What makes a song great? Is it craftsmanship or passion? Defying expectations or masterfully executing a time-tested formula? The intense personal connection we forge with music tailored directly to us, or the way some tunes become so ubiquitous that they loom large over culture as part of some grand communal language? The answer, obviously, is yes.
In the following list, Stereogum's staff and contributors attempt to make sense of all those competing impulses to determine the best and brightest tracks of 2025. Boiling a whole year down to 50 songs is a fool's errand, but these particular fools have stumbled into a brilliant sonic scrapbook for a year that was not lacking for signature anthems. Dig into our list below, then stick around to find them helpfully culled into playlist form. —Chris DeVille
"Man Of The Year" isn't your typical dance-pop catharsis. Instead, it's a slow build with something seething under the surface. It opens with a raw, isolated bass and Lorde's searching lyrics — she's become someone both unrecognizable and more familiar to herself. There's ego-death and hunger for routine. She brushes her teeth and masturbates. Time passes. "Days go by in a haze, stay up and sleep late," she sings. As Lorde slowly uncovers her layers, she rewards our patience with a striking crescendo of industrial drums and revelatory vocal trills. Metamorphosis complete. —Margaret Farrell
At a certain point in the '90s, to be fully convincing, yearning R&B songs had to be delivered in the pouring rain, the singer’s shirt unbuttoned, hands stretching into the distance for that unattainable love. On "Tossed Away," Marcus Brown takes that screaming-crying-throwing-up template and perfects it, crooning about lost love over a bed of chintzy synth tones, chiming guitars, and rubbery drums. Is he destined to destroy every relationship? Will he ever get out of his own way? The answers aren’t clear, and the quiet storm rages on. —Dash Lewis
LUCY (Cooper B. Handy) and Boy Harsher’s Augustus Muller have orbited each other since 2022's The Runner soundtrack, but as Safe Mind, the two have more room to bring out each other’s strengths. On "Standing On Air," they do exactly that. Muller's buoyant, windswept production has the right sonic ambivalence to support Handy’s melancholy-tinged motivational lyrics. They sound like hustlers in a movie about burnouts scheming, but visible beneath their goofy exterior is an undeniable sincerity, swagger, and emotional complexity that's occluded by a thumping bass line. —Devon Chodzin
The Chicago country duo Tobacco City quietly released one of the most gorgeous songs of the year in "Autumn." It's a song about growing up in a shitty town that treats its wafting water treatment odors and greasy diner food with pure, romantic nostalgia; "I never knew about leavin', 'cause I never knew about nothin'," the duo sing, yearning for that innocence. The song's soft acoustic strums, lazy slide guitar, and transcendent chorus harmonies are a perfect summer breeze. —Spencer Hughes
"Nightmares didn't come during dreams," Bruiser Wolf recollects up top. Over wobbling piano chords and a woozy backbeat, "BLK XMAS" finds him vividly detailing the struggle to get by in poor Black neighborhoods, his cartoonish diction this time deployed in service of harrowing real-life scenes. Then billy woods swings in to detail the aftermath of the inevitable crash, when a life's worth of possessions are spread out on the sidewalk to be picked through by passersby. Like all of GOLLIWOG, it's worth thinking long and hard about; just don't add it to your holiday playlists. —Chris DeVille
There's about as much going on in this standalone single as feeble little horse load into an entire record: glitchy jangle riffs, overlapping twee-folk refrains… and the heaviest breakdown this year outside of metal, with pummeling distortion, blast beats, and screams to rival anything from Portrayal Of Guilt. It’s a bewildering sequence of sounds, but fully immersed in the feeling of the ground shifting beneath you, and the tenuous attempts to regain stable footing: “I got my anger off my chest but/ We'll never be the same again,” Lydia Slocum repeats in the track’s final moments. In a year where infringements on the real grow more dubious by the day, confusion by barrage is maybe the only honest way to capture the dissonance of the moment. —Natalie Marlin
