I’m not a big New Year’s guy.
I was relatively impassive on New Year’s Eve. My kids stayed up and welcomed the year, and I sat around making as much idle progress into 2026 as a slug in winter.
What can be said about 2025 that hasn’t already been said? The world was afire. Being in news media, you see the world chipped away like detritus from a stone tool, and we continue to stumble backwards into the Stone Age as a species.
But enough cynicism. It wasn’t all bad.
I travelled broadly across Canada: Ottawa, Niagara Falls, Thunder Bay and Halifax. I quietly published my first book, Eerie Whispers: Exploring Canada’s Reluctant Relationship with Its Ghostly Lore, through Dundurn Press. And I grew the audience for The Superstitious Times. That explains why I don’t update my current website with articles, though I really should post my Haunted Magazine pieces here.
Regardless, it’s time to drum up my Top 5 songs from a year now firmly buried at our feet.
Some songs that deserve a shout-out but didn’t make the Top 5 include Saskatchewan’s Kalsey Kulyk with “You Fight Dirty,” Florida’s Doechii with “Anxiety,” Colombian chanteuse Karol G’s “Latina Forever,” legacy artist Sheryl Crow’s “The New Normal,” “Dissolve” from darkwave EDM masters Sidewalks and Skeletons and hyperpop Louisianan Addison Rae’s “Headphones On.”
Now, without further ado, my Top 5 from 2025.
5.
Song: “Dame Un Grrr”
Album: Single
Artist: Fantomel featuring Kate Linn
Release: June 20, 2025
Why: A dance track steeped in Latin American influence, this song is ironically produced by Romanian mixer Fantomel. Kate Linn is also Romanian, which makes the Latin rhythms, eagerly seized on by manicured social media darlings, feel slightly out of place. Somehow, it works beautifully and lands as a welcome middle finger to ICE, which continues to attack Latin American communities in the United States.
4.
Song: “Body Down”
Album: Single
Artist: Stanley Simmons
Release: December 5, 2025
Why: While their fathers lean hard into a zero-fucks-given, please-keep-buying-our-stuff boomer phase and get praised for it by one of the most insidious figures in modern history, Nick Simmons and Evan Stanley go in the opposite direction. For their first single, they channel Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. I hear shades of Fleet Foxes, The National and Mumford and Sons, but the track carries a stronger “Wooden Ships” or “Ohio” energy rooted in the protest folk genre of another era.
3.
Song: “Asking for a Friend”
Album: Single
Artist: Foo Fighters
Release: October 23, 2025
Why: If you wanted to sum up 2025 in terms brevity would appreciate, you might simply say this: hard, troubling times rife with cruelty. The bad guys are winning. They’re trying to get a foothold in the world while suppressing freedoms so they can get fat and comfortable. It feels like a grim blend of the Gilded Age and Nazi Germany, with too many people holding themselves back from fighting against it. Foo Fighters shine a light on that tension with a polished rock track that carries a darker edge than their recent singles.
2.
Song: “The End”
Album: The End
Artist: Mammoth
Release: May 1, 2025
Why: Wolfgang Van Halen, son of legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen and actress Valerie Bertinelli, carves out his own space with this call to arms. It’s a solid banger that calls out global indifference to heinous acts unfolding around us, and the apathetic malaise that seems to be afflicting us as a species.
1.
Song: “Catch These Fists”
Album: Moisturizer
Artist: Wet Leg
Release: April 1, 2025
Why: Isle of Wight outfit Wet Leg, buoyed by Rhian Teasdale, keeps cranking out female-powered rock that feels increasingly rare in a sea of over-produced, over-polished pop. Music like this doesn’t just pad the escapist backlog of the Spotify generation. “Catch These Fists” is a sharp clapback aimed at skeezy pickup artists who scour nightclubs and dingy dive bars like sharks.