The end of the year is upon us, and it's time to reflect on your favorite music of 2025! Here is Gannon Hanevold's favorite music of the year. Once you've made your own list, vote in The Current's Top 89 poll by Sunday, Dec. 14, and we'll count down your Top 89 of 2025 at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 31.

Top Songs

1. Wednesday - “Elderberry Wine”

This is a masterclass in songwriting from vocalist Karly Hartzman and Wednesday. A cautionary tale about impermanence and, just as crucially, a beautiful country ballad. With the context of Wednesday’s in-band breakup, the tartness of this track is even more potent. 

2. Wet Leg - “mangetout”

You know those hypotheticals about whether or not you could beat 50 lobsters in a fight or whatever? I could take on several dozen large jungle cats if you played this song in my headphones during the fight. That little vocal change from Rhian Teasdale at the end? Woof.

3. Florist - “Sparkle Song”

My favorite love song of 2025 comes from the New York folk band Florist, who pulls hazardously with my heartstrings on “Sparkle Song.” It’s enough to make a good man cry.

4. CMAT - “When A Good Man Cries”

Speaking of making good men cry, Irish singer CMAT deals cathartically with post-relationship guilt on this country-pop ballad that’ll make me think of Dorian Gray as a verb for the rest of my life.

5. Samia - “Bovine Excision”

It takes a real stroke of genius to write a song inspired by cattle mutilation and lyrically namedrop in order: Diet Dr. Pepper, leeches and lime-flavored Lays. This is sonic tick repellent from the newly local Samia. I can’t get enough of it.

6. Danny Brown - “Copycats” (feat. underscores)

Rap and hyperpop is a genre-blend made in heaven. Only these two artists could pull it off with this much flair. The “rapstar, popstar, rockstar” refrain gets stuck in my head about eight times a week.

7. ZORA - “FASTLANE”

Speaking of songs that merge rap and hyperpop influence… Local rapper-producer ZORA flipped the “pop that” sample from Luke’s 1992 track “I Wanna Rock” for this year’s best song to commute on the I-94 to.

8. Slow Joy - “Bent”

Slow Joy is the moniker of Dallas-based emo rocker Esteban Flores. It’s not exactly an accurate descriptor of this song, which breaks necks with its fuzzy guitar riff and triggers an emotional response for me that would be undersold by “joy.”

9. Little Simz - “Blood” (feat. Cashh & Wretch 32)

The brilliant British rapper Little Simz is a wizard of storytelling, and this is her most recent flex of that muscle. She trades conversational bars with Wretch 32 in a gripping piece of audio theatre about siblings getting distant with age.

10. Jeff Tweedy - “Enough”

How do you end a 30-song triple album full of sparse and tender folk songs? With a little cowbell, of course. 

How do you end a Top 10 Songs list when you’re indecisive? With 10 more songs, of course: 

Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band - “The Simple Joy”

Jasmine.4.t - “Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation”

Petey USA - “Breathing The Same Air”

Tyler, The Creator - “Stop Playing With Me”

Momma - “I Want You (Fever)”

Ethel Cain - “Nettles”

Lorde - “What Was That”

Anna Graves - “Dizzy”

Of Monsters and Men - “Ordinary Creature”

The Technicolors - “Aphantasia”

I keep an obsessive amount of lists. My phone is full of them. Useless lists, necessary ones. Songs, movies, books, groceries, obscure NBA role players. But I always love reflecting on my love of live music this time of year, so here’s a list of my favorite shows of 2025! 

1. Kendrick Lamar & SZA @ US Bank Stadium

Months after “Not Like Us” mania and the Super Bowl Halftime Show, this one felt bigger than music. Bigger, even, than that behemoth Viking ship of a stadium. The fact that this was the first show of the Grand National Tour brought an element of surprise that you just don’t get anymore in the era of setlist websites and viral concert clips.

2. The Killers @ Palace Theatre

There are so few opportunities to see arena bands in venues of this size. But yet, The Killers have done it twice here in Minnesota in the last few years. As a Las Vegas native myself, this was cathartic in ways I can’t describe. So to quote Brandon Flowers on “When You Were Young”… Sometimes you close your eyes and see the place where you used to live. On a summer night in St. Paul, I did.

