Amy Grant – The 6th of January (Yasgur’s Farm)
Lady Gaga, – Abracadabra
HOA – Push Man
MJ Lenderman and This Is Lorelei – Dancing in the Club
Mitski – Where’s My Phone
Taylor Swift – The Fate of Ophelia
Motorists – Frogman
Rosalía feat. Björk and Yves Tumor, – Berghain
Daniel Lopatin – I Love You, Tokyo
Some Notes
I did something a little different this week. I went to Rolling Stone Magazine and looked at their top songs of 2025. Nothing new in that, but all my choices this week are from their top 14 picks. This is a really excellent list and I think I will go to this in the following weeks. The text below each artist is taken from the article, except for Rosalia, where I added more material, some of which I have been collecting since before Christmas.
Lady Gaga, – Abracadabra
(number 1)
Lady Gaga – Abracadabra (Official Music Video)
There’s a lot of magic on “Abracadabra”: the way the synthesizers fade in and out like a slow-strobing disco light on a foggy dance floor, the sweeping, syncopated “A-braca-da-braaaa” hook, and of course the skipping way she declares “Feel the beat under your feet, the floor’s on fiiire.” The song was an immediate hit and 2025’s most inescapable earworm anthem thanks to the way she and her sorceress’ apprentices assembled a perfect Lady Gaga pop song — one that nods to early hits like “Just Dance” and “Bad Romance” right on the edge of glory while feeling totally of her own brand-new moment. “I wanted to traverse old ground while breaking new ground, which I think is hard to do,” Gaga told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “Maybe the last four or so albums I’ve made, I moved away from that and tried some different things, but this was a return to those Gothic dreams.” —K.G.
MJ Lenderman and This Is Lorelei – Dancing in the Club
(number 2)
MJ Lenderman & The Wind – Dancing in the Club (This is Lorelei) – Live in Carrboro, NC – 1/29/2025
When This Is Lorelei’s Nate Amos released “Dancing in the Club” last year, he said it was “dreamt up for others to sing.” Those dreams came true on the new deluxe edition, when our favorite guitar hero, MJ Lenderman, was put to the task. If the original was a glittering Auto-Tune adventure into heartbreak, Lenderman’s version takes the full plunge into despair, delivering twangy, turbulent lines that rattle in every note: “A loser never wins/And I’m a loser, always been.” It’s a devastatingly great collaboration and a highlight within a massive year of highlights for Lenderman that also included a tour behind his breakthrough album, Manning Fireworks (the finale was a headlining slot at a Rolling Stone showcase), a fantastic record with Wednesday, and playing drums for the Crutchfield sisters. When it comes to Lenderman, the loser wins. —A.M.
Taylor Swift, – The Fate of Ophelia
(number 8)
Taylor Swift – The Fate of Ophelia (Official Music Video)
“The Fate of Ophelia” is Taylor’s biggest Swiftspearean drama since “Love Story,” rewriting Hamlet the way her teenage self rewrote Romeo and Juliet. Just as she did in “Love Story,” she goes back in time to rescue a tragic young heroine and give her a new story — except instead of country twang, she goes for thrillingly exuberant synth-pop. Your English teacher took this Bardcore romance to Number One for seven weeks (and counting) — that’s just her way of keeping it one hundred on the land, the sea, the sky. —R.S.
Rosalía feat. Björk and Yves Tumor, – Berghain
(number 14)
ROSALÍA – Berghain (Official Video) feat. Björk & Yves Tumor
The first release from Rosalia’s stunning album Lux was a shock to the system. From the second it starts, ‘Berghain’ feels like a surge of adrenaline — all urgent, frenzied strings and soaring operatic vocals, signaling a dark grandeur few were expecting. If that wasn’t striking enough, she keeps burying surprises into the labyrinthine arrangement, packing in a cameo from Bjork, vocals from Yves Tumor, and nods to the ever-nocturnal German nightclub the track gets its name from. The effect is intense — and breathtaking.–J.L.
Berghain
And NY Times
The idea of popera isn’t new, nor is the idea of globe-traveling within an album, but in an age of small and quick and dirty innovations, the scale and ambition of “Lux” is an aggressive position statement. Rosalía is a restless and relentless consumer of the world and its many ideas, and the rare artist in any medium who wants to leave the places she goes better than she found them — and actually can.
And this
There is no pivot too sharp for Rosalía, the pathbreaking Spanish pop star. She emerged a decade ago as a disruptive star student of flamenco, and has since become pop’s leading avant-gardist and one of its most convincing omnivores.
Next week, she will release “Lux,” her fourth full-length album. In the way that her radical pop breakout, “El Mal Querer,” was an implicit retort to the formal wrestling of her debut, “Los Angeles,” and the sensuous industrial churn of her third album, “Motomami,” was a retort to “El Mal Querer,” “Lux” — an album shocking in its formal audacity and its playfulness — is a retort to all of those things. Or perhaps, an elevation above them.
and more notes
Amy Grant – “The 6th of January (Yasgur’s Farm)”
Amy Grant has often been referred to as “The Queen of Christian Pop”. At least that’s the first thing that springs to my mind. Seemingly out of nowhere on January 6, she released this compelling song.
In the video she is playing a strumstick which is a three-stringed instrument that produces a sound somewhere between a dulcimer and acoustic guitar. the guitar.
It’s interesting reading the comments at this blog regarding the meaning of the song.
Hoa – “Push Man” -single
HOA band is a South Korean band who have apparently arrived via a time machine from 1965-66. Both the song and the video are furiously channeling “A Hard Day’s Night”
There’s not much info on these guys, but the YouTube Channel Chatting tracks is here to bail me out.
Mitski – “Where’s My Phone” -Nothing’s About to Happen to Me
Mitski, is an American singer-songwriter She has been performing and releasing music since 2012. “Where’s My Phone” is from a soon to be released album. The song has an absolutely bonkers video!
Motorists – “Frogman” – Never Sing Alone
I found out about these guys in a recent Exclaim! Article. Originally from Calgary now Toronto based, The Motorists have that jangly sound that I love.
Daniel Lopatin – “I Love You, Tokyo Marty Supreme OST
Daniel Lopatin best known as Oneohtrix Point Never, is an American electronic music composer. Lopatin has done production work for such artists as The Weeknd and Soccer Mommy. He has done film scores in collaboration with the Safdie brothers on the movies Good Time and Uncut Gems. The latest Safdie movie is Marty Supreme and Lopatin is back on board.
The chosen track, “I Love You, Tokyo ‘ plays during the closing credits.
Whole-Hearted 