As usual, here’s a wrap-up of the stuff I liked in 2025. This year, I’ve separated it from a more personal review of my year, which you can find here. The art that affected me in a given year is a good reminder of what the year felt like, so I look back on these posts once in a while to reminisce and/or cringe at the past. Maybe other people will find some new things to check out too, who knows.

By the way, none of this stuff used AI, because AI is incapable of art and wannabe artists who use AI are traitors.

Here it is:

Music

As usual, this is an uncurated list of the albums I listened to most, courtesy of Last.FM. As I mentioned in my 2025 in Review post, I was trying to be more analogue, which meant more vinyl, which meant more old music, so that’s not fully reflected in these 2025 albums. Still, there was a lot of good new music this year.

First, some honourable mentions for albums I liked that came out late in the year, late last year, or didn’t make it on the list for whatever reason. The newest albums from these bands were really good: Bartees Strange, Between the Buried and Me, Brad Sucks, Castle Rat, Dream Theatre, Garbage, Jethro Tull, Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke, O.R.k., Portugal. The Man, Rivers of Nihil, Styx, Viagra Boys, Hayley Williams, Steven Wilson, and Wolf Alice.

And the top 10:

#10: Tumbleweed Dealer – Dark Green: Instrumental prog-ish rock with great titles like A Distant Figure in the Fog and Body of the Bog.

#9: Ghost – Skeletá: More solid cheesy metal from the scary mask guy.

#8: Lunatic Soul – The World Under Unsun: Really got into the Riverside cinematic universe this year, including this more chill side project.

#7: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Phantom Island: These guys have so many albums. Some are good, like their newest.

#6: Gleb Kolyadin – Mobula: I randomly came across this Russian (I know, boooo) composer of jazzy prog and couldn’t get enough of it.

#5: Sleep Token – Even in Arcadia: Another mask band on the list. All their songs start to sound the same, but I’m not sick of it quite yet.

#4: Matt Berry – Heard Noises: Yes, that Matt Berry.

#3: Halestorm – Everest: I never got too into this American (I know, booooo) metal band before, but they’ve really reached a new peak (haha) with this one.

#2 (Tie): Lady Gaga – MAYHEM: A year with more Gaga is a good year.

#2 (Tie): Miley Cyrus – Something Beautiful: I really love the first track in which Miley tries something a little different and more noisy. I wish the rest of the album was like that, but it’s still a very solid pop album in a year when I really couldn’t get into much pop.

#1: Coheed and Cambria – The Father of Make Believe: I don’t follow the intricate multi-media storyline of all their albums, but they make some great prog metal, and some vinyl with cool artwork.

Television

I watch a lot of TV—too much to really remember what I watched—but here are the shows that actually had an impact on me:

• Alien: Earth
• The Chair Company
• Doctor Odyssey
• The Four Seasons
• Gen V
• The Last Frontier
• The Last of Us
• Pluribus
• The Rehearsal
• The White Lotus
• Selling Sunset, the OC, New York, London, etc. Ideal TV for when you’ve had a few drinks watching a movie and now want to drunkenly yell at the TV and/or fall asleep on the couch.

Movies

These are the movies that came out in 2025 (or late 2024) and that I rated 4.5 or 5 stars on Letterboxd (go there for full reviews).

• 28 Years Later
• Final Destination: Bloodlines
• The Gorge
• The Home
• The Surfer
• Together
• The Ugly Stepsister

Short list this year! Not many movies I really loved. Honourable mentions to Bring Her Back, The Perfect Neighbour, Sinners, Superman, and Weapons, which are all very good too.

Games and Apps

Here are the games and game-related things I played a lot of this year. I went back to Xbox (vs. Playstation) as my main platform this year, at least until the Switch 2 came out. I’m old enough to still be amazed when a little rectangle can play games I couldn’t even dream about when I was dinking around with an NES in the 80s.

Add me on whatever platform you’re on if you’d like to play together.

• The Alters: An underrated survival / base building / hard sci-fi game that you should play if you haven’t.
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33: Beautiful game that I kind of lost interest in halfway through.
• Donkey Kong Bananza: It’s good to break everything around you. Kids.
• Dungeons and Dragons: the actual role-playing game, with a campaign that’s been going over 3 years now.
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2: My Christmas holiday game. I’ve been playing for 40 hours and all I’ve done is wander around trying to figure out how to take a bath.
• The Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed: Two games from Obsidian, pretty similar to each other, both decent.
• Marvel Snap: Still my toilet game.
• Resident Evil Village: Not a 2025 game but I finally got around to it.

Books

To quote my 2024 self:

Note to 2025 self: try for at least 10 books this year, you lazy fuck.

I failed. Look, I read hundreds of scientific papers and I’m reading all day at my science job, but does that show up on my Goodreads? No, all anybody cares about is these “books” that are so trendy. And yes, I only technically read a few full books last years, despite calling myself a reader and a writer, and that’s really pathetic, and I should aim to get my shit together, and the time I spent on TV screens could be better spent on books, and … where was I going with this? Ah well, quality over quantity, these were all very good books:

• The Case of the Murderous Doctor Cream by Dean Jobb (featuring old-timey murder right here in London Ontario!)
• Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari
• A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
• Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

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Ok, that’s another year of consuming content. Smell you later.

P.S. Remember to also check out my personal review of stuff that happened to me this year: 2025 In Review.