Recommendations of the Editorial team
Episode 282
Be the avant-garde of retrospection! With this motivation behind me, I decided to write an annual summary for the pop diary now, long before the general retrospective furor. Serious research was necessary, and so I hacked the words “The Year 2025 in Pop” into an AI.
The answer came promptly: “The year’s pop music was a mix of continued hits carrying over from the previous year and new, dynamic releases.” A wonderful sentence: the concentrated, exhausted perplexity of our days under the makeshift make-up of an urgent narrative of progress.
Even more than in previous years, pop music in 2025 was one of the more predictable aspects of existence. Everything that could have been expected happened: Taylor Swift released an album, rock star biopics caused ennui in the cinema seats, Oasis played again, several heroines and heroes left, and Markus Söder sang a version of “Sweet Caroline” produced by Leslie Mandoki. The latter is everything you need to know about Germany in 2025.
In between, something special happened in the various niches: in January, the Neapolitan jazz funk musician Bassolino played the concert of the year with his band in a Cologne club. Listen to his EP “Città Futura”, the sun shines like a stone oven pizza even in winter! There were also the “new dynamic releases” mentioned by Aunt KI in the form of great records by Bad Bunny (Latin Trap), Geese (Indie Rock) and Sophia Kennedy (Sophia Kennedy).
Sometimes nothing happened for months. Tumbleweeds flew over desolate roads, rice sacks fell over and time tiredly watched itself pass.
Again, nothing with a revival by Ry Cooder
I had to cope with two defeats: The prediction I made privately that in 2025 young retro record buyers would now discover Ry Cooder after Fleetwood Mac, Queen and the Doors did not come true. As record dealer friends assured me, people continued to buy Fleetwood Mac.
Defeat number 2 was worse: while trying to dance to the Bad Bunny track “Baile Inolvidable” as part of exuberant celebrations, I sustained a nasty back injury in April, which to this day causes appreciative tongue clicks in physiotherapist circles. A man’s gotta know his limitations…
The Style Award of the Year goes to Bob Dylan. He obviously had no desire to take cell phone photos as part of the “Outlaw Tour” that he undertook in the summer and as a result played several concerts despite the dry weather in baggy rain gear with a hood. What was left of him looked like Liam Gallagher dressed up as a construction worker’s tent.
Admittedly, December is still ahead of us, but I’m already pinning my hopes on 2026. If one can express wishes, a year without biopics would be incredibly disappointing for me. Otherwise, something like a new music genre or an overwhelming, transgressive youth culture would be great.
Of course it’s cheap to just comment on the decline from the columnist ivory tower. You should set a positive example and set your own tone. For my part, I intend to produce a rave anthem for 2026. For this purpose, I will have Werner Herzog say the sentence “The year’s pop music was a mix of continued hits carrying over from the previous year and new, dynamic releases” in order to then accompany it with stimulating beats. The sentence, not Herzog.
During live performances, the DJ booth will be flanked by dancers in construction workers’ tents. Of course, this doesn’t solve all the problems, but it would be a start.