Four Island

Happy New Year, everyone! It's 2026 now, and you know what that means: it's time for me to try to revive my blog by writing nostalgic posts! My aunt and I made a pact to blog more this year, so we'll see how well I can stick to that. In the past, I've done annual goals or silly predictions on the first of the year, but this time I think I'm going to cut in early with my music review post.

2025 was a great year for me in terms of music! It's been a goal of mine to listen to more new music (especially since the Great Debacle of 2023 when I only listened to two albums all year). I purchased or received eleven CDs since Christmas 2024 (but only ten albums, as I got one album twice!), which is improved from 2024 when I got five. While I did not reach an average of one album a month, I still think I kept myself occupied with songs I enjoyed listening to, rather than being stuck in a hole of listening to Memory Reboot and nothing else over and over.

This was also the year that I implemented the silly box on the sidebar of my blog that shows a random song I've been listening to lately. Just some fun with the last.fm API! It's been spoiling the names of some of the songs on my upcoming album, which I find amusing.

Once again, I've created a playlist of some of the songs I'll be talking about. Feel free to follow along as you read the post!

Albums

I usually listen to full albums rather than singles, so I'll mostly be talking about those today. There's five definitive standouts from last year that are worth reviewing. I'll be going through them in reverse order of how much I listened to them, which I think roughly lines up with how much I enjoyed them.

There's room for a few honorable mentions before I start, however. . (literally just a full stop) by Kesha was an impulse buy in the middle of the year after I saw an Utena AMV to Joyride. A good chunk of the album is banger after banger, with my favorite being Boy Crazy, because that's just how I feel in real life. Another album I listened to a fair bit was the Lingo 2 OST by Icely Puzzles. I worked on this game, so it's pretty special to me, and I recommend everyone play it! My favorite track on the OST is Gammadelt.

MAYHEM by Lady Gaga

You may be surprised to see Lady Gaga at number five on this list, especially after how hyped I was for her new album in last year's predictions, and, well, that's just an indicator of how good last year was for music! This certainly was an anticipated release, however. I've been a fan of Gaga since Just Dance. She spoke to me, as a gay kid who likes dance pop and confusion. While I didn't really love ARTPOP and Chromatica, I've been waiting for the queen to make a triumphant return, and MAYHEM certainly delivered!

Disease is an obvious standout. I heard it once, months before the album came out, and it immediately hooked me. It's got the classic Gaga grit and it's so easy to dance to. The music video is also super intriguing because it reminds me of Unedited Footage of a Bear, with the whole "getting beat up by your doppelganger while in HoA cult suburbia" thing. (Disease on the left, Unedited Footage on the right)

My favorite track is How Bad Do U Want Me, though. I knew it would be a hit the moment I heard it. It's just so poppy -- and I love some good wordplay, too.

One other funny note about MAYHEM is that I have two of them. There was a Target exclusive release and a release exclusive to Lady Gaga's store, both of which have different album art from the regular release, and each also have different bonus tracks. I had to get them both to complete the track listing!

Girl With No Face by Allie X

Allie X is another singer I've been listening to for a long time. I listened to CollXtion I a lot in 2015, although last.fm doesn't seem to think so. CollXtion II was good, but not as good, and so I fell off for a little while. However, just like Kate Nash last year, I checked back in with Allie years later to find a new album, and I was smitten.

Girl With No Face was actually released in 2024, but it's a 2025 album to me because that's when I listened to it. It's absolutely a return to form for her, with exciting dance moments like Black Eye, ominous interludes like Staying Power, and cheery jaunts like Truly Dreams. I'm particularly fond of Off With Her Tits, a fairly self-descriptive song that I will nevertheless describe as being about struggling with the societal impact of having breasts, and wanting to have them removed.

My favorite track is probably You Slept On Me. The chorus is so utterly singable; it's a staple in the shower for me. Time to get down on one knee! Tell me why you slept on me! Then she starts talking about Krispy Kreme and I don't know why, but that's fine.

While writing this post, I noticed that Allie X now has another new album. I'll have to add that to my list for 2026.

BRAT by Charli XCX

I know, I know, I'm late to the party. I had my BRAT summer in the winter of 2025. Listen, I don't have a radio, I don't have social media, and I don't use Spotify. I don't know what you want from me. Everyone already knows this album so there's probably not much to say about it, but I'll try my best.

Charli XCX is yet again an old favorite of mine who I'd lapsed on for several years. True Romance is one of my favorite albums of all time; I really can't emphasize enough how influential it has been to my own music. But SUCKER was merely okay, and I didn't even know about / listen to most of the other albums. BRAT changed things.

360 is a pretty easy standout, and it's the one you hear the most in memes, but there's a lot to love on this album. Club classics, Sympathy is a knife, Apple... so many of the tracks are catchy. There's very few that I skip. To be honest, I don't like Girl so confusing very much, but it's one of the only ones.

Everything is romantic is probably the catchiest to me, but I'd have to say I think about it all the time is my favorite.

I think about it all the time
That I might run out of time
But I finally met my baby
And a baby might be mine
'Cause maybe one day I might
If I don't run out of time
Would it give my life a new purpose?

She's right. I do think about it all the time.

PRINCESS OF POWER by Marina

I don't even have to explain that Marina is another old favorite of mine. She's perhaps my favorite musician of all time. The absolute most surprising thing of the year is that the new Marina album wasn't number one. It was neck and neck for a while, but the other album eked out a win with likely only two or three playthroughs over Marina.

This album was so fantastic, though. It met all of my expectations. This is Marina, back again with powerful pop that gets into your skin and lives with you. No, it's not The Family Jewels or Electra Heart again, but it's so her and I love it.

