20. MODEL/ACTRIZ, “CINDERELLA”

“When I was 5, I remember clearly my want to have a Cinderella birthday party.” This fairytale track from Brooklyn-based rock band Model/Actriz sees frontman Cole Haden confess his queer childhood dream of a princess birthday party to a first date. A standout from their album Pirouette, the track is breathless, a little frantic, and a raw introduction to the band’s distinct visceral sound. (™)

19. R!R!RIOT, “RUN RIOT RUN FEAT. ATM HANSON”

This one’s certified platinum on WeChat; you’re late. It’s a pluggnb collaboration between producer ATM Hanson – the so-called ‘Metro Boomin of China’ – and vocalist R!R!Riot, who sounds like if Avril Lavigne and Playboi Carti had a baby, and that baby was a bilingual English-Mandarin speaker. “Run Riot Run” is also somewhat of a title track for R!R!Riot herself, whose name is a portmanteau of her birthname, Riya, and the word ‘riot’, lifted from Raf Simons’ “Riot! Riot! Riot!” 2001 Autumn/Winter menswear collection. (SPM)

18. ROBYN, “DOPAMINE” 

Finally, the sovereign of sad-happy songs has returned with another cathartic club anthem. Back with her first solo release in seven years, last month, Robyn dropped “Dopamine” – adding to her list of songs engineered for the 4am closing set. Following in the footsteps of its predecessors, “Dancing On My Own”, “With Every Heartbeat” and “Be Mine”, “Dopamine” is sonically uplifting, yet carries emotional weight, with anxiety lying beneath the excitement. It includes all the magic ingredients that made us fall in love with Robyn in the first place: namely, the desire to thrash about in the rain (à la Flashdance), exactly like the Swedish singer does in the music video. (See also: the Jamie xx remix of this track). (IVD)

17. AYA, “OFF TO THE ESSO”

hexed!, the 2025 album by Huddersfield-raised musician and producer aya, is not for the faint of heart. The cover – which shows the artist herself, with a mouth full of worms – pretty much sums it up: slightly repulsive, anxiety-inducing, and somehow very compelling, all at the same time. Track two, “Off to the Esso”, bundles all of this up in a frantic three-and-a-half minutes, beginning with a thumping bass heard through paper-thin walls, and culminating with a ruckus of aggressive synths. Do I know precisely what aya means when she says: “a blizzard when the lizard den got pickled then / I’m sizzled, sozzled, hen”? No. Do I absolutely need to? I don’t think so? (TW)

16. KIMJ, SEBII, THE DEEP, EFFIE, “MY UNNIES”

Over the past year, across East Asia, a number of young artists have been rewriting the rules of pop music, and, in many ways, “My Unnies” featuring South Korean vocalists The Deep and Effie, Korean-American producer Kimj, and Chinese-American producer-vocalist Sebii, is the culmination of this movement. It’s K-pop in its expansiveness: some catchy melody lines, a hint of rap, and a kaleidoscopic electronic beat that opens up into an explosive, almost tear-out dubstep bassline; but it’s told with the DIY language of today’s musical outsiders. Much like the track’s music video, which sees the cohort link up on the beaches of Thailand, “My Unnies” is a mission statement: having honed their talents in various cities across East Asia, they are now ready to take over the world. (SPM)

15. PINKPANTHERESS, “ILLEGAL”

“Is this illegal? / (Hehe) It feels illegal.” If you managed to avoid this cheeky snippet from Fancy That this summer: congratulations, you’re obviously not on TikTok. Opening the latest album (sorry, mixtape) from PinkPantheress, the song soundtracked many a confessional video this summer, overlaid with text about adventurous and/or disastrous life choices. Maybe this viral spread is a reductive way to measure the track’s success, but it surely wouldn’t have travelled so far and so wide if it didn’t speak to a very real feeling of uncertainty. This vulnerability comes through via Pink’s pithy songwriting and intimate vocal delivery, and is backed up by the frosty, nostalgic drum and bass we’ve come to love. (TW)

14. MECHATOK, “MAKKA FEAT. FAKEMINK AND ECCO2K”

“Makka” is lightning in a bottle. Originating in a chance meeting between new-gen pop producer Mechatok and Fakemink in the corridor of a studio complex they both happened to be recording in, with the music video being shot outside on the same day, it’s all about spontaneity. Who cares if the same Fakemink verses also appear on “Snow White”? After all, running throughout the entire track is an adlib layer of Fakemink mumbling what appears to be absolute nonsense. Add Mechatok’s plodding lead guitar riff and Ecco2k’s breathless chorus built around a slang word for cough syrup to the mix and you get a pretty wild ride, but, somehow, it all works together beautifully. (SPM)

