GAY POP Picks: The Best Music of 2025 (So Far)
We’re almost halfway done with 2025. Here are GAY POP’s picks for the best tracks this cursed year has given us thus far.
Three disclaimers. Firstly: I know we’re not precisely halfway through the year just yet. Truthfully, this writer is a smidge burnt out from assignment season, and this piece was a lighter load than GAY POP’s usual in-depth music coverage, hence why it’s out at the start of June and not the end. Secondly, the ranked format of this list doesn’t necessarily mean that the order is fixed or even all that important; it’s more down to my personal preference of having things in a numbered list. Finally: this isn’t a definitive list of all the best music released this year across all genres – there’s plenty of other sites to visit if that’s what you’re looking for. Instead, I’m rounding up my personal favourite tracks of the year in the interest of keeping things relevant to you, my reader. That being said, if you’re particularly upset that a certain song didn’t make the list, my comments are open. Happy Pride, GAY POP reader. Thanks for being here.
Honourable mentions:
Satisfy (LSDXOXO & Shygirl) – gleefully vulgar lyrics atop a pulsing dance hook. In a just world, this is our song of the summer.
Illegal (PinkPantheress) – a bit cheeky and a whole lot intoxicating, this track is quintessentially Pink while levelling up her sound to something even more infectious.
It’s Just Us (Kali Uchis) – a honey-sweet, loved-up ballad from an album chock-full of them. Uchis’ vocals are like a siren’s call on this highlight from Sincerely,.
Male Gaze (Kyle Dion) – the spare and tender antithesis to Uchis’ all-encompassing love songs, Dion’s track is no less warm and inviting.
Sports car (Tate McRae) – say what you want about the lyricism or McRae’s nasally voice, but the hook and production on this track simply slap.
Walk To Class (Malcolm Todd) – the juvenility suggested by this song’s title belies an earnest take on love slipping away, set atop a summery indie sheen.
Take a Sexy Picture of Me (CMAT) – warm production disguises startling, wryly funny revelations on nostalgia and intimacy.
ict (Oklou) – the jury’s still out on what on Earth these lyrics mean, but production-wise this is a stunning, searing sonic journey through the cosmos and back again.
High Fashion (Addison Rae) – bewitching and beguiling, Rae’s feathery vocals are matched by sensual production and lyrics that are as vexing as they are downright cool.
Gnarly (KATSEYE) – a future camp classic with abrasive production and a slyly satirical edge that I’ve already written about at length.
Just Two (Rose Gray) – Ibiza-ready and SPF-soaked, this house cut from Gray’s debut album celebrates love in all the hedonistic pleasure of its early days.
Shadow of a Man (Lady Gaga) – though MAYHEM is vibes-first, lyrics later, this track is an outlier, delving into Gaga’s experiences in a misogynistic music industry. Even better, she does it all with a swagger to rival Michael Jackson.
HOTBOX (Lil Nas X) – criminally underrated and pure queer fun, this track’s spunky sound is perfect for a summer drive.
not a lot, just forever – live (Adrianne Lenker) – a tender, wrenching live rendition of a song that I previously thought couldn’t get more tender or wrenching.
Like JENNIE (JENNIE) – a stellar baile funk and phonk cut whose only proper flaw is that it’s not longer than two minutes.
Mega Circuit (Japanese Breakfast) – this plodding highlight from Michelle Zauner’s latest record is menacing and paranoid. In other words, it’s the song of our times.
GAY POP Picks: The Best Music of the Year (So Far)
15. Vacillator (Ethel Cain)
It was hard to discern what Perverts, Ethel Cain’s release from earlier this year, was properly about. Only on repeat listens – which were difficult to get through due to the record’s repetitive droning passages – did its messages about self-pleasure in the context of religious punishment become apparent. ‘Vacillator’, though, was one of the few tracks with proper lyrics, and is also the only one on Perverts with drums. Cain, as usual, sounds haunted, yet there’s an indelible melancholy to her voice: “If you love me / Keep it to yourself,” she croons, as though she knows any pursuit of happiness or pleasure is futile anyway.