Three days into 2025, an infamous NBA washout got ahold of a beat that sounds like something Mouse On Tha Track made for Lil Boosie in 2007, sliding into the kind of pocket that very few full-time rappers find. When actual Louisiana rap all-star Lil Wayne jumped on a remix, the track lost its magic. It always needed to be just LiAngelo Ball. How? Why? Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. —Tom Breihan
The first sound you hear on "Weight Of The Wheel" is drummer Ned Folkerth
counting the band off. That's a small detail, but it's indicative of the lived-in quality of this gorgeous song about the cycles we can't seem to break. Across four unhurried minutes of pedal steel, acoustic guitar, and clarion, Sandy Denny-like vocals, Kassi Valazza recounts life in an endless in-between with a poet’s precision and a barstool companion’s candidness. —Brad Sanders
Emerging at the dawn of the sad boy era, Corbin's music has always been dismal. On Crisis Kid, the reclusive artist — formerly known as Spooky Black — ponders sobriety, paranoia, and belief atop coldwave instrumentals. "Come Down" is beleaguered. "I admit that it's tiring, I'm running out of hope/ And my noose is tightening, the devil holds the rope," he deadpans over a frosty guitar riff. It is a gut-wrenching glimpse at the SoundCloud oddball in adulthood. —Ted Davis
"Angel" begins with a harrowing vision of some celestial being, suddenly helpless, gone up in flames — so much for eternity, huh? But instead of worrying about his own fate in the absence of a once-promised guardian, MSPAINT vocalist DeeDee decides it’s time to break down how he really feels. The result is a synth-punk headbanger that manipulates little kernels of wisdom we've all rolled our eyes at before into deeply resonant mantras: "Thеre's no control/ Just controlling yourself!" As "Angel" swells into a hair-raising wall of sound, it dares to become a beacon of spiritual enlightenment in itself. —Abby Jones
On Stochastic Drift, Sam Barker's songs constantly scatter and reform within the space of a few bars. Each is anchored by cyclical repetition, like the jazz chords and soft hi-hat pulse of "Fluid Mechanics," but it's what happens in the surrounding space that gives these tracks their mesmerizing heft. As drums flutter around the central rhythm and synths yawn in the margins, it's like tossing a flare into a cavern to understand the enormity of the space. Somewhere between the Necks' reverberant sprawl and SW.'s splashy organic house, "Fluid Mechanics" is a gorgeously expansive, bleeding-edge vision of what electronic music can encompass. —Dash Lewis
Combining the Technicolor synths of Kanye West’s Graduation with treacly R&B slow jams, the woozy confessionals of Sacramento’s zayALLCAPS give off the vibe of a stoner surfer dude that can also somehow sing like early Frank Ocean. With a groovy, warped bassline and high, seductive coos in the style of Zapp-era Roger Troutman, the Disco Sam duet "Work It Out" makes one feel like they’ve stumbled into the middle of a Rick James cocaine party. The son of an opera singer, Disco Sam hilariously howls chest-deep about being a "certified freak," while zay toasts to a group chat that feels more like a family. —Thomas Hobbs
"Life Signs," a career-defining single from punk-ish Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes, echoes those aimless strolls you prescribe yourself when secluding idly at home finally gets boring. Nate Amos' wandering guitar lines contrast Rachel Brown's deadpan, tongue-twister observations on the world around them and their place within it: "Tick tick, you're alive, sunlit sick sky scraped by bright-eyed short sight online for thy," they pseudo-rap, seemingly offhandedly. "It's so sad in this beautiful place/ I need you here right now in this beautiful place." "Life Signs" doesn’t necessarily find any resolution between life's innate beauty and suffering, instead coming to terms with the discordance. Some days, that's enough relief to keep on trekking. —Abby Jones
