Tags
Banda Al9, Brett Newksi, Chaparelle, Chris Church, Chris Stamey, Daisy House, Death By Unga Bunga, Eytan Mirsky, Force Model, Grant Lindberg, Hidden Pictures, HOA, Jaimee Orr, Japanese Breakfast, Jim Trainor, Keyside, Liquid Mike, Log Flume, Lolas, Marshall Crenshaw, Martin Luke Brown, Mike Browning, Movie Movie, Nicky Koro, Oehl, Pony, Pouts, Rich Chance, Sally Spitz, Sofa City Sweetheart, Softjaw, Sorry Monks, Strange Neighbors, Tamar Berk, The Berries, The Bret Tobias Set, The Cords, The Geezers, The Half Cubes, The Invisible Rays, The Jeanines, The Lemon Twigs, The Mayflies USA, The Memories, The Mommyheads, The Needmores, The Sonny Wilsons, The Spindles, The Super True, The Tummies, The What Four, Tom Henry, Tony Marsico, Tristan Armstrong, Zombies of the Stratosphere
Another year, another slew of great singles made their appearance throughout our 73 posts of music coverage. If you’re an old school melodic rock and roll fan like me, the jangly, hooky, guitar-centric creativity was off the charts. Sadly, such the jangly, hooky, guitar-centric creativity was off the conventional music charts as well. That’s why we don’t rely on trade mags or corporate radio to tell us what’s top of the pops, we make up our own charts. Now, let me be clear, if I wrote about a song this past year I thought it was great, full stop. We’re an ‘all-positive, all-the-time’ kinda shop around here. So what you have in this post is recap of 50 songs that burned just little more deeply into my psyche this past year. Click on the hyperlinks to hear each of the songs and read the original write ups.
Enough stalling, here are Poprock Record’s top 50 should-be hit singles from 2025:
1. Keyside “Rock My Love”
2. Strange Neighbors “Beer at the Bar”
3. The What Four “Quarter to Midnight”
4. The Lemon Twigs “I’ve Got a Broken Heart”
5. The Sonny Wilsons “Maybe”
6. Pony “Superglue”
7. The Cords “Just Don’t Know (How to Find You)”
8. HOA “Don’t Be A Loser”
9. Tamar Berk “you ruined this city for me”
10. Banda AL9 “California”
11. Martin Luke Brown “To Be a Man”
12. Eytan Mirsky “Lost You in the Jetstream”
13. Grant Lindberg “In My Own Way”
14. Jaime Orr “Somebody Like You”
15. Force Model “How Can One Girl Be So Sad”
16. Log Flume “December’s Ending”
17. Rich Chance “Azelea Close”
18. The Bret Tobias Set “It Begins With Lean”
19. The Memories “Too Weak to be Strong”
20. Death By Unga Bunga “I’m Really Old”
21. Softjaw “I Need You”
22. The Spindles “Getaway”
23. Brett Newski and the Bad Inventions “Narrow Escapes”
24. Chris Church “She Looks Good in Black”
25. Japanese Breakfast “Magic Circuit”
26. Tristan Armstrong “The Lonely Avenue”
27. The Super True “Right Here”
28. The Needmores “Lookin’”
29. Oehl “I Love You”
30. Sally Spitz “Tag Your Sign”
31. Sorry Monks “I Know What’s On Your Mind”
32. The Mayflies USA “Calling the Bad Ones Home”
33. The Geezers “Modern Days”
34. Lolas “Work is the Blackmail of Survival”
35. Tom Henry “Close Your Eyes”
36. The Jeanines “What’s Done is Done” / “On and On”
37. The Tummies “Send Me A Picture”
38. Movie Movie “After Hours”
39. Tony Marsico and the Ugly Things “Goodbye to Lonely Town”
40. Chris Stamey “Anything is Possible”
41. Jim Trainor “Nothing”
42. Hidden Pictures “Wedding Singer (Going Through a Divorce)”
43. Liquid Mike “Selling Swords”
44. Zombies of the Stratosphere “If You’re Into It”
45. Daisy House “The Seducer”
46. The Invisible Rays “I Don’t Dream of You”
47. Nicky Koro “Dreamin’”
48. Pouts “Stay Awhile”
49. The Mommyheads “It’s Only Life”
50. The Berries “Lie in the Fire Again”
My top five this year were real head-turners. Liverpool’s Keyside show the city has still got the fab vibes. Strange Neighbors turned out killer tunes for the second year in a row. The first I heard of The What Four’s “Quarter to Midnight” I was hooked by its adrenaline-soaked beat. The Lemon Twigs have pretty reliably produced should-be hits over the past few years but there was something about “I’ve Got a Broken Heart” that just hit all poprock marks. And from way back early in 2025 I was struck by The Sonny Wilson’s unique sound. No maybe about it. I could go on about the other 45 songs here but you can get the dirt from the original posts by clicking the hyperlinks.
