Feeling Groupie

My last podcast episode discussed the top 10 albums of 2025, and this is a corresponding post.  I included the top 100 albums of the year, the best in several genres or conditions, and the worst of the year. All images are from Wikipedia unless otherwise noted, and the rights of the picture belong to the owner, artist, and/or distributor of the cover.   The album cover selected is bolded when listed in each individual list.     Top-100 Albums   Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You , Ethel Cain Horror , Bartees Strange Sable, Fable , Bon Iver Eusexua , FKA Twigs Lonely People with Power , Deafheaven Copper Changes Color , CAAMP Wild and Clear and Blue , I’m With Her Let God Sort Em Out , Clipse Foxes in the Snow , Jason Isbell I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me , Lorna Shore Sankofa , Redveil Luminal , Corpus Delicti New Threats From the Soul , Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band Timeless World Forever , Graham Hunt Westward , Dylan Gossett S...

With the Grammy nominees being announced November 7th, one thing that I think goes understated is the fact that there is no transparency from the Recording Academy regarding the submissions.  The reason why this matters to me is because there are several situations where individuals or works are eligible for awards but aren't submitted for and people wonder why they weren't nominated (in particular, there are always some artists who don't submit any work, and it isn't particularly transparent; some examples who I thought could have gotten nominated this year include Taylor Swift, Ethel Cain, and Morgan Wallen).  As such, I did something that nobody asked for again, which is creating a spreadsheet with all of the Grammy submissions that I know (this year, I know 2,976 submissions with decent confidence). As a disclaimer, there are 4 instances where I know a song was submitted for an award, but I'm not sure which song.  These instances include a Joachim Horsley submis...

This year, I decided to create a Riot Fest prediction lineup for fun.  I made it based on a combination of acts who are likely and some other acts who make sense.  I tried to choose acts that would make sense with the budget, though the first few names on Friday and Saturday might be pushing it a bit to have all of them.  I’m not sure how many are going to be on each day, so I went with 30 on Friday and Sunday and 33 on Saturday (there are normally a few more acts on Saturday).  In the last few years, they have had bigger headliners on Friday and Sunday while there is a smaller headliner (or co-headliners) on Saturday.  I feel confident about the Friday and Sunday headliners, though less so about the Saturday one.   Friday Blink-182 Vampire Weekend Weird Al Yankovich Pulp Alkaline Trio Rilo Kiley 4 Non Blondes Franz Ferdinand Fountains of Wayne Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine Hot Water Music Afroman The Sound of Animals Fighting Propagand...

Now that the Grammy’s have passed, I never discussed who I would vote for if I had a vote (as you probably guessed by now, I do not have a vote).  While there is a limit in the number of awards a voter can vote for, I am ignoring this for this post and making choices for several awards.   General Record of the Year I was fine with any of them winning except for “Now and Then”, though I also wouldn’t have been the biggest fan of “Texas Hold ‘Em” winning.   I largely went back and forth between “Birds of a Feather”, “Not Like Us”, and “360”, while going with the former due to the performance and production.   That said, I thought “360” was the best produced of the nominees. Choice:   “Birds of a Feather”, Billie Eilish   Album of the Year The one album in this award that I didn’t review was Chappell Roan’s (I didn’t think it would explode like it did when it was released in 2023).   I considered this year to be a weak year in this award; ...

This post is a recap of my predictions for the Grammys.  In addition to the winner, I ranked each in order by likelihood of winning in my opinion (note that this is not the order that I think they will finish in; rather, this is the order of who I think is most likely to win, which would most likely not match the final vote tallies, which are never released).  For more information about each award, check out the corresponding podcast episode.  I'll give the caveat that I was torn between a few for several awards, so it's entirely possible that the overall percentage of awards that I get right is not high; that said, I expect several that I get wrong will include ones where the winner was one I thought was possible.     General Field Record of the Year “Espresso”, Sabrina Carpenter “Now and Then”, The Beatles “Texas Hold ‘Em”, Beyonce “Birds of a Feather”, Billie Eilish “Not Like Us”, Kendrick Lamar “Good Luck, Babe!”, Chappell Roan “Fortnight”, Taylor ...