Hey everyone, it's Mary. It's officially 2026, and we are continuing our run of year-end superlatives,

with a look at the year in music. From the continual domination of Bad Bunny to the divisive

indie band Geese, it's been a year we're trying to whittle down the wave of new music to one or two

favorites has been tough to say the least. So we're kicking it to the music experts, not me. I'm talking about our friends at Hit Parade. Slate's Carl Wilson and Hit Parade's Chris Malamfi have revived the Slate Music Club and invited a couple of friends along for the ride. And we're going to share it with you today. If you like what you hear, head on over to Hit Parade. Trust me, you're going to enjoy it.

Hey, everybody. This is Chris Malanfi, host of Hit Parade, Slate's podcast of Pop Chart History.

Welcome to The Bridge.

This is a special episode of Hit Parade The Bridge. This is a special episode of Hit Parade The Bridge, a recap of 2025, The Year in Music, with my colleagues in the Slate Music Club. We're making this show partially available to all Hit Parade listeners.

Our Slate Plus members get the whole show. What is the

Slate Music Club? For more than two decades, Slate convened a panel of critics at the end of each year

to discuss the year in music, the cultural trends that drove the musical zeitgeist, as well as our favorite

albums and singles. We would share our

thoughts in a series of written articles published just before the holidays. Starting last year,

we turned the music club into a podcast conversation. We've convened a panel of smart folks

to talk about music in 2025. So let me introduce our participants, all of whom

have graced the bridge before, and one joining us for the Slate Music Club for the first time.

First off, a return visitor, Julianne Escobedo Shepard. Julianne is a writer, editor, and co-founder

of Hearing Things, an independent worker-owned music

publication, and she is the author of the forthcoming book Vakera, about growing up Mexican-American

in Wyoming and the myth of the American West. Next, she's not new to the bridge, but she is

new to music club, Lindsay Zolads. Lindsay is a pop music critic at the

New York Times, where she writes about a variety of current music and curates the paper's weekly

newsletter, The Amplifier. I look forward to Lindsay telling me why I am wrong about geese.

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