Next up, Poprock Record’s most inventive covers from 2025:
1. The Half Cubes “Whenever You’re On My Mind”
2. Sofa City Sweetheart “Waltz #2 (XO)”
3. Marshall Crenshaw “Never To Be Forgotten”
4. Mike Browning “Lost In Conversation”
5. Chaparelle “I Want to Dance with Somebody”
The Half Cubes put out another amazing album of covers and really outdid themselves but nowhere more strongly than on their cover of an early Marshall Crenshaw classic. Sofa City Sweetheart teased us this past year with an impressive rendering of Elliott Smith’s “Waltz #2.” Not an easy tune to take up. Marshall Crenshaw pulled together a host of songs for a new album, including a cover of a Bobby Fuller Four gem. And then we have Mike Browning covering an obscure Canadian track and Chaparelle countryfying a song everybody knows.
Well, there you have it, some great songs that deserve another shot across your attention span. Click the links for the original posts and revisit just how good 2025 was to us on the single file.
Photo courtesy Carbon Arc Flikr collection.
Sometimes smart guys skip grad school and make records instead. It seldom leads to tenure, of any kind, but can you put a price on piece of mind? Well, if they’d become academics you probably could – but that misses the point. Which is that I selfishly appreciate that these bright tuneful dudes forwent cushy jobs to provide me with all this great music. Thanks guys! Seriously though, when you combine smart, multi-layered lyrics with catchy hooks, you’ve got something pretty special. Our quartet of smart guy poprockers do that and more!
Warning: there’s some serious Canadian content in this post. Though not too serious, if Hamilton’s B.A. Johnston is anything to go by. With album titles like Stairway to Hamilton, Shit Sucks, and The Skid is Hot Tonight you can pretty much see where this is going. Punville. Even Johnston’s name is a joke – derived from a teen nickname where Christian Johnston became ‘Bored Again’ Christian, or B.A. for short. Johnston’s work is so Canadian working class but his protagonists are not Springteen-esque heroes, they’re just ordinary folks. And despite the humour, Johnston shows a twisted kind of respect for this subjects. Stylistically, the music exudes Canadian icon Stompin’ Tom on acid, with some Jonathan Richman earnest sincerity, and a bit of Ben Vaughn goof. Here I’m just going to focus on his poppier numbers. Like “I Miss that 90’s Hash” or “I Need Donair Sauce” – both tunes have subtle hooks and a bit more polish that Johnston’s usual fare. “Orangeville” channels a lumpen Johnny Cash while “Straight Outta Cobden” is B.A.-typical low-key, with hooky backup vocals in the chorus. “I Love It When You Dress Up” has a sweet ambling country tempo and a refreshing lack of humour. “Fort McMurray” captures the narrowed class horizons for most working people. “Couch Potato” is like B.A.’s philosophy crammed into 90 seconds. With 13 albums since 2000, there’s a lot more B.A. to discover and he’s worth the slide by.
Hapless is the word to describe Eytan Mirsky’s public musical persona. But awkward and desperate would run a close second and third. Yet far from being a downer, Mirsky constantly lightens the mood with a dry wit and dark cynicism worthy of Nick Lowe or Elvis Costello. Over the course of seven albums his rock and roll has been consistently tuneful, full of sly hooks and loads of clever verbal innuendo. The basic raw material is all there in the 1996 debut album title, Songs About Girls (and Other Painful Subjects), particularly on cuts like “Smart Enough” and “Beautiful Inside.” Or check out the Joe Jackson-esque swing of “What Do I Do?” and “Either Way” from 1999’s Get Ready for Eytan! Then there’s his 2001 masterpiece, the hilarious Was It Something I Said?, an album of wall to wall killer cuts. I’ll just draw your attention to “Can I Get Any Lower?” and the very hooky “Sluts.” But hey, drop the needle anywhere on this record and you come up with something great. I could keep going like this through every album. Instead I just want to highlight Mirsky’s great use of pop culture references and humour on tracks like “Watching Dawson’s Creek” (from 2016’s Funny Money), “Share If You Agree” and “Lingerie Pillow Fight” (both from the fantastic new 2019 LP If Not Now … Later.” Honourable mention: don’t miss the Paul Collins-esque “She’s Looking Better” from 2004’s Everyone’s Having Fun Tonight! Mirsky also does a lot of Facebook 
I got to check out Blair Packham when he opened for the Northern Pikes recently in Toronto. Who’s Blair Packham? I didn’t know. But after loving his clever, hilarious and hooky blue-eyed soul performance I went looking. Turns out he had a some Canadian hit singles (like “Last of the Red Hot Fools”) with his 1980s band, The Jitters. Since their breakup in 1991, he’s released only three solo albums. But what great LPs they are! Packham offers up hooky poprock numbers with intelligent wordplay and heartfelt ballads, delivered by a pop-soul voice that falls somewhere into the sweet spot between Huey Lewis and Paul Carrack. Cases in point “Weird to You” and the title track from 2000’s Everything That’s Good. If the band sound familiar on Packham’s 2004 release, Could’ve Been King, they should – it’s Canada woefully underappreciated poprock geniuses The Odds. They provide some topnotch playing for Packham’s killer tunes like “Come Undone,” Somebody Else” and the touching “Little Fish.” I love the lyrics on “Could’ve Been King” – ‘didn’t like the hours, the wretched excess, the abuse of power …’ But Packham really hits it out of the park with “One Hit Wonder,” which is simultaneously one of the most honest renderings of the liabilities of being a one-hit-wonder while still incredibly respectful to the artist that has it. And the song has an infectious handclapping, singalong chorus! The record ends with “Last,” a song that’s all about, well, being last. Thirteen years later Packham returned with 2017’s Unpopular Pop and it was worth the wait for the hooky, single-ish “You (Yeah, You)” and the Costello-vibing “Other Side.”
