If loving this is wrong I don’t wanna feel right. Barely four months out from their stellar 2024 LP release Splash Hit, Philadelphia’s Log Flume float their brand new single “Necessary Evil” and it is wickedly good. I’m dubbing the sound here ‘smash jangle’ given its dynamic pairing of punk adjacent vocals with sparkling guitar work. There’s a dissonant musical backdrop to these proceedings, almost shoegazey at times. But then the crystal clean jangle comes ringing through the sonic mist here and there with utter clarity. The vocals are delivered with a sing-along punch that should have fists waving in sweaty, packed venues everywhere. The song’s stripped down denouement is both a striking finish and glimpse into how great an acoustic version could be. This one should be busting charts from Adelaide to Manchester to Brooklyn and then some. Now I would be remiss to not mention another post Splash Hit release, the very janglicious “Get the Picture.” This one is right out of 1960s power pop central casting. A little less dissonant than their usual fare, more pure grin-inducing poppy goodness. A fitting b-side to our should-be hit single main feature.
Can an album be far behind songs this good? I sincerely hope an LP of similar singles is presently in the making. Check out everything Log Flume at their Bandcamp site.
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:
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:
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.
We’re deep into December and snow is coming and going in my part of the world. All the more reason to find shovelling inspiration wherever we can. Here’s another 21 songs to put some heft into your snow relocation efforts.
I’m a bit late picking up on this song from Dave Rave and the Governors from their 2023 LP Seven. “Distractions” has got a Blue Oyster Cult classic rock pop feel. Cool, mysterious, with a host of great inventive changes. Yorick van Norden highlights “Better Days” ahead on his recent single, full of sunny sentiment and a quality dose of jangle. Just one of many similar contributions on his new album Do It Now. The ever surprising Kurt Hagardorn goes a bit more Americana than usual on his recent single “Float Away with Me.” Very much sounding like an early 1970s-era Band deep cut. South Korea’s HOA are fab in so many ways. Open your ears to “Don’t Be A Loser” and tell me you don’t hear the Fabs at every melodic turn. It vibes Meet the Beatles with a dash of “Drive My Car.” Back in the early 1990s poprock master Bill Lloyd got the chance to work with rockabilly legend Carl Perkins on a set of session that ultimately never got released … until now. Here’s the title track to the fantastic 10 song album, Some Things Never Change. Perkins sounds like a million dollar player for sure and the song has the elan of timeless classic.
John Sally Ride main man John Dunbar works up a new alias for his most recent project. The Elbow Patches exude a psychadelic pop feeling on “The Day Got Away From Me.” Just one of ten great pop numbers on their full length record Achingly Familiar. Tommy Sistak pushes the Everlys faders up full on the “Long Goodbye.” Really, the Everly tone here is eerie but oh so pleasant. Wow, Log Flume offer up a Joni Mitchell “Clouds” bit of jangle-age on “Get The Picture.” Just great guitar work, period. Egersund, Norway’s I Was A King have a sound that’s warm and just a bit spooky on their new LP Until the End. Title track “Until the End” even has a splash of folkish charm pop up in the instrumental break. Jeff Shelton gets political on the most recent Well Wishers single. “littleorangemagaman” has some rough edges, solids hooks and a point of view, just what we’d expect of him.
On 2022’s BackgammonesqueLos Andes gave us a killer South America-flavoured Teenage Fanclub vibe. Their new single “Facil” (or “Easy” in English) is just as delightful, swimming with lush guitars and beautiful vocal harmonies, in both full band and acoustic versions. Doug Hammond’s Daisy House was an early fave on this blog. His recent releases as Vaughn Trapp revive that magic, drawing from his remarkable, 1960s-infused songwriting skills. “What’s On Your Mind” has a particular pop sheen, so classy and smooth in its execution. Remember Sports are a band that sound live and lively. “Across the Line” rolls out with a steady emphasis, alternating between a laconic and deliberate kind of impact. The contrast between the spacey guitar tones and the folk-friendly vocals gives Guppy’s new song “Back to the Thing” a really unique charm. My head just starts doing the Peanuts head-bop dancing thing without much prompting here. Andrea Calvo is Grand Drifter, a sophisticated folkster of Italian persuasion who is long overdue for a new long-player. In the interim we can enjoy is hot-off-the-45-stamper “Any Second Now.” It’s a song about ‘finding traces of love hidden in the small, ordinary moments of everyday life,’ cocooned in a soft, Lennon-as-homemaker style.
