As the year comes to an end, it’s time to be ruthless and choose twelve songs from my big annual playlist of ‘music I have enjoyed’ for the yearly list. This list isn’t about being the biggest song of the year, the cultural moments, or the must-see musicians. They’re the ones that have stuck with me, that I’ve been listening to, or thinking about since hearing them.

There are some themes that I’ve been drawn to this year. There’s a lot of finding inner strength, continuing to be creative after decades of work, raging against what the world is doing to itself, and living with contrast. There’s also some straightforward power-chord driven rock and soaring Spanish ballads. The genre dial is all over the shop, as it is every year.

You can find a full playlist of the songs on YouTube.

12. Invisible Thread, by The Divine Comedy

Neil Hannon connected with me through the lead track from ‘Rainy Sunday Afternoon.’ He draws on the experience of his children growing up and leaving home, yet the connection endures when you let go of someone or something.

Both of those hit home for me this year, with a slightly emptier home and one of my passions turning away from me. Wrap that up in the inventiveness of Hannon’s magical hooks now tempered with the melancholy of age and experience, and you have something both complicated and personal.

11. End Times by Will Varley and Billy Bragg

If any song sums up just how bleak 2025 was, it was ‘End Times’. It introduced me to Will Varley and his folk-tinged protest songs. This hits me hard; it’s less about demanding change and more about just how badly things have become.  Think Woody Guthrie with a dash of Threads-

And then Billy Bragg turns up with his leathery voice, a rough and downtrodden curse against the poisoning of nature and the impact of generative AI… “She did not ask for your plastic oceans, or machines that feed on our minds.”

The fight goes on as the elder statesman passes the torch to the next generation.

10. No Quiero Flores, by Pastora Soler

Time for a big ballad, and this year the honour goes not to Italy but to Spain. Specifically, to Pastora Soler and her release of ‘No Quiero Flores,’ which coincided with Soler’s third decade in the music industry.

Again, I’ve found myself in a story that seeks deep connections and relationships rather than fleeting moments. With Soler, it’s about love and romance; with me, it’s less about the details of the lyrics and more about the feeling and the shape of the music telling the story.

That story, wrapped in delicate moments before the fragile takes off and soars, has something that works emotionally at an almost instrumental level.

9. Solo Anthem by Felin

Following the big ballad is, naturally, the female-fronted power-pop slice. This year it’s from Felin. Born in Sweden, raised in Finland, and bringing her music to Estonia, a lot is going on here.

Nothing pushes too far out of the ordinary in terms of the melody; it does everything you need it to do when you expect it to. The real power lies in the lyrics, with Felin bringing stadium-rock energy to resilience, independence, and self-belief. It’s about knowing your identity and inner strength, and turning them into your superpower.

It’s a throwback to anthemic rock from the nineties, and I am here for the fireworks.

8. I Hate Myself by The Darkness

There is a sweet spot in the career of Status Quo where they manage to land the boogie-woogie shuffle sound, 70s glam rock, and slightly over-the-top lyrics that hide a lot of meaning. It’s a spot that I really like.

The Darkness found that spot with this slice of Faux Quo from the ‘Dreams On Toast’ album. It actually popped up late in 2024 (missing the 2024×12 cutoff by a few days), so this has been in rotation for nearly twelve months. What hasn’t been in rotation is the rest of the album. I was hoping for a full-on boogie-woogie long player. Nope, this is the only Quo, so the song stands alone for me.

And that’s fine. Sometimes one song is all you need to love a band, and this is the song for The Darkness in 2025.

7. Sound of the Drum, by Steeleye Span

Very much one from the “deid or no deid” list of bands, turns out Steeleye Span are still performing music and recording albums. ‘Conflict’ is their twenty-fourth studio album in over fifty-six years. It mixes in ancient folk, some modern folk from the last century, and some newly written standards.

I always like a strong bass line, and ‘Sound of the Drum’ has that; not surprisingly, given that the story’s drive is the taking of the King’s Shilling as the armies march through villages to recruit cannon fodder for war. And just as those left behind in the village are left wondering what happens as the march fades into the background, so does ‘Sound of the Drum’ ask if the glorification of war is still justified when the cheerleaders are over the hill and far away.

6. Light Can Only Shine In The Darkness, by Lord of the Lost, Within Temptation

Look, when your opening gambit is “this is a collaboration between Lord of the Lost and Within Temptation,” it’s hard to say no. Dark gothic-meets-symphonic metal is catnip.

Everything here is about contrasts, none more so than the complementary voices of Chris Harms (Lords) and Sharon den Adel (Within), which are just as much of a contrast as the overall styles of the band. I love the twist on the classic trope: it is in the darkness where you can be secure and take time to consider yourself. That’s not an easy path to take, and we all have our intensely personal trauma that could surface.

