Well, another year has flown by and will soon be consigned to history’s waste bin. It was a year of monstrous tariffs and volatile markets, of small boats and protests outside hotels, of ongoing, heartbreaking conflicts around the world. Once again, the women showed how it should be done in a hugely impressive second consecutive Euros triumph for the Lionesses. In a world ever more dominated by technology, there were cyberattacks on the likes of Marks and Spencer, and the inexorable rise of Artificial Intelligence. AI may change humans’ relationship with music forever, as AI-generated content and creativity begin to be added to streaming playlists – while most people don’t notice and many, perhaps, don’t even care. While ‘big’ names like Oasis drew in the crowds for events in arenas and stadiums, small venues continued to struggle. Maybe the world of music is being re-shaped and listeners, sorry – consumers, and their habits and behaviours, are changing too.
For me, there have been so many musical highlights, and I take heart from the continued quality of music that artists are putting out into the world. There have been stunning albums from the likes of The Delines, Patterson Hood, Kassi Valazza, The Bones of J.R. Jones and Anna Tivel. Uplifting sounds have come from Valerie June and the prolific Glitterfox. Meanwhile, Jerry Joseph excelled himself once again with my personal album of the year, which opens with the song of the year – ‘Pink Light’ is an epic exploration of life, told through a near-death experience. You can check out a backstage mini-gig I recorded with Amigo the Devil here. I had the great pleasure of interviewing some wonderfully interesting people, including three of my favourites: John Carter Cash, Frank Turner and Jerry Joseph, with whom I shared Sunday lunch and he experienced toad-in-the-hole for the first time. What amazing, fascinating company he is. I did my bit for small (and large) venues with a long list of great gigs, including Ferris & Sylvester, Beans on Toast, John Smith, Jim Ghedi, Lord Huron, Casey Neill, Chris Murphy, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, David Ford, and John Smith, amongst others. There were several artists I saw multiple times in 2025 – Chuck Prophet is so incredibly entertaining, Jerry Joseph is a force of nature on stage, and Frank Turner blew me away several times, including shows in Ipswich, Norwich, his unbelievable ‘Show 3000’ at Alexandra Palace and the unexpected reunion with his old punk band Million Dead. There was also the great community that is the Maverick Festival, wowing audiences since 2008. This year, the festival welcomed Danny George Wilson, Michele Stodart, Ags Connolly and many other exciting artists. Maverick remains my spiritual, musical, communal home. But, for all these marvellous shows and interviews, my musical highlight of the year was rising star Ella Spencer playing an intimate house gig for my birthday – spellbinding stuff.
So, it’s time for my video run-down of 2025. As usual, my self-imposed rule is that I can only choose one from each month. Some months were incredibly busy with quality music. So, inevitably, this means that many superb songs and videos have been left out, but what remains makes for a pretty fine playlist for Christmas Day. To all the artists, agents, managers and PR people that send stuff my way – many thanks for showing what good health our music industry is actually in. I get sent huge numbers of videos to review, many more than I could ever actually post. The competition is fierce – apologies for all the worthy songs that didn’t quite make it. Anyway, on with the list.
Having set my rules, I’m going to cheat immediately by sharing, once again, the video for Foy Vance’s latest single, which we premiered a few days ago. My list had been compiled before I received this, and I feel compelled to share it again first:
January – Ringo Starr ‘Look Up‘ (original post here)
Produced and co-written by the legendary T Bone Burnett, Ringo Starr released his first country album for fifty years, and it was a triumph. With brilliantly crafted songs and an excellent country-vocal performance, Starr showed everyone how it should be done. The title track is a hugely listenable song that is both musically and lyrically uplifting: “There’s a light that shines in the darkest days.” In the video, a crowd of people make a giant, human peace sign and Ringo’s message of peace and love is one that should be taken much more seriously. This is one to enjoy.
February – Neil Young and The Chrome Hearts ‘Big Change‘ (original post here)
‘Big change’ from Neil Young delivers a big message through a big sound. The guitars from Micah Nelson are forceful, driving, squalling, demanding your attention. It’s a brash, uncompromising anthem for our times, and it asks an important question: Are you going to stand by and watch as the world changes, or are you going to be part of making it happen?
