The 25 stories that defined Paste in 2025
Here’s the gist of everything we covered this year, whether it was every Bob Dylan album anniversary, a rare Sufjan Stevens interview, obituaries on deceased rock and roll immortals, a cover story on the artist who made our AOTY, concert reviews, or an essay about the current state of Brooklyn’s DIY community.
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As Frank Ocean once said: “That’s a pretty fucking fast year flew by.” 2025 has come and nearly gone. We lost a few heroes but gained many along the way. We talked with people we admire, wrote about people we don’t, and ignored a lot of the people in-between. Hopefully we’re leaving this year better than we found it. So why not go full Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson mode once last time and give a nod of approval to some of this site’s greatest hits from the last 12 months? For this roundup, we are excluding lists, reviews, and news breaks. Otherwise, it would just be our Arcade Fire pan, the big Album of the Year ranking, and Jack White talking shit on Donald Trump. Thank you for reading all of our words this year. We’ll be back in January with more bullshit, more articles, and more things to disagree with. Here are the 25 stories that defined Paste in 2025.
25. Now that’s what I call a lost art: The case for compilation CDs
By Cassidy Sollazzo
Before algorithms flattened taste into vibes, compilations made discovery an active habit rather than a hollow promise.
24. Could you love John C. Reilly forever?
By Matt Mitchell
In 2023, the Oscar-nominated actor, beloved comedian, and doting musician launched Mister Romantic, an improvised musical revue starring a desperate, pansexual, love-seeking time traveler living in a steamer trunk. As he’s taken the production to Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, and beyond, it’s become his finest act yet.
23. JADE plays the game
By Matt Mitchell
The English musician spoke with Paste about Little Mix’s hiatus, the responsibilities of being a pop diva, selling butt plugs as merch, rediscovering her Arabic heritage, and her long-awaited solo debut, That’s Showbiz Baby!
22. Marianne Faithfull’s life contained rock music’s secret history
By Elise Soutar
Paste‘s Elise Soutar faces the daunting task of fully explaining the harrowing and heroic life of Faithfull, cheater of a thousand deaths and music history’s true avenging angel.
21. Rochelle Jordan earned her bragging rights
By Matt Mitchell
In October, the British-Canadian singer-songwriter/producer released the best pop record of 2025, Through the Wall. She then sat down with Paste to talk about it, her partnership with KLSH, using audience cravings as a longevity tool, and what being a diva means to her.
20. Decidedly Lady Gaga
By Matt Mitchell
The pop trailblazer spoke with Paste’s editor about her career-spanning hit record, Mayhem.
19. A not-so-hidden gem of the Midwest emo scene remains a masterclass in throwing a DIY music festival
By Grace Robins-Somerville
Summit Shack Presents Faux VIII sold out in just a day, with fans clamoring for resale tickets up until the night before the festival. Though Faux has consistently had its finger on the pulse when it comes to booking up-and-coming acts in punk, emo, and indie rock, the festival has also collected a loyal slate of fan favorites who keep coming back to play year after year.
18. Animal Collective can laugh a little
By Tatiana Tenreyro
Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist, and Deakin speak with Paste about the lasting legacy of their sixth album, Feels, and how it became a turning point for them as a band.
17. The uncanny discontent of Judas Priest’s British Steel
By Devon Chodzin
Each metal subculture has its own approach to cultivating a kind of unity, one where the existing rules of what’s off-limits and how, musically, you can go the extra mile beyond what’s thought possible. It was British Steel that brought that vision to life, revealing a place for mortal rage in metal while pushing the genre forward.
16. To quote a phrase: Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks at 50
By Matt Mitchell
In 1975, Dylan released his 15th studio album. It’s the greatest love story ever captured on tape—songs as domestic and challenging as they are idyllic and dense, and songs that are as timeless as the protest music he stepped away from ten years earlier.
