As has become regrettable tradition, it’s time for me to unveil the hotly awaited list of the 20 tracks that have most profoundly rung my bell in the year just gone.
See tracks in the comments below….
Bingo’s Best of 2025
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1. Diet Pepsi – Ben Platt
Quite probably the 2025 track that will linger longest in the memory for me when all is said and done, Platt’s estimable cover of the – ahem – Addison Rae classic stripped away the knowing, glossy production and come hither vocal of the original in favour of strings, sincerity and just a touch of camp. What was an anaesthetised lust anthem became a soaring hymn to longing, Platt riding the orchestral surges to lend ever greater emphasis to his “say you love, say you love, say you love me”s.
A singalong classic, in turns very silly and perhaps just a little moving, and featuring one of the funniest readings of the lyric “sexy” you will ever hear. Right up there with anything released this year.
2. For The Boys – Slotface
This only came out a few weeks back, but I’ve listened to it a hundred times, and expect to listen to it many hundreds more.
We live in an era in which female empowerment has been thoroughly essayed by the lyricists of the day. Less so manhood, or at least the kind of manhood worth reaching for. What a happy surprise then to hear Slotface take a crack at providing the necessary counterpart; one, quite literally, for the boys.
Of all the joys afforded by music this year, the sound of Haley Shea howling “This one’s for the boys who don’t know who they are just yet/who are trying to be better/I know you’ll get there don’t give up just yet” as the song opens up and the guitars rise to their pulverising crescendo was an absolute call to arms that sent a shiver down the spine. An anthem for all the guys trying to do a little better than those that came before. For those who bend and break and fight and cry.
It’s a song I’ve already shared with a fair few boys I know, because this is us. Where we are, where we’re going. And it’s really not something I’ve heard many songs about so far.
Slotface will always have a special (?) place in my heart for being for the first gig I had a ticket for that was cancelled due to COVID-19
3. Love Takes Miles – Cameron Winter
Cameron Winter made what is almost certainly the best debut album of the year (Heavy Metal) and everyone should go listen to it. Admittedly, it came out in December 2024, but it was after last year’s list, so I’m counting it on this one.
Sat at the heart of Heavy Metal, Love Takes Miles pitches its tent somewhere between the open road chug of Kurt Vile and the more bittersweet end of Lou Reed, Winter’s murmured vocals all big-hearted Indie vulnerability.
It also peddles a nice line in memorable lyrical bons mot: “Love will make you fit it all in the car”, “Love takes miles/love takes years”. It’s a song that evokes running hard and hoping your feet take you where you need to be. Which is really what so much of life boils down to.
4. Drift Away – Orville Peck
New Orville Peck is invariably a shoo-in for these lists. What can I say? I just love the voice. Few moments in music this year brought me more pleasure than his reading here of the line “They’ll tell you come back down/saying something bout/I gotta save my soul/before I’m old”.
He’s going to keep making these tunes, and I’m going to keep loving them. That’s just the way it is. Ace video too.
5. Aging Young Women – Anna von Hausswolff, Ethel Cain
Anna von Hausswolff’s Iconoclasts was my album of 2025, taking the organ sound of previous records and leavening it with woodwinds, strings and a Rock sensibility to produce something that felt immediately new and fresh.
The single most beautiful track I heard all year, Aging Young Women saw Von Hausswolff and Ethel Cain trade laments over the passing of time; the doors that close as life progresses, the paths not taken. The dream of a family as it slowly disappears.
It’s a song full of gorgeous moments: Cain’s entrance with the line “See me out, and set me free” makes my spine tingle every time, and the introduction of the organ two thirds of the way through, kicking everything up a gear as the two vocals meet and chase one another up to the rafters, was a true 2025 peak.
6. The Birds Don’t Sing – Clipse
2025 was, it must be said, not a banner year for new Hip Hop. After three plus decades of steady innovation, the genre hit something of a rut, and the new ideas (Country crossover?) did not prove particularly enticing.
Perhaps it was unsurprising then that many of the year’s best moments sounded like throwbacks. Clipse returned with their first album in 16 years, and one of their best, Malice and Pusha T picking up right where they left off, and with as much energy as ever.
The entire record got a lot of play this year, but album opener Birds Don’t Sing was my personal highlight; a classic Pharrell production, featuring vocals from John Legend and a great lyric about fathers and sons, and parental sacrifice.