March – Patterson Hood ‘The Forks of Cypress‘ ft. Waxahatchee (original post here)
Featuring guest vocals from Waxahatchee, ‘The Forks of Cypress’ is a beautiful, epic song that grows and swells and transports us away from ourselves. Everything is just right: the arrangement, the layered instrumentation, the poetry and power of Hood’s language. He says of the song: “The Forks of Cypress is a real place, a few miles just north of my hometown of Florence, Alabama. A former plantation house, once owned by a cousin of Andrew Jackson, it was struck by a ‘lightning cluster’ in 1966 – when I was two – and exploded into flames, burning to the ground in under five minutes. All that was left were these huge columns, in a rectangle on top of the hill overlooking the meadow. It was right by a very creepy, rickety one-lane bridge that the locals called Ghost Bridge. I drove past this (and crossed the scary bridge) every week of my childhood on my way to my Great Uncle’s house (where I spent every weekend). Later, as a teenager, kids would drive dates out to Ghost Bridge and tell ghost stories and make out. The bridge was torn down about a decade ago. I wrote the song as pure fiction, inspired by those great story songs that Bobbie Gentry did, an ‘Ode to Billie Joe,’ etc., where she implies a story without really telling it. In my head, I heard Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) singing it with me and was blessed that she was willing to do so. She’s one of my very favorite artists, and such a lovely person. The song was fleshed out wonderfully by Phil, and Brad Cook (who played keyboards, dobro and bass on it), Dan Hunt on drums, and then Kevin Morby put the cherry on top with a stunning lead part.” The single appeared on “Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams”, Hood’s first solo album in 12 years and one of the year’s best releases.
April – The Bones of J.R. Jones ‘Shameless‘ (original post here)
New York-based The Bones of J.R. Jones, also known as Jonathon Linaberry, was a new discovery for me this year. This song, from his sixth album “Radio Waves”, is typically compelling. Guitar is blended with lo-fi electronics and a brilliant vocal. It’s great to see such art and effort in the video too; it follows the narrative of a betrayed lover and is an absorbing piece of cinema. Do check out the album – one of my favourites from 2025.
May – Valerie June ‘Endless Tree‘ (original post here)
‘Endless Tree’ is an anthem for all the optimists out there. It’s an uplifting song, full of hope, that highlights human connection rather than division. She asks the question: “Are you ready to see // A world where we could all be free // As branches of an endless tree?” If only we could all think and feel and be a little more like Valerie June, the world would be a very different place. Taken from the album “Owls, Omens, and Oracles”, this is the voice of truth and love and an antidote for fear and cynicism. The accompanying video is suitably vibrant, colourful and magical.
June – Holly Carter ‘What You See‘ (original post here)
One of the most memorable live performances I’ve seen this year was Holly Carter at the Maverick Festival. It was no ordinary musical set; instead, she presented the story of unionist Joe Hill, describing his life through talk and song. It was a vivid reconstruction of his life, brought to life beautifully by Carter’s pure voice. The two-time AMAUK Instrumentalist of the Year winner is known for her fingerstyle guitar playing and for being one of the only female professional pedal steel players in the UK. This song, which we premiered in June, demonstrates the quality of Carter’s fluent vocal. Enjoy.
July – The Swell Season ‘Great Weight‘ (original post here)
The acclaimed duo of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová are at the heart of The Swell Season. In ‘Great Weight’, the pair are supported by a team of wonderfully talented musicians; swaying percussion and soaring fiddle elevate the song, reinforcing Hansard’s emotional delivery and the great sensitivity of their writing. Hansard explains the song’s theme: “This song is about throwing off the weight and burdens of unnecessary struggle. It’s a take stock moment. A kind of report from the centre of a clearing storm. It’s violent, but one knows it’s gonna leave one at a new beginning. Any way the wind blows. I still roam. Every direction is suddenly available.” Powerful stuff from the duo who once earned the 2007 ‘Best Original Song’ Academy Award for ‘Falling Slowly’.
August – Glitterfox ‘Gamma Ray‘ (original post here)
Glitterfox were always going to be in this list – it was just a case of ‘which song?’ ‘Gamma Ray’ is from “Decoder”, which was produced by Chris Funk of The Decemberists. Incredibly, it was the band’s second album of 2025 – the Portland-based band are experiencing an absolute flood of creativity and invention. The video is good-humoured and demonstrates the band’s ample imagination as well as their typically uplifting musical style. ‘Gamma Ray’ is all about the driving rhythms, hooks and flowing melody that is typical of all their songs. It’s impossible not to be swept along by this tuneful river of music.
