Another year has come and gone, but the tunes will remain. And what a year it was! 2025 thrilled with key reunions of bands like The Starting Line, Yellowcard, and Motion City Soundtrack, while some solo albums from Hayley Williams, Luke Spiller, and Taylor Acorn all made their way onto top spots in my personal list. In this blog, I’ve hyperlinked to my past work on this site in ’25, and added in some new blurbs if I didn’t get around to writing about the record during the year. I hope everyone had a peaceful and relaxing holiday season, and 2026 seems poised to be just as strong in the music front.

It’s been an interesting year around these parts. Like always, music, books, and television has played an integral part of how I cope with the daily stress of life, the added stress of the world we live in, and just in general with how I interact with those around me. I don’t have all that much to say, but if you know who I am from being around Chorus and AbsolutePunk for the last twenty years, here’s some things that I found to be class this year.

End of the year – you know what time it is.

A wise man named Smash (but it’s Dr. Mouth to you) once said “the years start coming and they don’t stop coming”. He was so right for that. 2025 felt a decade long, but also it’s already December again. What’s that about? Not a fan!

Some real bullshit in the world this year, dude! I know it’s not what you came here to read about, so I won’t get into it. But if life feels more and more like circling the drain these days, I get it, and implore you to hang in there. Yes, Dr. Mouth, our world is also on fire – but every now and then we get a One Battle After Another. Or go to Red Rocks for the first time. Or compete in a parallel parking contest. Or watch stand up comedy in a park on a summer afternoon. And it’s like, oh shit, life is pretty tight actually!

Wonderful year in music though – it was tough narrowing down to 50 selections. Can you believe I did it? Applause break please. My fun little annual project at the end of every year is to count down my list over the course of a week on Instagram stories – it’s not the ideal platform for something like that, but I like to think of it as an exercise in concise (and very casual) writing since there’s a limit on space for text. Below you’ll find my favorite albums of the year, with all of those little blurbs. If you don’t care about any of that, scroll to the bottom of this page for a screenshot of the list in its entirety.