3. Wet Leg @ First Avenue

This gets points for maybe the coolest walk-up I’ve ever seen for a show. Flanked by a metric ton of smoke and the crunchy guitars of “Catch These Fists,” Rhian Teasdale took the stage as a silhouette with both arms up, flexing. It somehow got even better from there, as Wet Leg glided through an early-set play of “Wet Dream” and a closing sequence including “Chaise Longue” and “mangetout.”

4. Paul McCartney @ US Bank Stadium

I got to take my mom – a lifelong Beatles fan who has never seen a member of the Fab Four in concert – to this show, and I’ll cherish that forever. Any amount of cynicism in one’s heart can be boiled clean by a few minutes of “Let It Be” and “Hey Jude” sing-alongs – or Paul’s cheeky jokes and stories, which we got by the dozen. 

5. Momma & Wishy @ Fine Line

I’ve never felt the floor shake at a show quite like when Momma made their entrance at Fine Line. As they played alt-rock heaters like “Speeding 72” and “I Want You (Fever)” it felt like a sinkhole might swallow the venue whole. I jumped anyway. It was irresistible and worth the risk. 

6. Beach Bunny, Bad Bad Hats & MAKR AN ERIS @ The Current’s 20th Anniversary Celebration at First Avenue

Shortly after I moved to the Twin Cities, this was the first show presented by The Current I got to see. It was an immediate affirmation of music and public radio’s ability to foster community. At one point, I overheard a father and his young daughter talking about how this was her first-ever concert, and he used to watch shows from the same spot when he was her age. I also got my ears positively jolted by MAKR AN ERIS bangers and broke my voice singing “Weeds” by Beach Bunny. That’s a special evening.

7. Charli xcx @ Target Center

It may have been about seven months too late for the heyday of Brat summer, but Charli still had Target Center bumping more than any Wolves playoff game this spring. This setlist was a blast from start to finish, from Brat hits like “Von dutch” to throwbacks like the Icona Pop collab “I Love It.”

8. Friko @ Fine Line

At one point in this show, Friko frontman Niko Kapetan stood at the stage’s far corner, dripping sweat over a piano and crooning the band’s slowest ballad “For Ella.” Moments later, he was kicking guitars to the ground and vibrating with electricity through wall-busters like “Crimson to Chrome” and “Get Numb To It.” This band is the real deal.

9. Walker Rider & Nat Harvie @ Pilllar Forum

This was my favorite all-local bill of the year, at a really cool venue in Northeast Minneapolis. Nat Harvie commanded the stage with just a backing track and a mic, strutting like a protagonist in a Broadway musical and singing with the precision of one, too. Walker Rider burned through all of the best cuts from his stellar new album, Free.

10. Linkin Park & Jean Dawson @ Target Center

Linkin Park was the favorite band of my childhood, and Jean Dawson is one of my favorite newer acts, so this was a dream bill. Dawson put on an electric Minneapolis Sound-nodding performance of songs like “Rock A Bye Baby” and new LP vocalist Emily Armstrong carried the band’s hits with ease. They also met the moment that day – both Dawson and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park shared tributes to the Twin Cities, as the show fell on the day of the Annunciation shooting. 

11. Ratboys @ The Current’s MicroShow at Cloudland Theater

One of the buzziest bands out of Chicago absolutely crushed their MicroShow set of largely unreleased tracks and deeper cuts from their past few records. Their energy was infectious, and hosting the show gave me an excuse to do a B-minus Bernie Sanders impression.

12. Porridge Radio & Sluice @ 7th St. Entry

I’m eternally grateful I got to catch this great British band on what was presumably their last tour, after they recently announced a split. In a venue too small for their sound, but just right for their familial-feeling songwriting, Porridge Radio played a Greatest Hits-level set from their discography. A sparse, yearning set of tracks from North Carolina’s Sluice was the cherry on top.