The Worst Musical Developments Of 2025 (So Far)
By God, the crap keeps on flowing.
When you listen to as much music as I try to, you’re undoubtedly going to come across some true stinkers. This year has been no different, but I thought I’d try something different this time around in discussing what sucks about music in 2025. Below are eight songs, albums, bands, events or trends that flat out stink, ranked in no particular order. And a special shoutout to Benson Boone for being just forgettable enough to not make this list. I listened to all of this so you don’t have to. Or do and join in my misery: every applicable entry has a link to more for the morbidly curious. Enjoy?
“On a very vague, esoteric look at things, I can see why Lil Wayne might see a weird kinship with Weezer. Both acts are far past their prime that have become ambassadors to the genres they once dominated; both also continue to release music no one needs to hear. But there’s no way to look at “Island Holiday” as anything but an abject failure.” Read my full thoughts on this stinker below.
As if Katy Perry hasn’t embarrassed herself enough over the last few years. This stunt to send an all-female mission into space (for 11 minutes) was for what exactly? An image rehab trip for Perry after a colossal flop of a record in 143? For all her claims about bringing glam to space and, yes, “putting the ass in astronaut”, the media coverage had a hard time doing anything but laughing at the self-centeredness of it all. It was especially hard not to laugh when the whole crew was heard screaming for dear life as their capsule descended back into our atmosphere. Perhaps there is a way out there for Perry to recapture the glory of her early 2010’s output; floating in zero gravity waving flowers towards the camera and preaching some bastardized version of feminism because it’s the cool mom thing to do certainly isn’t the way.
“Early on Pink Elephant, Win Butler sums things up pretty well. “Don’t think about Pink Elephant” he croons on the title track, and I can’t help but think that was a warning… They’ve gotten so far away from what made them great to begin with; how can one get so lost in a castle they constructed themselves?” Believe me, I have plenty more to say on the worst album of Arcade Fire’s career in my full review of Pink Elephant below. I’m crying like the candle on the album cover.
One small caveat to this entry: it is cool seeing metal have a moment in the popular sphere. Not one, but two metal albums have debuted atop the Billboard 200 this year; is it too much to ask for those albums that reach the peak to not suck? Ghost have been so much better than they are on the empty Skeletá, an album that’s as thin and generic as they’ve ever sounded. Tobias Forge’s insistence on these songs being vehicles for lavish, lucrative live shows (that are undeniably fun) neuters the studio recordings; the smile he so clearly sang with on “Rats” or “Spillways” is replaced with a cold, corporate drone, intent on dollars and cents at the cost of artistic integrity. But at least Ghost was once worth a damn, as Sleep Token’s whole modus operandi is to be as worthless as possible. Perhaps they hide behind masks because they wouldn’t want their real names to be associated with making some of the most spineless music of 2025. Even In Arcadia speeds through metal, screamo, emo, alt-rock, pop, and a litany of other genres while giving none of them the time of day to be fleshed out. It’s a menagerie of awfulness, and when the lead singer leans more into cringe than colorfulness, it makes you realize this is all a red herring: people want to think they like metal while actually not liking anything that can make metal great.
Yes, you read that right. Not only has AI infected the creative world in the worst ways possible stateside, the Far East has found new ways to prove why this shit needs to be regulated. “YAJU&U” sounds like nothing more than the intro to a third-rate anime upon first listen; it’s when you find out that its lyrical content references an early 2000’s Japanese gay pornographic film that it starts to make you shudder. Its “novelty” topped Japanese Spotify charts for weeks, and honestly, it’d be really funny if it wasn’t AI. If a real human put in the effort to something so stupid, with a full orchestra and everything, I’d maybe laugh. But it’s just robotic slop, a cheap imitation of music from a bad kid’s cartoon with no soul and some pretty atrocious fake vocals to boot. And when the intentions are so nefarious and weird (read into the lyrics for a real treat), it really makes you question it all. Special shout out to Kieran Press-Reynold’s Pitchfork article for introducing me to this, read that full piece here and revel in our decaying world.
At least he’s not doing pop punk an injustice? Full thoughts:
It was news to me that Lizzo had a mixtape in the works that dropped last Friday. It’s an obvious pivot to make with “Love In Real Life” getting the deserved critical panning it did, and the album it’s attached to is nowhere to be found. Her brand of positivity has never sounded faker or more forced, and I doubt a delay is going to make the end product better. Read more on that lousy single below.
Throw in any combination of synonyms for “terrible” into the pun for this one. Sexyy Red and Bruno Mars are two incredibly fun artists on their own, so why do they sound so unfun on “Fat, Juicy & Wet”? It’s the worst kind of collaboration, one that sounds fine in theory yet absolutely atrocious in execution. How either artist heard this and said “yeah let’s drop it” is beyond me, other than the obvious fact that it’ll be a success based on everything other than artistic merit. I’ll just keep thinking of adjectives for “bad” I can use to make fun of it.
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