Melissa Kacar

It's that time of year again, the moment to look back on all of the songs that shaped my 2025! My annual favorites posts are something I genuinely look forward to writing every December. Truthfully, I am mentally compiling this list all year long, so I'll probably need to start theorizing about possible contenders for the eventual 2026 list in just a few weeks! It's always interesting to watch how this list evolves as the year goes on and as more artists release music, and which songs manage to stay in rotation despite the constant wave of new releases. I'll admit, this year brought the biggest dilemma I've had yet when it comes to ranking these tracks. While my annual lists are always loosely ranked, I do pay special attention to the placement of the top ten and this year was especially the toughest to narrow down. Sometimes there is a very clear winner in my mind and I can always point out the singular song that defined the year for me, like last year with "...

As the lead single off Harry’s House in 2022, "As It Was" completely set the tone for the rest of the project. On this track, Harry Styles perfectly soundtracks the feeling of opening yourself up to the next chapter and embracing the idea that nothing is the same as it was, and maybe that's a good thing. The inevitability of change, and the willingness to let go and allow yourself to move forward, sits at the heart of everything this song represents. He repeatedly sings, "in this world, it's just us, you know it's not the same as it was", which at its core sums up the meaning of Harry's House so perfectly. It's a song rooted in dealing with a transitional period of life, which everyone will interpret differently in their own lives, but the emotional truth of it remains universal. It's an incredibly powerful song because it fully owns the fact that change is always going to come and instead of wallowing in what could have been or the fear of...