Hip Hop has given us a lot of terrific songs about Mamas down the years – from Pac’s Dear Mama to Ghostface’s All That I Got Is You – but the fathers have tended to be absent at best. Birds Don’t Sing flipped that one right around – this one was for the Dads.
7. Family Tree – Shorty, Jme, Skepta, Frisco, Jammer
The inevitable Grime track. It’s a bop, but it’s mainly here because I laughed the first time I heard the delivery of the line “Wake up in the morning, fly out the bed/Rudeboy, I’m alive, fuck sleep/Full volume even when I brush teeth.”
Rudeboy, I’m alive, fuck sleep. Laminate that shit.
8. My co-worker clark kent’s secret black box – Open Mike Eagle
Another 2025 Hip Hop throwback, and a song that has it all. A lyric written from the perspective of Clark Kent’s put-upon co-workers at the Daily Planet, forced to toil away under the twin challenges of the threat of unemployment and the pretence that they don’t know who their colleague really is.
Hard to find fault in any track that features the immortal lyric “Whenever aliens assault the island/can’t nobody in the office find him”. Bonus marks also for giving shout outs to both karaoke and Pearl Jam’s Better Man. One of the most straight up fun tunes of the year.
9. Disease – Lady Gaga
Few musical moments of 2025 are as likely to live long in the memory as Gaga’s jaw dropping Coachella headline performance.
An absolute imperial tour-de-force that reminded the audience of the insane range of classics she now has in the armoury, and quite what a sensational performer she is on her day. It didn’t hurt that she also released some excellent new music to sit alongside it.
Disease is a certified, grade A Dark Pop banger, and a call back to the heyday of Bad Romance et al. That filthy synth sound, that beast of a chorus. It’s the Fame Monster on steroids, and I am absolutely, resolutely here for it. Long may she reign.
10. Plastic Box – Jade
Expectations were high for the Jade album heading into 2025, off the back of last year’s superb Angel of My Dreams. Expectations were raised further still after her stellar performance at Glastonbury.
As it turns out, THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY! nonetheless eclipsed all my hopes and dreams, delivering bangers aplenty, a number of which (Lip Service, IT Girl) jostled for contention here. In a year without a Carly Rae Jepsen album, Jade assumed the mantle, serving up smart, sophisticated Fun-Pop with a direct lineage back to early Robyn.
Plastic Box is the pick; it’s less wild and risky than some of the other tracks, but it’s a near perfect exemplar of the ever welcome “sad banger”. With its impassive vocal, heartfelt lyric and surging, hands-in-the-air production, it reminds me of Always On My Mind whenever I play it. And, particularly at Christmas time, there are few stronger recommendations for a tune than that.
11. Buschtaxi – DJ Koze
DJ Koze first made my end of year best of list way back in 2018, when his Balearic-tinged Pick Up helped to warm the colder months.
In 2025, he made his best album yet, packed full of experimental sounds, and crowned it off with Buschtaxi, a four to the floor stomper with plentiful monkey chattering.
Life is full of surprises, and I certainly did not expect House Music to twist and evolve in the way it has in recent years, yet here we are. Buschtaxi is a classic “dancefloor odyssey” tune, eight minutes of hypnotic, pulsing transcendentalism as your shaman guide leads you ever deeper into the Jungle. The warm embrace of its foliage was one of my happy places in 2025.
Yep it’s a great tune. The album will be in my top 20 too.
12. Lippy – Joy Orbison, Overmono
Every year there’s a song that ends up being played at all the parties. This year, it was Lippy by Joy Orbison and Overmono. Because we’re not that different. We’re not that different.
13. Standing At The Gates (Sofia Kourtesis Remix) – Rufus Du Sol
Born in Lima, based in Berlin, Sofia Kourtesis has been building up a head of steam for several years now, her pulsing, fluttering variant of House bringing with it a distinctly Latin American sensibility while mining classic European sounds.
Her most recent EP, Volver, is full of great tunes, and builds nicely on her previous record, the wonderful Madres.
But it was her remix work that I’ve enjoyed most of late, chiefly her fabulous reworking here of Rufus Du Sol’s Standing At The Gates, which sounds like Depeche Mode with the sensuality turned up to eleven, and which crash landed in my playlists early in the year and never left.
