The best music of 2025

I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven Ams.

Look.

I love making this show. Interviewing fascinating people for a living never gets old. But it's also been a very heavy year for many of us. And when you work in the news, there's no shining away from that. It's just part of the job. So for me, music is a respite, something that helps me process to heaveness and something that brings escape and relief. Claire Collins is head

Okay, I've chosen an album by an American indie rock artist, but Alex g and his latest album hit Flights. This is easily my most played album of the year. It's one for all the dad rock fans out there. It's got lots of warm guitars. There's a beautiful emotional undercurrent. It's a bit scruffy, and it's great songwriting. Villain Jack like Afterlife as the lead single from the album, and it just has this beautiful nostalgia. There's great mandolins. The

You described this as dad rock, but Alex g was born in the nineties. Is that where we're at right.

Now, sadly, Daniel, Yes, it is.

He actually just have a child himself, so that's one to age us all.

And for someone who was in his early thirties, he's recorded a lot of albums. I counted ten studio albums. The Beatles only recorded twelve. Talk to me about his history as an Indian musician before he signed to a major label for his last record.

Yeah, so Alex has been releasing albums for about fifteen years now.

He's a real demi artist.

Obviously, very prolific and a lot of his early albums were just made in his bedroom. He started attracting critical acclaim around twenty nineteen with an album Portouse of Sugar, but he had a real breakout with his last album, God.

Safety animals in twenty twenty two.

He's also written a lot for movies and the soundtracks, and he even contributed guitar for Frank Oceanslong, which is a fun faction I only found out about recently.

Do you think signing to a major has changed his approach?

Well, this album sounds a lot more expensive as you would expect.

It's yeah, it's gorgeous.

There's a high fidelity in the recordings, and it's just more polished overall.

But really the DNA and ME sum writing is still there.

That song so freely I felt my gravity. He's been compared to Elliott Smith, who is an influence of his. Would you say that that's a fair comparison. What else would you put in his wheelhouse?

Yeah?

Well, I think they both share like a wistfulness and a melancholy and the lyrics and the vocal delivery. I'd also include him in a company of Wilco Irim, Modest Mouse, all those indie classics and some more contemporary roughens.

He does not be Phoebe Bridges. We aren't drugs. So it's a really great company he's in there.

That's good gear. All of that is very good gear. Okay, so let's move on to your second pick.

Okay. The second p is kind of a more recent release. It's Billy Allen's West End Girl.

And it's the talk of the town.

Is it not launched? A million? Means? Daniel, don't come home. I don't want you in my bed.

Go to the apartment in the West Village instead, pop draw for your Close Your Mountain Medication.

I'm already on my way heading to the station.

It's a full on revenge album and in fairly gruesome detail, it outlines the breakdown of her marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour and his alleged affairs.

Can you tell me about your favorite song from the album, Pussy Palace? Why do you love it?

The imagery on this song is so vivid and it just really contrasts with this very ethereal, very cooky production, and it's just so sad.

Oh doja dolchaja.

And I just love the idea of half the city walking around tying a song called Pussy Palace as well really gives me a joy.

This song is about her husband's infidelities, with lines like hundreds of trojans, You're so fucking broken. She sings, am I looking at a sex addict, but she does it all in such a light way. If you weren't listening to the words, you probably wouldn't register the rage that's under the surface here. How brutal is the album I was.

A bit of ten on the brutality scale. It's the lyrics are impossible to ignore. She's actually had a really beautiful voice, and that just adds.

To the impact.

She doesn't leave anything off the table lyrically, and we really get a sense of the narrative arc of what is unfolded as well.

Lily's been leaving in the public eye for such a long time. She was only twenty one when her breakout His Smile came out, and yet she still wears her heart on her sleeve, writing very openly about her own pain and humiliation. Is that what you think people love Lilian so much?

Yeah?

I mean she has said this really refreshing honesty. But she's also very funny, and I think you know, you can't have one without the other.

So she's always been a great writer.

I'm really glad she's getting another go at it in her forty years.

Though he forward made me feel a bit awkward made me feel a bit awkward.

Oh well, Cuplistead, I was struck listening to this about what a big year it's been for divorce in popular culture. I mean, Missy Higgins was inducted into the area all of fame after herself writing about divorce.

Being a forty two year old woman and singing about divorce and single parenting isn't like the sexiest thing you can do in this industry.

But the response to.

This album has been so incredible that it's made me realize that women my age don't give a fuck about We just want to feel heard, we want to feel seen.

So what do you think divorce is resonating as a theme at the moment?

Yeah, look, I love it.