OsamaSon held his own at the head of the American rage-rap pack this year with two albums, January's long-awaited Jump Out and October's Psykotic. The standout streamer between the combined 35 songs was the blissed-out gem "Made Sum Plans," on which Lil O — over a swirling, rattling track by rage maestro ok — asserts his devotion to another by offering to buy her whatever she wants. His generosity just might be impaired, though: "Talk to me baby/ I'm on that drank," he sings, before the tune’s signature line, "Tell me what you need and I’ll break the bank." These two crowd-pleasing minutes turned into a viral favorite months after release, led by a cheeky TikToker who came to be known as the "Made Sum Plans girl." Lil O might not want to break the bank on anyone just yet, but winners like this bode well for his future plan-making. —John Norris
Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo - "Radioactive Dreams" (Computer Students/Modulor)
The sound will grab you first — Hayden Pedigo's arpeggios electrified in echo, Cap'n Ron's swinging drumbeat bashed out in the distance, Raygun Busch's blunt-force vocals softened into melodic resignation. It's gorgeous, and when the wave of distortion comes flooding in, its beauty only intensifies. But what might linger with you more than the sound is the way Busch evokes some hopeless situation: "And I don't want to talk, but/ God isn't speaking/ It's a dog I can't outrun/ Unshakeable feeling tonight." —Chris DeVille
In 2024, Anna Von Hausswolf's anchored two critically celebrated (and very different) films, The Substance and Sound Of Falling. In 2025, she followed that towering year with Iconoclasts, an equally towering album. Its centerpiece, "Struggle With The Beast," has the year's most swaggering intro/outro by far, several minutes of Von Hausswolff and her band sallying forth into psychic battle. Saxophonist Otis Sandsjö is blistering and bardic — think Colin Stetson doing a riff on Black Sabbath's "The Wizard" — while Von Hausswolff turns her martial trumpet of a voice upon battles of a more interior sort, introspecting upon the limits of her pain even while it sounds an unignorable clarion cry. —Katherine St. Asaph
Shoegaze was never intended to be fun, per se. Hotline TNT's take on it, though, has always had a little more pep in its step, and "Julia's War" showcases an energetic, shoegaze-loving power-pop band with torrential riffage. Frontman Will Anderson now has a proper band flanking him, giving him the chance to step into a high-fidelity limelight on a track defined by "na-na-na's" and guitar melodies that are fuzzed out but not obliterated. It's something that few songs in the shoegaze canon aspire to be: an earworm. —Devon Chodzin
Within the span of 2025, Bassvictim metamorphosed from electroclash sleazebags to neo-twee masterminds. Forever is their album-length plea for endurance, but January's "Forever Salty" was immortalized at birth. Easily the best "FFO: Crystal Castles" song this decade, this cybernetic romp has all the power of big beat and all the ethereal magic of peak Grimes. The hook sounds like a chorus of squealing schoolchildren egging on a playground fight, and when Maria Manow's voice is diced and pitched into an angelic arpeggio during that final bridge, it feels like clasping hands with a higher power. —Eli Enis
When Sorry announced their new album COSPLAY, they unveiled "Echoes," an unforgettable, sultry daydream. The hypnotic guitars, yearning vocals, and intense lyrics offer the feeling of a forbidden tryst, encompassing the thrill of desire laced with secrecy. "Echoes" is a song on its knees, and its sense of longing is contagious in a magically fun way. —Danielle Chelosky
Maybe we've gotten Deafheaven wrong all along. Sure, we figured out their simultaneous heaviness and sublimity early on, but we're still learning how far they can take that balance. Hell, maybe Deafheaven are still learning that too. How else to explain "Body Behavior," one of the many outliers-as-new-normals dotting Lonely People With Power? George Clarke shakes his typical screech for a register like Alice Cooper choking on a lit cigarette, the lyrics on objectification as learned behavior are jarringly lucid, and the track's back half — all lurking bass and pseudo-viola howls — could even read as Godspeed You! Black Emperor worship. It's menacing and stirring in a way Deafheaven have never been, but, then again, they’ve never been ones to take the same road to that destination twice. —Natalie Marlin
