GL.25.15: Caseysimone Ballestas
GL.25.16: RYAN JOYCE
GL.25.17: Desa Warner
GL.25.18: Claren Warner
GL.25.19: Vikram Joseph
GL.25.20: Kevin Wyckoff
GL.25.21: Sidney Southerland
GL.25.22: Jazzmen Williams
GL.25.23: Megan Swidler
GL.25.24: Carl Anderson
***
Ryan Joyce
BYH Guest List Week 2025
The struggle to settle into a rhythm defined my 2025. Sustaining a cross-continental relationship meant countless early morning hours zooming down an empty Attiki Odos to and from Athens airport and jumping straight into long days of work. As the months passed, a deep and persistent exhaustion overcame me that made nothing seem more attractive (or feasible, really) than crawling into the covers at 9pm. If 2024 was the year when I was often still awake when the sun came up, 2025 was the year I regularly found myself in bed before the sun went down.
When the exhaustion set in, I noticed also that my appetite for music abandoned me. And not just the desire to dig into the new releases each week, I’d go days and days at a time without listening to any music at all. Tapping back into my Favorites List in Spotify was my body’s way of telling me that I’d finally recovered from that week’s 16-hour day.
It wasn’t all bleak. 2025 also contained long spurts of creativity during which I managed to design a board game. I cobbled together a DJ set for a dear friend’s 40th birthday, and managed to get through more books than I had in the last few years combined.
One of the perks of the time spent in the back of taxis and at airport gates was just how much great music I came across via short-form videos. Looking back through my saved posts, between cunningly edited videos of one-pot recipes I’ll never make and mobility routines I’ll never do, were some mind-boggling vocalists pouring their talents in pop music’s most coverable songs. (cf. Jesse Gold’s bossa-nova-inspired twist on Shania; and Anna Frank Hjernøe giving Miley a run for her money on a Crowded House classic.) Sandwiched next to recitations of favorite poems and distillations of modernist typographic principles, there’s a Brazilian talent show contestant singing on public transport and South African a cappella groups doing vocal warm ups and singing in schoolyards.
And best of all, a couple New York singer songwriters! Jackie Evans and Kevin Atwater both built out their catch verses and choruses into fully-fledged earworms catchy enough to make my end-of-year list below.
But alas, the malaise that sequestered me completely from music world meant that it wasn’t until November that I listened to Mayhem start-to-finish. I never quite got through Life of A Showgirl. (Sorry, Matt!) And there are the other releases (FKA Twigs, Rochelle Jordan, Addison Rae, Rosalia) I’d have dutifully given a spin in earlier years in the aims of making my GLW list more complete, but that this year I didn’t engage with at all.
So rather than call this a best-of, these are the 25 songs that found me in the right place at the right time and stopped me in my tracks–even just for a moment–this past year. My five favorites up first, with the rest in alphabetical order by song title.
•
“Man I Need” • Olivia Dean
After looping “Dive” all last year, this was waiting for me in my Release Radar the day it came out. And I danced like a goofball each of the 61 times I played it this year!
“Pomeranian” • FORAGER
A stunning feat of time signatures and tempo changes, “Pomerian” shifts from a pre-chorus in 4/4 at 160bpm, to 15/8 and 5/4 before the chorus settles into 4/4 at 100bpm. All this in 20-seconds or so. It’s also a picture-perfect send up of yuppie culture and the source of my favorite lyric this year: Everybody else’s / Palate is getting more refined / Turning up their nose at / The grocery store wine.
“2 hands” • Tate McRae
The dance break in this video sent me to space the first time I saw it.
“Cherry Hard Candy” • Snocaps
Thank you, Ilana! “Your number’s called / You’re long, long gone” evoked the most lovely sense memory of my childhood fascination at the combination of the red plastic “take-a-number” dispenser and the “Now Serving” digital displays at delis: if you’d told 9-year-old me it was magic that caused the number to change each time an employee shouted, I’d have believed you.