My instinct here is to make a tier list for every track. Keep in mind that there is not a single song that I dislike; there's only ones I like less.

★★★★★ (Immaculate)	Princess of Power Cuntissimo Final Boss
★★★★☆ (Fantastic)	Je Ne Se Quois Cupid's Girl Everybody Knows I'm Sad Hello Kitty Butterfly
★★★☆☆ (Great)	Digital Fantasy Metallic Stallion I <3 You
★★☆☆☆ (Good)	Adult Girl Rollercoaster

Cuntissimo is my favorite song of the year, hands down. It is so electric and invigorating. If there's one song you should listen to from this list, it's this absolute powerhouse.

The other thing about this album is that I got to see it performed live with my friends Angel and Jett! I hadn't been to a concert since before the pandemic, but when I saw that Marina was performing in my city I snatched those tickets up right away. I have chronic pain and anxiety around people, but if there's anyone who I'll brave the crowds for, it's Marina.

I've actually seen her before; my second concert ever was her in New York during the Electra Heart era, which was phenomenal. Getting to see her a second time was spellbinding. I'm not usually too overwhelmed by celebrities, but Marina is so important to me. Actually seeing her, knowing it was really her gracing us with her beautiful voice, was wonderful. Definitely one of the best experiences I've had in years.

The most insane thing about this concert is that she performed Hermit The Frog from The Family Jewels. Hermit The Frog!!!!!!! That is such an obscure album cut and my friend and I absolutely lost our minds.

purity ring by Purity Ring

This album finally deviates from the pattern set by the rest of them, in that I had not lapsed in my listening of Purity Ring's music. In fact, I've stayed glued to them for years. They're the only group left from my 2016 trifecta of electronic music (Crystal Castles, Grimes, and Purity Ring) that I'm not embarrassed to be listening to. Definitely one of my favorite musicians. And yet, I did not know this album was coming. I heard about it from my roommate days before the Marina concert, which meant I couldn't allow myself to listen to it yet. It was something like two weeks that I had to wait in agony before I gave in.

This album. Is so good. I kept putting off listening to other new albums (like Lorde's album Virgin, which I did not end up liking at all) because I felt like purity ring needed more time. Eventually, I realized two months had passed and I was still listening to the same album. I feel like it has only gotten better with more time. It's so quintessentially Purity Ring, but you can tell how much they've evolved.

relict starts the album off with a strange, idiosyncratic vocal sample combined with spoken word poetry about grief. Grief! You know how much I love art about grief. Then we burst into many lives, a bright, singable light shining down before trickling seamlessly into part ii. Then we have place of my own, the first really danceable track with a hook and a chorus. After that, there's red the sunrise, which combines vocoded spoken word with beautiful singing that I can't help but belt out when I'm at home:

You're returning, turning now
Can you hear me, hear me now
So red, so red the sunrise
You're returning, turning now

Things only get better from there, with the cheerful memory ruins. There's a cat that meows halfway through it, which I always enjoy singing along with. Then, we get the instrumental mistral, a little ditty that reminds me of Frosti by Björk. It's always exciting to hear it because I know the next song is my absolute favorite from the album: the long night. This one is hard to listen to without getting out of my seat and dancing; long, swishing strides from one end of the room to the other. The trance-like gating is one of those effects I'm always itching to hear in songs, and the drop at the chorus really gets me.

The next song is imanocean, which I actually don't like that much, but I think it's mostly because it's right after the long night and it's hard to follow that up. It's the same reason I'm not too enthusiastic about Rollercoaster on Princess of Power. Regardless, we then go into between you and shadows, one of the more intense tracks, kind of like Dust Hymn from Another Eternity.

mj odyssey is another instrumental, and like the previous one, leads into one of the best tracks on the album: broken well. It's so moving. It seems to be about the sadness experienced because of the awareness of mortality, which is something I struggle with a lot too. I always love music that speaks to me. Finally, we end with glacier ::in memory of rs::, a tribute to deceased composer 坂本龍一 (Ryūichi Sakamoto), which samples his song Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. It reminds me of the snow levels in video games with its synth backing and pensive lyrics.

I really love this album. If you haven't listened to Purity Ring before, you may want to start with something more approachable like their album Another Eternity, but if you have and you haven't heard this album before, you need to get in there right now. I'm waiting.

Songs

I didn't really listen to too many single songs this past year. Memory Reboot by VØJ and Narvent, This Feeling by my;lane, and shines by Purity Ring and Black Dresses were all still heavily in the mix, but that's not really different from last year. I had enough albums to listen to that I didn't need to rely on assorted singles.

There was one "new" single that I listened to a lot of this year, though, and that was Careful by Michelle Featherstone. This is not a new song -- it came out in 2009 -- but I heard it in an episode of How I Met Your Mother and bought it on iTunes right away. It's a lovely ballad about being nervous to open your heart.

One other song I'd like to mention is one that I made myself: Maybe. It's the first song I've released in six years, since my single Clipping in 2019. It's been exciting working on music again, but it's also fairly nervewracking to actually release something! It's a dark song with an upbeat and danceable melody. That's the way I like it! I hope you like it too, if you decide to give it a listen. As a bonus, there's also a B-side called Bubbled.

Anyway, that's my review of the music of 2025! I'm looking forward to a new year of music. My goal is to include some more artists that I haven't listened to before, since this year featured a lot of old friends. There's an album by Zara Larsson waiting for me back at home, at the recommendation of my hair stylist. I've got a shortlist of other albums to try out by artists I've been hearing on the radio while on vacation, like Sombr. Of course, there's a couple of albums by old favorites that I want to check out too, like Allie X and CHVRCHES. We'll see how the year goes!

Happy new music!