While Lewisham's Jim Legxacy is often framed as a genre-splicing rapper, he's at his best when he's singing syrupy emo harmonies. See: "'06 wayne rooney," a bright, bouncy pop song that sounds more like the giddy menu music on a Super Monkey Ball game than a grime song. Despite the care-free atmosphere — which echoes the sky-high confidence of the Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney back in the mid-2000s — Legxacy bleeds his heart out, reminiscing on sleeping on floors and having dirt on his jeans. Converting inner-city turmoil into pillowy singalong hooks is something that comes natural for Jim Legxacy. —Thomas Hobbs
Matthew Berry is a touring guitarist for Hotline TNT, but his music as the Berries forgoes fuzzed-out pop for different kinds of retro pleasures. Specifically, this year's self-titled LP rewardingly taps into the dreamy heartland rock that has proven so fertile for bands like Wild Pink and the War On Drugs. Between those huge chords, that slow, steady backbeat, Berry's drowsy vocal, and vibes that stretch the jangling twang to infinity, "Angelus" ends up feeling like a half-remembered Tom Petty classic. —Chris DeVille
Some 30,000 people came out to the Stone Roses' 1990 Spike Island concert, and the legendary clusterfuck became a symbol for the highs and lows of the Madchester moment. Jarvis Cocker wasn't one of those 30,000, but he gets it, man. On Pulp's first single in many years, he locks right back into his lounge-disco shimmy-strut. He was born to perform. It's a calling. He exists to do this: shouting and pointing. So swivel. —Tom Breihan
Hey kids, spelling is fun! The lead single from Militarie Gun's God Save The Gun joins "Respect," "Glamorous," and "Hot To Go!" in the spelling song hall of fame. It’s a little difficult to accompany with a dance á la Chappell, but it's better suited to spitting out mid-crowdsurf anyway. This is peak adrenaline-shot, fuck-you Militarie Gun, and while a hardcore-aligned band bringing out the synths is always divisive, it feels appropriately fun here. —Spencer Hughes
Don’t discount the beauty and graceful propulsion of the sophistipop arrangement, but primarily, "Pale Song" is a showcase for a gifted young singer brimming with gravitas. With the sublime, swooning elegance of Jeff Buckley (and hints of Thom Yorke’s neurosis at the peak of his Buckley worship), Dove Ellis summons maudlin electricity here. Not that we should get too caught up in precedents when processing the young Irishman’s lightning-in-a-bottle talent; after all, "The past is like a sign/ A sign it never talks/ A sign you think you've lived/ But it's just stone with a little chalk." —Chris DeVille
When caroline called their album's opening track and lead single "Total Euphoria," they meant it. The London octet spends four and a half minutes making order sound like gorgeous chaos. As fervently strummed guitars, droning symphonic strings, and loosely battered drums pile up like browser tabs on autoplay, a gentle vocal melody alludes to deep personal matters without getting too specific. It sounds like they built a song from shards and fragments, haphazardly stabbing musical elements and notebook scraps together until they cohered into unimaginable beauty. In the end, a nuclear blast rips through the music, and the band emerges from the wreckage, united, triumphant, possibly on the verge of tears. —Chris DeVille
If you really zoom in, "Yamaha" is an absurdist euphoric collage. Velour synths mash against funky vocal flares, punchy keyboard chords, and robust saxophone splurges. There's even a telephone screaming in the background at one point. It has the cut-and-paste momentum of a Girl Talk banger minus the onslaught of obvious samples. The familiarity of "Yamaha" is more like a collision of memories than one specific scene, tightly woven soundbits that create a sonic terrain both orgasmic and sentimental. —Margaret Farrell
The best character studies are always the loving portraits of fucked-up people facing hard times, and there's no mistaking Ethel Cain's affection in this '80s-style megaballad about a girl who just wants to feel good right now. The guitars crash and the keyboards glimmer like laser lights through disco balls while Cain moans that she'll never be the kind of angel he would see. —Tom Breihan
