GL.25.15: Caseysimone Ballestas
GL.25.26: TOM FLANAGAN
GL.25.27: Mary Pero
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I am a notoriously sad boy. Or well sad in the very anodyne sense, that it’s kind of harmless but you still think my god, is he actually ok? This at least is what my music taste tells me or rather what everyone listening to the music I enjoy suggests.
I’ve always been drawn to music in a minor key – which as an aside would be a great LP/EP title – possibly a direct result of my dad playing ‘Hotel California’ to me at every waking hour of my childhood. But these days I’m less ‘Hotel California’ and more just ‘California’ (Lana, who else?). I like the idea of a song that has a more anachronistic melody, a deviation from where you think something should go and a confirmation that it can. Music that exists in contrast; songs that sound happy but read sad, songs that ring melancholic but push for optimism.
Looking back on 2025, I think that idea worked as a red thread throughout my year. My life has always existed within the frame of ‘you should be happy and yet you don’t feel it’ but come the bleak midwinter (cc the only alternative Christmas song you need) iced under and snowed in, I’m the only one revelling in the feeling that life is actually good.
What this says about me is mercifully not for here, something saved for my loyal and long-suffering Substack readers [Ed. Note: Check it out], but it does crystallise my listening habits the past year. I was on a beach with friends in Indonesia and I spent most of the time listening to yearning pop songs of a love lost (not something I was experiencing). Later on, while in the middle of a melancholic summer, I turned to Soundcloud’s endless hyperpop to get me through it.
This was also the year I got into ambient and ASMR music and in the true spirit of zillenial cringe, much of it Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings-inspired. My partner who I live with had the bad luck finding out that one of his top streamed albums of the year was ‘’Lord of the Rings for Sleep’; as much thanks to my newfound dedication and his misfortune of letting me pick music to play on the TV. And so ended our shared jam sessions.
Anyway, this is a very long prologue that is an attempt to organise 2025 into some kind of musical sense. There were so many highs this year; it was a very good year for albums and if Rosalia’s LUX did anything, I hope it’s bringing back chronological listening vs simply heading straight to the 2.20min Spotify-sanctioned single. There’s a reason artists order tracks in the way they do and maybe I’m old school but it’s nice to feel like you’re experiencing the music as someone intended. Lily Allen’s West End Girl is evidence of that too – you just wouldn’t appreciate ‘Madeline’ in the same way if you hadn’t listened to ‘Tennis’ directly before it (this is your cue to go listen if you haven’t).
There were lows too. I’ve been falling out of love with Taylor’s music for sometime now – TTPD was a slog even for my downcast spirit – and Life of a Showgirl felt like Taylor leaning into her worst instincts. I was ready to self-medicate heavily upon hearing ‘Wood’ but by the time I’d got to ‘Wi$h Li$t’ and hearing her croon ‘Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you’ I was left fully dissociating. It’s hard to imagine that this is the same artist who penned evermore (my personal favourite) and Red, and wrote the all-time great line of “so casually cruel in the name of being honest”. I’m not against her having fun and I don’t want to suggest artists can’t be happy and make great music but there’s something to be said about the trend of leaving introspection behind and embracing the external. BANKS was guilty of the same this year – Off with Her Head felt too close to bitterness than bliss.
It’s symptomatic of what it means to create today. When you’re so inundated with input and external demands, how easy is it to write authentically? When are you writing from yourself or for someone else? This extends across art forms but I think it’s why it makes the good music this year even more impressive. Lily Allen wrote West End Girl in 10 days, Addison Rae worked with only three collaborators, Oklou used next to no percussion for choke enough and Rosalia spent two to three years learning how to sing in 13+ languages. It takes work to do something different but even more work to create from a place that’s organic to you. But when you do, it’s great.
It’s one reason I’ve spent the last quarter of this year reading a lot of classical literature. Not in a ‘look at me don’t look at me but look at me way’ but more because I have this desperate need to escape the contemporary. You start to realize why certain works are classics and stand the test of time, because they draw from a universal human experience and aren’t written performatively. We’re in the age of the performative listener and reader after all. It didn’t used to be like that.
But back to the list. I’ve split it into 25 songs, two for each month and one extra for 2025 to round it out nicely. I’ve ordered them into one happy/sad and one sad/sad song per month, in the spirit of the year and my own tastes. I’ve kept it mostly to newer songs, bar one or two, and to what I’ve actually been listening to.
Listening to all of these songs now, I’m made to think of the last book I read, Persuasion by Jane Austen, conveniently also one of my favourite novels ever. There’s a line in there that goes when pain is over, the remnants of it often becomes a pleasure. I hope this list stands as testament to just that.
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‘January’ | Telenova (happy/sad)
Maybe it’s the Virgo in me but I loved listening to this back at the start of the year, possibly something to do with order and neatness. There’s a lovely melody in there too; there’s yearning and wistfulness and the way Armstrong (lead singer) draws out ‘January’ into five syllables really makes you appreciate it as a word.
‘Cairngorms’ | Sarah Julia (sad/sad)
Best played in wintry surroundings, give me a music video that’s both an ode to solitary landscapes (misery!) and follows a moss-like woodland creature through a Scottish national park any day.
‘Some Kind of Angel’ | Georgia Gets By (happy/sad)
Hands down my favourite song this year, it’s one that I’ve forced everyone close to me to listen to. Mid-tempo, indie pop, the lyrics why can’t I stay right here have never sounded so good and the outro where she goes up a key is just gorgeous poignancy, *chef’s kiss* every time.
