November 2, 2025

by Ann Powers

This week, our critic ponders why music fans feel so strongly that the songs we like should be popular.

artwork: 'Jesus and John Wayne' by googly eyes, Joy Oladokun & Allison Ponthier

Hello discerning readers,

In one of my music-obsessed group chats the other day, a friend posted a protest anthem with the comment, “This could be the song of 2025.” A collaboration between an indie-pop artist called googly eyes and Americana-leaning singer-songwriters Joy Oladakun and Allison Ponthier, “Jesus and John Wayne” speaks out against the hypocrisy of Christians who value money and power more than compassion. Sonically, it’s a sweeping ballad that’s not too far off from Miley Cyrus’ or Kesha’s more Nashville-leaning ballads. The song’s repurposing of Music Row-style grandiloquence in service of progressive politics reflects the moral and ethical quandaries consuming many people right now, and with its rich harmonies building to a cathartic climax, it effectively translates its political views into affecting emotional language. Yet the numbers next to “Jesus and John Wayne” on various streaming services suggest that it’s drawn a relatively small audience. I mentioned that in the group chat, and my friend got a little worked up. “The number of times I’ve said to myself, ‘What a f****** shame’ this year ….” he wrote.

His gentle outburst came just as thoughts of fairness for musical underdogs had entered my brain, as they do around this time every year. The last week in October is when the best-of scramble officially begins for arts writers. I’ve been expressing my discomfort with list-making for decades, so I won’t go into a big philosophical screed here. Instead, I’m homing in on a feeling that haunts the process of musical taste-making, whether critics or fans (or both, together) are doing the arguing: not only indignation grounded in the sense that popularity or even critical renown is a moral right, something that should flow toward artists who are somehow more honorable than others, but an inward-turning frustration — what my friend called “shame” — as if fans could make something popular by sheer force of will.

In fact, beyond the absolute center of the mainstream where armies of online supporters rally for stars who already have everything the pop music industry has to offer, the systems that ensure popular and critical success are firmly established, while the particulars of one song’s rise or one album’s plunge to obscurity can be infuriatingly arbitrary. Many factors go into a song or album making it big, or even semi-big. History has told us that sexism, racism and homophobia are baked into the music business, and that conscious effort is necessary to change that, and that the change will be slow.

It goes without saying that the flood of music released each year, running up against ever-increasing consolidation within the entertainment industry, means that only a sliver of releases gain any meaningful notice and fewer still achieve a level of influence that lasts. And that’s also translating into greater financial hardship for most artists, as the economics of touring and recording make it ever harder to break even on a bid for the top (or even the vanishing middle).

This problem has intensified as niches grow more distant from each other across platforms on the internet, with little consensus forming about the kinds of mid-level crossover successes that once defined the musical middle class. “Jesus and John Wayne” could have been a buzzy breakthrough song if more fans of rootsy singer-songwriter fare had known about the hyperpop-associated googly eyes, for example; in another time, a memorable video might have landed it on VH1. (Its strong political stance might have prevented that, though; the mainstream has rarely supported such overt declarations.) We could all be talking about it — or at least more than a handful of people would be — as 2025 draws to a close. Instead, it’s a modest success, like most of the music that the most intense fans champion in any given year.

So, should an air of righteousness surround music appreciation? It has an “eat your vegetables” aura that seems antithetical to the rush of pleasure that music provides in tandem with its more lasting effects. The ears want what they want, and this year millions wanted bangers from K-Pop Demon Hunters, a wedding ballad and a Kendrick/SZA love song that Pitchfork’s hip-hop columnist called “fine enough.” Critics’ and tastemakers’ year-end lists exist, in part, to redistribute the wealth away from these Top-40 juggernauts. Yet groundswells and groupthink affect them, too. This fall, for example, the New York band Geese released Getting Killed, and a perfect storm erupted among that city's hipsters and their far-flung satellites across the internet; the praise for the album grew so loud that when the Wordle answer was “GEESE” a few days later, social media erupted with cries of “too much”! It kind of sucked, momentarily, to be Neko Case or Rochelle Jordan or Cate Le Bon, all consistently well-received artists with acclaimed new albums that were slightly buried by the release date they shared with Getting Killed.

