AOTY season kicks off with an all killer/no filler roundup of some of the year’s most noteworthy releases.
Good Morning!
Today we’re kicking off a 3- part series spotlighting the best releases 2025 had to offer.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Welcome to AOTY season.
It’s no secret that I believe hearing the right album at the right time can change your life. I could point to plenty of examples — and odds are good you can too — but the point is simple: music sticks when it meets you where you are.
I know I sound like a broken record (heh), but 2025 was once again an incredible time to be a music fan. The big station in your town might’ve been filling the airwaves with empty calories, but on the other end of the dial (and online), it was a completely different story. New artists were showing up daily. Older artists were too. Geese put out a great record, Goose put out a bunch.
It’s worth noting that in 2025, we saw releases from Madonna, Mekons, and 7 Seconds, plus live sets from Hüsker Dü and the Dream Syndicate. That doesn’t even touch the loads of reissues we were gifted this year (Lush, Unrest, etc.). Madge has a new record slated for 2026, and odds are good it’ll be on more than a few lists next December. Bob Mould’s still making records too — great news for music fans and hearing-aid manufacturers alike.
Part of what made this year interesting for me personally was a side project: I spent a good chunk of the year (re)listening to records from 1989 as part of a bracket challenge, and De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising made the final four. Their Cabin in the Sky came out less than four weeks ago — and IMO, it’s some of the best work they’ve ever put out. The only reason it’s showing up here today is that it’s so new (note on that below). The more things change…
Growing up, the “best of” lists were both easy to find and incredibly monolithic — self-appointed tastemakers dictated what we heard on the radio, and that was that. Light work, but homogenized. Consumption was a collective experience. If you want to figure out someone’s age, ask about AT40 or name-drop Rick Dees. The reaction will tell you everything. That’s obviously no longer the case, though looking at some early lists, you’d be excused for thinking otherwise. After working through a bunch, I saw the same titles cropping up again and again.
It’s not that I think those records are bad. I just know there are hundreds of others worth your attention. As I read each of these, I kept thinking, where are the rest?
And that’s where lists like this come in.
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Four writers. Zero consensus. Forty-plus albums that defined indie, post-punk, and everything in between—ranked, argued over, and ready for your queue.
Good morning!
Today we’re taking a quick look at the best records of 2020-2024.
Narrowing down a favorite anything can be tough. It’s much easier to overdeliver and give someone a list of 5 or even 10 top picks. And even that can be fraught. Are these objectively the best, or are they your favorites? Maybe a blend of both? And are you sharing something truly worthwhile — a nudge in the right direction — or have you just given the other person homework?
There’s also a line of thinking that you shouldn’t do these sorts of lists at all — much better to, say, group by genre or list by release date. And to that I say… fair point. But I should be clear here: I love lists — especially when it comes to music. Every music writer is really just three Rob Gordons in a trench coat, and I think (hope?) people like reading them.
If you’re looking for breakdowns on drop tuning, chord changes, or whatever, I’m not your guy, but that’s not usually why people check top 100 or best-of lists anyway. A few are there for the rage bait & hate reads; the rest are there for the recommendations without having to sift through 4000 releases a year.
In other words, they’re trying to avoid a homework assignment.
The first half of the 2020s gave us no shortage of unforgettable albums, from indie and post-punk to genre-crossing experiments. If you’re searching for the best records of the decade so far, consider this your cheat sheet.
For the past couple of years, Sam ColtSteve GoldbergJami Smith and I have put together our annual favorites. There’s not a lot of overlap in taste—or any other demographic—and that’s what keeps this so fun.
We’ll be doing it again this year, so please keep an eye out! In the interim, we wanted to tee things up by taking a quick look at our faves of the decade so far. A fool’s errand? Maybe, but why not?
Consider it the music writing equivalent of a recap or clip show, only this is the lead-in to 2025’s best-of, and not a “very special” episode of your favorite TV series.
Meet the Contributors
Jami Smith—Author of Songs That Saved Your Life, exploring overlooked queer perspectives in music. Her work has appeared in The Advocate and Out Traveler.
Jami’s List:
St. Vincent – Pay Your way in Pain (2021)
Dua Lipa – FutureNostalgia (2020)
Run the Jewels – RTJ4 (2020)
Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg (2021)
Doechii – Alligator Bites Never Heal (2024)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Cool It Down (2022)
Janelle Monae – Age of Pleasure (2023)
Beyonce – Renaissance (2022)
Brittany Howard – What Now (2024)
Cimafunk’s El Alimento (2021)
Sam Colt—Recovering copywriter and author of This Is A Newsletter!—a consistently hilarious, biting chronicle of modern life and its indignities.