13. JT, “GIRLS GONE WILD”

There’s so many quotables on this one, yet very few I feel comfortable uttering from my own mouth — “Bad bitch Bar Mitzvah” is about as PC as it gets here. From its triple-X-rated lyrics to its bombastic, body-popping production, “Girls Gone Wild” is a Detroit ghettotech track through and through, but it’s destined for dancefloors all over the world. (SPM)

12. ZARA LARSSON, “MIDNIGHT SUN”

As 2025 comes to a close, the Zara Larssonaissance is in full swing – but things looked a little different earlier in the year. Sad. Broke. “Lush Life” money running out – then “Midnight Sun” dropped and the world would never be the same again. Propelled by an insatiable TikTok dance, gay men’s Instagram stories and – most importantly – its own fiercely catchy melody, “Midnight Sun” became the viral sleeper hit of 2025. Like diligent chemists in a Swedish lab, Larsson, MNEK and their band of collaborators somehow managed to distil the purest essence of pop vitality into a three-minute song, and undeniably shift the singer’s career in the process. With Doechii bopping to the song on TikTok, PinkPantheress crowning it “progressive pop”, Muni Long hopping on the bouncy remix – plus the not-so-small feat of a Grammy nomination – “Midnight Sun” has well and truly given the girls what they needed. Summer isn’t over yet! (EH)

11. SOPHIA STEL, “I’LL TAKE IT”

YouTube comments posted under the “I’ll Take It” music video are littered with “here before this blows up” and “why is this not more viral,” as the Canadian alt-pop musician runs around a hotel gym with her wired headphones spilling the adrenaline-building beat. And while the synth-heavy electronic track did eventually go viral on TikTok, Stel’s success lies in making exactly what she wants, writing and producing her own tracks that feel as instinctive as this one. (TM)

10. BLADEE, YUNG LEAN, “INFERNO”

With Jonatan, Yung Lean embraced guitar music, from caustic post-punk to stadium-ready power ballads, and sounded more like a rock star than ever before. It’s a great album, but after much deliberation, we decided that “Inferno” – a swaggering collaboration with Bladee – deserved to make this list. It’s a back-to-basics affair compared to either Jonatan or Psykos, the pair’s more experimental 2024 album, but it’s not just a retread of early Drain Gang. 

Drawing influence from the emerging genre of rage rap, “Inferno” is electrifying and pulsing with energy. The lyrics may not be reinventing the wheel, but there’s something deeply satisfying about Bladee’s delivery of the lines “just another day in the life I guess” or “it’s a crazy world, L-O-L, I’m dead” – I have to force myself not to shout along when I’m listening to it in public. “Inferno” also features a sample from 2020 documentary Yung Lean: In My Head, in which the father of their late friend Stephen Machat describes them as “not good boys.” Maybe an insensitive thing to include in a song about success, but it’s undeniably potent. (JG)

9. BASSVICTIM, “27A PITFIELD STREET”

This brooding electroclash track from the chaotic duo’s Forever album is an ode to the Shoreditch house now slated for demolition. In the track, gentle vocals from Maria Manow and production from Ike Clateman spiral into chaos as they reminisce over lines like “Smokey little flat, always full where we all hanged out,” recalling the space where the duo and friends partied and produced much of their debut album. Long live “27a Pitfield St”! (™) 

8. LORDE, “SHAPESHIFTER”

The standout track from Virgin, “Shapeshifter” circles the feigned indifference that comes with shifting through different identities, both personal and romantic. The track collapses the highs Lorde chases elsewhere on the album – oxytocin from a lover, dopamine from a pill, any late-night rush – into a single longing: a will to give up all control, as she refrains, “tonight I just wanna fall.” That falling plunges the listener into a track that lands Lorde bruised and ruminative on Jim-E Stack’s bass‑heavy production. (TM)

7. 2HOLLIS, “FLASH”

Anyone who’s seen the memes about 2hollis performing “jeans” seven times in a row in Toronto earlier this year knows the visceral reactions that his music can produce. While the younger 2hollis (and preceding alias Drippysoup) was described as a trap artist, 2025 was the year that he became a pop star through and through – and “flash” is the perfect example. In its pulsing electroclash beat, relentless percussion and soaring vocals, all building into an explosive crescendo, “flash” speaks far more to the charts of the future than the heydays of Chicago and Atlanta rap music. “Holli wanna be a star,” 2hollis sings on the track, and it seems he has already become one. (SPM) 

