Top 10 songs that got me through 2025
10. Voyager by boygenius
Genre: alternative/indie, folk
Length: 2:49
Released: 2023
From the beginning of the song, “Voyager” bleeds with loss. Like much of Bridgers’ work, the lyrics are simple but hard-hitting. Dacus and Baker provide the gentle hum that starts off the song, evoking feelings of lamentation, defeat and… acceptance. Ultimately, “Voyager” is the detangling of a relationship, trying to separate the good from the bad. Hot summer suns, long days spent only with them and being so painfully close to someone that they seem like the star you orbit. When that ends, the bad begins to emerge as the rose-colored glasses come off. This person that you thought you knew like the back of your hand hurt you. They could have killed you. You weren’t vulnerable in terms of intimacy, you were vulnerable like a hunted animal.
When that relationship is over and you become yourself again, it feels as alien as walking on the moon. You are in uncharted territory. You are an alien in your own life, and you will never fully be the person you were before them.
Favorite lyric: “You took it from me, but I would have given it to you”
9. The Hand by Annabelle Dinda
Genre: folk rock
Length: 3:11
Released: 2025
“The Hand” draws the delicate balance between criticizing how men view themselves and trying to understand it. The first verse, chorus and second verse all detail how men portray themselves in media. They’re heroes. They’re adventurers. They’re trailblazers. Men have the primal urge to not be forgotten. They ache to be remembered and etch their lives into the earth. The remainder of the song focuses on how women are portrayed. Oftentimes, women are made to be demure and subservient. We shouldn’t yearn for the spotlight. It makes us uncomfortable. Men are creators. Women are the creation.
Why is it like that? Why are we not allowed to be loud and angry and dominant?
“The Hand” comes down to one true question: Are we, those who are meant to be silent and admired, allowed to be inheritors of the world?
Favorite lyric: “The strike, the pause, the message from God forbid she shows emotion”
8. Big Black Hole by we just met
Genre: indie folk
Length: 4:38
Released: 2025
To be human is to long for connection. One of the hardest parts of being human, however, is the inability to read someone else’s mind. “Big Black Hole” grapples with intense feelings towards another person while still being unsure of their feelings towards you. Its melody is carried by dreamy banjoes and sweet-like-honey harmonies. The chorus of the song is cosmic. The singer is “proving [their] worth with the burn in the atmosphere,” showing that they are meant to be because they haven’t disintegrated in the muse’s orbit. But ultimately, all of that effort doesn’t mean that their desires will come true. Your feelings of worth do not equate requited love.
Favorite lyric: “Guess if you were gonna need me/You probably would've cornered me by now”
7. Changed Things by Jake Minch
Genre: singer-songwriter
Length: 5:20
Released: 2025
Doing things for yourself, though sometimes necessary, always affects other people. Moving away affects your parents. Your siblings. “Changed Things” details the emotional changes that happen between siblings when one departs from the flock. The song is nostalgic, reflective and overwhelmingly melancholic. Despite things never going back to the way they were, our brains revert back to a simpler time in our dreams. Our old childhood home, where our family was just a walk down the hall away. The late night conversations had that felt easier than breathing that aren’t going to happen again. All of that is because something you did changed the way life moves. It changed things.
This song hit the hardest for me because it reminded me so much of my little sister (my older one, too, but Minch wrote this song for his younger sister). Growing up is inevitable. You eventually realize that jokes were made at your expense, or that those we love are doing something self-destructive and you just have to watch while they do it. As much as you can dream of being ten years old again, that time in your life is never coming back. You can’t run away, and you can’t bring them with you. All you’re left with is the fact that things are different, and you played a part in it.
Favorite lyric: “You talk, I draw/I'm not doing well/You know, you help”
6. Let Down by Radiohead
Genre: alternative rock
Length: 5:01
Released: 1997
As described by Radiohead lead vocalist Thom Yorke, “Let Down” is about the let down of sentiment and the lack of ability for music and art to fill our emotional needs. We can’t keep waiting for things to fix themselves. We can’t rely on something nonhuman to fix our human needs and emotions. Ultimately, we will be “let down” by the lack of fulfillment we get from holding out hope for things to improve. We can dream of when things are better, when we’ll “grow wings,” but for the time being we will be disappointed by what our lives are. We are useless in our lack of ambition to fix things.
In true Radiohead fashion, the song is quite nihilistic. And I think that adds to my enjoyment of it.
