One of my hobbies is making annual playlists: songs that were new or important to me in 2025, carefully arranged in a way that makes it a replayable time capsule and shareable with friends. And I like to also write up why, to help others see what I see, and to also help me personally understand and express what I like. Because I’m an English major, I have the vocab to talk about what I like in literature, especially dramatic literature. But music and film were two areas I felt insecure about having opinions about for a long time, because the art that I like isn’t always the art that important men like.
When we were all on LiveJournal, it was built into the journal update form to include your “current music”, and I loved it; you’d see a friend who had really good taste was listening to a specific artist on repeat and so you’d go look them up. I was too old for MySpace but of course they had something similar, too. But tweets don’t ask you to note what music is playing while you’re tweeting, and Facebook only asks how mad you are today. So I got in the habit of relying on music algorithms. This isn’t new; I usually have had good experiences with “People who like this also like that” going back to when I was using last.fm.
I actually dusted off my old last.fm account recently, to find it was perfectly preserved with the profile pic I took in our first apartment on a $30 webcam. I forgot that I’d hooked it up to Spotify when I started using it in 2014. It has been silently, dutifully recording every track I’ve streamed since:
I’m trying to get us off Spotify. Their streaming rate is terrible for artists, they stick garbage genAI “music” in their official playlists without doing so much as being honest about the track’s origins, and their ad department sees nothing wrong with taking ICE’s money to help them terrorize the country. And the subscription price keeps going up all while while artists can’t make rent. This model demolished an entire artistic occupation, and I’m embarrassed it took me so long to move on finding a replacement.
I’m currently testing Qobuz, and it’s fine. The audio quality is really good. But of course, it doesn’t have the same library Spotify does, and the app doesn’t let you add in your local files to fill in what’s missing, meaning I can’t get really precise about my playlists. And if you haven’t learned this about me yet, I’m really precise about my playlists. One way to fix this is a home always-on server (could be your computer, could be a dedicated device) that will host your files (I’m looking at an Amber X because I also want to start using Plex), and then some program to manage that and mix in the streamer audio. I got Qobuz working with Roon.
Roon has two apps, one for the home server, the other a mobile app. And for that mobile app to work when you’re outside of the house (you know, mobile) you need a fourth VPN app to tunnel home and of course that app has a monthly subscription fee too. So I’m going to pause this direction for now. I’d rather find a way to buy mp3s, pay artists more directly and actually get a shot at owning music again. Good god, I wish Bandcamp had the really big artists on it.
Y’all. All I want to do is to make a mixtape for myself, play it in the car, share it with all my friends, and see the artists compensated for their work. I really am struggling right now on the tech end of making that happen. So for now, here’s a couple links to my annual playlist and hopefully one of them will work for you and what you use.
Playlist on Qobuz (missing “Teardrop”)
Playlist on YouTube: (prioritizing music videos)
Lots of songs on this one feel out of time, from another era, but the title comes from the first one:
Built to Burn – Shayfer James
I started the year in a real haze as the horrors in the news descended. As we watched, helpless, Elon Musk and his tech industry flunkies carried out careless and cruel destruction of social systems they didn’t understand, in the name of amassing power. This year was so foolish and and all the pain was unnecessary. (But I hope we’ll also make the best of it, by building replacements in the future that are better than what we had.)
Dive – Olivia Dean
“I’m a tidal wave of question marks / and you’re just surfing”
Beautiful, dreamy longing, puts me in a good mood. This track rewards a headphone listen because there’s a lot of really subtle production, but it all still comes out balanced. Speaking of another era, I’m unsurprised to see Matt Hales (aka Aqualung, a regular on my playlists in the late-00s, a guy whose whole thing is blues & soul with cool layered electronica) as one of the producers on this track.
GTFO – Max Rickun
“get the fuck outta my head, I never said / you could stay there for as long as you did, I never said / you could build a home in my dome, so I need you to / hit the road and pack up your bags OH BABY JUST…”
The best Hall and Oates song written by a Gen Z TikToker, it played in my car almost every single day this fall, especially when going to ELF rehearsal. I love the groove here, and the descent into tantrum around 3:15 (3:31 on music video).
