I compile a playlist of songs each year that held meaning for me. Here’s the 2025 batch.
P.S. Eliot – “Tennessee”: “We’ll go to sleep when we’re dead,” Katie Crutchfield, 20 at the time of recording, strains. “And I’ll quit when I’m 25.” Staring down 30, I wonder if I ever embodied the feeling that she captures here. There was a time when 25 felt like forever away. Knowing Crutchfield’s open discussion about addiction, the line takes on some extra resonance; best intentions quickly dissolve when it’s time to settle the bill. One among many very beautiful tracks I held close from Crutchfield (mostly from her records as Waxahatchee) this year.
Father John Misty – “Mahashmashana” Never thought I’d have Father John Misty on one of these lists, or that I would ever have such a profound emotional response to one of his songs again. But this just steamrolled me. It’s massive, in a All Things Must Pass-era George Harrison way, and the lyrics have the same reverent spirituality. The final verse is overwhelming. Not going to Kilby in Salt Lake City this year because of the current government was a drag for a few reasons — headlining sets by New Order and The Cure high on that list — but missing out on seeing this live stings.
The Magnetic Fields – “Smoke and Mirrors”: Stephen Merritt shape-shifts his band into Broadcast, a decade before the release of Tender Buttons. His vocals — distant, haunted, grieving — are striking. No song has ever sounded as good on headphones.
Cameron Winter – “The Rolling Stones”: Like everyone else, I’m enamoured by the new Geese record, and I could easily pluck “Taxes” or “Cobras” or “Au Pays du Cocaine” for this. Each of those are lyrical marvels, but even better in my mind is this, the opening cut from Winter’s solo record. Specifically, my favourite lyric in recent memory, so evocative and such a gut-punch at the climax of the song: “The pianos are landing on me and you.” The uncomfortable intersection of ambition and desire and the tangle of identity. What a statement.
Magdalena Bay – “Black-Eyed Susan Climb”: Magdalena Bay have solidified themselves as my favourite band (active? of all-time??), and the only artist currently making music where I am compelled to devour every new piece of art the moment they make it available. This fall, they put out what became the Nice Day singles collection, a set of four double A-sides that are each masterpieces to varying degrees. The top one for me — and an almost incomprehensively great artistic achievement — is “Black-Eyed Susan Climb,” a psychedelic country rollicker about surrender to impulse. The rising (climbing!) synth line at the climax is magical. Climb, climb, climb!
Songs, Ohia – “Just Be Simple”: Almost certainly the most raw thing on this mix. A perfect, deeply sad song. This is what all folk music should strive to be.
Destroyer – “The Same Thing as Nothing at All”: Dan Bejar put out his best record in years with Dan’s Boogie, and it barrels out of the gate with this track (which has a similar Phil Spector Wall of Sound thing going on to “Mahashmashana”!). He’s acerbic as ever, and mostly inscrutable, but he lets the wall fall near the end: “That’s life/A lot of near-hits, some misses/Dead man walking…And it’s the same thing as nothing at all.” Ain’t that the truth, Dan.
Loudon Wainwright III – “The Swimming Song”: Undeniable, beautiful, sad. The second verse is startling — if it catches you the right way, it can really knock you off balance. “This summer I swam in the ocean/And I swam in a swimming pool/Salt my wounds, chlorine my eyes/I’m a self-destructive fool/I’m a self-destructive fool.” :’-)
Wilco – “Say You Miss Me”: I finally saw Wilco this year, after missing a couple of chances previously. Pre-listening for that show and the concert itself solidified for me Being There as their great record, and one of the crowning songwriting achievements of the ’90s. It’s a double album with a one-track-mind focus on heartache that is wonderful both when it is oblique (“Misunderstood”) and when it is direct and plaintive, as on this track, shouted into the void. It’s a beautiful, difficult sign-off to the album’s first disc, with a subtext Tweedy makes explicit on the next track: there is no sunken treasure.
Genesis – “The Carpet Crawlers”: The branching-out of my taste this year was probably most apparent in my begrudging enjoyment of some prog rock classics (no deep cuts; I listened to substantially more Pink Floyd than ever before last year, and kept finding myself putting on In the Court of the Crimson King). Genesis has been a major allergy of mine, mainly because I despise Peter Gabriel’s solo output. So this double-concept album was a tough sell. And then there’s this remarkable, beautiful piece of work stuck in the middle of it! A sublime, magical track, the kind of song that seems impenetrable but that carries you can easily imagine could mean anything to anyone.
Ween – “It’s Gonna Be (Alright)”: Like coffee and vodka, Ween have proven an acquired taste. The ‘brown’ stuff, as it were, is often enjoyable to me, albeit in small doses. But I think it’s the flippantness of much of the rest of the work that makes a song as sincere as this hit as hard as it does. This goes on the list of ‘the best Beatles songs that The Beatles never wrote.’
Rilo Kiley – “The Good That Won’t Come Out”: The existential stands in for the personal; to whatever extent this is about global warming, it’s moreso about the fear of the self. Lewis fights against her impulse to lay herself bare, but the truth demands release: “Eventually my mouth will just turn to dust.” The double-tracking of her voice is such a gorgeous touch — setting all of herself on display, and trying to assume responsibility. A foundational song for me.
The Waterboys – “Sweet Thing”: A fusion of several things I would generally have considered myself not to enjoy: Van Morrison, Celtic folk rock, and ‘big music’ in the vein of The Joshua Tree-era U2. In spite of these biases, The Waterboys’ cover of Morrison’s “Sweet Thing” is transcendently beautiful, managing to pull the beauty out of a song that on Astral Weeks is shrouded in an impressionistic haze. The “Blackbird” interpolation is another inspired swing. I love this so much that it got me into Morrison, a task I would’ve thought before this year to be impossible.
TV on the Radio – “Lover’s Day”: This may be the most forgotten band of 2000s indie, when considering the chasm between what they were then (back-to-back 9.1/9.2 Pitchfork reviews, consistently upper echelon of year-end lists) and what they are now (essentially a non-entity). They’re definitely a tier below the Arcade Fires and LCD Soundsystems of the day re: output of truly undeniable work, but I’m shocked at how little of a legacy a song like “Lover’s Day” has. It’s brash, uncompromising, joyous. Tunde Adebimpe (and backing vocalist Eleanore Everdell) deliver the patently absurb lyrics with so much tenderness. The fall-away at the last chorus and the crescendo outro are breathtakingly beautiful. “Yes, here of course, there are miracles,” they sing. This song is one of them.
Bob Dylan – “Buckets of Rain”: My favourite song on my favourite Dylan record. Simple and plaintive. As good as it gets.