Sam’s List:
Alfredo — Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist (2020)
Promises — Floating Points, Pharaoh Sanders & the London Symphony Orchestra (2021)
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You — Big Thief (2022)
Blue Rev — Alvvays (2022)
Cave World — Viagra Boys (2022)
SCARING THE HOES — Danny Brown & JPEGMAFIA (2023)
3D Country — Geese (2023)
“NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD” — Godspeed You! Black Emperor (2024)
No Name — Jack White (2024)
Imaginal Disk — Magdalena Bay (2024)
Steve Goldberg—Writes Earworms and Songloops, weaving personal essays with the songs that lodge themselves in your brain.
Fantastic Negrito — Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? (2020)
Silk Sonic — An Evening with Silk Sonic (2021)
Arooj Aftab — Vulture Prince (2021)
Sloan — Steady (2022)
Weyes Blood — And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow (2022)
Corey Hanson — Western Cum (2023)
King Gizzard — Petrodragonic Apocalypse (2023)
Cowboy Sadness — Selected Jambient Works Vol. 1 (2024)
Storefront Church — Ink and Oil (2024)
My List
Maggie Rogers — Don’t Forget Me (2024)
Wussy — Cincinnati, Ohio (2024)
Sweeping Promises — Good Living Is Coming For You (2023)
Chemical Brothers — For That Beautiful Feeling (2023)
New Pornographers — Continue as Guest (2023)
Spoon — Lucifer on the Sofa (2022)
Nada Surf — Moon Mirror (2024)
Destroyer — Have We Met (2020)
Alvvays — Blue Rev (2022)
Working Men’s Club — S/T (2020)
2020:
This year started on an auspicious note; I blew out my knee the first week of January, and also managed to fracture my foot in multiple places, because why not? At the time, I assumed that would be the defining event of 2020. Silly me. We went on vacation at the end of the month, my knee held together only by my stubborn desire to sit on a beach, and returned to a world almost unrecognizable. After that, we made the same descent into “online learning” and sourdough as everyone else.
Working Men’s Club’s self-titled debut was a bright spot in a bleak year, and landed with me because its sound harkened back to those late ’80s/early ’90s post-punk and dance records I was binging in my newfound free time. I found Destroyer retroactively, thanks primarily to readers here who never missed a chance to mention Dan Bejar whenever I talked up The New Pornographers. Have We Met is elegant, quirky, and well-built all at once. As good a trifecta as any when looking for a “best of” record. This is still one I play relatively often.
2021:
You may notice that there are no 2021 records on the above list. Given the lag between producing a record and us getting our hands on it, 2020 ran on the fumes of records actually recorded in 2019. The dearth of 2021 releases more accurately reflects what lockdown life looked like—a year of live streams and doing shows via Zoom to survive, not booking studio time. At least that’s my impression, anyway.
That’s not to say there weren’t some killer records like Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee. I’m still #teamPsychopomp, but this is excellent, and “Be Sweet” got the nod for my favorite song of 2021, so there’s that. Ditto, Lily Konigsberg’s Lily We Need To Talk Now, and since this is my newsletter, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a live record by a certain Manchester band.But if you only have enough time/money/whatever for ONE record, and asked me which 2021 release to pick up, it’d be Dry Cleaning’s New Long Leg. The English post-punk band knocked it out of the park with their debut album. The musings/vocals mix well with the layered, dense soundscapes she’s talking over (but not overtaking). Dry Cleaning reminds me a bit of King Missile, except frontwoman Florence Shaw is talking about things like lanyards and helicopters, and not detachable… organs…
2022:
Look, anytime Spoon puts out a record, it is a cause for celebration, and Lucifer on the Sofa delivers. They’ve teased a new record for next year, and there’s a greater-than-zero chance I’ll be yapping about it in next year’s year-end piece.
The year also gave us debuts from The Linda Lindas and Wet Leg. The former channeled every pop-punk record in your cabinet, and with tracks like “Ur Mum,” the latter came across like the Gen Z equivalent of Lily Allen.
The Paranoid Style also gifted us For Executive Meeting, an LP where I gave up trying to find new superlatives and just went with: “This record is just one heckuva good time. Have fun.”
Afghan Whigs dropped one on 9/9 that was a solid 10, and 5-3-8 by Dendrons proved post-punk was alive and well. Picture Wire’s Colin Newman, Joy Division (in a good mood), and High Vis all stuck together making an album during the pandemic — and they’re listening to Pavement for inspiration. The result is first-rate post-punk from America’s Second City.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Cool It Down just missed the cut here. Had there not been a deadline to get this out, it’s possible I’d still be fussing with the lineup, and this would likely’ve been on it. As I noted at the time, it managed to thread the needle, making a record that sounds both “like a Yeah Yeah Yeahs record” and brand new all at once. The performance-art element isn’t as front & center as before, but the edge is as sharp as ever. No easy feat.
