I was reading a piece in the New York Daily News—that legendary newspaper where Pete Hamill once worked—and I stumbled onto an article listing the Top 25 Songs of 2025. Big, glossy names. Lots of neon. Plenty of tracks I’ve never heard in my life.
It got me thinking: what would your top 25 be?
Because if I’m being honest, I can’t think of a single 2025 song that knocked me sideways this year. Not one.
I did come across some incredible music in 2025, but most of it wasn’t from 2025 at all. It was the usual thing—I drifted back into hard rock, blues, a bit of metal, and then suddenly I was knee-deep in older albums again. That’s the joy of heavy music: the shelf life is eternal. You can listen to something recorded in a garage in 1987 and it still hits harder than most of what’s charting.
There were a couple of new tracks that caught my ear…
but don’t ask me what they were called—I couldn’t tell you if my wifi depended on it.
Meanwhile, bands like The Fixx are still out there, touring and re-releasing classics. Their Phantoms expanded edition came out this year, which I promptly listened to instead of discovering anything new. So yes, guilty as charged.
But if you did want new heavy music in 2025, there was a mountain of it. Almost too much. Here’s just a slice of the chaos:
• Deftones announced a new album.
• Messa dropped The Spin.
• Deafheaven released Lonely People With Power.
• Cradle of Filth unleashed The Screaming of the Valkyries.
• Converge announced Love Is Not Enough.
• Lynch Mob gave us Dancing With The Devil.
• Vicious Rumors delivered The Devil’s Asylum.
• And Melvins 1983 continued doing Melvins things with Thunderball.
Black metal, doom, hardcore, post-metal, alternative—you practically needed a personal assistant just to keep up.
But if your ears live here in South Africa, 2025 sounded very different.
South Africa in 2025: A Musical Free-For-All
Amapiano is still the country’s oxygen supply, and the streaming charts prove it. Tyla continues her global steamroll, DJ Maphorisa and Kabza De Small dominate everything they touch, and the cross-continental collaborations get wilder by the month.
A quick snapshot of the year:
Pop / Amapiano / Global SA
• Tyla dropped “Butterflies” and “Truth or Dare,” paving the runway for her massive debut album.
• Elaine’s Fire & Ice kept burning into 2025 with tracks like “Serenity.”
• Kamo Mphela + Ayra Starr produced “Energy,” probably the most addictive popiano moment of the year.
• Newcomers like Mylo Radebe (Growing Pains) and Gemma Fassie (“Plastic Roses”) brought something fresh to the scene.
Rock (Yes, we still have it!)
• Fokofpolisiekar surprised everyone with Kouevuur, darker and more experimental.
• Bye Beneco stayed on playlists with “Head Noise.”
• The Tazers put out “Static Mind.”
• The Homesick Blues and Sweeter Than Sorrow led the new introspective wave.
Blues, Soul & The Good Stuff
• Dan Patlansky continued his national guitar pilgrimage.
• Shane Durrant ditched indie rock for a raw blues turn with “Broke Down Engine.”
• The Muffinz kept their 2024 album Ikwane alive well into the new year.
And if we zoom out further—Spotify confirms that amapiano is South Africa’s major export of 2025. The most-streamed South African tracks globally? Mostly Tyla, Maphorisa, Musa Keys, and that new wave of 3-step and hybrid genres that only South Africans seem able to invent before breakfast.
Which Brings Me Back to the Original Question…
With all this noise—international charts, local charts, heavy rock releases, amapiano dominance—what were your actual favourite songs of 2025?
Here’s a link to that 25 of 2025 songs from the New York daily News:
