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2025 in Song
Dec. 18th, 2025 08:11 amAs usual, the first few songs are bands I saw at Rockaway Beach in Bognor, the festival that basically carries on New Year's celebrations for a few more days.
The Pill - Woman Driver. Often I find that bands that play Rockaway are 6Music-famous by the end of the year, Self Esteem, Fat Dog, Fontaines DC. Ditto this band who've been on permanent play on the indier of the 6M shows. This song is a lot of sarcastic fun.
Arxx - Crying In The Car Wash. Fun fact, Brighton's Arxx wrote the songs for the BBC's Riot Women. This one is electro clashing with indie with a bit of a Robyn vibe.
Fontaines DC - It's Amazing To Be Young. In which Grian sings. Not necessarily successfully but let's give points for effort. I like the jangletastic semi-shoegaze of the backing. Can't really empathise with the sentiment, obvs, although "sometimes I wake up and it's dark" rings some bells.
Wet Leg - Catch These Fists. They're back! with a second album! We went to the launch event where we didn't get to meet the band (and anyway, we already met Josh (keyboards, guitar) outside Purezza in Brighton back in 2021) but did meet the Goblin on the album cover. Anyway, Catch These Fists is Rhian being a fighter not a lover as some loser tries to chat her up, with a bit of Franz Ferdinand's Do You Want To thrown in.
Pulp - Spike Island. They're back! It seemed obvious after their triumphant return to live gigs in '24 that they'd want a bit more Arabacus Pulpy action. I had thought they'd squeezed everything they could out of pop, but i surprised myself by humming this a lot back in April. I was wrestling with the coat-hanger, can you guess who won? is classique Jarv.
Chuck D - New Gens. He's back! Damn, he's weird. I loved this track, which I assumed was about Gen X loving the Zs. Makes a fucking change for an elder statesman to celebrate the younger generation. Rest in place and cowabunga.
D Meletis - Niamos. I got bored during the second series of Andor, but I liked the wedding episode which was basically the characters dancing to this song for 50 mins. We both liked it so much that we had it at our wedding (party), but not for 50 minutes straight.
Erika Vikman - Ich Komme. Erika was robbed. This saucy seaside postcard of a song should've beaten that Austrian simp.
Sissal - Hallucination. The second best sing at Euroviz.
Pulp - Got To Have Love. As above but more electro-gospely.
The Pill - Posh. More from the Isle of Wight's second best band. Proving that youngsters aren't all sitting at home drinking kombucha and talking about #fitnessgoals. "Red wine, red lips, sore tummy and a bag of chips. I've lost my drink!"
Wet Leg - CPR. Is it love or suicide? Rhian falls in love. I worry if she falls out of love there's going to be a car crash of a break up album.
Suede - Disintegrate. I heard this song on 6Music and was like, who is this? Then Brett's whine came in. Given that I spent much of the early '90s with a dislike of Suede that was only mollified when Oasis came on the scene, I was surprised that i liked it - probably because it's sounds like early '80s Cure.
CMAT - Take A Sexy Picture Of Me. We've had country, alt-country, folk-country, and now Welsh-country. This was pretty much Ciara's year and it's good that popstars can still come up through the OG gig economy rather than the Simon Cowell route.
Bater Dury - Schadenfruede. Like the Suede song, I heard this on the radio and was all kindsa excited until I Baxter's nasal drone kicked in, but i ended up really liking it, despite the mispronunciation of schadenfreude. After all, It's my favourite emotion, I know how to pronounce it.
Wig Wam - Do You Wanna Taste It? I wrote last year that once upon a time I got to know music from adverts, now it's theme tunes frm TV programmes. This was the theme tune from S1 of Peacemaker, my fave TV show of the year. I don't usually like '80s themed hair metal but combined with the awkward dancing form the cast, it was a grower.
Foxy Shazam - Oh Lord. I didn't think the theme tune to S2 could be better but I ended up with a permanent earworm. Keep on. Keeping on!
Coach Party - Disco Dream. Pretty much like The Pill: loud guitars, shouty vocals, like being 21 again. Another from the Isle of Wight - Wet Leg has started a Solent revolution! The music. The dancefloor. The lights.
Humour - Plagiarist. Like the 2000s never happened, I like the way it goes from 1991 style industrial hardcore to indie-melodic grunge.
Nation of Language - The Wall and I.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
picosgemeos and I saw these in November and given that I only knew one song (2017's Fractured Mind), I really loved them. They came off somewhere between The Postal Service and OMD, but unlike '80s electro bands they were active, not static behind synths and were very entertaining with some Napoleon Dynamite-esque boogieing. Also we had seats, which always helps.
Adrien Noelle, Nancy Wang - Sharevari. They also played this, which is a cover of the first techno song by A Number of Names from 1981. I prefer the cover.
Sleaford Mods & Big Special - The Good life. The Sleaford Mods mad-person-on-the-bus ranting broken up by the soulful crooning of Big Special.
Just Mustard - Endless Deathless. Let's finish the year with something that sounds like the Nightblooms why don't we?
The Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7rjWB3CLBP9280WDhH159b?si=ZPUEp87XS6Gvr1ACjGvJnw
The Pill - Woman Driver. Often I find that bands that play Rockaway are 6Music-famous by the end of the year, Self Esteem, Fat Dog, Fontaines DC. Ditto this band who've been on permanent play on the indier of the 6M shows. This song is a lot of sarcastic fun.
Arxx - Crying In The Car Wash. Fun fact, Brighton's Arxx wrote the songs for the BBC's Riot Women. This one is electro clashing with indie with a bit of a Robyn vibe.
Fontaines DC - It's Amazing To Be Young. In which Grian sings. Not necessarily successfully but let's give points for effort. I like the jangletastic semi-shoegaze of the backing. Can't really empathise with the sentiment, obvs, although "sometimes I wake up and it's dark" rings some bells.
Wet Leg - Catch These Fists. They're back! with a second album! We went to the launch event where we didn't get to meet the band (and anyway, we already met Josh (keyboards, guitar) outside Purezza in Brighton back in 2021) but did meet the Goblin on the album cover. Anyway, Catch These Fists is Rhian being a fighter not a lover as some loser tries to chat her up, with a bit of Franz Ferdinand's Do You Want To thrown in.
Pulp - Spike Island. They're back! It seemed obvious after their triumphant return to live gigs in '24 that they'd want a bit more Arabacus Pulpy action. I had thought they'd squeezed everything they could out of pop, but i surprised myself by humming this a lot back in April. I was wrestling with the coat-hanger, can you guess who won? is classique Jarv.
Chuck D - New Gens. He's back! Damn, he's weird. I loved this track, which I assumed was about Gen X loving the Zs. Makes a fucking change for an elder statesman to celebrate the younger generation. Rest in place and cowabunga.
D Meletis - Niamos. I got bored during the second series of Andor, but I liked the wedding episode which was basically the characters dancing to this song for 50 mins. We both liked it so much that we had it at our wedding (party), but not for 50 minutes straight.
Erika Vikman - Ich Komme. Erika was robbed. This saucy seaside postcard of a song should've beaten that Austrian simp.
Sissal - Hallucination. The second best sing at Euroviz.
Pulp - Got To Have Love. As above but more electro-gospely.
The Pill - Posh. More from the Isle of Wight's second best band. Proving that youngsters aren't all sitting at home drinking kombucha and talking about #fitnessgoals. "Red wine, red lips, sore tummy and a bag of chips. I've lost my drink!"
Wet Leg - CPR. Is it love or suicide? Rhian falls in love. I worry if she falls out of love there's going to be a car crash of a break up album.
Suede - Disintegrate. I heard this song on 6Music and was like, who is this? Then Brett's whine came in. Given that I spent much of the early '90s with a dislike of Suede that was only mollified when Oasis came on the scene, I was surprised that i liked it - probably because it's sounds like early '80s Cure.
CMAT - Take A Sexy Picture Of Me. We've had country, alt-country, folk-country, and now Welsh-country. This was pretty much Ciara's year and it's good that popstars can still come up through the OG gig economy rather than the Simon Cowell route.
Bater Dury - Schadenfruede. Like the Suede song, I heard this on the radio and was all kindsa excited until I Baxter's nasal drone kicked in, but i ended up really liking it, despite the mispronunciation of schadenfreude. After all, It's my favourite emotion, I know how to pronounce it.
Wig Wam - Do You Wanna Taste It? I wrote last year that once upon a time I got to know music from adverts, now it's theme tunes frm TV programmes. This was the theme tune from S1 of Peacemaker, my fave TV show of the year. I don't usually like '80s themed hair metal but combined with the awkward dancing form the cast, it was a grower.
Foxy Shazam - Oh Lord. I didn't think the theme tune to S2 could be better but I ended up with a permanent earworm. Keep on. Keeping on!
Coach Party - Disco Dream. Pretty much like The Pill: loud guitars, shouty vocals, like being 21 again. Another from the Isle of Wight - Wet Leg has started a Solent revolution! The music. The dancefloor. The lights.
Humour - Plagiarist. Like the 2000s never happened, I like the way it goes from 1991 style industrial hardcore to indie-melodic grunge.
Nation of Language - The Wall and I.
picosgemeos and I saw these in November and given that I only knew one song (2017's Fractured Mind), I really loved them. They came off somewhere between The Postal Service and OMD, but unlike '80s electro bands they were active, not static behind synths and were very entertaining with some Napoleon Dynamite-esque boogieing. Also we had seats, which always helps.Adrien Noelle, Nancy Wang - Sharevari. They also played this, which is a cover of the first techno song by A Number of Names from 1981. I prefer the cover.
Sleaford Mods & Big Special - The Good life. The Sleaford Mods mad-person-on-the-bus ranting broken up by the soulful crooning of Big Special.
Just Mustard - Endless Deathless. Let's finish the year with something that sounds like the Nightblooms why don't we?
The Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7rjWB3CLBP9280WDhH159b?si=ZPUEp87XS6Gvr1ACjGvJnw