The 20 best songs of 2025

20

Little Simz – Flood ft Obongjayar and Moonchild Sanelly

Over a pared-back post-punk beat, Simz details her life’s “genius plan”, namely “being free as I can”. The first half is spent detailing the roadblocks she’s faced in her quest, marching through them like a Marvel hero. Then, as if throwing her arm round a young apprentice’s shoulder as she walks, she lays out her six-point plan for greatness with koans of wisdom such as: “Never eat with the hyenas / ‘Cause they will look at you as bones.” If her rap career ever falters – and it looks exceedingly unlikely to on this form – she could write a brilliant leadership training book. Ben Beaumont-Thomas

19

Bad Bunny – Nuevayol

The opening track from Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos is named after New York, but contains a whole world. It encompasses the displacement, identity and resistance of the Puerto Rican people; the sample of El Gran Combo’s 1975 salsa hit Un Verano en Nueva York celebrates the cultural innovations of diverse Latin communities mingling in mid-20th-century NYC; there’s puckish Dominican dembow; the longing for home – and its heat – of PR poet Virgilio Davila’s early 1900s work Nostalgia. (The must-see video adds even more layers of beauty and defiance.) For Bad Bunny’s domestic and diasporic audience, it’s a rallying cry, particularly in a year when he refused to play the US to avoid his fans being seized by ICE, and faced a racist backlash to his upcoming Super Bowl headline set. For anyone else, it’s an invitation to get on his level, to learn, pay homage, knock back un shot de cañita and dance. And why wouldn’t you? Laura Snapes

18

Wednesday – Elderberry Wine

View image in fullscreen Wednesday. Photograph: Graham Tolbert

Miles from their usual crush of hay-bale southern punk and screaming, the North Carolina band returned with this disarmingly pretty tear-catcher. But beneath all the twang and sway lay a fairly devastating account of the distance elapsed between two people – from knowing the niche things that make someone cry, like fairground rides and TV ads, to driving them to the airport in silence and simply wanting to give up on life – and thei