Good morning everyone, happy new year. I hope you had a good New Year’s eve. Mine was lovely. Lots of kids and confetti at 8ish, and a more subdued adult New Years at midnight. A+ no complaints.

I am a stickler for doing all my year-end wrap-up posts in the New Year, because one day, mark my words, the best album of the year will be a surprise drop on 12/31.

So today begins a week or so of 2025/2026 posts. And we start with MUSIC.

2025 Best (Recorded) Music

All year, I listen to new music when I am working. I listened to, I think, 570ish new to me albums. It might be 670ish. I lost count just now somewhere in August and don’t want to count again. Maybe half of these came out in late ‘24 or 2025. I do, of course, listen to records I already own and love. All the time. They do not get notated.

I meticulously catalog it (my media consumption list for the year is forthcoming), and star tracks I like as I go.

I give every single album I listen to two listens. I try to do these two listens in different mental states, paying different levels of attention, though I confess with some albums, I do not succeed.

If it is a vinyl album, I listen to it once (or more) on vinyl, no starring. And after that, I will do the two-listens thing.

(And I am so, so embarrassed to say this, but I purchased about 200 of the things this year, a year, where my new years’ resolution was to stop buying vinyl. All I can say in my defense is I think that was fewer than 2024).

At the end of the year, I take all of the starred tracks and add them to my master playlist of 7,000 songs that I listen to in the car and on headphones n such. That is my M.O.: New music at my desk, older music (the year before and earlier) everywhere else.

My Methodology:

Making a best-of list for the year, then, is somewhat complex. I do not super remember music from the beginning of the year, and I dislike lists that ignore albums from earlier in the year. Last year, I developed a methodology that endeavors to address this by doing something quantitative. It’s not perfect: what would absolutely be my #1 album had I done this qualitatively placed in the mid-20’s. But I found it useful enough that I am going to repeat it this year.

Hence: I went through my “2025 starred” Playlist [all the playlist links are, for now, in Spotify. But I am in the very complex process of getting off of Spotify. That is a topic for next week. I hope to get you new links in other streamers next week]. I tallied how many songs I starred from a particular album, and divided that by how many songs are on the album, for a percentage starred metric.

I am ranking the records on a percentage starred metric. This offsets albums with fewer tracks overall getting penalized. I do not think my starring habits have changed a lot through the year, and almost every album only gets two listens, so it is kind of a fair shake. I star anything that strikes my fancy in any way. Some days I am more forgiving, some days I star nothing, but, then, every album gets two listens. On two different days. So it feels about as fair as I can get.

Some notes:

• I am doing albums only. No singles, no EPs. I do this with the assumption that bands are better at picking “all killer no filler” for singles and EPs.

• It is really hard sometimes to tell if something is an album or an EP. My number # 1 record for the year is, at 31 minutes, arguably an EP. I use judgement here. I will, for example, point out that their label calls it an album.

• I didn’t include anything under 50% liked.

• I am including albums that came out in late 2024: Mid-October or later.

The Top Twenty-Five:

(Except it’s not 25, because there is a tie at the bottom. Lotta ties with this methodology.)

Some thoughts:

• Boy I sure listen to a lot of metal, shoegaze and country.

• If you had asked me, I would have thought The Spiritual Sound by Agriculture was my favorite album of the year, I love it so much. But I saw them live, and I suspect that is tainting it. Still, can’t wait for the year to end, and I can listen to it again. Agriculture member Dan Meyer’s solo album Kneeling did rank, though.

• A circumstance of this who complicated process is that I legit did not remember a few of these records at all. I went back and listened to them. They are awesome!

• My god this took so much time to tabulate: I have been working on this for about five hours.

• Even with listening to 500+ new albums every year for a decade now, I am constantly learning about new bands that I had never heard of before that people are shocked to hear I did not know about. Some 2025 discoveries that are relatively popular with friends: Wussy, Scrawl, Alessandro Cortini, Patrick Watson, Christian Loffler, Sleep Token (controversial, I know), Michael Hurley, Jackson Brown.

• People ask me how I find so many albums. I want it explicitly stated: I almost never use algorithms for this. I use friends, mostly: the best-of lists from a ton of friends have come out this year, and my current to-investigate list, which was zero hours at the end of the year, is now already about thirty hours.

  • Specifically I would like to thank Bill, Laura, Nick, the GMHHAY Slack, Nicky, and everyone who texted me an album link this year. I listened to it.

  • I also check Pitchfork, etc., about once a month and throw anything into the list that sounds mildly interesting or I am embarrassed I’ve not heard of.

  • I keep a little note app on my phone to send me bands that people mention at bars n such. My friend Adam recommended a band called Skull Practitioners a couple days ago, and it is currently at the bottom of the 2026 To investigate list.

• If there is one old slab of vinyl I listened to more than any other this year, it was Xymox’s Twist of Shadows. What a great purchase.

Off-the Cuff Qualitative Top Ten:

If I had to make a qualitative top ten for the year, it would be something like this:

1. Agriculture: The Spiritual Sound

2. Dan Meyer: Kneeling

3. Slow Teeth: I

4. Pulp: More

5. For Those I Love: Carving the Stone

6. Swans: Birthing

7. Springsteen: Tracks II

8. Saint Etienne: International

9. Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory

10. Ragana and Drowse: Ash Souvenir

    

I cannot say it is an awesome listen, probably best on shuffle, but here are the starred tracks from the top albums of 2025:

And if you are a real glutton for punishment and want all (nearly) 2,000 starred songs of 2026, 145 hours worth, they are here:

Happy New Year everyone. Here’s to more great music in 2026, one of our last refuges from fascism.