2025: My Favourites
- kevpalowe8
- Mar 22
- 12 min read
Originally posted Dec 2025
INTRO
Strange – and music can be strange. This marks the end of my 2nd year doing this project. That’s kinda crazy. Its feels overblown to say ‘I’m a changed man’..... but in this particular area of my life, I think I am. Simon Ore knows me best (especially in this subject) so he would be a better person to assess me than myself. So, what is ‘strange’? Because gut feeling is I did not enjoy the 2025 music as much as 2024. However, the data suggests otherwise. I struggled to whittle my shortlist down to a ‘top 3’ this year. So I extended it to ‘top 5’............ and still struggled. Also, my average mark for albums this year was undoubtedly higher (even though one album this year got my lowest mark yet). Without working out the actual average I know that more albums got a 7 and 8 albums got a 8 compared to 5 last year. I think if I try to analyse why my feelings don’t match the data, I will be waffling on for ages. But, my guess is it is probably because this year WAS somewhat better, but last year, absolutely everything was a new world to me, mysterious and fascinating. In 2025, I had at least a limited backdrop of knowledge and context in my head.
So, what happened in 2025 UK pop music world? Many of the most successful singles of the year were released prior to 2025. The biggest being the brilliant “Messy” by Lola Young (covered by Si & I).
Some of the biggest stuff came from acts that were not particularly unique to 2025..... Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Sabrina Carpenter etc. There was a supposed ‘K-Pop invasion’ although most of it I would nkt describe as authentic K-Pop – more like ‘the western-pop has a try and K-Pop’. The biggest single of the year was Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” (an ACTUAL 2025 single). I have described the track as ‘a little chiché, but great nonetheless’. It stands at 46 weeks on the chart, most of them in the top 20, 26 of them in the top 10, and 13 of them at #1 including a consecutive run of 12 weeks.
Oasis’s reunion meant they had a strong year on the chart mostly with music from their 1st two albums from 1994/5. As usual, the list of most successful albums is largely made up of classic albums and older artists’ “best of” collections. But, here’s something weird...... Taylor Swift released an album this year and is wasn’t the #1 album of the year!
.......... haha! Gotcha. Of course it was!
You can see how my listening panned out in the attached photos. Looking at some of the stats – you cant accuse me of not putting the time in!
MY FAVORITE ALBUMS:
Here’s the list of artists that released new albums this year that I gave 7 or above. Lambrini Girls, Ethal Cain (x2), Teddy Swims, The Wombats, Saya Gray, The Doves, Jennie, The Lottery Winners, Børns, The Darkness, Black Country New Road, Elton John & Brandie Carlile, Bon Iver, Avataruim, Oklou, Sleep Token, The Sparks, Self-Esteem, Pete Doherty, Pulp, Miley Cyrus, Little Simz, Benson Boone, Lorde, Yungblud, Haim, Wet Leg, Gwenno, YHWH Nailgun, Ed Sheeran, Lola Young, Olivia Dean, The Last Dinner Party, Turnstile, Tame Impaler, Dave, Lily Allen, Florence & the Machine, Tyler the Creator, Reneé Rapp, As December Falls, Jane Remover, Wolf Alice, Model/Actriz, Loufey, Emma-Jean Thackray, Rosalìn, and Martin Carthy.
These are my top 3 and what I wrote about them
3. Little Simz “Lotus”
So this falls within that area I’m a little shaky on i.e , rap/hiphop/etc. But!! This is brilliant. Its not really hip-hip. Many of the tracks are more rock, but good rock, where the vocalist just happens to be rapping. And, not in the way we’ve heard rock acts do it before which is more just ‘shouting in rhythm’ than rapping. Its not just rock either. There’s a little punk, a little funk, a little jazz, and I think there was a bit of Bosa Nova thrown in there. The rapping style changes too. There’s gentle laid back rapping, conventional rapping, an occasional Eminem style of uneven phrased rapping, and vernacular style. Almost all the tracks have their own interesting musical quirks too The mark I’m going to give this may be a tiny bit hyped by the fact that I’ve just really really enjoyed a rap album from start to finish....... but I’m going with it.
