My favourite end-of-year list to compile changes every given year, but 2025 certainly feels like an exceptional year for music videos. I’ve adored revisiting so many different unique, inventive and entertaining visuals, many of which still feel fresh and exciting many months down the line. I truly think this is our strongest crop of videos to date, many of which could well have been worthy winners in their own right had the timing been a little different. So before we dive into the best music of the past year, let’s first feast our eyes on 2025’s most arresting visuals. Continue reading →
Season’s greetings to one and all! It’s the most wonderful time of the year – time for our annual Listmas celebrations! Starting in earnest with a look at the most interesting and imaginative artwork of the past year. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. A great cover can say a lot about an album before you ever press play. Depending what the album calls for, the artwork can serve to catch your eye, spark your imagination, set the mood, or even tell an entire story all its own. Here’s a look at our favourite examples from 2025. Continue reading →
We live in the golden age of new music. More new albums are released now than at any other point in history. We are quite literally spoiled for choice. Even with the best will in the world, we can only listen to a small fraction of all the albums released in a given year. Fewer still can be given the time and attention necessary for a proper review. Free time is in short supply, but that doesn’t mean that these records which fall by the wayside aren’t worthy of note. Brand new for this year, we’ll be kicking off our Listmas celebrations with a look at the “best of the rest”. The overlooked albums that didn’t get a proper feature on the site, but nonetheless left an impact on me, soundtracked my year, and left me longing to share them with people in some capacity. Here’s a brief shout out to a handful of the best Forgotten Gems of 2025. Continue reading →
Sometimes the universe decides to send you a sign, and what else can you do then but follow. A few months back I remarked to a friend how long it had been since I last saw a gig at Sheffield Arena. “All the major tours used to stop in Sheffield; what happened? I’m sick of trekking all the way to Leeds for shows, when Sheffield is right there!“. Lo and behold, later that very same day, Mumford & Sons announced their latest UK tour, and offered up precisely what I’d been asking for. Not one to question such a well timed coincidence, I took it instead as a sign that I was long overdue seeing the Mumford lads live. They feel like such an important cultural pillar of my generation, one of the big bands of our teenage years, the folky soundtrack of a simpler time since passed. Surely there’s no better time of year than the run up to Christmas for reigniting that youthful spark within; just the kind of energy I needed for my final live show of 2025. Continue reading →
We’re all a little haunted by who we were, and who we thought we’d be. We start out life so naïve and ambitious, head full of dreams, picturing ourselves as the main character in some epic adventure. As time goes by, our stories seldom lead to the glorious highs we envisioned. Life gets in the way, fresh hurdles and challenges get written into the plot, ever more pages appearing between where you are now and the happy ending you’re working towards. We coast through the years, just trying to get by, until our story becomes so unfamiliar that it feels like it was written by someone else entirely. What would our younger selves think of us now, I wonder? Perhaps that’s we get so drawn to tales of great heroes and fantastical worlds – because after too long in the real world, we start to feel like side characters in our own story. ‘Ghostwriter’ finds Megan Dixon Hood trying to reckon with the stranger described in all the ink scrawls laid before her, and where her idea of herself fits within the story so far, before resolving that the ending is still yet to be written. A stunning return to her bewitching gothic folk roots, ‘Ghostwriter’ is a powerful reminder that every new day is a blank page, and a new chance to rewrite your own story.
It’s been said that when you look at someone through rose tinted glasses, all their red flags just look like flags. You can become so besotted with the wrong person that you can no longer see them for who they truly are. You’ll keep getting hurt time and again, yet still believe every insincere apology. Your friends will worry about you, call out the toxicity for what it truly is, and in response you’ll just keep making excuses for the one who hurt you and say “you don’t know them like I do”. Eventually some transgression will be the one that tips the scale and causes their glamour to drop, finally letting you see the way they’re treated you. “I know what you’re like, now that I’m on the other side“. Our favourite pop rock powerhouse Cristina Hart crushes those discarded rosy glasses beneath her boot heels on her fierce new single ‘Little Crimes’. Full of fire and confidence, it’s all about calling someone out for the pain and frustration they’ve put you through, all the time and energy you wasted telling yourself they were right for you, and making a promise to yourself never to welcome them back into your life. I’m loving the edge, energy, and self-assuredness woven into Cristina’s recent singles; keeping the momentum going, and growing the anticipation for what the next era has in store for this rising star.
I love a good villain song – they were the highlight of practically every Disney film as a kid. Villains in movies always seem to be having a blast; hogging the spotlight, chewing the scenery, performing ridiculously over-the-top acts of wickedness and skulduggery. The kind of villainy we encounter in real life however is nowhere near as charming. Everyday evil is something simple, banal and empty. We rationalise the actions of those that hurt us as something intentionally antagonistic and spiteful, because that makes sense, moreso than the reality that toxicity is often just their broken default setting. ‘Romanticise’, from progressive pop trio Exploring Birdsong, takes the everyday evil of a toxic relationship and dials it up to moustache twirling levels of villainy.
Written from the perspective of the perpetrator, it depicts someone with a well of malice within, who sees the world through red lenses. Someone eager to cause pain (“I opened up your chest, your heart is on a plate, So I filled the wound with salt, and put it on a flame“) and so cartoonishly wicked as to view positivity with derision and distain (“You could romanticise a car wreck at 80, the sky while it’s raining“). A great villain song delves into a darker place while still being a fun ride, and between the twisted lyricism, the gut-punch metal breakdown, and that addictive earworm chorus, Exploring Birdsong absolutely nailed it. ‘Romanticise’ is one of band’s best tracks to date, and I can’t get enough of it.
Belwood Music 