The Kallys® – Best Music of 2025 – The Unexpected List
The Kallys® are an annual set of made-up awards (aren’t they all?) that celebrate my favourite creative works from the calendar year just gone. It’s a fun way to reflect on my favourite arty experiences and share them with others. I give you full permission to pass these suggestions off as your own when someone comes to you for a cool recommendation. I hereby present The Kallys®: Best Music of 2025.
I’ve always been a sucker for musical artists who treat three-minute pop songs like a short story, and if you’re gonna deliver that to me in an inventive mish-mash of styles, then I’m not looking back.
And in 2025 I was beaming because I had two unexpected music discoveries just like that. Both have one thing in common though. Brilliantly crafted songs that are never predictable.
So the following are my delectable selectables from the best new music I encountered in 2025. My musi-Kallys, if you will. Turn it up.
I caught these wild and wonderful guys on the BBC Glastonbury coverage (see above) and was instantly hooked. Despite fluffing their lines on national TV, Getdown Services still had something utterly captivating and charming about them. So I went off and sought them out, and absolutely fell in love with their witty, weird and absolutely rocking songs. It feels like a marvellous muddy mix between bar-room poetry and bluesy rock, sprinkled with mad loopy synthy experiments in between. Its unique and it shouldn’t work, but it does. Its fresh sounding and a genuine musical find for me.
CMAT is completely herself at all times, and I love her for it. Her songs are original, they are grounded in the now, and there is a playful, cheeky energy to everything she does, whether she’s pirouetting across a stage or pouring her heart out on record. There’s poppy hooks, catchy choruses, and a dash of country twang. She is already deservedly popular, but 2026 feels like the year when she takes it to another level. And every minute of it is earned, and I am here for it.
In fairness, is there a better song this year than “Take a sexy picture of me”?
So this is a bit of a cheeky one. I’m adding my own song in here, purely because it is “technically” new. 15 years ago I entered (and won) a competition to compose an alternative national anthem. As a master of marketing, I like to stagger the release of things to achieve maximum impact, so I finally got it up on Spotify this year. It is also available on TikTok, Instagram and all the other socials, if you fancy tacking it onto your own posts. So, {drum roll please, maestro}… presenting the world premiere of “My Blood Is Boiling For Ireland” on Spotify