The record that pipped it? Alvvays — Blue Rev, where the chords are all in the right spots, and where the bridge on a track like “Belinda Says” is exactly as it needs to be. You can hear vestigial traces of the usual suspects here (Lush, MBV, etc.), but nothing is derivative. Blue Rev takes the best parts of power pop, dream pop, shoegaze, and whatever’s going on in lead singer Molly Rankin’s mind and just makes it work.
2023:
If 2021 was a reawakening, and 2022 was an (almost) return to normal, 2023 felt like when we hit our collective stride again. The last of the “pandemic project” modifiers peeled away, and the good music faucet was opened all the way up.
Drop Nineteens came out of nowhere to give us an incredible record, Seablite gave the shoegaze crowd a lil’ something, and the sad dads got a gift from Jason Isbell, the rare songwriter who can tell a whole story in one verse. The Chemical Brothers got in on the action with For That Beautiful Feeling. Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons still know a thing or two about putting together a record rather than piling a bunch of singles together and calling it good
Good Living Is Coming For You from Lawrence, Kansas-based Sweeping Promises was a revelation. The title sounds like the sort of slogan you’d see on Soviet agitprop posters or hear Peggy Olson come up with in a strategy session for Tupperware. Both are true. Speaking with the duo, frontwoman Lira Mondal described their sound as “Voracious, wild-eyed, grabbing-with-both-hands YOLO energy.” I also saw their sound described as “The B-52s if they never saw the sun.” Both of those are true, too.
Continue As Guest will take a listen or two before it clicks. But the band will win you over, as they invariably do. I often find myself writing, “Just go buy this record!” as a placeholder until I can better articulate my thoughts. Sometimes, I wish I could leave it at that. This is one of those cases.
2024:
Is there some recency bias here? Sure, maybe. But it’s undeniable that last year was chock-full of good records from end to end. Cloud Nothings tried to blow our speakers with Final Summer, and Cola dropped the best Parquet Courts record not made by Parquet Courts. What’s old was new again as J Mascis, Jesus and Mary Chain, and Pearl Jam all dropped new records. Kim Deal, too.
Last year saw Nada Surf gift us Moon Mirror, a rock-solid power pop from one of the most consistent, if not popular (heh), bands of our generation.
Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee garnered almost as much ink for how it was distributed as for how good it was. Any record that gets someone to sit down and listen for two hours without doing anything else is worth considering for any best-of list. Cindy Lee is the stage name of Patrick Flegel. No spoilers, but don’t be surprised if another Flegel shows up on this year’s list.
My fave of last year was Wussy’s Cincinnati, Ohio. I don’t know what it is about this band, but man, they strike a chord in me that few other bands can hit. I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but I think better than anyone else, they have helped me “get” what living in the Midwest is like. And the music? Well, it’s an LP with gem after gem just waiting to be discovered.
That’s a wrap! Did we nail it? Miss something obvious? Snub your favorite? Let me know—I’m always ready to be proven wrong (or at least add a few more albums to the listening pile).
#24 The Replacements’ Don’t Tell a Soul vs. #105 Tin Machine’s Tin Machine
Good morning!
Today we’re taking a look at records from The Replacements and David Bowie’s Tin Machine
Note: As many of you know, I recently wrote about a Best Record of 1989 challenge and noted that I’d be occasionally writing some of these up.
I’ve started doing some quick hits of each matchup and posting them directly to the page. Some will be longer, some won’t, and some might just be a handful of sentences. There’ll probably definitely be some typos.
Check ’em out and let me know your thoughts! Chin wags & hot takes welcome! Sharing and restacks are always appreciated.
In case you missed this week’s earlier matches, check out:
There used to be a wall in downtown Portland, Oregon, where someone had painted “Paul Westerberg is God.” Anytime my friends and I were down there, we’d see it, laugh, and make the sort of inside jokes funny only to us. (notably, it stayed up for a really long time).
I’m not sure I’d go that far, but when it comes to taking sincerity and cynicism and making it sound fantastic, Westerberg is definitely in rarefied air.
Westerberg, of course, was in The Replacements, a band I’ve yet to find anyone say anything bad about. Don’t Tell a Soul is a record that evokes plenty of strong thoughts.
