In these 100 songs, you’ll hear lusty dubstep, quietly subversive electronic pop, regional rap bangers, alt-country odysseys, ubiquitous chart-toppers, and much more. We were drawn to songs this year that expanded the toolkits of genres that we’ve covered for decades—all in service, quite often, of unspooling the mysteries of love and human connection.
Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2025 wrap-up coverage here.
100.
gyrofield: “Vegetation Grows Thick”
gyrofield started off making drum’n’bass, but on this year’s Suspension of Belief EP, the music comes unglued from those strict rhythms and forms into something stickier, more pliable. It’s right there in the title of the first track, “Vegetation Grows Thick,” whose textures feel like mutant organic tissue. With dusty hip-hop drums straightened out and sped up, it feels a bit like an old Mo’ Wax record left in a damp attic until it grew mold in its grooves—humid, buzzed, and a little blissed-out in its spongy transformation. It’s a head rush grounded in the earth, electronics running through soil and sending messages to god knows where. –Andrew Ryce
Listen: gyrofield, “Vegetation Grows Thick”
99.
Tortoise: “Oganesson”
Tortoise’s first new song in nine years slinked and shimmied into existence. With a bobbing and weaving bassline, watercolor guitar strums, and a 7/4 rhythm that stubbornly refuses to resolve, the song feels like it is tumbling forward in perpetual motion. Like its parent album Touch, the beauty of “Oganesson” is in its penumbral qualities: a spinning dream machine that flickers between light and shade. In time-honored Tortoise fashion, the band dropped “Oganesson” alongside a suite of remixes—mostly notably, one by Saul Williams that lent this instrumental band a new political voice, drawing lines between division at home and destruction abroad: “These bombs are welfare/Come collect your shrapnel.” –Louis Pattison
Listen: Tortoise, “Oganesson”
98.
Morgan Wallen / Post Malone: “I Ain’t Comin’ Back”
Here is where “I Ain’t Comin’ Back,” Morgan Wallen and Post Malone’s second blame-shifting duet, goes from a perfectly serviceable country radio hit to a great song: “There’s a lotta reasons I ain’t Jesus, but the main one is that I ain’t comin’ back.” It’s a damn near perfect line, one that’s funny and sounds like it was written and sung with a big ol’ shit-eatin’ grin. And it’s just long and choppy enough to make you have to recite every single word, reminding you that this breezy single from the black sheep of mainstream country was ridiculously released on Good Friday. –Matthew Strauss
