🏅 Tom’s 2025

Song of the Year: Damocles by Sleep Token (Spotify)

• Incredibly beautiful song on an otherwise dogshit album. Has drum fills that changed the way I think about cymbals (3:30-3:50). Also has bits: word painting on “harmony” (0:45) and tape record sounds at 2:10. Fun stuff.
• 2024 winner: Much Ado About Nothing by Waxahatchee​

Album of the Year: SWAG by Justin Bieber​

• I’m not a Belieber. At least I wasn’t. But this album came out and blew me away. A lot of simple, catchy R&B songs that just sound summery and perfect. Definitely some fluff in there, but I rate albums on gross, aggregate heat, not heat-to-fluff ratio.
• 2024 winner: One of Wun by Gunna​

Show of the Year: Love on the Spectrum Season 3​

• Not a great year for dramas. Severance S2 was OK. The Rehearsal was fun. But nothing came close to that Succession/Thrones/Breaking Bad-level of cultural uptake. Hope we get there again. Love on the Spectrum was genuinely touching, entertaining, educational, compelling, and surprising. So it wins.
• 2024 winner: Pachinko Season 2​

Movie of the Year: Weapons​

• Only movie I saw in theaters. Very original and fun to watch.
• 2024 winner: The Substance​

Best Book I Read This Year (besides Rich Girl Nation): Endurance by Alfred Lansing​

• Kinda cliché but I loved it. Thrilling and witty and put things in perspective. A task at hand is a wonderful thing to have.
• Honorable mention: Among the Thugs by Bill Buford​

☝️ Word of the Month:

internecine (adj) in-tuhr-NES-een

Of or relating to conflict within a group or nation; mutually destructive.

From Latin internecare (to slaughter), from inter- + necare (to kill), from nex-, nec- (death).

“Jones also gives us a portrait of how Enlightenment-era French citizens clamored for self-rule, and an account of the grisly, internecine feuding that led to the rise of Napoleon in 1799.”

🎵 Jams of the Month:

• ​Ruston Kelly – Pale, Through the Window. Nice, calming guitar.
• ​Jennifer Lopez – Get Right. Cool sample.
• ​Oklou – take me by the hand. Cool synths. Oklou rules.
• ​Danny Brown – Starburst. Insanity.
• ​Tate McRae – you broke me first. Cool underground artist.
• ​Tkandz – NOW OR NEVER. UK grindset rap.

💬 Quote of the Month:

“To measure a man’s happiness only by what he gets, and not also by what he expects to get, is as futile as to try to express a fraction which shall have a numerator but no denominator.”

-Arthur Schopenhauer

ps: mash-up of the month (Instagram)

pps: high-level humor (Instagram)

ppps: unsettling (X)