Music Listeners

listening to Your Favorite Songs 2025, part 12

part CHWELVE

part 1 here. part 2 here. part 3 here. part 4 here. part 5 here. part 6 here. part 7 here. part 8 here. part 9 here. part 10 here. part 11 here.

scroll to the bottom for youtube embeds of all the songs!

"Dollar Store" - Ben Kweller (feat. Waxahatchee)
from Scott H.:
"It's melancholy and cathartic. I love the imagery."

Just a perfectly constructed, perfectly calibrated song. The stubbornness of the repetition in "All that you want and more....more...more...more," and the impudent crash when the chorus expands, and the delicate guitar work that turns into a great whalloping field hockey stick of a riff. Below, an obligatory viral tweet of mine about having a deep bench of Bens on my high school iPod:

"Hartwell" - Shelly
from Pete Hunt:
"There's this new book, Such Great Heights, about the triumph of indie rock in the 21st century, so everything from The Strokes to St. Vincent to LCD Soundsystem. "Hartwell" is the end of the history culmination of the cultural and musical trends the author identifies. This is indie as lifestyle music, as natural a fit on college radio as it would be streaming in an H&M or soundtracking a Corona commercial. And it's adorable, of course, to hear someone in their 20s sing about nostalgia and the bittersweet yearning for an imagined future."

This commentary is so astute. I struggle a little with the genre tag "indie," in that "indie" used to refer to music made on independent record labels, and now just means...non-commercial-sounding rock music, I guess? Studiedly unpolished music made by sensitive people? "Not Greta Van Fleet"? For someone who sometimes lands on the prescriptivist side of the Grammar Wars (words used to have meaning), the semantics of Indie Music are tough for me to parse, but when I hear "Hartwell" it kind of snaps into place for me. For people under the age of 30, as Shelly's charming frontwoman Clairo is, indie is simply...an aura. Anyway, feel free to join me on my quest to bring back "alt rock" as a thing, but it's probably a futile quest, because "alt rock" makes people think of, like, Incubus. Onward...

"Townies" - Wednesday
from Benjamin Birdie, you can find me at @benjaminbirdie at Bluesky and Instagram:
"I spent a lot of time waffling between "Townies" and "Reality TV Argument Bleeds," which is the lead track on the new album. I went with "Townies" because while it doesn't rock as hard as "Reality TV..." nor does it bring me right back to the basement shows I saw in Oxford, OH in 1995, it best encapsulates Karly Hartzman's quality as Flannery O'Connor if she'd ever been in a Dollar Tree. There's so much authentic detail in the song about life in a town that would have townies, but it also has a bridge transition that just melodically breaks your heart every time."

When I saw Wednesday named a song "Townies," I was like, ooh baby, excited to hear if it's as good as Mitski's "Townie" and guess what...it is! Those songs are like sisters, I think they would sound good back to back. Can I just say that Bleeds hit for me in a much more legible way than Rat Saw God? It feels more immediate, precise, bold and catchy. There's way more to hang onto for me, way more there there. I find the first chorus—"You sent my nudes around / I never yelled at you about it / ‘Cause you....diiiiiiiiiieeed"—extremely funny. Is it supposed to be funny? I guess I find it relatable? Get to a certain age as a woman, and assuredly you will know guys who behaved badly, and not all of them make it all the way. It's weird, and perturbing, and this song nails that feeling.

"Poachers" - Tyler Childers
from Finn:
"I could name pretty much any song from Snipe Hunter, the best album of 2025, but this one just wedged its way into my head and never left. It’s so funny, it’s so fun to sing, and I’ll never get tired of it."

A hilarious waltz about forgetting to report whatever meat you shot and killed, and the cascading events that might land you in jail for such a thing. I love when Childers hears about the concept of lean, as in the cough syrup beverage, and thinks it sounds like a drag: "I like my drugs meth-y." God bless.

"You’ll Know You Were Loved" - Lou Reed
from Jordan Michael Iannucci:
"This song is not FROM 2025 but it would be a grave misrepresentation to act as if any song impacted me this year as much as this. It's from the 1995 soundtrack to the TV show Friends, and from what I can tell, has appeared no where else. While I have no idea how this song ended up on that soundtrack I can assume based on the sound of the song that they asked him to contribute a song to the soundtrack, so he wrote a 90s college radio alt rock song with JUST enough Lou Reed in it to make it freaky.

Why do I love it so much? Well, first and most importantly, "the Lou Reed song that is exclusive to the soundtrack of the TV show Friends" is very funny to say and I do every chance I get. Secondly, it is a beautiful song, truly. And finally, I am really endeared to the idea that even with his legacy and status, Lou Reed still had bills and needed a payday every once in a while.

"I got a fan that does music supervision for Friends? Sure, why not""

Normally I'd reject non-2025 songs outright, but Jordan is the only person who gets a pass because this song rocks and made me cry, especially the lyric "Some of us never had a home / And if we did we left it long ago / And didn't know we were loved." This song feels like the end credits for this year, even though it came out 30 years ago.

What's crazy, though, is I am a SERIOUS, HARDCORE Friends person—I know, I know...listen, Mad Men is my favorite show of all time, but Friends has just seeped into my bones after all these years—and I do not remember the inclusion of this song in the show at all?!? The Music of Friends Wikipedia entry says the songs "were tracks either used directly in the show or 'inspired by' the show" so maybe it never made it on air. You know what did make it on air? Interpol's "Untitled," which they played when Rachel and Joey smooched near the end of the series. Meet me in the mfing bathroom!!