‘To the Boys’ | Theo Bleak (sad/sad)
An example of the kind of song I relate to both musically and lyrically without there being any bearing of truth to my own life, the amount of times I caught myself singing it’s 2011, I hear you’re using is too many to count. A little shoegazy, a lot sad, good for those times when you’re feeling nostalgic.
‘Loveher’ | Romy (happy/sad)
The xx gave us so much but they also gave us Romy. Glad to see her embracing a slightly more uptempo style and ‘Loveher’ is an encapsulation of that bridge between house/pop/dance that feels like a suitable heir to ‘Dancing on my Own’ (!). Also if you can make singing ‘i love her i love her’ over and over sound compelling across multiple verses, I’m sold.
‘Guillotine’ | BANKS (sad/sad)
If the rest of Off With Her Head followed in ‘Guillotine’’s footsteps, we would’ve had a contender for Goddess and The Altar. Produced by SOHN, pretty much every collaboration between the two is gorgeous and I’ve put this song as sad/sad as a reminder of what could’ve been. Still, we got 1:54min of what BANKS does best – dark, moody, sultry, bubbling pop and though it’s a crime it’s so short, rumour has it a longer version is out there. Release it now please.
‘Books in Bed’ | Queen of Jeans (happy/sad)
An anthemic indie-rock song about trying to forget someone through reading and it never being enough? An all timer. Wishing that you were here instead of all these books I've read, To fall asleep to dreams I won't regret sounds happier than it reads and that’s what makes this special.
‘choke enough’ | Oklou (sad/sad)
The title track from one of the year’s best albums, what oklou understands is how to build a song; the tempo changes, the abstraction of the lyrics, the vocal layering, you don’t know what’s going on until she sings “i think my dad would appreciate” and the feeling hits.
‘In the Rain’ | Addison Rae (happy/sad)
One of the many songs that give me what can only be described as aquatic feeling, like I’m living in an underwater world and she’s the reigning queen. Also a very good pop song.
‘Vlammen’ | Eefje de Visser (sad/sad)
A song about dancing and dying in flames together has never sounded so enticing.
‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ | Wolf Alice (happy/sad)
Ok while this might not technically qualify as sad, a song about proving everyone wrong against all odds has a hint of hope and tragedy to it. Plus those high notes Ellie hits in the chorus give me shivers every time.
‘Nettles’ | Ethel Cain (sad/sad)
All this year’s drama aside, if you’re going to make an 8min ode to a fictionalised lost lover who dies in a chemical plant explosion, then this is how you do it. To love me is to suffer me – a line for the ages and sadly my year.
‘Drag’ | Yumi Zouma (happy/sad)
There will never be a year I’m not listening to New Zealand’s best indie band.
‘Five-Year Plan’ | Night Swimming (sad/sad)
One of the year’s best new bands and one for the shoegaze lovers out there.
‘Everybody Knows I’m Sad’ | MARINA (happy/sad)
A song that, based on everything I’ve written so far, should need no introduction. This is what I mean about sad lyrics, happy sound. The Nintendo NES production while she sings Everybody knows i”m s a d-ahhh–ahhhh-aahhhh-d is pure camp.
‘Good Fight’ | Phoebe Go (sad/sad)
For those who don’t know whether to stay or go, this won’t help but it takes a little genius to write something as simple and unnerving as i'm scared and i'm bored at the same time.
‘Oak Hill’ | TOLEDO (happy/sad)
Crushed every time I hear Hurt you when I should've loved you, well I couldn't / Strange feeling of wondering if you hate me / Well, you probably should
‘Flicker’ | Tiny Habits (sad/sad)
I was introduced to these guys thanks to Kacey Musgraves and wow – the harmonies on everything they do are phenomenal. This is just one example of the many that have kept me company throughout the autumn and winter.
‘Leash’ | Sky Ferreira (happy/sad)
I prayed for the day Sky Ferreira would be back. It’s all about the outro here. Fuzzy, grungy destitution, all wrapped up in I know I'll never get my way.
‘Affection’ | Kllo (sad/sad)
The quieter side to Leash’s lust for a power dynamic, affection goes inward with yearning and control.
‘Would You Go Down On a Girl’ | Déyyess (happy/sad)
The short answer is no but this song makes a very compelling, anthemic case for it. Best listened to as loud as possible.
‘In Your Room’ | Airiel (sad/sad)
20+ years later and still one of my go-to shoegaze tracks, 9:26min has never sounded so short.
‘Good Stuff’ | Bnny (happy/sad)
Not to be cringe, but I can only describe this song like that first ray of sunshine breaking through the cloud cover after it’s rained all day. The closest thing I got to an optimistic listen.
‘How Long’ | Yana (sad/sad)
Yana was on repeat for me all year and if you like gently strummed folk with a heavy dose of love lost, she’s your girl.
‘Magnolias’ | ROSALIA (sad/sad)
There’s no better way to round out the list and the year than with the same song that brought LUX to a close. I love attempting to sing this while butchering the pronunciation but I’ll do it anyway because this song is that gorgeous and a lovely way to close off the album’s approach to the divine and the earthly. Y lo que no hice en vida Lo hacéis en mi muerte / And what I did not do in life, you do in my death. Amen.
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