The end of the year is upon us, and it's time to reflect on your favorite music of 2025! Here is Luke Taylor'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 10 songs

This year, I’m making my picks on which songs from the past year gave me the most persistent and welcome earworms. Here they are in alphabetical order by artist:

Blondshell – 23’s a Baby
This very catchy track from Blondshell is made all the more powerful by the singer’s admonition to listeners: “Don’t have babies too soon, kids.”

Bon Iver – Everything is Peaceful Love
Justin Vernon and company create some mental space where everything’s gonna be all right.

I’m With Her – Ancient Light
Outstanding instrumentation, vocals and lyrics. It’s hard to choose just one song from I’m With Her’s excellent Wild and Clear and Blue album. The trio’s concert at the Fitzgerald Theater was one of my favorites of the year.

Jasmine.4.t – Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation
The first time I heard the groove of this song, I was hooked. Add to that Jasmine.4.t’s singing, with an assist from Phoebe Bridgers, plus the layered references in the very title of the track, there’s a lot to love about this song about working to quiet an overactive mind.

Jason Isbell – Ride to Robert’s
I’ve never been to Nashville, but the visual picture Isbell paints about seeing live music at the venue Robert’s makes me feel like I have been there. Just one of several beautiful stories told by Isbell on his excellent acoustic album, Foxes in the Snow, which was produced by erstwhile Minnesotan and MSU-Mankato graduate Gena Johnson.

Jon Batiste – BIG MONEY
Batiste has the power to uplift through his music and his very presence in that music.

Lucy Dacus – Best Guess
A beautiful love song.

Samia – Bovine Excision
When Samia explained it, the title is pretty gruesome, but the song itself is endlessly delightful. Plus, I so respect Samia’s quest to find the best words in her lyrics. “I'm obsessed with this idea that synonyms don't exist, and that there is an exact, perfect word for every sentiment,” she told Jessica Paxton back in April.

Valerie June – Joy! Joy!
Like Bon Iver and Jon Batiste (see above), Valerie June sings about joy in a defiant way, that despite everything, we’re going to find joy in life somehow, and music just might be that avenue. I’ll add that June’s concert earlier this year at the State Theatre in Minneapolis fully expressed the singer-songwriter’s effervescent and irrepressible joy.

Wet Leg – mangetout
I’m a huge fan of Wet Leg; they’re an awesome rock band who write awesome songs. Plus, their story — how the band formed around the nucleus of two best friends, Hester Chambers and Rhian Teasdale, and how they didn’t set out to be global rock stars — only adds to the band’s overall appeal. That said, when their song “mangetout” first played in my headphones, my initial reaction was surprise that Wet Leg would write a food song; that seems to be more the domain of “Weird Al” Yankovic. But then my colleague Nilufer Arsala blew the whole thing open for me when she stretched out “mangetout” into its English portmanteau components: Man get out. Suddenly the crafty lyrics with its double meanings and sly references only augments a tune that already totally rocks.