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This is quite something.

This is the first time we've ever done the show in the room where the room where we're all in the same room. Hazel Sills, down from New York. Yeah, I'm here in the flesh. You've docked at the mothership. I'm not AI. I know that was a concern for all of you, but I'm real. And then Sheldon Pierce, you're here. Yes, I am. This is the all songs considered.

Look at the year's best songs.

The best songs of 2025.

This will be a stunningly incomplete list.

If you check out the NPR website, you will find a much more comprehensive picture of everything that we love this year. There are, what is there, a hundred and twenty-five songs. I'd argue there are probably more great songs than that. Do you think? And we couldn't even find them on the list this year. Someone sounds a little salty. That's a hot take, Sheldons. About how many songs I get come on. Don't even look at our list. Oh, man. You won't find what you like on that list.

It's great.

Great advertising.

Yeah.

It's a mix of stuff picked by the BNPR music team, our stations.

On this episode, we're just going to share some of our favorites from that big long list.

And it's an unranked list, right?

It's not like there's a very clear number one song on that list. Do you all have a number one song, like a personal number one

song? I don't think so. Songs are always tougher for me. There's just so many. There's too much.

Yeah, I feel like as the year goes on, there will be certain months or moments where I have one favorite song, and then it'll sort of transition out, and then I have a new favorite song. So when the year ends, it's really hard for me to say, like, oh, this one song dominated my year. And I feel like there's just a number of songs out this year that I could say, oh, that's top for me.

Yeah, but like, I just didn't feel like there were a lot of obvious, standalone singles. Like, oh, what a year of singles? See, that's where we disagree. I always feel like that. I'm always like... Oh, you mean you feel like it's that way every year? Yeah, every year. I don't think there's... there's probably more in years past than this in terms of like consensus singles, especially on our team. But I think generally for me,

I tend to lean towards weirder songs in general that most people are like, why would you pick that

...