I'm Gilbert Cruz. This is the Sunday special.

For the last few episodes of 2025, we're looking back on the year and culture. Today, we're

talking about music. There were so many albums and songs released throughout the year.

We're going to talk about some of the biggest and best

with two people who are immersed in music pretty much every single day.

Karen Gans is the pop music editor here at The Times.

Hello, Karen.

Hello, Gilbert.

And Lindsay's OLEDs is a pop music critic here.

Hello, Lindsay.

Welcome back to the show.

Thanks for

having me back. So to kick things off, I'm going to start a sentence and you're going to

complete it. Okay? So for music, 2025 was blank. Fill in the blank. It was a bummer year for me,

Gilbert. Honestly, it really was. I know. I'm sorry. We're starting off on a sour note.

We're going to, things are going up here. The rocket ship takes off after I finished this initial

answer. I was making my own best of list. And I was like, I have had the hardest time this year. I think the hardest time ever. And I'm going to say 25 years of professional list making. Oh, my God. Because last year, it was like Billy Elish and Beyonce. The year before that, it was Olivia Rodriguez and 100 Gecks. Like, there were just these obvious giant things that had such a strong impact on me.

And when I was making my list this year, I was like, uh-oh. So to me, overall, there were a lot of records I was expecting to be great. They were a little lesser than I anticipated. I'm going to say a year of disappointment. I'll take the flip side of that. I'll try to spin it more optimistically. Thank you.

Just so we're not stuck in the mud here at the first.

Everyone's going to get mad at me. No, but I don't think you're wrong. I think in the,

in terms of the mainstream, it was a very stagnant year. And I think some of the biggest blockbusters

of the year, you know, were huge in a commercial sense, but I found lacking artistically.

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