2. Ethal Cain “Perverts”
Wow. Now this is something. I’d defy anyone to say this wasn’t at all interesting, even if they hated it. Its a challenging listen with 9 tracks at a running time of 90 mins. I would describe many of the numbers as ‘sound-pieces’ and even the few that are more song-like are not particularly conventional. Opening with what sounds like an old recording of “Nearer My God To Thee” on an album (and 1st track) entitled “Perverts” I knew we were going somewhere dark. I wasn’t prepared for quite how dark. This is followed by over ten minutes of a low distant rumbling sound with snippets of unintelligible voices and other very disturbing sounds coming through in small snippets. After almost ten mins of this, although the whole sound is quite disturbing I was feeling quite secure that the snippets of sound were short – so I felt genuinely anxious when one final snippet continued on and on. It final stopped abruptly and a voice exclaimed ‘it’s happening to everyone’. The second track “Punish” begins and there’s a indistinguishable noise that repeats (almost like a riff) and sounds something like someone rocking back and forth on a creaky piece of furniture. I wondered if this was all just montages of sound but a piano/vocal track ensues. Her voice is quite enchanting – I was immediately reminded of Enya when she does solo voice (rather than her multi-layered vocal tracks) with piano/synth accompaniment. Despite the simple beauty in this tracks there is still a backdrop of disturbing noise. I don’t wish to do a track by track description but track 3 “Housofpsychoticwomn” reverts to the ‘soundpiece’ idea with something that sounds like a baby’s heartbeat on a sonogram. There are indecipherable voices again but as the track progresses a voice repeating ‘I love you’ becomes clearer. Given the disturbing backdrop of sounds this ‘I love you’ seems unlikely be anything good and it’s interesting that the lyric of the next track, “Vacillator”, is ‘if you love me keep it to yourself’. The track “Pulldrone” fascinated me because it featured some very extensive and unpleasant noises that sounded like drills. But I realised as I was listening that there was actually tonal organisation. These awful sounds were actually forming a repeated succession of chords.
I love this and will struggle to sleep tonight.
1. Rosalía “Lux”
Utterly superb. Sadly, because I foolishly never tried with languages at school and beyond, I can’t comment on the lyrics here and I’m sure understanding them would heighten the listening experience further. This wonderfully navigates itself all over the place. Its mostly a big orchestral sound, but with large use of electronics – so at times its like listening to a key moment in a stage show and at others we are slipping into some sort of underground dance movement. At times the melodies are lengthy and shapely, at other they are monotone. At times the composition is developmental, at others static. At times the rhythms are complex, at others repetitive. At times its like we are listening to a classic Disney soundtrack. At others we have gone experimental and avant-garde. Genre? I would be silly to label it too confidently. Try something broad like ‘art-pop’. I know some would struggle to listen to this – the nature of its construction means we never settle onto one idea for any significant length of time before we zoom off somewhere else. My favourite tracks are “Pocelana” & “La Vugular”. I may be speaking too soon but this could end up being my album of the year.
MY FAVORITE SINGLES:
Here’s my list of contenders for my top 10.
Doechii “Denial Is A River”
JADE “IT Girl”
Ratbag “Juliet & Juliet”
Lorde “What Was That”
Fred Again, Skepta, & Plaqueboymax “Victory Lap”
Olivia Dean “Nice To Each Other”
Teddy Swims “God Went Crazy”
Raye “Where Is My Husband?”
Richard Ashcroft “Lover”
Katseye “Gnarly”
Courting “Lust For Life”
My top 5 and what I said
5. Sienna Spiro “Die On This Hill”
Although I cant claim this is a particularly ‘original’ track – its a brilliant song and a powerful performance. The more I listen to it, the more I like it. It may end up in my top singles of the year.
4. Doechii “Anxiety”
I’m really liking Doechii at this point. This is a contender for my favourite track of the year thus far. There’s a bit of problem with it. The music is essentially lifted from Gotye’s “Someone That I Used To Know” – so some of the reason I like it is because of that track. The “Baa Baa Black Sheep” tune placed over an interesting harmonic progression that displaces its root and puts it in a minor context rather than a major one. So the root note (I) becomes the flattened 7th note (bVII) – and the rest of the tune actually falls neatly within the harmonic progression. I always enjoyed that in the Gotye track and I like it here. But, there’s a lot that’s original to Doechii’s track that I like too. I’m really liking her style generally, I like both the rapping and singing, I like the way the vocals are arranged, I like the vocal percussion, and I like the way there’s so much going on in the chorus that it actually depicts a feeling of anxiety.