Favorite lyrics: “One day, I am gonna grow wings/A chemical reaction/Hysterical and useless”
5. You Were a Child by Jennifer Jeffries
Genre: singer-songwriter
Length: 3:03
Released: 2024
We are always searching for a sense of meaning, and “You Were a Child” summarizes that perfectly. The song describes a broken relationship with the church, which in turn affects the relationship with God. We blame Him for our flaws, because He made us this way. We criticize our supposed failings. We believe people’s twisted interpretation of the Word. We can feel as though we are doing everything right, but we still falter. That’s what makes us human, but in a system that has a distaste for the human, it’s seen as failure.
I was born again in my faith this year, and this song still hits me just as hard. It has taken a lot of deconstruction from the ideologies that surrounded me in my youth, but I have regained my faith. This song, to me, is a criticism of what “the church” does to those who are not perfect paragons of Christianity. Instead of welcoming them as Jesus commanded, many churches shun them.
Favorite lyric: “Those words that you sing are the way that you bleed/You're bleeding out/And you hate who you are even worse who you're not”
4. Pain is Cold Water by Noah Kahan
Genre: folk pop
Length: 2:19
Released: 2024
Many of Kahan’s songs deal with the throes of depression, and this one is no different. In the namesake lyric, “pain’s like cold water, your brain just gets used to it,” Kahan describes what it’s like to live with chronic depression. It’s a numbed sense of self. Depression makes us isolate. It makes us angry. It makes us empty. We feel disconnected from other emotions so much that we fear we will never have them again.
We can tread water all we want to try to stay afloat, but we will tire out eventually.
Favorite lyric: “And if love was contagious, I might be immune to it'/Pain's like cold water, your brain just gets used to it”
3. Nettles by Ethel Cain
Genre: alternative/indie
Length: 8:04
Released: 2025
The best thing for us isn’t always the easiest. To Anhedönia (the real artist behind Ethel Cain), the song is about “someone who feels like you are difficult to be loved but still craving to be loved.” We want to be wanted, but being wanted is hard. It’s prickly. We want to protect ourselves from the vulnerability we so desperately crave. The title draws parallels between our desire for hard things and the nettle plant, which have stinging hairs but are medicinally beneficial to humans.
In terms of the narrative of the album, “Nettles” describes Ethel and Willoughby’s differing worldviews and how they each handle hard times. Ethel is terrified of losing her beloved, while Willoughby tries to assure her that it won’t happen. Despite her anxieties and hesitations, Ethel does dream of a life with Willoughby that ultimately never comes.
Favorite lyrics: “To love me is to suffer me”
2. Fable by Gigi Perez
Genre: alternative/indie folk
Length: 4:22
Released: 2025
“Fable” details how loss shakes the way we view the world and religion. Written in response to her sister’s death, Perez details her spiritual doubt but ultimate hope that there is something better out there for her sister. She ends up “dream[ing] of eternal life” so that she can see the person she’s lost again. It draws some similarities to another song of hers, “Sailor Song,” where she “sleep[s] so [she] can see you.” Though she still is hesitant in her beliefs, she calls out to God in the hopes that she will receive some kind of guidance.
Loss can make people turn to things they never would have considered before. Perez hoped that she could find some sense of belonging and reasoning in Christianity, since that is what the faith promises. Despite this, she has her reservations, because she worries that she will be rejected by God Himself for simply existing as she does. Nevertheless, she calls out to Him because of her sister.
Favorite lyrics: “When I lifted her urn/Divinity says, ‘Destiny can't be earned or returned’/I feel when I question my skin starts to burn/Why does my skin start to burn?”
1. Pool by Samia
Genre: alternative/insie
Length: 4:03
Released: 2020 (original); 2025 (stripped)
Nothing lasts forever. The beautiful things we have in our lives are fleeting, but we cling onto them anyway. We try to revel within moments to feel it as long as possible. But even with these moments safe within our memories, our mind will fail us eventually. We will forget the little things. Love doesn’t always last, just like the memories we hold won’t be as vivid as they once were.
As we get older, life becomes filled with questions. How long will this party last? How long will my workday be? How long will I remember my grandfather’s voice? How long until I forget the purr of my childhood cat? How long will the people I love stay in my life? How long? Our fears can overwhelm us as soon as we crack open the door. Everything comes pouring out.
Favorite lyrics: “How long/Do I have left with my dog 'til I start forgetting shit?/How long, how long/’Til we're rich and then we're not, and then we're rich?/How much longer 'til I'm taller?/How much longer 'til it's midnight?/How much longer 'til the mornin', are my legs gonna last?/Is it too much to ask?”