The music video interrupts the beat with few seconds of submerged tinnitus, but I put it on the youtube playlist instead of the plain music track because he is clearly having a blast performing this song and, y’all: as of today this song only has 22k views, how
Cinderella – Remi Wolf
Cheerful, bright, and a little horny (especially the cute music video). I love this funk beat and the little percussive flair in the mix (like the little hotel front desk “ding” at 2:51).
“is there something wrong with the way that I’m designed” followed by an emphatic “lol no girl, you got this” was very comforting to replay as often as I did this fall.
6am – Fitz and the Tantrums
This song is from 2012 but I heard it while running errands one day and teleported back to the early 80s instead. You know I love songs that remind me of going to the roller rink as a kid, so here is one.
Wall – Good Kid
The energy and brightness here is so cheering. Feels like what I liked from Blur or early Fall Out Boy.
Good Kid has a lot of animated music videos with character continuity, and I really like the video for this one! Cute little story, great movement & character design. (The band gets to show up here too, performing in the concert the characters attend.)
As If – Pretoria
I picked this bright indie-rock banger off Aloe’s playlist; they saw Pretoria live this year opening for The Toxhards (see next song). Pretoria’s a local band to us these days and Aloe reports they absolutely rock live, so I’m hoping I can catch them some time.
Get Creative! Or Get Radicalized – The Toxhards
“I gave all I was given / but I won’t anymore / stranger in the mirror / and he won’t stop getting old…”
My favorite album this year, Your Neighborhood by the Toxhards, begins with a midnight scan through a car’s FM stations. A man on a talk show warns very casually: “these days you either grow up being creative, or you get radicalized on the intern-…”
I really like The Toxhards. They get compared to Tally Hall or Ben Folds Five for their theatrical rock and tight harmony (just listen to that vocal slide at 0:27 (0:56 on video), the most BFF thing ever), but they’re also clearly inspired by psychedelic progrock. Your Neighborhood is a punky, introspective rock album about isolation, a car crash, and accepting your own agency. (Just be aware there’s loud train and traffic noises sprinkled throughout and, uhhh, one track is a damn car crash, so you may want to try the album first when you’re not in the car.) Will have one more track from this album on the playlist later.
Who’s Ready For Tomorrow – RAT BOY, IBDY
The first of a few songs that are actually from shows/games I haven’t seen/played, but love the music anyway. This was in the trailer for the Cyberpunk 2077 anime Edgerunners, and here’s yet another chance I have to bring up studio Trigger in my blog. Just look at this the slum with all those Kill la Kill extras and one Gurran Lagann-looking asshole:
Even 30 seconds more of that oompah beat and I might find it tiresome but this one gets in and out quick.
Heat Above – Greta Van Fleet
The vocals on this song are so weird and cool! With this band’s name, I spent all year picturing some short blonde Dutch woman belting it, like a Grace Slick or Stevie Nicks. And then when I went to go look up more about her, instead I found Kurtis Conner in a balloon puff-sleeved white jumpsuit.
The music video is the most Queen ever, actually. I need to listen to more from these brothers, they’re good.
Daisies – Black Gryph0n, Baasik
I wondered for months why the algorithm was pitching so much music from the show Hazbin Hotel to me. Okay yeah I’m a musical theatre, animation, and black comedy fan, so I do check all the boxes, but I’d never engaged with the show otherwise. Then I found out that this song I’d saved out of Discover Weekly and put on my daily playlist isn’t just a fun jazz song, it’s actually a fan song about an HH character.