3 Olivia Dean “So Easy (To Fall In Love)”
This is brilliant. I’d say its the best of the singles from the album. Although, I’m not sure if it was officially a single or if it just streamed well – being the lead track on the very popular album. Either way, it has the best melody, lyric, and arrangement (with its intricate backing vocals, piano and trumpet). Its a breezy jazz-pop track, with a bossa nova back drop. The lyric is more interesting than it first appears. Its definitely light hearted but that joyful affirmation of ‘its so easy to fall in love’ also acts as a warning that........ well...... ‘its so easy to fall in love’. I say its the lyric that’s interesting but I actually pick this up from the music accompaniment. The music at this point is the most harmonically ambiguous of the whole track. It took me a very long time to work this track out sat at the piano. If you strip away all the rich jazz embellishments, you are left with a fairly simple chord progression at the track’s core. But, of course, the jazz element is NOT stripped away! This made working everything out quite difficult. In jazz, you may have a very simple chord, but once a guitars adds a major 7th to ‘jazz it up’, then the bass adds a different note to it, then the vocals add a further different note, then a trumpet goes in a different direction........ analytically you’ve got your work cut out. Because even after you’ve figured all the notes, have you identified the ‘root’ note? Even then, f you have 5 notes, there are not just 5 possible chords depending which note is the root, because for each one of those 5 there are 4 other possibilities called ‘inversions’ of that chord. So even those all the notes are identical and in the same order, you have 25 chords you could make an argument for (by my maths). Anyway.......... I went off on a tangent there......... the line ‘its so easy’ is sung over the most ambiguous bit. There is an F in the bass. Building from there, it seems logical to suggest we have an F-minor-flattened-7th with 9th and flattened-11th. (F, Ab, C, Eb, G, Bb). But there are some problems. Firstly, the 9th and 11th could also be a 2nd and 4th because they are the same notes but in a different octave. I’d argue the former rather than the latter because of the way the chord is spread. But after all that explanation, I wouldn’t argue this anyway. It doesn’t hit my ear that way. Because your ear is usually naturally drawn to the melody, that makes the notes of the melodic line the most important. In this case, the notes a descending arpeggio of C-minor-flattened 7th (Bb, G, Eb, C – descending). An F-minor would require an A-flat and I’m not convinced we can hear one. But, even if we can, it could be a flattened-6th in C-minor. There is, however, an F at the bottom (which is why I outlined the ‘F-minor with all its added things’ option). But the F could be an added 4th to the C-minor-7th chord. And THAT is what I think we have. A C-minor-flattened-7th-with-added 4th (or 11th) in its 2nd inversion.............. except I DON’T really think that. I actually think its a C-minor-flattened-7th and the bass is just doing its own thing (playing something ‘wrong’ if you will) to deliberately throw us off. So......... lol....... the point of all this its that its very ‘ironic’ (I’m not sure that’s the right word but I’ll go with it) that the most ‘problematic’ chord is featured at the point the lyric states ‘its so easy’. All of this occurs after a tense diminished 7th chord (very unusual in pop) on the word ‘agree’. The diminished 7th chord contains the interval (the space between 2 notes) of a diminished 5th (in fact several of them but lets not go down another bunny hole) known in classical music as ‘the devil’s interval’. The arrangement also becomes notably sparse at this point. All these elements lead me to believe its all not as light-hearted as it seems. Its a warning. Yes, it IS so easy, and lovely, and a great feeling......... but is that necessarily a good thing? An absolutely superb track!!!!
2. Lola Young “d£aler”
Subtle and brilliant. I was a little unconvinced to begin because the structure and chord progression was remarkably similar to her #1 hit “Messy”. There’s just an additional chord thrown in between the 2 repeated chords of 1 & 2. (1 4 2 repeating instead of 1 2 repeating). However, I like the simple but effective melody of the chorus and although I’ve not experienced an identical situation to that described I do relate to the overall sentiment of much of the lyric. Its very ‘classic’ in its make-up but with a raw and modern edge to the lyric. Its very much up there with my favourite tracks of the year. Top 3? We’ll see.
AND MY SINGLE OF THE YEAR
1. Eartheater & Shygirl “Shark Brain” / “Dolphin”
This had me on the 1st listen. The whole set up seems to depict something quite dark and threatening. This happens right from the intro as the words “Shark Brain” swirl around the mix (and therefore your head – if you have the earbuds in) before one final announcement that’s delivered like a ‘quiet scream’. Its not loud, but it pierces your senses. The 1st section (verse (?)) is tonally ambiguous. The melody is mostly compromised of a top G dramatically falling to a B & A (as was heard in the ‘quiet scream’ I mentioned). This is a little ambiguous in isolation but especially when it is placed against the backing music which is largely made up of just two elements. One is a keyboard figure of A leaping up to C then falling in steps to B and A. You could argue a case for A-minor. But your case wouldn’t really be helped by such an emphasis on the top G, nor the 2nd element of the music. That is a single bass note of D. What you have there is a scale that has a number of clashes of tones close to each other followed by huge leaps over absent tones. I am, of course, using the standard western tonal scale as a reference point only. In any case, a 2nd section (chorus(?)) contrasts this with more fuller chords and melodic composition. Although, its still disturbing with a creepy music-box-like keyboard figure in the background that sounds like something out of a black and white horror film.
The lyrics deepen the sense of horror. The child-like ‘kitty-kitty-purr-purr’ is foreboding. ‘The smell of blood a bleeding heart curling in the nostrils’ offers no comfort. The idea that we might be depicting sharks in dangerous waters is bad enough but, as is shown on the artwork (see the pic attached to this post, Eartheater has remarked how similar an x-rayed hammerhead sharks’ head looks to the human female reproductive system. So, ‘I welcome you into my open jaws’ and the clitoris being seemingly referred to as a ‘detonator’ doesn’t make you feel eased.
As I said before, the track totally changes. The tempo, music, and even the singer are all replaced. Its based around one pulsating chord which gives it a sharper sense of focus. The melody and music lose that sense of ambiguity for ideas we can analyse much more easily in musical terminology. The lyrics seem to change to depict a sense of survival and empowerment. Although, a sense of something disturbing is not lost by any means. ‘Tempted into your teeth the jaw of a fighter’. ‘Strong swimmer, shore collider’.
What exactly is being depicted? I don’t know. Something about female sexual empowerment using a shark as a metaphor? Yea, OK. Maybe on a surface level. But, I think its deeper and much more terrifying than that! And it’s probably best just to leave it at that rather than actually literally figure it out.
END OF GWIM PROJECT 2025.
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