Don't look now, the playlist companion to the story - a track from almost all my favourite albums of 2025, with the missing-from-Spotify Icecream Hands replaced by an extra from the 7-album Bruce Springsteen box. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

The apocalypse may be upon us far sooner than anticipated, the world of small men playing hard man may deal us out before then anyway, but some things remain true. Among them: cricket remains the most satisfying sport, Kensington Pride is the only worthwhile mango, and there’s always good music about, sometimes even great music, and this is the spot to find them. Or at least some of them. Because as I say every year, these aren’t the best albums of the year (necessarily) and

100 songs for a year caught between every version of Scylla and Charybdis. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Very much not Drake. KENDRICK LAMAR Allianz Stadium, Sydney, December 10   KENDRICK LAMAR DOESN’T WANT to be a pop star, but he doesn’t not  want to be one either. Take the flames left and right and two absolutely huge screens, the sparkly-framed glasses and a posse of dancers, the giant furry dice with scented tree ornament and the scaled-up stairs on an otherwise bare stage, the crack of fireworks like cannons and a whispered start with Lamar muttering in the shadows backst

Modern English: Andrew Fearn and Jason Williamson. Photo by Nick Waplington BEHIND JASON WILLIAMSON in a narrow but sunlight room of his home in Nottingham, you can see some art, a tour poster for his band, Sleaford Mods – with vocalist Williamson and bandmate Andrew Fearn leaning into each other and looking fit to pull the roof down – and two sets of baby shoes, framed. It’s a gentle domestic touch, metaphorically miles from the harsher, messier family life of his youth live

Warmer's in motion John Encarnacao. Photo by Brendan Smyly. SONGS ARE EXPENDABLE, these days without even spending, for so many people. Everyone says so. They accumulate in a playlist, the flash of a ticket from some concert years ago found in an old jacket, or in the box underneath the house that you’re definitely going to get to this summer. When the cricket’s not on. When it’s not too bloody hot to leave the air con. They tickle a memory occasionally, coming up in a sports

Woman of the year, Ms Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, This year’s favourites list is being polished – like a trophy, not like a turd, you nasty-minded few! – with a list of good things and accompanying playlists to be shared with you, as they say in the good book, momentarily. As we wait, Wind Back Wednesday does what it was set up to do and goes back in time to see what mattered, what was muttered, and maybe who was munted (or should have been, if only to survive) in day

Crazy notion. But who knows, it might catch on. Again. Sing it sister! CLICK HERE TO LISTEN Legally obliged to remind you there are more playlists like this at the lawless gulf that is Spotify.

THE MAN HAS HAD A YEAR. A few years, for sure, what with Covid, an existential crisis, a physical one accompanying it – they took up a lot of space. But this one … well, for Dublin-based David Keenan, it’s been something else. There is a new album, called Modern Mythologies , which does exist on its own as a rich, frank and tenderly vivid mix of folk and rock and something utterly soulful – a decidedly Irish album. But in truth it should be heard in the company of a tense, di