What a wonderfully twisted world is the land of Jim’s Big Ego! It’s a place where anything can be the subject of intelligent satire, from mixed tapes to loving zombies to math prof rock stars to impoverished gun owners. But unlike some sardonic songsters, Jim’s got a clear political position very much on the progressive side of things. It’s there clear and without irony on the wonderful “International” from 2008’s Free*. And that’s just another thing to like about JBE. Amidst all the fun and cleverness, there’s a point to the poking. I came to the band via their quasi-hit single, “The Ballad of Barry Allen,” a slick piece of melodic goodness from their 2003 release They’re Everywhere. I expected to find more but instead I found a guy (Jim Infantino) with a great range in songwriting and performance, sometimes bringing to mind a more poprock Robbie Fulks, or Kevin Devine vocally on occasion, or Peter Case in stretching from new wave to country to folky material. You can dig in anywhere and find something to enjoy, like “Concrete” from 1999’s Noplace Like Nowhere. Or you can check out his last LP, 2012’s Stay, a smart, funny commentary on cults, religion, zombie love, and money in politics (my faves here? The hooky “Chills” and “Earworm”). The catalogue must-listen is “Award Show” (on Free*) a spot on dismantling of the internalized self-hatred and self-indulgence of the genre. Sadly, there’s been no new JBE product for over a half decade. Let this entry act as a placard-waving demand for more JBE. JBE! JBE! Now, cue the water cannon …
Putting a famous name in your song title would seem to be a sure fire way to have a hit. Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes” or Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” readily come to mind. But really, those are the exceptions. A quick search of the internet actually turns up a whole bevy of celebrity names on songs, mostly on the indie side of things, most of them album cuts. So why do bands do it? Homage? Satire? Or are they just as celebrity obsessed as everyone else? The French duo Please was formed and recorded a song with the sole explicit intent of getting a response from Paul McCartney – not that Paul appeared to notice! The range of material covered in this post gives us a bit of all these approaches, from hero worship, to ridicule, to little more than just mentioning the celebrity name.
What is it with guys and record collections? While I think things have changed a bit recently, coming of age in the 1980s the record store and music obsessions were predominantly male preserves. Nobody captured it better than Nick Hornby in the first chapter of High Fidelity, which opens with the male protagonist deciding for the umpteenth time to reorganize his record collection, this time in the order he purchased them. I remember looking up from the book thinking ‘somebody’s been watching me …’
So here are two songs that capture the traditional range of views about women and record collections. In one, the singer is delighted to find a girl with a serious record collection, noting she “blew me away, with her 45s, they’re all alphabetized …” But in the other, the narrator “did a quick inspection and found [her] ELO” and dumps her, directing her to “take your record collection and go.” In either case, the serious female record collector is either a surprise or unthinkable. Yet both songwriters are clearly mocking this sort of narrow thinking. 
Eytan Mirsky has a large body of hilarious, self-mocking poprock. One album features a pathetic looking Mirsky slouching in a chair as some girlfriend’s luggage is heading for the door – the album title? Was it Something I Said? On his song “Record Collection” (from Get Ready for Eytan!) the shallowness of his male narrator deciding to dump the girl he’s moved in with over some supposed musical indiscretions is both mocked and yet somehow also sadly believable. Meanwhile, producer extraordinaire Fernando Perdomo offers up two distinctly different versions of his charming “Girl with a Record Collection,” one leaning on a jangle poprock sound while the other exploits a more poppy arrangement.
Poprock Record 