Sometimes it seems Jane Remover's mission is to get louder and louder. Even after the hyperpop wunderkind turns the volume all the way up throughout Revengeseekerz, "JRJRJR" makes for a ferocious finale. It sounds like a computer glitching and then combusting, and the artist only adds fuel to the fire with brazen raps: "And I do whatever the fuck 'cause I’ve been whatever the fuck." It’s not so much a song as it is an explosion. —Danielle Chelosky
Smerz's "Feisty" is a hypnotic ode to inconsequential nights out. It's a song with a big bass and a big attitude, but there isn’t any major drama. Riri is blasting and then followed by a shitty transition; cigarettes are smoked and makeup is reapplied; you meet a new best friend on the dance floor then run into a possible cutey with horrible shoes. Norwegian duo Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt approach this amusing social marathon with a judgy eye-roll. "Feisty" captures the bizarre thrill of how some nights teeter between a social rollercoaster and a mundane slog. —Margaret Farrell
I'm telling you to loosen up my buttons, babe, but you keep frontin'. Our finest zamboni-pop prospect rode a Morgan Wallen duet to #1 this year, but her real star moment was a drag-show road-sex whisper-giggle that sounds like 2005 and 2045 at the same damn time. —Tom Breihan
The self-reflective rock song is a risky gamble: Lean too far into hagiography and you end up with blink-182's "One More Time," or worse. But there's blessedly little in the way of self-aggrandizement on "infinite source," from Deftones' tenth album private music. Instead, the band reminds us that they're still the kings of towering riffs in one moment and seductive restraint in the next. Even as Chino Moreno toasts to "dreams," "years," and "cheers," there's the sense that this song could just as well be about a torrid lifelong affair, a "love we chased and found." —Arielle Gordon
Sirens blare in the background. A skittering beat ushers us forward and james K's metallic vocals beam with a sense of adventure. Is this a car chase? Are we time traveling? Are we preparing for battle or at a crossroads? The New York producer sets up a cosmic action scene that I never want to end. In just under five minutes, glittering dream-pop clarity, drum 'n' bass euphoria, and grungy anticipation fire like angry pistons until "Play" reaches its "there's no turning back now" moment — a drum solo breakdown that feels like a heroic fight scene. "Play" is an escapist anthem that revs its engines until we're at warp speed, our foes in the rearview mirror choking on exhaust. —Margaret Farrell
To hear Pusha T tell it, Clipse could've ditched the Kendrick Lamar verse and kept their Def Jam deal. In that scenario, "Chains & Whips" would still be colossal – Pusha's theatrical disgust for Jim Jones, Malice's biblical bloodthirst, Lenny Kravitz's angry-sludgy riffage, Pharrell Williams' falsetto threats and organ squelches. But an out-of-his-mind Kendrick elevates this to the status of cultural event. Something like that is worth breaking a few contracts. —Tom Breihan
LA-based hyperpop pals 2hollis and nate sib have both been compared to Justin Bieber. "afraid" flexes their it-boy qualities; they've got clean vocals, lots of energy, and simple hooks that stick. The bouncy beat is an unequivocal mood-booster, and sometimes that’s the best thing a song can do. Though the lyrics grapple with the disorientation of sudden fame, "afraid" is the sonic embodiment of a shot of adrenaline. —Danielle Chelosky
Desire isn't always convenient or logical. It's primal, instinctual, unbothered by what you think you want, or what you think you should want. They say the heart has a mind of its own, and in Rochelle Jordan's case, it's guiding her to a decision she knows she’ll regret. Over Kaytranada's sumptuous house groove, Jordan describes the carnal pull to the Wrong Guy, a move that would blow up whatever she's got going with the Right Guy but would feel so good. "The Boy" is a classic tale of sexual longing versus emotional intelligence. Hearts don't lie, but neither do hips. —Dash Lewis
Despite their relatively short lifespan, trees of heaven are a notoriously invasive species; even in less lush conditions, like a concrete-packed metropolis, their roots can still grow hastily right up until death. Philly-based Friendship frontman Dan Wriggins reflects on the tree of heaven's pervasiveness on his song named for the plant, a lightly twangy, almost funereal anecdote of an impermanent relationship with a lingering impact. But as Wriggins recalls all these streets he’s wandered and the stoops he’s chilled on, "Tree Of Heaven" feels less like it's about a singular person, instead personifying the city from which so many of his relationships grew as if those stories, too, were forever fossilized in the concrete: "You know you changed me, babe," he howls, emanating the same type of reverence you might bestow to the great loves of your life. —Abby Jones