The appropriate response to such unavoidable circumstances is probably a quiet sigh. Buzz is authentic and manufactured in equal measure. Geese earned its feathers: The band is three albums into its career, has built a starry-eyed fan base through neatly unhinged live shows, and gained extra points from critics due to frontman Cameron Winter’s classically styled solo debut, released last December. The band’s sound is very much grounded in classic rock and punk (especially mid-1970s New Yorkers like Lou Reed and Patti Smith), but pulls the thread on those influences enough to sound new, especially to younger audiences. Extra points for mining nostalgia and feeling avant-garde! At the same time, the band was perfectly placed to go viral on TikTok since the core of U.S.-based music influencers are based there. And Winter just looks like a central-casting rock star, shaggy but runway-ready. So both artistry and luck made this one of 2025’s big stories while other adventurous conventional rock bands (like my personal fave, Courting) are doing … fine.

As I’ve explored this subject, I’ve hit upon a few things that do seem to work against artists on the playing fields of critical and commercial success. Gender isn’t one of them, at least right now (and outside of the still bro-ruled country sphere). When it comes to race, things are inevitably more complicated — the report that for the first time since 1990, no hip-hop is in the Top 40 hit hard this week, but a closer look shows that R&B is stronger than it’s been in years, and factoring in K-Pop and Latin hitmakers while adjusting for Swift’s current stranglehold on the Top 10 makes the charts look pretty diverse. And one thing that can’t be denied as the endless debate over poptimism rages on is that, for whatever reason and Geese aside, rock made by white people no longer dominates critical discourse. However, songs in English still do. The Bad Bunny revolution broke through the barrier for Spanish, but there’s a world of great songs being made in French, Arabic, Japanese, various African languages and more that most Anglophone writers simply ignore.

That’s a difficult roadblock to clear. After falling in love with Saint Levant’s album Deira last year, I’ve spent my leisurely listening time in 2025 rabbit-holing with pop videos from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and other Middle Eastern and North African countries. I’m fascinated with the blend of folk, R&B and hip hop elements in this music and I think I’m slowly starting to grasp its context. But few resources exist for a white, English speaking American fan like me to really understand the intricacies of Arabic music’s many subcultures. Right now I’m excited about Zeyne, a Jordanian-Palestinian artist who blends post-millenium R&B and Levantine folk styles like dabke. Zeyne has a U.S. publicist; I’m hoping her daring and finesse earn her a place on playlists that feature spiritual kin like Sudan Archives and Doecchi. But she’ll have some hurdles to clear. Some listeners will inevitably turn away from songs like “Asli Ana,” which speak of Palestine with pride and the spirit of resistance; others will embrace Zeyne for this same passion. More daunting, in a way, is the struggle to simply reach potential fans who have little knowledge of the musical and cultural perspectives that define Zeyne’s approach.

Other restrictions on musical success in 2025 are more individual, tied to the phases of an artist’s life. Older musicians, deemed less marketable as their sex appeal and connection to novelty wanes, always struggle for a fair shake. (A few whose albums you should check out this year: 75-year-old Rodney Crowell, 84-year-old Martin Carthy, 67-year-old Annie Caldwell and her family gospel band.) Those who pivot in unexpected ways can encounter hostility — I’ll be curious to see how jazz genius Cecile McLorin Salvant’s wondrous, definitely unconventional new singer-songwriter album does in that genre’s year-end lists. Great albums that come soon after an earlier milestone can miss out on praise simply because audiences (including critics) are a little sick of them; I worry that my beloved Wednesday, a band that truly topped itself with its new Bleeds, might be overlooked by some because 2023’s Rat Saw God was also a leap.

And finally, a really beautiful album may slip by because it simply doesn’t scream for acknowledgment, instead quietly opening a door. Allow me to reveal my true motive for writing this essay: I just want you to listen to Cruel Joke by Ken Pomeroy. This 23-year-old Cherokee singer-songwriter from Oklahoma does have a few advantages helping her ascend within the relatively modest ranks of roots-leaning troubadours: a notable co-producer in Gary Paczosa, who’s known for his golden touch with women artists ranging from Dolly to Sierra Ferrell; support from Tulsa notables like John Moreland, who duets on her album, and Sterlin Harjo, who cast her in an episode in of his Ethan Hawke vehicle The Lowdown. (“I’ll never do that again,” Pomeroy laughed, describing her acting debut, when I saw her play in town a few months ago.) But her songs aren’t the kind to go viral; they demand a quiet space where their subtleties can be absorbed. Make that space. You’ll encounter some of the richest songwriting you’ll hear in 2025, conveyed by one of the most hypnotic, addictive voices I’ve heard in years. I want Pomeroy to make all the best-of lists this year. To twist a phrase I heard from a friend, It would be a real shame if she didn’t.

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