14. Bullseye – Lucy Dacus, Hozier
Lucy Dacus was one of the stand out performers of 2025, releasing another great record and playing my favourite live show of the year. As essayed elsewhere, her performance of Thumbs was probably about as palpably magical as music got for me this time round.
Forever Is A Feeling has plenty of tracks that I listened to throughout the year – the tender balladry of Big Deal, the light footed swoon of Come Out – but ultimately it was Bullseye, Dacus’ collaboration with Hozier, that I found myself returning to again and again.
A thoroughly charming duet of the old fashioned variety, the song is full of Dacusisms (“In many European cities there’s a bridge/where lovers put locks on the rails/and throw their keys into the river beneath/we were two such suckers” – could hardly be anyone else), but it’s also blessed by a very fetching chorus and a measured co-vocal from Hozier.
The point at which the two singers join together to see us out, trading harmonies back and forth, is so pretty that you wish they’d just carry on forever.
She is such a talent, I can’t wait to hear what she does next.
15. Who Wants – Jade Bird
A gorgeous, understated slice of Americana, with a chorus to die for, from the year’s other Jade. The album that sired it is pretty great too.
16. Grandmother – Big Thief, Laraaji
Big Thief delivered another very strong album in 2025, but I really enjoy the way the collaboration with Laraaji on Grandmother takes their sound somewhere slightly different.
There are shades of Mazzy Star in here in the song’s trend to etherealism, but also a truly beautiful lyric that captures a truth of time passing and watching your parents grow old. Trying to reconcile the challenges of the past with the limitations of the future.
“Grandmother
Sleep tight, sleep loose
It’s alright, everything that happened, happened
So what’s the use of holding
It’s unfolding, we’re all insane
We are made of love
We are also made of pain”
“We are made of love/we are also made of pain”. I’m still thinking about that line months later.
17. Magnolias – Rosalia
Rosalia returned in magnificent form with a superb album. It seems I’m in the minority on here in having very much enjoyed Motomami, but Lux’s pivot back towards Rosalia’s original sound remained welcome and really allowed her to showcase the full strength of her vocals.
Magnolias is not the best song on Lux, but it’s become my favourite. Warm and pulsing, with a lovely choral backing, it’s about as simple as Rosalia gets, but none the worse for it.
If your Spanish is rusty, it’s worth looking up the translated lyrics, because they’re as gloriously Latin as they come, with just a tinge of Federico Garcia Lorca in the verses. How can you not love a song that begins:
“They say that if you were to see
Death pass by your side
In that long Mercedes
It brings you good luck
All of you have come
Even my enemies
Today, they cry”
Or that proceeds with an absolute cavalcade of sensuous imagery: coffins bedecked with tears and smoke, gasoline and red wine, cigars and chocolate. Seemingly from beyond the grave, Rosalia asks us to throw her magnolias, to send her to the other side in joy and celebration. It’s a song that finds all the life in death and brings it to the surface.
Troubled by a feeling that Motomami was a miss-step, I approached Lux somewhat hesitantly, but now I’m properly with you on this. And this song is spine-chillingly great.
Fabulous, isn’t it?
I’d guess that the hope is she can take the new fans she won with Motomami and then bring them back with her to this sound. Frankly, the more people that hear her the better; she is a truly glorious talent.
18. Jaouad – Dressed Like Boys
I’m not sure where I first heard Dressed Like Boys, but the Belgian’s eponymous debut record released towards the end of the Summer and has been playing steadily in my world ever since.
I was initially drawn in by the album’s closer, a song about Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, but I stuck around for all the lovely piano ballads and vulnerability. Nando is a tender and jubilant with shades of Elton John. Stonewall Riots Forever, the album’s obvious centrepiece, is like a musical theatre tour through queer history.
But it’s Jaouad that has really stuck with me, because it’s the saddest song I’ve heard in a very long time. That whispered vocal, over slightly tragic sounding piano, with all the shades of Sufjan Stevens and the 2025 lyric that I suspect will stay with me longer than all the others: “Do you want to be/understood/without having to be/understandable”. I mean, yes – if it’s on the menu.
19. Alicia – Lorien Testard, Alice Duport-Percier
The signature track from by far the best video game I played last year; Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and a great story to boot.