14. Hackney Wick (Rose Gray)
Though Louder, Please – Gray’s debut album, released in January – was characterised largely by pop hooks and party vibes, its finest track has neither of those. ‘Hackney Wick’ is a true oddity, a mostly spoken-word piece about nostalgia and good times set atop a pulsing, quickening house tempo. What begins as a reflection on a night out transforms into a forlorn meditation on growing up that can be handily summed up by that one Andy Bernard quote. It adds new depth and hard-won context to the hedonism that the rest of the album revels in.
13. Full time papi (Guitarricadelafuente)
Spanish crooner Guitarricadelafuente, real name Álvaro Lafuente Calvo, first came to my attention when he featured on a Troye Sivan record a couple of years ago. Like Sivan, Calvo is an underrated lyricist with gentle, agonised vocal sensibilities, and ‘Full time papi’ marries his strengths with engaging, unusual production. Swerving between spiritual organ, haunting string sections and rattling Blonde-esque drum machines, it’s as though the track itself is alive with Calvo’s own heartache.
12. Something Beautiful (Miley Cyrus)
Repurposed from a previous GAY POP article: “Something Beautiful’s title track […] toggles between a sultry jazz club ditty and a psych-rock freakout that bewilders the ear as much as it entraps it. The verses are sumptuous, a ‘Rocket’-adjacent tale of slow-dancing with a lover just before things get hot and heavy. In the chorus, it happens all at once: “I’m losing my breath / Boy, you’re marking up my necklace,” as Cyrus’ cravings engulf her. At once, it reminds you of both Pink Floyd and Tame Impala, yet the vocals – making an impassioned, throaty return – stake Cyrus’ own flag on the track.”
11. Talk (Lucy Dacus)
Though Dacus’ record from this year, Forever is a Feeling, was overall too dainty and reserved to be properly compelling, its best song reminded you of her strengths as a lyricist while livening things up with seismic, haunting production. Dacus sounds truly cursed by the ex of whom she sings, their body “looming like a spectre / Hungry as a scythe” as Dacus both scorns their name and longs for their return. It’s perhaps cruel to suggest that Dacus’ record, largely focused on her new relationship, could’ve done with more songs this emotionally tense. Then again, even when she’s singing about her romantic tribulations, she makes it sound so good.
10. Do You Even Think About Me? (Rebecca Black)
Rebecca Black is ready to move on. After the ‘Friday’ debacle, she’s emerged as a pop princess for our modern times: bratty, rude and highly emotional. One song from her recent EP, though, reckons with her fraught past in a compelling way, holding a mirror up to her worst detractors. The fiery production boils over as she howls: “We don’t know each other anymore / But I know that I’m still living in the same dead horse!” If her haters haven’t gotten the hint to get off her case even now, Black sounds furious enough to deal with it herself.
9. Backseat (Balu Brigada)
Charli xcx, be warned: a new competitor has entered the ring. Threatening to steal xcx’s crown for the best song named after the second-best place in the car (first being the driver’s seat!), Kiwi duo Balu Brigada’s ‘Backseat’ is a bloody psych-rock speed drive bearing shades of Tame Impala, if Kevin Parker’s voice was deeper and more desperate. That’s until, in the track’s final two minutes, it slows, as though the car is changing direction, reversing down the highway, down a path of no return, through the portal, never to return. It’s effortlessly cool and utterly transfixing.
8. 15 Minutes (Sabrina Carpenter)
The pint-sized pop star deserves more credit. Carpenter is the target of many a think-piece on how she’s too oversexualised, her lyrics are too dumb, her hair is – get this! – a wig. (That last one is particularly stupid, but I digress.) On the deluxe of her stellar Short ‘n’ Sweet record from last year, she made a counteroffer: she could be sexy and clever. Crazy, I know. ’15 Minutes’ is sharply clever, layered with double entendres – its title refers to both Carpenter’s time in the bedroom and the claim that her ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ are up – and it’s done through a lens of infectious, ABBA-indebted disco pop.
7. Number One Girl (Pablo Brooks)
Straight men are that perennial peculiarity, particularly among girls and gays; we love to chastise their stupidity, their recklessness, yet we continue to rely on them for validation. We love to hate them, but we also properly hate loving them. German pop singer Pablo Brooks deals with the latter on this gorgeous, shimmering synth-pop track, embarrassing himself at a party in front of a man he knows will never be his. Still, a boy can dream: “I look like all the girls / I know that you would love […] I′m drunk enough to / Say that I would do it in a good girl costume.” It's the age-old gay struggle – he’d love me if I wasn’t a boy.