Part of that rationale comes from the fact that DTaS is a departure from their earlier records. Gone are some of the rowdier, adolescent elements that made records like “Sorry, Ma’ and “Hootenanny” such a wild ride. This is a more polished, straightforward-sounding record. There’s no “Gary’s Got a Boner” on this one. For all the self-sabotage and self-inflicted wounds over the years, DTaS at least feels like a record from a band that wants it to become popular.
The album kicks off with “Talent Show,” one of my all-time favorites by the band. We can talk about playing style and instrumentation all day, but none of it would matter without first mentioning Westerberg’s talent as a songwriter. Few people can tell a full story in so few words the way he can. He says in a few verses what it would take us mere mortals a book to describe.
You could make the argument that this was a preview of Westerberg’s solo career, and it would have some merit. That would come in time. But for now, this is still a four-piece, and the music holds up as well as anything that came from Westerberg’s pen. “Talent Show” is an all-timer, but “We’ll Inherit the Earth” is right up there as well. “Achin’ to Be” feels purpose-built to rocket up the Modern Rock charts, and does “I’ll Be You.” And no Reps record would be complete without a few acoustic-ish tracks. Here, “They’re Blind” and “Rock n Roll Ghost” fill the bill.
If forced to pick a clunker, I’d go with “I Won’t,” but I wouldn’t like it,
there is a line of thinking that “Darlin’ One” is one of the weaker closers in the band’s discography. When posted up against its predecessors (“Here Comes a Regular,” “Can Hardly Wait,” Answering Machine,” etc.), it’s an easy statement to make. But we’re not comparing DTaS to those earlier records, and taken as part of this album, it holds its own just fine.
People like what they like, and they generally like whatever record they first hear of any given band. It’s easy to see why the adoration for Tim, Pleased to Meet Me, etc., is still there decades later. In my case, DTaS was the first record by the band that I owned. And you never forget your first, right? I don’t know if this would be one of my desert island discs, but it’d definitely be one of the ones spread out on my bed while I was scrambling to figure out what to pack.
If there’s a lament here, it’s that this should’ve been the record the band used to call time. It’s the perfect endcap to a brilliant discography, and they would have gone out on top, IMO.
Instead, they hung out for one more record (All Shook Down), and it was a case of one record too long. In an alternate universe, that would’ve been the first solo Westerberg record rather than masquerading as the final Replacements one.
Comment from YouTube
Somewhere, there is also a universe where Westerberg does things like run errands. He goes to the same appointments the rest of us endure. He does laundry. That’s not a universe I want to acknowledge or even know about. He might not be God, but he’s certainly a legend, and that’s enough for me.
In 1995, I saw David Bowie play. Setlist.FM will tell you it was a decent—if not great— setlist. A few hits, some deeper tracks as red meat for the true fans, and a couple of covers. Serviceable, if nothing else.
Nine Inch Nails was co-headlining, and they came out to play a couple together as well. All well and good.
What that webpage won’t tell you is that I spent most of his set feeling underwhelmed. None of it made sense. This was Bowie! What the fuck? Maybe it was that the lights were never quite turned down. Maybe he didn’t play a couple of tracks I’d been hoping for. Maybe I just wanted to see NIN more. The reasons don’t matter, only the result.
This also happens to be how I feel listening to Tin Machine. I know it’s a side project, but still! It’s David Bowie’s Tin Machine.
And herein lies the rub. This wasn’t just another reinvention; this was an intellectual break with what he’d been doing. This was a quartet all on (supposed) equal footing, as opposed to hired guns performing Bowie’s work.
The recording of the album was also a departure, with live takes making the final cut, etc.
It’s a bluesy, gritty record- especially compared to the poppier veins he’d been tapping in the years leading up to this. There would still be a bit of time before Grunge really caught fire, and this feels like a Grunge record made before anyone knew what that was.
Being ahead of one’s time was nothing new to Bowie– he’d spent a whole career doing just that, but it’s one thing to do it when you’re a neophyte. It’s wholly another to do it as an established m, member of the rock god Pantheon. We like what we like, and we (collectively) had no taste for whatever this was.
There are a couple of bright spots here and there (“Pretty Thing” in particular), but you have to squint to hear ’em. Relistening to the record, I couldn’t help but be transported back to that show.
Sitting in that seat, I kept thinking I should be digging this more than I was. Listening to this ahead of the bracket challenge, those same feelings came flooding back.
Bottom Line: Both of these records represent a departure in form for the respective artists. It might be a hot take amongst Reps fans, but I think the band nailed it with DTaS. On the other hand, Tin Machine proves that abrupt departures aren’t without their risks. Specific to this matchup, one of my favorite records of all time is up against one of the more underwhelming releases from an artist I like.
My vote: My bracket and vote will go to DTaS, and I won’t even blink while throwing the lever.
