Happy New Year!

On ‘Souvenir,’ the fifth track on Deftones’ abrasive, pummelling, possibly perfect album private music, there’s a moment that makes my eyes roll back in my head. When Chino Moreno and co get to the two-minute mark, it sounds like they’re resetting for a second verse, but it’s a fake out, and they choose a different road. A classic Deftones guitar grind begins, but Moreno doesn’t scream obscenities, like he has done for decades on every Deftones album since Adrenaline. Instead, he sings, sweetly, like he’s just discovered utopia. “We gaze at the night,” he coos. “We own it, it's divine.”

That moment only lasts 30 seconds, and it’s the only time Moreno sings like that on ‘Souvenir’. I must have listened to it 200 times, because it is both searing and serene, a stunning moment of catharsis in amongst the chaos. To me, it perfectly encapsulates what music fans have been through in 2025. The albums, songs and concerts we all loved found ways to wrestle with this strange new world we find ourselves in. It has been weird and wild and shonky and sloppy, a heaving concoction of beauty and brutality, often everything everywhere all at once – and everything else in-between.

That disparity defined the year. You want pretty? You had Addison Rae sighing sweetly about the gross side of celebrity worship. You want ugly? How about Cameron Winter screaming about a bomb in his car. You want nice? Fans finally heard Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter’s voices entwine like two lost souls. You want nasty? Try Deafheaven’s apocalyptic howl that tried to entice Beelzebub himself to surface. You want … blood? Young Fathers made their best album yet, a stunning score full of sweeping cinematic chills, for a grotesque horror film featuring a zombie with a giant schlong.