6. warm (Ariana Grande)
Again, I’ve said it best before: “[Grande] reworks her longing into a gorgeous track that envelops like an embrace, sunny synths bouncing around a summery dance pulse. The song is even more impressive when placed in tandem with ‘better off’, a Sweetener cut that found Grande struggling with the realisation that her partner is simply not good enough for her. Now, on ‘warm’, she refuses to make sacrifices or compromises for her lover, asking him to meet her where she is. Hearing ‘warm’ is like having your closest friend get with a nice boy after a string of toxic relationships. It’s a marvel of sheer self-respect.”
5. Me & Angel (Perfume Genius)
Glory, the latest record from Mike Hadreas, felt like a left-turn precisely because it wasn’t a left-turn. From the humid avant-pop of 2017’s No Shape to the opaque, at times impenetrable mystique of 2022’s Ugly Season, Hadreas was getting weirder with each release, which made the accessible, plain-spoken soft rock of Glory feel like such a welcome palate cleanser. ‘Me & Angel’ is one such example, a relaxed, simple love song: “I’m on your side”, Hadreas repeats, embracing a lover in the calm after the storm.
4. Fame is a Gun (Addison Rae)
Though none of the singles preceding her debut album’s release have been anything less than terrific, Rae’s most recent one is both the most sonically enthralling – layering deceptively angelic vocals onto strutting, stormy 8-bit pop production – and the most thematically intriguing. Here, she reckons with her public image and those who’d written her off as the tryhard TikTok girl, arguing that the negative attention only makes her work harder: “when you shame me / It makes me want it more.” It might be inspiring if Rae didn’t seem so untouchably cool.
3. Drinking Age (Cameron Winter)
Winter’s debut record, Heavy Metal, technically came out last December; it’s a testament to its undeniable beauty that its shadow has loomed large over my listening habits in 2025. As such, I’m making an exception for ‘Drinking Age’, a woodwind-inflected piano ballad that’s so beautiful it hurts. The lyrics are poetic and preciously few: “Today I met who I’m gonna be / And he’s a piece of shit”, Winter croons, in a rich, bassy tone. Then it crescendos, and his heart bursts open as he wails: “This is who I’m gonna be / This way / A piece of meat!” Ironically for a piece about aging, he sounds as though he’s regressed back into boyhood – devastated by the weight of existing.
2. Zombieboy (Lady Gaga)
Gaga is often caught between two worlds (it’s a theme addressed several times throughout her recent album, MAYHEM). At her core, she loves a piano, a big throaty ballad she can play the hell out of. Then again, she’s usually at her strongest on a muscular pop beat. ‘Zombieboy’ – the finest song from MAYHEM – marries the principles of both these sides of Gaga. It’s a heartfelt tribute to her late friend, model Rick Genest, but instead of being dwelling and melancholy, it’s put to a glisteningly infectious roller-rink instrumental, replete with stellar electric guitar lines and distinct Gaga-isms (“put your paws all over me, you zombieboy!”). It’s a stunning, celebratory disco track, but there’s one line that gets me weirdly emotional at the end of the bridge: “Goodbye, I’ll see you in my dreams,” as she waves goodbye to her friend – while vowing to keep the party going in his honour.
1. Striptease (FKA twigs)
For all the online furore surrounding FKA twigs this year, the music she released in January was really quite good. EUSEXUA’s carnal centrepiece, ‘Striptease’, is the finest song in an album full of future classics. It’s a gorgeous, icy exercise in vulnerability: “Opening me feels like a striptease,” she teases atop chrome-coated clangs, like her fear of intimacy – a topic coursing through the veins of EUSEXUA – is weaponised as an act of love. That’s before the song’s stunning finale, a drum ‘n’ bass orgasm that doubles the tempo and quickens the heartbeat as she repeats the chorus. Her layers shed, she succumbs to the beat, swooning in time as her voice fades into the still-chaotic rhythm. She’s achieved eusexua, tuning out and diving into bliss.
Zombieboy def one of my faves of the year so far
def needs more dubstep but overall solid picks