Which are the contrasts brought forward, the interplay between lyrics and melody, the brightness and the shadows, and ultimately the stadium-rock sound mixed with introspective darkwave.

It’s not immediate; it takes time to explore the song, but once it is revealed, it is absolutely stunning.

5. Tavo Akys (Choir Version), by Katarsis

This is also another track which didn’t immediately click with me. With a front row seat to Eurovizija in Lithuania’s second city of Kaunas, other acts caught my ear and stood out. A teen group made up of different shades of gloom was a hard sell. Perhaps too hard for me.

Wind the clock forward a few weeks, and the incessant chant of “Tavo, Tavo, Tavo” would ring through me on every listen… This is gloom, there are many glooms like it, but this gloom is mine …then the band decided to release a choral version to enhance the gloom, before going all-in with a music video presented in extreme 3:1 widescreen (so wide that not even Christopher Nolan has mastered it).

Society is collapsing, the world is burning down as we watch it, and the only option is to watch. ‘Tavo Akys’ is, simply, that mood given musical form.

4. Baller by Abor & Tynna

A high camera angle opens onto a dark, dusty Euroclub dancefloor; flyers for countless Swedish acts are scattered throughout the camp remnants. “Why can’t we have modern music at Eurovision?” comes the plaintive cry of the community, “Why can’t we have successful chart acts appearing at our Contest?” A shadowy DJ drops the needle on ‘Baller’ by Abor & Tynna.

“No! Not like that!!”

Modern German electro-rock EDM energy… featured on all the playlists that counted over the summer… would be perfect at 3 am in a Berlin industrial zone festival…

Yes. Like that.

3. Venus by Royal Republic

Seeing ‘Venus’ on my twelve at the end of this year is a bit of a surprise. Coming across Royal Republic’s cover over the summer felt like a shot of adrenaline in a sea of mid-tempo beige ballads. Nothing spectacular, nothing revolutionary, just one great song transposed into another genre. I’m coming at this from Bananarama’s heavily ‘Dead or Alive’d version from the eighties, others will start at the psychedelic hints of Shocking Blue. That the song can live in these distinct spaces proves its strength.

It also shows how Royal Republic have a strong musical identity, allowing them to stamp their mark on the song without breaking it. It’s a strong song with a strong sound; it shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s here.

2. Survivor, by Parg

It’s Big Dumb Energy. It’s gorgeous. And it starts in the first line. No matter what anyone says, I remain convinced that Parg’s first line is “Putting my Bat-Shades on” as a homage to Adam West’s Batman.

I do think that’s the best way to approach ‘Survivor‘. West’s Batman is surrounded by cartoon energy, over-the-top antics, and the sort of dialogue that would curdle if it weren’t so damn sincere. Through it all, West plays it with a straight bat and elevates something that could have been childish into a work of pop art.

Parg has an incessant bass line that is going absolutely nowhere. There’s a brutal boy-band construction to the lyrics that keeps driving you forward, panicking into the chorus. You have a chorus that allows all manner of dance moves and poses from his engine-oiled frame. It just never lets go with its brutally engaging three minutes.

A final thought – a song about being bullied, finding resilience, self-assertion, sung at full volume in the earshot of an Azerbaijani delegation? Perhaps it’s not so dumb after all…

1. Lust by Ida Maria

These end-of-year recaps are about songs, although you can probably spot the points where I’m really nominating an album by proxy. That’s very much the case here for Ida Maria’s ‘Seven Deadly Sins+3.’ ‘Lust’ just nips in ahead of ‘Pride’ (but doesn’t it always?).

It’s absolutely packed with energy and tension wrapped around a positively dirty groove. You can’t help but smile wickedly when you have an album (and a song) challenging the standard view that the seven deadly sins are not to be avoided, but embraced. Mix that with the punk sound Maria brings, and your ears have something gloriously grubby to enjoy.

That crunch is balanced by lyrics that are easy to latch onto from the first listen but offer depth and discussion weeks and months later. It’s a quickie and a long-term relationship all in one.

The Ones That Just Missed Out

The Bluest Bell, by Sophie Ali (YouTube).

… because some songs are more about the memory of the music than the music itself; in this case, “Bluest Bell” reminds me of my first visit to Lithuania.

Wedding Photo Stranger, by Matt Berry (YouTube).

…another dreamy, psychedelic, Matt Berry song. It’s just not as high up my list as previous Berry songs. It’s a high bar to hit the twelve, and it’s not quite there. Enough for “Mentioned In Dispatches” though.

Ted Fucking Williams, by The Baseball Project (YouTube).

…because it was released in 1981, but it’s been in heavy rotation.

(Why 2025×12? Because this started many years ago as song, per month, per year; and that looks and feels a bit like 20×2).