6. ADDISON RAE, “TIMES LIKE THESE” 

It seems like most end-of-year lists have opted for “Headphones On” as Addison Rae’s finest song of 2025 – and, with respect, they are mistaken. It’s “Times Like These” which best embodies the spirit and sonic landscape of her debut album: dreamy, sun-drenched, exquisitely produced and wearing its influences on its sleeve (trip-hop, 90s Madonna, early 00’s chill-out) while still sounding like something new, rather than a mere regurgitation. The lyrics are unexpectedly angsty, riven with doubt and self-criticism (“am I too young to be this mad? Am I too old to hate my dad? It’s so confusing”), but the song is a burst of transcendence, an ode to Zen-like acceptance which hits just as hard in the depths of a wet, dreary winter. In times like these, it really do be how it has to be… (JG)

5. JIM LEGXACY, “FATHER” 

It’s no secret that Jim Legxacy’s music comprises a diverse range of influences, and, in less than two minutes, “father” manages to manifest all of these simultaneously. There’s the chipmunk vocal sample harking back to that strange time in UK music where grime artists ‘went pop’, lyrical allusions to alt-pop trailblazer Mitski, and the jerk percussion patterns central to the UK underground today. Thematically, “father” is equally impressive, chronicling both a childhood lost to absent male role models, as well as a salvation found in music. The lead single from his Black British Music mixtape (read: album), “father” is exactly the kind of song that makes Jim Legxacy a national treasure. (SPM)

4. FKA TWIGS, OKLOU “VISCUS”

“The body is a temple / Am I worshipping too hard?”, sings Oklou, on “Viscus ft. FKA twigs”. When I first listened to this song, I couldn’t (and still can’t) get that line out of my head. In a year when we have seen self-optimisation, specifically relating to the body, in full force, it is a line marked by sharp self-awareness that we do not treat our bodies as bodies at all. In an interview between the pair with Highsnobiety, Oklou remarks that the song was inspired by her relationship with her body: “I have had tummy aches since I was a child. I kind of go through all of these sources of anxiety and talk about my body as a conflicting relationship,” she states. The otherworldly textures of “Viscus” – from the feather-light percussion to the orchestral swells – leave you wanting more as the pair create a world of inquisition that you find yourself reluctant to escape from. (HJ)

3. SMERZ, “YOU GOT TIME AND I GOT MONEY”

From Shakespeare and Goethe to Euphoria and The Fourth Wing, great love has typically been portrayed as torturous and all-consuming. “You got time and I got no money” instead depicts a quieter, easier and more serene form of passion –  as Catherina Stoltenberg, one of half of the Norwegian duo, put it in a Vogue interview, it captures “that sensation of floating almost […] when you’re very just comfortable with someone”. The song serves as a reminder that love doesn’t require being driven to the brink of madness, and that suffering is not the ultimate proof of depth of feeling. The mundane hyper-specificity of its lyrics - “I like your shoes, I like these clean t-shirts on you / I like your brother and your sister too, I like the restaurants that you choose” – makes it all the more romantic. With its swooning strings, sultry baseline and Stoltenberg’s sweet, cooing vocals, “You got time and I got money” feels like an instant classic, the best love song released not just this year but in quite some time. (JG)

2. ETHEL CAIN, “NETTLES”

There aren’t many artists who can get away with long songs in the age of dwindling attention spans – but Ethel Cain is one of them. In June, she released “Nettles”, an eight-minute, three-second epic and the lead single from her upcoming second studio album, Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. Inspired by Twin Peaks, the track introduces the tortured relationship between Ethel and her childhood sweetheart Willoughby. Cain has described it as “a dream of losing the one you love, asking them to reassure you that it won’t come true and to dream, instead, of all the time you’ll have together as you grow old side by side.” After a melancholic, 90-second instrumental opening, she delivers a heart-wrenching portrait of love in slow decline. Both lyrically and sonically, it’s Ethel at her best – but it’s her voice on the line “to love me is to suffer” that somehow manages to break my heart every time. (HD)

1. ESDEEKID, FAKEMINK, RICO ACE, “LV SANDALS”

Call us ‘newgens’ if you want, the fact is that “LV Sandals” singlehandedly changed both Fakemink and EsDeeKid’s careers for a reason: it’s a banger. It’s a union of distinct styles, from Fakemink’s left-field ‘dirty luxury’ sound, to EsDeeKid’s explosive Scouse fricatives, to Rico Ace’s more traditional UK rap approach. But particular credit needs to be given Wraith 9 and DJ Ess’ production, with their central backwards loop and burst 808s creating an eerie, liminal space in which all of the aforementioned styles can mesh together. What’s particularly special about this track is that, given the astronomic success that both EsDeeKid and Fakemink have enjoyed since, it is the sort of breakthrough moment that can only ever happen once. (SPM)