform while "writhing on the floor in a corset, fake blood dripping down his face" which honestly makes a lot of sense once you've listened to the music. Pirouette has such a power to it, and its anxious, danceable beats keep going for the entire 40 minute run-time. I spent a lot of time this year running to this album and also putting on makeup to this album, which I feel are the two most appropriate activities to be doing while this music plays. I'm manifesting in 2026 that I'll get to see this band - they're at the top of my list. I just find their music exciting, and so different from a lot of what we're getting in the noise rock genre these days.
Bad Bunny's DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
Benito is the biggest artist in the world right now, and rightfully so. DTMF is first and foremost about Puerto Rico - about colonization, gentrification, and the connection to an ever-changing homeland. The album blends the reggaeton beats and clever rhyming raps that initially put Bad Bunny on the map, but this time it pulls them in together with the classic, nostalgia-filled sound of years gone by. Baile Inolvidable is my favourite track on the entire album, from its first build up being broken by Jacobo Morales saying "Mientras uno está vivo / Uno debe amar lo más que pueda." (While one is alive / One has to love as much as possible) to the groovy trumpet and percussion to a wistful chorus, "No, no te puedo olvidar / No, no te puedo borrar / Tú me enseñaste a querer / Me enseñaste a bailar" (No I can't forget you / No I can't erase you / You taught me to love / You taught me to dance). You will shed a tear while shaking ass.
DTMF is a masterclass in writing a musical love letter to a time and place. I've never been to PR but this album has made me feel like I teleported there. A few weeks ago I was walking to work in -25 degree weather and I put on Café con Ron and I genuinely felt like I could feel the sun on my face and smell the ocean nearby. I listened to it all summer in the car with the windows rolled down. I danced to it with my tia in a Cuban bar in Mexico City, I danced to it with my friends, a few beers in on the back porch in Ontario. I danced to it while I flew to a new home.
Water From Your Eyes' It's a Beautiful Place
I want Rachel Brown's voice in my head FOREVER. I think I just love women who sound like they'd rather be anywhere else than singing a song with the sort of dreamy speak-singing, apathetic vocals. Playing Classics is one of my top songs of the year and I find this verse just looping infinitely in my head, "Look, I'm concerned as a matter of fact / Contact, contact, all this shattered impact (Practice shake it, you're free) / Shake three (Practice, shake it, two, three) / Desire in crisis, no, a longing for truce / Yeah, the long hard road from here to the truth (Practice shake it, you're free)." The guitar and keyboard parts are also so catchy and danceable. I love listening to this as loud as possible through good headphones because the mix is really smooth, just clearly lots of care and effort into making this sound really satisfying. This album came on my radar a bit later in the year, but I look forward to it being included in my rotation all through next year.
Horsegirl's Phonetics On and On
I think what makes me feel so drawn to this band in general is just how familiar every part of their music feels. Three people in their early 20s from Chicago, just making music with catchy guitar parts and plently of la la las and da da das. I just feel like they're similar to the types of people I know in real life. Listening to Rock City for the first time, I actually started to tear up - it sounded like if Modest Mouse were Gen-Z girls, and it felt like coming home. This album has been the soundtrack to so much of my 2025 - in a year that took me through every emotion under the sun. Good days and bad days, I was listening to Horsegirl. I know every word on this album, back and forth, and I am so grateful for the ways in which there are pieces of the artists I love in every corner of the album. I later found out that this album was produced by the great Cate Le Bon - yet another reason to love it and keep it on rotation.
Sometimes the best music is literally just a dude with a guitar. I've always thought that if I ever made a coming of age movie that it would be soundtracked by Alex G. This album feels so much older than many of his other albums. If God Save the Animals was a mini experimental foray into strange production, Headlights is the return to form that appears as a logical follow up to his House of Sugar album. During my undergrad, I put off listening to Alex G for quite a few years due to the reputation of his fans. Eventually I got over myself and ended up listening to hundreds and hundreds of hours of his music (including his unofficial unreleased tracks) over the course of three years. I hadn't listened to his music much again since I left the East Coast, so of course he released this album the literal day before I went back to visit some pals. I sat on a hammock by the ocean in Summerside, PEI and listened to the sweet chords of June Guitar take over my ears. The first lines of Afterlife (the song), really just felt like an acknowledgement of how much personal growth happens in a life, hitting me with the "Let me run on Afterlife / Filling up the tank with it / Like a kid, I ran it past / Rolling in the tiger grass / We were mean and seventeen /Make it like a dream." Back down East again, back in the realm of Alex G, all things as they should be.
shame is having so much fun. You can also have fun if you listen to Cutthroat. How can you not feel punched in the face by an album that starts with the words "Big, beautiful, naked women fall out the sky /Motherfucker, I was born to die"?!!? Something about the civilian anger with the current political climate of the UK is making a lot of great bands create great stuff. I don't know what they're putting in the water across the pond, but I'd like them to keep doing it for the sake of artistry. Their lead singer has the type of British lad vocal quality that I am a sucker for, plus it's also a great type of voice to hear yelling obscenities. This album came out of nowhere for me - only in the last few weeks have I really come around to it! Perfect for driving, perfect for listening to while cooking dinner (at least for me… your mileage may vary). Super thrilled to be seeing these guys in 2026 - I hope to leave a mosh pit of theirs with an adequate amount of bruises.
A very well-made and solid follow-up to their 2022 self-titled debut! Rhian and Hester are SO weird and those two divas really made a truly catchy and enjoyable album. catch these fists is a standout track for me, so cheeky and powerful, opening with "Can you catch a medicine ball? / Can you catch yourself when you fall? / You should be careful, do you catch my drift? / 'Cause what I really want to know is can you catch these fists?" This album is and will continue to be on my gym playlists for all of eternity. The bass on CPR scratches my brain in the best way, it's so good it's nasty, type of guitar that your scruntch your face up at and keep nodding along to. Loved getting the opportunity to see this played live with Bib & PJ - one of the last concerts in Montreal that I'll be attending for a while.
Big year for big tunes. Thanks to everyone who listened to these artists with me this year, or who showed me cool music! Please email me and tell me what you listened to this year!!
love n hugs,
sam