The 25 best songs of 2025 so far
As we approach the halfway mark of 2025, among the things we have yet to find out are how many weeks Morgan Wallen's 'I'm the Problem' will spend at No. 1, when Lana Del Rey's supposed country album might actually drop and whether Taylor Swift was setting us up by suggesting she's unsure about completing 'Reputation (Taylor's Version).' What we do know is that Drake is not over and that Miley Cyrus is now better at making ABBA music than ABBA. Here, in alphabetical order by act's name, are tunes by the two of them along with 23 more of the best songs of 2025 so far (including a few that came out late last year but didn't achieve true liftoff until more recently). Scroll down to the bottom for a Spotify playlist that collects them all.
Bad Bunny, 'Baile Inolvidable'The year's most widely heard piano solo?
BigXthaPlug featuring Bailey Zimmerman, 'All the Way'A casually inevitable country-rap banger.
Blondshell, 'What's Fair'In which a daughter poses the questions she never could ask her late mother.
Bon Iver, 'From'Can we talk about vocal arranging?
Caroline with Caroline Polachek, 'Tell Me I Never Knew That'For those old enough, a welcome reminder of Chicago's Joan of Arc.
Sabrina Carpenter, 'Manchild''Why so sexy if so dumb / And how survive the Earth so long?'
Charley Crockett, 'Lonesome Drifter'South Texas country meets South Memphis soul.
Miley Cyrus, 'End of the World'As alt-rock collaborators go, Alvvays is a vast improvement over the Flaming Lips.
Lucy Dacus, 'Best Guess'The unhurried tempo makes it only friskier.
Damiano David, 'Zombie Lady'A key change to un-die for.
Drake, 'Nokia'Ten years (and one career-shaking rap beef) after 'Hotline Bling,' Drake is once again pondering who's calling him on his cellphone in this sneaky comeback(?) hit.
Sam Fender, 'Arm's Length'An extremely sensual soul-rock song about wanting not to be touched.
Florence Road, 'Caterpillar'Here's where the story starts.
Haim, 'Relationships'The L.A. power trio goes R&B girl group.
Lady Gaga featuring Gesaffelstein, 'Killah'What you need you have to borrow.
Kendrick Lamar with SZA, 'Luther'After 13 weeks at No. 1, this tender little love song still hasn't hardened.
Parker McCollum, 'What Kinda Man'Flirty, rowdy, sly.
Jensen McRae, 'Let Me Be Wrong'A type A can dream.
Playboi Carti, 'Cocaine Nose'Scuzzy yet plush.
Chappell Roan, 'The Giver'Man! She feels like satisfying a woman!
Sleep Token, 'Caramel''Bohemian Rhapsody' for metalheads into 'Black Mirror.'
SZA, 'Crybaby''I know you told stories about me / Most of them awful, all of them true.'
Zach Top, 'Good Times & Tan Lines'As crisp as country music gets.
Morgan Wallen, 'TN'Nashville's saddest superstar keeps finding new ways to feel sorry for himself.
Lola Young, 'Messy'From the nation — not to mention the performing arts academy — that brought you 'Rehab' comes another instant classic of saucy throwback soul.
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Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The 25 best songs of 2025 so far
As we approach the halfway mark of 2025, among the things we have yet to find out are how many weeks Morgan Wallen's 'I'm the Problem' will spend at No. 1, when Lana Del Rey's supposed country album might actually drop and whether Taylor Swift was setting us up by suggesting she's unsure about completing 'Reputation (Taylor's Version).' What we do know is that Drake is not over and that Miley Cyrus is now better at making ABBA music than ABBA. Here, in alphabetical order by act's name, are tunes by the two of them along with 23 more of the best songs of 2025 so far (including a few that came out late last year but didn't achieve true liftoff until more recently). Scroll down to the bottom for a Spotify playlist that collects them all. Bad Bunny, 'Baile Inolvidable'The year's most widely heard piano solo? BigXthaPlug featuring Bailey Zimmerman, 'All the Way'A casually inevitable country-rap banger. Blondshell, 'What's Fair'In which a daughter poses the questions she never could ask her late mother. Bon Iver, 'From'Can we talk about vocal arranging? Caroline with Caroline Polachek, 'Tell Me I Never Knew That'For those old enough, a welcome reminder of Chicago's Joan of Arc. Sabrina Carpenter, 'Manchild''Why so sexy if so dumb / And how survive the Earth so long?' Read more: Is Charley Crockett country music's next big 40-year-old thing? Charley Crockett, 'Lonesome Drifter'South Texas country meets South Memphis soul. Miley Cyrus, 'End of the World'As alt-rock collaborators go, Alvvays is a vast improvement over the Flaming Lips. Lucy Dacus, 'Best Guess'The unhurried tempo makes it only friskier. Damiano David, 'Zombie Lady'A key change to un-die for. Drake, 'Nokia'Ten years (and one career-shaking rap beef) after 'Hotline Bling,' Drake is once again pondering who's calling him on his cellphone in this sneaky comeback(?) hit. Sam Fender, 'Arm's Length'An extremely sensual soul-rock song about wanting not to be touched. Florence Road, 'Caterpillar'Here's where the story starts. Read more: Lucy Dacus on L.A., a layered love life and the 'horny poetry' of her new album Haim, 'Relationships'The L.A. power trio goes R&B girl group. Lady Gaga featuring Gesaffelstein, 'Killah'What you need you have to borrow. Kendrick Lamar with SZA, 'Luther'After 13 weeks at No. 1, this tender little love song still hasn't hardened. Parker McCollum, 'What Kinda Man'Flirty, rowdy, sly. Jensen McRae, 'Let Me Be Wrong'A type A can dream. Playboi Carti, 'Cocaine Nose'Scuzzy yet plush. Read more: How Jensen McRae became L.A.'s next great songwriter Chappell Roan, 'The Giver'Man! She feels like satisfying a woman! Sleep Token, 'Caramel''Bohemian Rhapsody' for metalheads into 'Black Mirror.' SZA, 'Crybaby''I know you told stories about me / Most of them awful, all of them true.' Zach Top, 'Good Times & Tan Lines'As crisp as country music gets. Morgan Wallen, 'TN'Nashville's saddest superstar keeps finding new ways to feel sorry for himself. Lola Young, 'Messy'From the nation — not to mention the performing arts academy — that brought you 'Rehab' comes another instant classic of saucy throwback soul. Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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ABBA book revelations: AC/DC connection, the unlikely inspiration for ‘Mamma Mia!', more
