It has become my habit that at the end of each year to put together a “best of” playlist of the music that I have been listening to, or has meant something, that year.

Again I’ve used the music streaming service Spotify to pull together the playlist. So if you’d like to listen to it here is the full playlist of about three and a half hours of my best tracks of 2025.

I realised as I began putting it together that I hadn’t actually listened to all that much new music in 2025. I had been listening to a fair bit of classical and soundtracks of movies and games (traces of which can be found in the list), but not really following favourite artists and exploring new albums. Something I plan on rectifying in 2026. So I ended up relying a lot on the end of year ‘best of’ lists from various online publications to choose many of the tracks. But in the end I have come up with something I really like. At points the playlist sounds a little angry. But perhaps that is a reflection of the times?

You can also read my ‘best of’ music posts from previous years: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010.