Brian Dunne knows how to strum a guitar up into a catchy song. But he’s also got something to say. His most recent LP Clam Casino runneth over with plenty of hooks and homilies, none more so than the should-be hit-single “Fake Version of the Real Thing.” A poppier Bruce Springsteen, for sure. On Mondo Cool Brooklyn’s No Jersey lay it all out, how the system works and for whom, in a winning Americana-tinged pop-punk style. It was a toss-up between “You and Me and the Means of the Production” and “How To Make It In America” but I think the latter just has more hooks. Right next door New Jersey’s the dt’s revive a particularly groovy 1980s popping rock sound on “Sorry Not Sorry.” While crashing a party might be a real dilemma, it’s fodder for a great song here. Secret Postal Society have a new single and its dreamy, strummy good. “Heather” has a lilting soft intensity that builds as it goes on. Great synth runs too! Ricky Rochelle rides the line between punky rock abandon and sweet sweet melodic hooks. His recent long-player Second Layer runs the same play over and over again (and I love it), starting out every song with a starkly plain or rough-edged attack only to seduce us in the melody-drenched chorus. “Highlight Reel” makes this obvious but, frankly, any track from the record could demonstrate this magic.
Original Merseybeater Billy J. Kramer has a new album out and it’s got some killer tracks. Title-track “Are You With Me” works some autobiography into a very hummable effort. “My Sweet Rose” is another notable cut. But the radio ready song here is the early 1960s crooner “Go On Girl.” Sounds so of the era!
Living driving distance from the bottom of the Canadian shield I know a thing or two about snow. And it definitely goes better with music. Here you’ve got 21 snow drift sanctioned songs to get you through it.
What’s playing across our spectrum? More hooks, more jangle, more mellifluous melodies – the usual, in other words. Today’s should-be radio sample has got sly riffs, coy lyrics and even a certain cinematic allure.
The early, more rough-house pop sound of Burgess Meredith sounds like it has been put through a Beatles filter and what has come out on their latest LP Person Hat is very Abbey Road with a dash of seventies solo Paul McCartney. I mean, LP opener “Nowhere” is so Macca it hurts. In a good way. Actually, the whole sonic vibe of this record oozes various Beatle-isms. It’s there in the ominous orchestration backing “Somewhere to Start,” the distinctive Mellotron keyboard underpinning “Becca Song,” or the oh-so-Beatles background vocals balancing the sparse acoustic guitar on “Heart Strings.” I’m not saying it’s all Paul here. “Life Love” strikes a more White Album Lennon note. You may also hear a lot of Beatles interpreters like ELO on cuts like “Blue Reign.” Then again “Hit the Road” seems very Apples in Stereo to these ears. I think the sleeper hit on this record is “Love Knows.” It is one of those subtle ear worms that gets stuck in your head the more you hear it. I also really like the ambition driving “The Children Can Tell” with its pop, folksy and sing-along elements blending seamlessly.
Philadelphia’s Log Flume sound like a power pop band that aged out of the punk scene but couldn’t quite quit that baby. The effect is sometimes like a pop singer playing in front a sound system turned up way loud. It’s wonderfully dissonant and fun on tracks like “Elevator Up,” “OMIT” and the poppy “DB Cooper.” Other tracks like “Rom Pom Pom” have that SMWRS slick, alluring indie poprock sound. By contrast “On the Spaceship” has a rough and ready sheen, a touch of slacker vibe that says ‘we can nail this’ but sometimes we like things a bit looser. But where I think this band is going can be found on songs like “Angel’s Flight,” “December’s Ending” and “Simple Friend.” The latter transitions out of the dissonant sound to more of an accent on melody. Then “Angel’s Flight” bends your ear with solid melodic hooks throughout. But the standout should-be hit single is undoubtedly “December’s Friend.” This one is just so poppy good. Another delight is “Twist” which builds the tune out of a complex lead guitar hook that just keeps looping in the background until a chorus breaks out of nowhere. The album title is Splash Hit and that captures a lot about this group: fun, unpretentious and willing to throw out hooks like kids cannon-balling from the diving board.
When The Rockyts launched in 2020 they were barely post adolescent but that didn’t limit them acing a driving beat group revival sound worthy of a dark sweaty night at The Cavern. On their debut album Come On And Dance they showed they had 1965 down. The question was, where would they go next? 1966? Or somewhere more unpredictable? Last year’s release of Parkwood Manor has provided some answers. The record now sees the band reduced to a solo act built around the group’s creative force Jeremy Abboud who writes, plays and produces everything here. I must say the results are surprising though not startling. Abboud shifts to that slick pop new wave feel that took signature elements of the Beatles sound in exciting new directions. Tracks like “I Get High” and “Without You” utilize Cars-like muted guitar and vocals to good effect. There is a sonic consistency to the performances of tracks like “Another One Like You,” “You and I” and “Falling.” Abboud adds some grit to his vocals here while maintaining solid melodic hooks. There are contributions that offer a softer pop take, echoing a lighter 1960s feel, and here I’m thinking of tracks like “I Don’t Know Why It’s Killing Me,” “Everywhere” and “You Were My Love.” Altogether Parkwood Manor is an impressive second effort from a young talent who is really just getting started.
Given what you see here it’s clear that poprock productivity remains strong. Really there’s no reason you can’t get the hooks you need going forward. Just tune in here to re-up your supply.
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