Any thoughts on either of these records? Agree/disagree with my takes? Which one of these would you vote for? Sound off in the comments!
Today we’re taking a look at Weird Al Yankovic’s UHF – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and Other Stuff (#48) as he takes on 11 by The Smithereens (#81)
Note: As many of you know, I recently wrote about a Best Record of 1989 challenge and noted that I’d be occasionally writing some of these up.
I’ve started doing some quick hits of each matchup and posting them directly to the page. Some will be longer, some won’t, and some might just be a handful of sentences. There’ll probably definitely be some typos.
Check ’em out and let me know your thoughts! Chin wags & hot takes welcome! Sharing and restacks are always appreciated.
KA—
I want to preface this by adding a few points for context. First, writing humor is hard. Like, really hard. If you think it’s not, just try it and show your work to a couple of friends. See what happens. Anyone who can do it once is worth noting—anyone who can do it for four decades plus is nothing short of amazing.
Weird Al‘s parody songs have delighted generations of fans, and it won’t be me that says anything bad about that.
UHF (the movie) was itself a parody- a parody of all the bad TV we used to be subjected to, where the channels were still changed by hand via a clunky dial. Before there were 57 channels and nothing on. It’s a fun enough premise and the sort of film you might’ve watched on a Saturday afternoon when it was pouring with rain. Yankovic plays a schlub who gets a job running a TV station his uncle won in a card game. Michael Richards plays one of the main characters. Hijinks ensue!
My second point? I have a very low capacity for humor in music. I’ve never gotten the appeal of a novelty band like Ween, and don’t get me started on that fistful of late 90s/early 00’s groups whose whole mission was to make “Zany” a new sub-genre. That goes double for all the ska groups that tried. Christ, some of that was interminable.
There’s none of that pretense here. The value prop with Weird Al is that he’s gonna take a song you love, and tweak the lyrics just enough to make you laugh. Maybe there’ll be enough of us smirking to make it a hit. There’ll be a metric ton of puns, some wordplay, and a liberal dose of accordion—all part of the schtick, and all good things.
The UHF soundtrack is no exception. There’s a take on Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” that’s solid. Ditto the spoof of Fine Young Cannibals’ “She Drives Me Crazy.”
Among a few of my friends, Spatula City was an inside joke for so long that it had morphed into something unrecognizable —one of those things that would be impossible to reverse engineer.
And hey, Yankovic’s songs are cool…the first time you hear them. But for me, they’re like a Carolina Reaper or Dave’s Insanity Sauce; you really only need to try them once every few years.
Speaking of movies, the title of The Smithereens’ 3rd record was actually a nod to Spinal Tap (as in “This one goes up to 11”). I am not entirely sure that’s true, but I’ve heard it enough over the years to think it might be. Besides, I want to believe it, so…
Even if you don’t recognize the record, you’ll likely recognize “A Girl Like You,” which cracked the Top 40. That was supposedly written for the movie Say Anything, but didn’t make the cut. Just imagine Lloyd Dobler blasting that out of his boombox instead of Peter Gabriel’s ‘In Your Eyes.’
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
That song would be their biggest hit, and it would be easy to assume that every track went as hard as it did. But the band owes much more to pop bands than rock bands. There are family-sized riffs and plenty of power chords, but those are balanced with plaintive lyrics and plenty of catchy choruses purpose-built for singing along. I wrote a whole ass love letter to Ed Stasium about his treatment of The Replacements’ Tim LP, and his touch behind the boards here is just as on point.
You get “A Girl Like You,” but also tracks like “Baby Be Good” (this writer’s fave on the record), and “Maria Elna,” which would be equally at home on a Gin Blossoms record.
Anyway, like Weird Al, the value prop with the Smithereens is simple; you get Mack truck-sized riffs, a groove so in the pocket, you owe it some change, and Pat DiNizio’s vocals. With 11, you get a record that is best enjoyed loud.
Bottom Line: My streak of playing the odds on my brackety and voting with my heart aligning was short-lived. But hear me out here: Somehow, Weird Al made the cut to get into this tourney. Do enough people actually like this record for it to be taken seriously, or was it, well, a parody of sorts? When making my picks, I went with the former. Each had to meet a threshold of votes to be invited to the dance, and I just can’t see there being a viable path to collusion. Maybe there’s an inside joke from previous tourneys that I’ve missed. I dunno. Either way, once again, my bracket pick is for one record, and my vote will be for another.
Head: Weird Al
Heart: The Smithereens
Any thoughts on either of these records? Agree/disagree with my takes? Which one of these would you vote for? Sound off in the comments!
Kevin Sent 
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