On her latest full-length for Hyperdub, hexed!, South Londoner aya polishes an unforgiving strain of digital punk. Heavily influenced by emoviolence, it is shaped by phobias, sorcery, and recovery from substance abuse. "off to the ESSO" is nauseating dubstep-meets-gabber. Physically modeled timbres squelch and burst, laying a framework for rapid-fire screaming. It seems to be crafted from rust and oil. —Ted Davis
"This is making no sense to the average listener," CMAT announces after the first verse. So here's some background: CMAT is a rising Irish alt-pop star, and Jamie Oliver is a celebrity chef in the UK whose face is apparently plastered all over certain gas stations across the pond, much to CMAT's dismay. That said, you don't need this information to clock "The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station" as a spine-tingling marvel. All it takes is one exposure to the steady propulsion of the backing track plus the brain-infecting power of that chorus: "OK/ Don't be a bitch/ The man's got kids and they wouldn't like this." I bet they like it at least a little bit. —Chris DeVille
My fellow New Yorkers can bitch about it, but our much-maligned subway is still the beating heart of our sui generis city. It's a place where anything can happen, like, say, uncomfortably catching sight of that ex you haven't gotten over. That scenario frames "The Subway," Chappell Roan's ode to a former flame with green hair and a beauty mark by her mouth. In this urban fever dream, the Midwest Princess is still down bad — triggered by smelling her ex's perfume on someone else, "counting down the days" until the breakup pangs fade and her former lover is "just another girl on the subway." Several minutes of gorgeous duress build to the real payoff: a lovely, anthemic coda that alternates the lyric "She's got a way" with "She got away." It's melancholy but somehow at peace, and totally sublime. —John Norris
For Ghanaian artist Amaarae, influences are an act; she is deliberate and purposeful about who she lets into her sound. She can tell you the exact highlife artists (obscure-until-recently Ata Kak) and R&B touchstones ("The Pleasure Principle") that animated her music, and exactly to which (and whose) ends she turned them. This allows her to make "S.M.O." (first word: "slut") surprisingly cohesive, even understated, for how much she's kaleidoscoping in; everything is flowing toward one single purpose already answered by the title. Amaraae's vocal is pitched into the uncannily blank, as if she's already half-dissolved into her woman of choice. And her horniness is holistic; she makes lyrics about absolute penetrative filth sound as reverent as "I want to meet the God that made you" and makes orchestra hits and Donna Summer-y moans seem equally charged. She even manages to take Lexapro — an SSRI known for doing pretty much the sexual opposite of this — and make it seductive. —Katherine St. Asaph
Yes, the advancement of technology is scary, but what if we took a break from the existential dread and partied along to an electronic banger about wanting to fuck your computer? ヾ( ˃ᴗ˂ )◞ • *✰ Who knew it was possible to make an anthem that was simultaneously extremely online and also made for the club? "Fuck My Computer" is true Gen Z genius. —Danielle Chelosky
Immediately after scoring one of her all-time biggest hits with an adult-contempo Bruno Mars duet, Lady Gaga came storming back to the dramatic, apocalyptic gibberish dance-pop that brought her to the dance in the first place. If you squint your ears hard enough, you can imagine Glenn Danzig singing "Abracadabra," which means it's the absolute best kind of mega-goth spookablast novelty banger. It's time to cast your spell on the night. —Tom Breihan