September – Anna Tivel ‘Fluorescence in the Future‘ (original post here)
Intimate and almost spoken in the verses and then soaring in the choruses, ‘Fluorescence in the Future’ is another poetic, thoughtful song from Oregon-based Anna Tivel. This song is unpredictable, full of spaces and anticipation, pulling you into its melodic movement. Tivel is one of the finest songwriters around, and her seventh album, “Animal Poem”, is a masterclass in songcraft and lyricism. I can’t explain the themes and purpose behind “Animal Poem” anywhere near as well as Tivel herself: “Every album is a snapshot, a momentary study of the way a mind reaches for understanding. I can feel myself reaching in these songs, for whatever is right beyond my grasp. Mortality and connection. Suffering and meaning. People lead the narratives, come into orbit, spin away again – an exhausted mother at a freeway exit, an aging neighbour surrounded by a growing pile of newspapers, the unsung heroes of a midwest uprising, two lovers looking at the sky. It’s hard to know how to hold a creative life in a time that feels fraught with venomous division, careening technological advance, and an ever-widening chasm between the affluent and the dispossessed. What good are poems when affordable housing is scarce, the climate teeters on a dangerous edge, and war breaks out over misinformation spread by profit-hungry algorithms? I think about being here. How brief it is. How incomplete our understanding. I think about history. All the worlds we’ve created and broken. Revolution and renaissance. Hope and humility. Everyone here is living a creative life – teachers and parents, kids and convenience store clerks. We’re all tasting this wild existence, finding ways to express how much it hurts and moves us. This work is my own small addition to that communal story. The water we swim in. The way our attention moulds our truths. Humanity is unfolding as we describe it. We’ll never get it right, but the attempt is everything.”
October – Lady Nade ‘Rainbow‘ (original post here)
Just like Valerie June back in May, Lady Nade brings joy and hope to her music. When she emerges from the woods into the bright clearing, holding the vibrantly coloured balloons, Lady Nade creates a moment of delight, and you can’t help but be moved. She says: “‘Rainbow’ highlights that we are all a full spectrum of colour, and every shade is part of our true selves. For me, it’s about finding peace in accepting that spectrum. This song is a tool for embracing the full range of our emotions, promoting well-being, and giving voice to those dualities we so often carry silently. Rainbow is about who we are in our inner world. We are complex people, with a myriad of different emotions that make us who we are. This song is about having compassion for our dualities and recognising that we are a Rainbow of human personality.” This is a song for everyone, an anthem for acceptance and embracing every part of ourselves. Beautiful music with a beautiful message – it’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
November – Pete Muller ‘One Last Dance‘ feat. Allison Russell (original post here)
With Latin sounds, warm bass, sweet violin and vocal support from the wonderfully gifted, GRAMMY-winning Allison Russell, ‘One Last Dance’ is a gorgeous piece of music. It’s beautifully crafted and meticulously arranged, the instrumental layers swirling and swelling as Russell’s and Muller’s voices circle around one another in an aching vocal dance. ‘One Last Dance’ is the title track from Muller’s new album, which is well worth checking out. The song and video sound, feel and look cinematic as the story of a failed romance unfolds. Soulful stuff.
December – Amy Speace ‘Weight of the World‘ (original post here)
Our final video of the year is from another outstanding storyteller, Amy Speace. Her language and lyricism are always sensitive and thought-provoking, especially important for a narrative about the impact of war on a family and the neighbourhood. As ever, her vocal performance is heartfelt and emotive, yet so controlled. Speace’s latest album, “The Blue Rock Sessions”, was the result of a songwriting residency at The Blue Rock Retreat and Studio. The album wasn’t planned; instead, the songs flowed from Speace, and the sense of freedom is evident in the songwriting. Immerse yourself in it if you haven’t already.
So, dear reader, that brings us to the very end of another year of videos. This list touches on the superb quality of the music that’s out there and demonstrates the health of our music industry. Despite all the challenges – streaming, AI, closing venues – creativity is thriving. Over the Christmas holiday, I urge you to absorb each of these songs and then explore the artists and albums they represent. I hope everyone has a merry Christmas, and I look forward to sharing what 2026 has to offer.
Fabulous list Andrew so much to explore