I finally did watch the first season of HH over winter break, and it did actually make me like this song a little less! (I don’t know that I like Alastor much! He’s like a Stephen Moffatt main character: lore dumps tell you he’s so cool and had crazy powers in the past, but what they show in the present is a guy just hovering, seeming to only use his deus ex machina powers when the writers run out of time on an episode and need to fix the problem quickly…) But if you ignore that this happy perky memento mori song is really being sung by an EVIL DEMON in HELL who’s just so COOL and SPECIAL you guys, I like the jazzy tune/harmony and the dirty beat that cuts in.
Yes, to Err is Human, So Don’t Be One – Will Wood
“dead from the neck up, but living just enough / to beg you pretty boy please: let me die / well I could drink your blood if you let me, baby / drain you o’ your love until you hate me”
Will Wood did the soundtrack for a horror-comedy storytelling podcast called “Camp Here & There”. I haven’t listened to it, so I hadn’t heard this spooky sexy klezmer-flavored monster song until he and his band did a smooth crooner version of it live at the concert we went to in June. (Then I proceeded to listen to it every day for the rest of the year, like the most annoying theatre kid ever…)
Like all Will Wood songs, I love the wordplay, I love how weird and playful the whole thing is, but yeah I’m just thinking about that live performance. (Also I realized this is the third song on here that’s a demon character song. wonder what that says.)
PS: I’m about 5 years overdue to do a “Stuff That Brings Me Joy” post about Will Wood, but it’s next on my list right now because I can’t stop listening to his storytelling show Slouching Towards Branson. Tom Lehrer comedy piano meets Hunter S Thompson travelogue in a Midwestern wasteland, somehow finding a very small seed of hope at the end of decay.
Vending Machine of Love – The Stupendium
Theme song for the video game OnlyCans, which I haven’t played, but this is very silly and the groove is so catchy. This also hit all the rules for getting on my comedy song playlist (basically: 1. musically solid, 2. too silly to be cool, 3. has a line that works as an allcaps IRC away message).
Okay, Silly Block of music is done, let’s get back to something you’ve probably already heard:
Sunday Best – Surfaces
I missed this one when it was big during 2020 (I had their smooth reggae “Heaven Falls / Fall On Me” from the same album on my 2019 mix, though), and again, here’s one that gets stuck in your head, this time thanks to that bassline.
I feel bad that I like it because it isn’t a good song, but maybe in 2025 it was just a message I wanted to hear in between my bummer podcasts. (Probably why everybody loved it in 2020 too.)
One of these two guys is Forrest Frank, who I guess had a good year with a Christian music hit I didn’t hear until I was setting track order (thanks for that, Todd in the Shadows‘s list of worst 2025 songs). To be clear, “Your Way’s Better” is the kind of thing I would have liked when I were still in the church yeah, not that it’s good but because I empathize with musicians trying to make worship more fun, because I once tried to be one of those people. The CCM landscape can be so derivative and bland that the palest blush looks like hot pink.
(Relatedly: I wonder what music I’m missing out on while I’m listening to a lo-fi soul album by two of the whitest college boys I’ve ever seen.)
Too Sweet – Hozier
Impossible to avoid this song this year! Hozier’s been on the playlist before because his music is such heightened drama, and I just love his voice.
Apparently there was something going around on Tumblr (I can’t find it) where fans inspired by the lyrics were ordering their “whisky neat” but got surprised when it was unpalatable. Hey, we all have to learn sometime.
Teardrop – Super Guitar Bros with Dan Avidan & Maiah Wynne
It gets harder and harder to say “Super Guitar Bros normally does gentle acoustic video game music covers” on their third album of pop music covers with Dan. It’s clear that they just do this now as well. (Dan had TWO cover albums this year, the other with his comedy rock band Ninja Sex Party, and that one is good too. “Walk the Dinosaur” gets some real funk put on it courtesy of backing band TWRP.)
If you recognize this song but can’t place it, the original was a 90s trip hop classic by Massive Attack and House M.D. used it for their opening titles. I didn’t think a mostly-acoustic version of this was possible, but they pulled it off. And for the video, it’s nice to see the animator Shoocharu trying something way more abstract (he normally does goofy comedy animation for NSP & Tom Cardy) and doing really well at capturing the hollow grief of the song.
