It’s 25 for ‘25

Another year: PASSED. Yes it’s time to dust off the cobwebs around my Blogger account and tell the story of the last year in the only way we know how here at carlbob.com - with some top pop of the year.

And it’s been another good year for Pop. A lot of fabulous pop girlies and women released great singles and some of them even some banging albums. Kylie toured and sold out 2 nights of New York MSG (and we were there for one of them). JADE properly arrived (and we saw her too). Sophie, Zara, Miley, Louise, Demi. Gaga, for god’s sake (saw her too). Sigrid, Perrie, Taytay (who definitely falls into the ‘great single, shame about the album’ category). And to cap it all off - Kylie Ann Minogue got a number 1 single, and the Christmas one at that. Honestly a day I never thought might come again - emotional is an understatement.

So here is a musical tribute to 2025, with 25 (do you see?) tracks curated to represent all of the above and more. And, yes, it really is very female-fronted, and long live that.

Usual rules apply: it had to be ‘released’ as a single, in the very broad sense that applies these days. And only one per artist, I’m afraid. Both of these rules made for some tricky calls, and the whole exercise means there are bangers galore not on this list, but, well, I started on this futile exercise in this way 16 years ago so we plough on.

It’s on Spotify here and on Apple Music here - and even YouTube here 

This year’s list is (alphabetical by title)

• Abracadabra — Lady Gaga
• Borderline — Louise
• Burn Burn — Willa Ford
• Chemical Reaction — Debbii Dawson
• Crush — Zara Larsson
• CUNTISSIMO — MARINA
• EGO — Agnes
• The Fate of Ophelia — Taylor Swift
• Fort Knox — Sigrid
• FUFN — JADE (second sweary one on the list)
• Golden — HUNTR/X
• Here All Night — Demi Lovato
• If He Wanted To He Would — Perrie
• Is It Love? — Maria Sur
• LAST MAN STANDING — Blusher
• last night i dreamt i fell in love — Alok ft. Kylie Minogue
• Last One* — Cerrone & Christine and the Queens
• Loser — Sophie and the Giants
• Lost Your Faith — Ava Max
• On and On and On - Klara Hammarström
• So Sad So Hot — Chloe Qisha
• Sweat — Melanie C
• Vertigo — Sophie Ellis-Bextor
• Walk of Fame — Miley Cyrus
• Hot in December — Kylie Minogue**

*a track on an EP, so a slight rule stretch, but I realised this too late to change

**not a single... but X.M.A.S isn’t on Spotify or Apple Music at time of going to print, so this absolute stonking track is subbed in to represent the Xmas number 1 in all its glory.

A couple of footnotes:

- There is a ‘Track 26’ on that playlist - You Were The One by Zoe. It came onto a shuffle session a few months ago, I was obsessed with it ... and I know nothing about it, and other than its existence on streaming as the only piece of work by ‘Zoe’ I can find no useful trace of information as to who she is, what the context is, or, well, anything. So it may well be AI, or a random project by one person.. and therefore I couldn’t quite bring myself to make it into the main list. But couldn’t leave it off either.

- In preparing this year’s list there were two songs that I’ve loved this year but they are very much 2024 releases and I couldn’t find a way of bending the rules, so they’ve been tacked on to last year’s playlist - Angel of Satisfaction by Rose Gray and the ubiquitous APT that I massively overlooked at the end of last year!