“Wood” • Taylor Swift
Did “Wood” get invited to the 2019 Met Gala because it is, quite literally, notes on camp. The wordplay and easter eggs are just so in-the-pocket on “Wood” – the imagery’s thematically coherent, it all scans perfectly. The airy, arpeggiated background vocal is heavenly, and the production is probably closest to what we all imagined the Taylor/Max/Shellback collab would yield. Plus, she is clearly loving getting dicked down by Travis. I’m all for it! You should be too!
•
“12 to 12” • sombr
Reminiscent of Roosevel’s self-titled debut album in a way that makes me nostalgic for my early years in Amsterdam.
“Abracadabra” • Lady Gaga
If “2 hands” is the epitome of a scrappy, marathon, one-day video shoot, then “Abracadabra” is the kind of over-the-top, big-budget, multi-day, “MTV’s Making The Video”-level after school event that we don’t get enough of these days.
“Anthems for A Seventeen Year-Old Girl” • Maggie Rogers, Sylvan Esso
Would listen to Maggie sing the phone book.
“Born Again” • LISA, Doja Cat, RAYE
The Lord giveth (I’m looking for a synonym / I’m tryna find the words to tell him I ain’t even feelin’ him / Don’t ever let me be deficient in / Wish that you could wake up then take me like a vitamin). The Lord taketh away (If you tried just a little more times).
“Die With A Smile” • Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars
There are a million more interesting things happening on this album but this is a pop vocal performance for the ages.
“Don’t Speak” • Loaded Honey, Lydia Kitto, J Lloyd
Stumbled across this one in a playlist of songs for people who love “Man I Need.” I’m an easy mark!
“For Now” • Solmai, Edgar Alvis
Met Solmai on a very drunk afternoon in Copenhagen while visiting Alex Kain and have followed her since. This is her first track that felt properly polished; accompanied me on many an Albert Heijn trip this autumn.
“Give it to me” • Cerrone, Christine and the Queens
For the sunrise bike home from the clerb.
“Huntley” • Kevin Atwater
Atwater’s voice and the confessional, him-on-his-worst-day storytelling bring to mind Chris Thile in the Why Should The Fire Die? days of Nickel Creek. The wordplay and storytelling double back in some beautiful but shatteringly sad ways.
“Let Alone The One You Love” • Olivia Dean
It’s the Carole King/Gerry Goffin quality to this one that drew me in. I was thrilled that she knocked it for six live on SNL as well.
“Let Me Love You” • Amber Mark
Always time for her alto.
“Mad” • Reneé Rapp
Thinking about how fun it would have been to belt this song while driving to and from a cappella practice senior year of college. If only!
“On The Wire” • Couch
Part Lake Street Dive (they met at Berklee, they have a brass section), part Lawrence (for the distinct R&B influence). The lyrics are a bit on-the-nose, the production a bit sterile, but the transition from the bridge to the final choruses never failed to get me moving.
“Predador de Perereca” • BLOW RECORDS, Mc Jhey
The year’s best TikTok dance soundtrack; the year’s filthiest Portuguese lyrics. And in that way, it felt like a peek into Dillon North’s life.
“Relationships” • HAIM
Reading divorcees for filth with the outro.
“Sleep For Days” • Jackie Evans
Tapestry vibes and a cracker of an opening couplet: Everytime I go upstate I sleep for days / Maybe I just get tired when I feel safe
“Tobeloved” • Parcels
No list of mine is complete without a layered vocal anthem.
“When A Good Man Cries” • CMAT
Hook (fiddle), line (Veruca Salt reference), sinker (the Kyrie Eleison in the outro).
“Whisper” • Ropa Bass, BELLA
For the summer sunset rental boat playlist. BELLA and Simmy would be the isiZulu collaboration of my dreams.
“YUKON” • Justin Bieber
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