Clair Obscur is the first game from Sandfall Interactive, a tiny French studio hardly anyone had ever heard of until this year. Half a decade ago, as the game was in early development, its director, Guillaume Broche, realised that a soundtrack was needed and decided to look for a musician on a music messageboard. He registered on the very same day that Lorien Testard, a young composer, made his first posts.
Testard and Broche began to chat. That chat lead to Testard composing approximately 8 hours of music for Clair Obscur, the soundtrack of which has now been streamed 1.5 million times and is widely regarded as amongst the greatest games soundtracks ever made. Lorien Testard had never previously worked on a video game. The sheer kismet of it all is mesmerising.
Alicia is Clair Obscur’s calling card; a gorgeous three minutes of vocals that plunge and soar in turn, evoking all the hope and deep melancholy of the game itself. Alice Duport-Percier sings so beautifully here, so tenderly, as to be unforgettable. The track has made her a star – reportedly the fourth most streamed French artist of 2025. The game is expected to sweep the board in the end of year awards season. All off the back of a chance messageboard meeting.
I am in the early stages of Clair Obscur and enjoying it very much
20. Revelator – Deafheaven
Fuck yes! Deafheaven back to, and perhaps even surpassing, their brilliant best. Fantastic album, and in Revelator one of the greatest riffs they have yet bestowed upon us. No wonder they’re the Afterword’s favourite contemporary band.
And there we have it. The twenty best new things I heard in 2025, a year where an awful lot of fine new music seemed to arrive from all angles.
I’d like to give additional shouts here to It’s A Mirror by Perfume Genius, Emergence by Sleep Token, Dear Miss by Zach Bryan, Dancing In The Club by MJ Lenderman, Never Enough by Turnstile, Just as Long as We’re Together by Jalen Ngonda, Living by Skullcrusher, The Man I’m Supposed to Be by Bill Callahan, Triple Threat by Hoodie One, Implosion by Labrinth, Train Dreams by Nick Cave and about a billion others that narrowly missed the cut.
We live in truly amazing times, where you can listen to all the new music you want at pretty low cost, and share it instantly with your nearest and dearest. And there are amazing tracks being released constantly. Can’t wait to see what 2026 brings.
Until then, wishing everyone a very happy holidays (once they eventually arrive).
Cheers
BL
X
Marvellous! As always. I don’t suppose you have a Tidal playlist? 😄
Unfortunately not! Best I can do is Spotify…
Thank you.
@bingo-little
Thank you for sharing your list. All bar about three of the artists are new to me. I particularly liked Orville Peck, Lorien Testard/Alice Duport-Percier and Jaouad but I will keep coming back to listen to the others.
Cheers, KFD – glad you found something to like in there ❤️
So sorry – just realised I’ve got the name wrong above, how rude. Should have said cheers Pajp; no idea why I have KFD on the brain! 🙂
No worries!
I’ll check some of these out. I listened to exactly zero tracks released in 2025 this year. My kids were delighted to tell me that my Spotify estimated age is north of 70 (I’m 54).
Nothing wrong with Spotify senior citizenship. It seems to want to make everyone either very old or very young.
I only know three of those tracks but they are all fabulous and they or possibly alternatives from the relevant album would definitely be on my list were I to make one (Dacus, Rosalia and Big Thief). You are clearly a man of taste and discernment and I look forward to listening to the playlist
And you are very kind. Yes, three wonderful records – I’ve now seen Lucy Dacus and Rosalia play live, so will work on Big Thief next year.
Was Rosalia as amazing as I imagine she might be? Looks like one concert in London is her only UK date next year, at least at the moment – let’s hope that changes.
Honestly, one of the most remarkable live performers I’ve seen.
It was on the Motomami tour, so you got this full on Pop/Reggaeton spectacle, with all the backing dancers and whatnot, that’s super slick and stylised. But then it’s interwoven with the much more intimate Flamenco-influenced stuff from her earlier albums, which is so incredibly raw and intimate. She has a really magnetic stage presence and can essentially do it all.
It’s not a mix I’ve ever really seen pulled off before, and I found it quite affecting. That said, I do like Motomami, which helped.
I love that enormous single by Jade so will investigate the LP to see if it really does stand up to that track.
Disease by Gaga is just such a banger, so ditto.
And I’m just gonna have to try out Deafheven now, aren’t I.