When the Chips are Down – Hadestown Original Broadway Cast (Jewelle Blackman, Yvette Gonzales-Nacer, Kay Trinidad, Eva Noblezada)
“and the first shall be first and the last shall be last / cast your eyes to heaven, you’ll get a knife in the back”
I hadn’t seen or listened to the soundtrack for HADESTOWN before this year; when it was huge in 2019 I was too burned out to listen to a tragedy, and then a pandemic happened to live theatre…so it took awhile for me to get back to it. Normally I don’t put Broadway on my playlist because most good Broadway songs can’t be extracted and blended into a folk/jazz/funk playlist. But this one’s brief, it fits musically on the mix, and it absolutely rocks, so have two minutes of the Fates gleefully torturing poor Eurydice into making a bad choice.
It actually was a “what to do now” video essay about the escalation in American fascism* in January 2025 that reminded me the Fates’ voice is deceptive, where there’s life there’s still a hope to make something better, and in the face of oppression this vile, you can’t just give up your voice in exchange for quiet. So long as life isn’t over, I needed to make an action plan, and…I also needed to see this play already. So we booked tickets to NYC, our very first time, and saw it on Broadway. I wept the entire second act; oh my god I love this play.
Hard Luck – Tia Brazda
The way I’ve arranged this track order, I’m imagining if this as Eurydice’s response, and all of Act II would be unnecessary…
I haven’t listened to swing jazz since it was huge when we were in college, and I miss it. This makes me want to dress up in rockabilly vintage and go to a dance.
Am I The Same Girl? – Swing Out Sister
This is the ’92 cover of the Barbara Acklin song (that you might also recognize as “Soulful Strut” from when some jackass producer ripped off her vocal track, replaced it with a session pianist, and released the track as an instrumental). It’s on here because I forgot it existed, and also I played it to death this summer because it made a really good vocal warmup when I was driving to MATILDA rehearsal.
The Giver – Chappell Roan
I didn’t expect anyone to write a country jam banger about being a proud service top lesbian, but of course if anyone was going to deliver on that it was Chappell Roan. A round of applause for our essential workers!
(and for my colleague at the summer theatre who proudly belted this in the catholic school gym on a post-show karaoke night: hell yeah)
Apple TV – The Toxhards
“when I die, reincarnate me as a bear in a river / catching fish on Apple TV+ screensavers I’ll never see”
[photo: Christoph Strässler / CC BY-SA 2.0]
This outro (starting 3:26) goes PLACES and is one of the best things I put in my ears this year. inspired me to dig up and re-listen to all sorts of Smashing Pumpkins and RHCP but flavored with classic rock and it’s so good!
(If you’re driving, be aware there’s various unsettling traffic noises at the end of this track.)
The Tinman – World News
One more song on this mix that feels really out-of-time: this late 70s atmospheric rock jam actually from 2023. I don’t know much about World News except I saw on their website that the singer originally performed with his brother under the band name “Tinman”.
This is mellow and smooth with just a hint of an edge, and I’d like to hear more from them.
Impossible Things – Matt Nathanson
“we go round and round in the ring / painting feathers on our anchors pretending they’re wings”
oh big surprise, carrie likes the slow tempo last track on a matt nathanson album
It’s actually been a long time since I checked in on him; late this year Aloe was looking for a nostalgia hit of music I would have been listening to in 2009 and I remembered how good his live album “At the Point” is. Only to find: he’s got a new live album (“Please Pet But Do Not Ride The Horse“) and it’s also very good, full of both good music and the crowd banter that he’s very good at.
He thrives when he’s writing really earnest poetry. “you asked me for water / so I brought you the sea” really hits for me too.
That’s it for now! Let me know if you listen, let me know what you like, and maybe tell me what you’re listening to too? Whatever mess this new year brings, we still need art to keep our spirits going. May we persevere, protect one another, and make the best of it.
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