I'm actually going to talk about another divorce album a bit later.

But look, it's just such a common experience and there's a natural in build audience there that's not a small one.

But the thing that interests me is that each artist has gotten what they need to out of the making of the album, and the audiences are getting something out of it in the same way.

It's really interesting to me.

Was Chloes.

Coming up another British icon? Now I love this. Next pick of yours clear tell us about Essex Honey by Blood Orange.

Okay, so Blood Orange is the mon A cur of UK artist Steve Hines. He's been around for a little while as well. And you wrote this album while brieving the loss of his mom and you can really hear that tenderness in every part of the album and it's just a really moving record.

He's collaborators on this album makes for a pretty impressive list. What can you tell me about him?

Oh well, I've bought in some quite high profile names actually that you might be familiar with, Caroline Policheck Lord and even the writers Ady Smith.

But these names kind of compliment his writing.

They don't really steal the show, which I think is really classy.

Yeah, it's a classy album because it's a real strong sense of place with this record. I mean, how do we hear dev connect to Essex in both a physical and emotional way.

Yeah, It's something that he tends to do on each album. He has a different sense of place and album and this is fine. He obviously takes us back to his hometown of Essex. I don't know, I think of it like the memory Palace. You can hear references to specific streets and childhood moments and sounds he.

Grew up with, and you really get a sense of.

Him returning home to grieve, even if it's not completely over.

There's a real softness to the production.

There's the tapes and strings and it's kind of slightly hazy, but then there's this sense of distance as well, and that comes out lyrically like it's kind of like he's observing himself, and I don't know, just thinks there's something a really interesting listening experience, which I recommend in headphones.

By the way, what's the moment or track that has stayed with you most on this album?

The track that really got me into this album was one called Mine Loaded, and that's the one that features Poula Check and Lord as well as.

I was sort of staffer.

Speaking of Elliott s fifth Lord actually interpolates an Elliott Smith's line into the album, and it moves around a lot that I just find whole, every single part so compelling.

Yeah, it's something you can listen to from beginning to end quite easily. What's your fourth pick?

All right, coming back home, We've got Nina Giacci's out of my computer.

Nina's had an absolutely massive year.

She's just won the JA Award for Australian Album of the Years, she won three Arias and just having a real breakthrough a moment. She grew up on the Central Coast and has been making music as a teenager, but has really been grinding away for the past ten years leading.

Up to this dabul album.

There's a huge amount of goodwill for her in the electronic community, and yeah, I'm really glad she's kind of having this favor.

Now.

Full disclosure, I have to admit I'd never heard of her until you sent me this list. But it is a huge album. It's high energy and very reminiscent of the early naughts. But Nina is only in her twenties. What are her influences on this album.

Yeah, it's a very Internet album, and I think that just reflects her experience growing up as.

An Internet native.

She pulls really heavily from like late two thousands, early twenty tens, you know, my Space era pop in his of early Scrillex and the Presepts even in it, but it's like she's experienced it through the Internet and not in real life.

Of course, I noticed that even though there's a very sort of glitchy computer music to the album. With the album even I Love My Computer, there's also an organic element to her sound as well. How does she achieve that?

She's a real expert at using found sound so recording sounds around her, whether it's like the click of a laptop or a mouse. She did this really cool TikTok video where she showed how she builds rhythms out of everyday noises, including birds of water, dripping, blaring sounds from the outside world.

Makes my drums less predictable and it helps me to gloom my arrangements together, and.

It gives those songs a bit of a softness against the kind of intensity of the production.

She absolutely cleaned up at the Arias this year. She's obviously hugely respected, as you said, and celebrated in Australia. Has she broken through overseas yet.

Look, it's early days, but she's picked up US management and she's definitely on the radar.

She's got lots of taste anchors following her.

I'm sure she's gonna have a very busy touring schedule next.

Year overseas, so yeah, come to see it.

Coming up best friends making music together. Okay, so let's finish strong. What's your final pick?

Okay, I've got to give an honorable mention to Flume and Emma Looise. Full disclosure, I've worked on this album and I've just been obsessed with it all year. It's actually another divorce album, but really not as overt as Lily's.

And so this is not the first time that these two have collaborated. What do you think it is about each of them that compliments the other one?

So? Well, Look, they're just as friends and I think they just have a very nice, easy relationship and they're very comfortable with each other, and they're both introverts, so I think they're the happiest when they're just making stuff in a room by themselves.

Well, Clare, you've given us plenty to go on with Thank you so much for outlining those albums and recommending them to us.

OH A pleasure.

I hope you enjoy listening and Merry Christmas.