From 'Dancing Queen' to 'Fernando,' 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' to 'Super Trouper,' the polished pop of ABBA still glistens. Beloved around the world, the quartet of Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad have remained mostly in the background in the decades since their 1970s domination, peeking out occasionally for a movie or theater opening (the staggeringly successful 'Mamma Mia!') or the debut of their live digital avatar show, 'ABBA Voyage,' currently playing in London. In 2013, the quartet allowed Swedish music journalist Jan Gradvall access to them and for the next decade, he culled their personal stories for 'The Story of ABBA: Melancholy Undercover' (out now from St. Martin's Press, 336 pages). The book reads as a thesis-like analysis of Swedish music and how ABBA's songs contributed to the globalization of pop culture. But Gradvall did extract tidbits about the origin of their hits and how ABBA became as much a business as a band. Those seeking juicy insights about intra-group dynamics or the dissolution of the marriages between Faltskog and Ulvaeus and Andersson and Lyngstad during ABBA's pinnacle should look elsewhere. ABBA's is a unicorn of a success story – a band that won Eurovision in 1974 with the delectable 'Waterloo' and for the next seven years dominated the charts with flawless pop songs that shimmered on the outside, but, as Andersson once said, snuck in some 'melancholy undercover.' Here are some highlights from the book. More: New music documentaries rock the big screen at Tribeca | The Excerpt Ambient sound played a vital role in one of ABBA's biggest hits Much like the Bee Gees have explained that the scratchy guitar intro of 'Jive Talkin'' originated with the band hearing the 'ch-ka-ch-ka-ch-ka' cadence from their car tires when they crossed a causeway into Miami each day, ABBA's 'Take a Chance on Me' also developed from unconventional influence. Ulvaeus was an avid runner – a hobby he started as a way to lose weight – and would frequently go on 6-mile runs in whichever city ABBA was touring. Before one outing, Andersson handed him a cassette tape of a new song that needed lyrics. As he ran the trail, Ulvaeus was aware of the rhythm his feet were making on the ground: 't-k-ch, t-k-ch, t-k-ch.' The sounds blossomed into words – 'take a chance, take a chance, take a chance' – and an ABBA classic was born. The song became the group's seventh No. 1 in the U.K. and reached No. 3 in the U.S. The curious connection between ABBA and AC/DC In order to tour Australia, ABBA was informed the country's musician's union required them to book an Australian band for shows back in Sweden. Concert promoter Thomas Johansson liked the debut of a barely known Australian rock band – AC/DC – and, while worried no one would buy tickets to see them, booked them in 1976 at dance halls and on bills with bigger acts. AC/DC earned an early fan base in Sweden after performing on outdoor dance floors (one show was billed as 'ballroom dancing') and with 'dansbands' including Bert Bennys. ABBA's biggest fan was a notorious punk rocker Sex Pistols legend Sid Vicious was known for violent outbursts, considerable drug use, and according to bandmate John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), loving ABBA. In a memorable moment for at least some of the people involved, Vicious and ABBA were both in Arlanda Airport in Stockholm when a smitten Vicious spotted the band and started running toward them with proclamations of love. Perhaps the vomit on his jacket propelled ABBA's security to quickly hustle the band away from the 'deathly pale teenage boy with a … dog collar around his neck,' thwarting Vicious from meeting his idols. More evidence of Vicious' admiration for the glossy pop band came from a one-time girlfriend, Teddie Dahlin. In her book 'A Vicious Love Story,' she wrote that during the Norwegian leg of the Sex Pistols' 1977 tour, Vicious brought only one cassette tape on his tour bus – ABBA's 'Greatest Hits.' More: Bruce Springsteen is releasing his 'Lost Albums': The songs you haven't heard but need to 'Mamma Mia!' the musical emerged from an unlikely source When it opened in London's West End in 1999, no one, including ABBA, could have imagined that a musical with a cute-if-flimsy plotline suffused with the songs of the Swedes would eventually play in 60 countries, including a 14-year run on Broadway (it closed in 2015 but returns Aug. 2-Feb. 1). The backstory of the creation of 'Mamma Mia!' comes from an amusing source: salacious American daytime talk shows such as Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake. The band didn't want a 'cheesy' musical, and book writer Catherine Johnson, a burgeoning playwright from Bristol, took inspiration from the outlandish parental stories as well as drawing from her own experiences as a single mother. The English Conservative government at the time suggested that women got pregnant merely to justify government aid, a concept that 'upset me a great deal,' Johnson says in the book. That anger fueled the storyline of a mother and daughter with three possible fathers, but in a thoughtful, positive manner. 'Mamma Mia!' was also the first West End musical to have a female writer, a female producer (Judy Craymer) and a female director (Phyllida Lloyd).