15. Tears for Fears lived to tell the tale
By Matt Mitchell
Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal reflect on 40 years of Songs from the Big Chair, the pop duo’s explosive, decade-defining sophomore album that topped the charts, spawned immortal hits, and made Tears for Fears a household name across generations in 1985.
14. Nourished by Time is possessed
By Matt Mitchell
When Marcus Brown began promoting The Passionate Ones in 2024, he only had one song written. After absorbing the dominions of Meat Loaf, David Hammons, early Kanye, SWV, and The Blueprint, he exited his creative stupor with 2025’s best album in hand.
13. Ezra Furman: Beyond the limits of language
By Casey Epstein-Gross
Furman’s 10th studio album, Goodbye Small Head, was written in the wake of illness, sociological terror, collapse, and creative exhaustion. She spoke with Paste about invoking tropes of humiliation, deviance, and rebellion by repurposing them through the lens of agency.
12. Walking out in the big sky: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love turns 40
By Matt Mitchell
In 1985, the English singer, songwriter, dancer, and producer released her masterwork—finely-crafted pop hooks and a surfeit of avant-garde intensities that chases after ideas of autonomy, sexuality, nature, the consciousness of gender, and parent-child relationships.
11. The legend of Cicciolina: Porn star, disco diva, and radical member of Parliament
By Tiernan Cannon
At various points in time a spy, a world-famous porn star, an Italo disco diva, and a radical left-wing politician, Ilona Staller, aka Cicciolina, has lived quite the life.
10. New York I love you, but you’re bringing me down: The effect of money and mythology on Brooklyn DIY
By Sam Small
The odds are disproportionately stacked against musicians and the greater Brooklyn DIY community as they face a higher cost of living and show crowds hell-bent on consuming nostalgic media over anything else.
9. Artist of the Year: Hayley Williams
By Matt Mitchell
In August, the Paramore vocalist dropped 17 singles out of nowhere. Since then, it’s become one of the year’s most beloved pop albums. We caught up with Williams about Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party and the growing pains of being an independent artist for the first time.
8. Hell ain’t half full: PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love at 30
By Elise Soutar
Released in 1995, PJ Harvey’s third album is dependent on negative space, where sound is either used sparingly or sent to erupt ferociously, kicking with the force of a sandstorm.
7. In their second act, Oasis returns as everything they once promised to be
By Lacy Baugher Milas
So much of the Oasis experience the first time around was scowls and arrogance and performative attitude, set to a seemingly endless backing track of Noel and Liam arguing. This time? Nothing but smiles—from the crowd, from the band, from the Gallagher boys themselves.
6. Sufjan Stevens communicates with ghosts
By Matt Mitchell
With his two greatest works, Illinois and Carrie & Lowell, turning 20 and ten years old, Stevens gave a rare interview to Paste and spoke about the transformations of grief, his pivot away from scholarship in songwriting, the consciousness of art, and Americana as mythology.
5. In 1973, Bruce Sprinsteen wrote the greatest summer song ever
By Matt Mitchell
Tucked into the saga of his second album, “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” became the perfect noise for lying belly-up in the dog days of July.
4. Neko Case won’t be tamed
By Casey Epstein-Gross
On Neon Grey Midnight Green, the folk-rock icon insists that grief sharpens rather than clouds reality, and that connection—human and animal alike—is the antidote to dread.
3. Brian Wilson was music’s greatest exception
By Matt Mitchell
After the passing of the Beach Boys’ co-founder and composer, Paste’s editor reflects on the lifespan of his work.
2. …But not mine: Patti Smith’s Horses 50 years later
By Elise Soutar
Patti Smith’s debut album chafed against the freshly corporate world of rock, then just a spry two decades old, and carried the sounds of New York in its propulsions alone.
1. Cameron Crowe: To begin with… everything
By Matt Mitchell
The profiler gets profiled. Paste’s editor sat down with the former Rolling Stone writer and Almost Famous filmmaker for a long talk.
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