Sometimes the elaborate, verbose romance ballads aren’t nearly urgent enough for your beating heart, and you just need to cut to the chase. Enter Momma's "I Want You (Fever)," a hypercharged pop-rock anthem that plows through the noise of messy love triangles, gossip, and whatever dissenting opinions lie in their wake: "Everybody knows that this is going down/ We're the talk of the town," core duo Allegra Weingarten and Etta Friedman sing with a convincing, flirty lilt. "I Want You (Fever)" maintains all the thrill of a will-they-won’t-they plotline in spite of the outcome's abundant predictability. —Abby Jones
The meme is cute. The song is cute, too – a giddy, stoned flirtation rendered in dance-pop form, built on a sample of an Underworld track seven years older than PinkPantheress herself, hinting at a nervous longing just beneath the surface. It's the full PinkPantheress experience in two and a half minutes, a sweet piece of internet brain-candy that sticks with you longer than you expect. —Tom Breihan
Choke Enough is paradoxically both effervescent and ash grey, and closer "blade bird" is the project's strongest performance of both emotional tension and instrumental weightlessness. Plucked acoustic guitar, cyborgian bird squeaks, and soft backing vocals echo while Oklou sings a moving parable about possession’s temptation. Throughout, she fights the instinct to cage what she loves, remembering the wildness that initially enchanted her. "I need you now, and I'll miss you when/ The wings I fell in love with take you away again," she tenderly sings. She has to let things go to experience the joy of their return. —Margaret Farrell
Haven’t you heard? We’re in the middle of a mandolin renaissance. (A mandosance? A linaissance?) On "Afterlife," the lead single from Alex Giannascoli's tenth studio record, the delicate instrument's doubled strings chime like church bells atop guitars and snare hits. It's a fitting introduction to Headlights, an album that marries pan flutes, violins, and chorus pedals with lyrics about swinging from the end of your rope. Eerie, elegant, and fleetingly triumphant, "Afterlife" captures the restless beauty at the heart of Alex G's music. —Arielle Gordon
Though her ascent to TikTok royalty and subsequent pivot to pop torchbearer sure looked effortless, Addison Rae put in the work. She was raised in a low-income family by parents whose relationship was always on-and-off, and as she tells it on the trip-hop-indebted "Headphones On," even her Louboutin collection can’t silence the occasional twinge of envy towards those who had an easier past: "Wish my mom and dad could've been in love," Rae laments. "I compare my life to the new It Girl." Immaculately produced with cello flourishes, a wash of gentle rainfall, and an addictive organ synth riff, "Headphones On" is a firsthand account of the little things (a cigarette and your favorite song, for starters) that make the pain more bearable until the hard-earned luxury comes your way. —Abby Jones
The loosely shaking groove. The bleating vocal. The searching bass. The soft acoustic strums. The tender, wordless coos. The killer lyric conflating the only two sure things in this life. It's all leading up to that transcendent moment when the chiming guitars soar into the frame and the full band achieves liftoff, a spine-tingling climax that confirmed the ascendance of a generational band. As a specimen of songcraft, few tracks functioned more powerfully or efficiently than "Taxes" this year: a metaphysical pop epic in just over three minutes, packed with musical epiphanies and philosophical gauntlets, ready to send Geese fans skyward for decades to come. —Chris DeVille
In 2023, Wednesday's Rat Saw God was a no-brainer selection for our Album Of The Year. The Asheville band established themselves as one of their generation's most important alt-country acts, and Karly Hartzman proved herself a master of writing grimy, evocative scenes of troubled youth that are daringly specific. In "Townies," from their new album Bleeds, she captures the tumultuous experience of girlhood in the most searingly straightforward way possible, narrating having her nudes leaked and getting "a strong reputation for someone always down." It's not a feminist anthem, it's not a sob story — it's a visceral fragment of her life relayed matter-of-factly. It's Hartzman at her most vulnerable, yet she wails with cathartic confidence, free from the humiliating scenarios of her teenage years, no longer begging on her knees but instead singing on stage. —Danielle Chelosky
