Festive Greetings from This Is Not Happening and welcome to our year-end, 2025 wrap-up episode. As always we split the pod into Part 1 and Part 2.Part 1 features our Top 10 favourite albums of 2025. We use a proprietary algorithm to create our list our collective favourite albums, we're talking nascent data-science excellence! Every year it throws up some surprises as our tastes are so different (and in some ways so similar.Part 2 features a festive Spin It or Bin It. We each bring a candidate for track of the year and ask the age old question 'Spin It or Bin It' … will anyone really bin anyone elses Track of the Year? Probably.To retain the tension, I won't share any spoilers here … other than to share a 40 track playlist of some of our favourite 2025 tracks … here.Whatever you do at this time of year, who ever you do it with … have a good one.Please join us in January where we will go back to the usual format of Album of the Month + Spin It or Bin It.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
Another month, another pod. Welcome to Episode 513 of This is Not Happening (TINH), an Album of the Month (AOTM) Podcast. In Part 1 we deep dive into an Album that one of us has chosen and in Part 2 we play ‘Spin it or Bin it’. This is where we pick a theme and each select a song that represents that theme. We judge each others selections by asking the question ‘Spin It or Bin It’?
This month, in Part 1, Guy hosts an interesting discussion on Father John Misty’s (FJM) latest album, Mahashmashana. 50% of the Pod love FJM, 50% don’t!
In Part 2, Spin It or Bin It, our theme this month is ‘Location, Location, Location’, or ‘songs about places’ and it’s a belter!
Part 1 | Father John Misty | Mahashmashana
We often review artists that we all love. This month this is not the case. 2 of us love FJM, one of us gets very angry when listening to FJM and one of us doesn’t really have an opinion. Can this album keep the fans happy and win over the angry and the non-plussed?
Given the above, this is a surprisingly well mannered and coherent conversation about FJMs latest album. There’s only 8 tracks but they’re all pretty long. We discuss songwriting, song length and album themes like ageing and the associated ego deaths that accompany it.
Watch some of the videos for the tracks discussed … HERE
Watch the World Cafe interview that we reference on the pod … HERE
Watch a live performance of lead single ‘She Cleans Up’ … HERE
Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | ‘Location, Location, Location’
Songs about places are really common. It’s a theme explored by many (most?) artists at some point in their songwriting. This was a great chat and 4 great track selections.
Guy chose Paris by Friendly Fires feat. Au Revioire Simone.
January is a funny time of year for music. Many albums wanting to be big in 2024 have either come out already or are holding off. It’s hard to pick albums to review unless you’re looking back before you’re looking forward. And in this episode’s case, we wanted to pick a critically lauded album that we passed over. So after a sift through a few lists we weren’t really sure. I’d never landed with Lankum, SZA was, sadly, out in 2022! In listening through tracks linked to the various lists, we were all mesmerised by A&W and after that we sort of got pulled in. And it’s not a decision I regret. It’s a pretty stunning piece of work, even if it’s imperfect.
I’ve never been a true fan of Lana Del Rey but I’m definitely an admirer. Of how she is, of how she operates, her ability and insistence on doing this her way. I was on board for Video Games (who wasn’t?), but perhaps my experience is influenced the way many others’ is. Is it made for me? Is there too much artifice? It’s definitely not style over substance, but there’s also a definitely imperative style that sets its into its own sphere, and I just don’t know if that’s ever really landed with me. Perhaps I’ve never given it enough time, either. She’s an artist on that list of people I really know I should’ve devoted more time to over the years, who friends and critics have pointed me at her, but it’s just never locked.
And obviously I’m wrong. She is not an artist that’s liked. She’s adored. Her fans are devoted, her songs held like torches for her acolytes. She moves them and that’s a magical place to be in the universe. Because what got us into music? What made us love artists? How did that music speak to us and make us feel? And how intense did those feelings burn? It’s what makes music music. It is what makes us love it. It’s why we do this thing. So that devotion, that desire, that’s what it is all about. But delving into Lana’s world – not to mention her huge back catalogue (Ocean Blvd, as I’m going to abbreviate it to from now on, is at least her 10th album, depending on how you count them) – is daunting. Both because she is such a big artist, and also because there’s so much context to each record, something that I just don’t have. So many of the callbacks, references to previous records, break-ups, themes, will largely sail over my head. Coming to a new album from such an established artist can be a bit, well, cold.
But it’s also because LDR’s world is uncompromising. Her position as a woman in music – as any woman in any position – is precarious. She’s held to a ridiculous standard. She is critiqued for being strong, she’s critiqued for looking good, she’s attacked for looking good, for not looking good. Being Lana seems a pretty awful place to be sometimes. Yes, she’s also harnessed this, leant into the darkness – themes of death, abuse, misogyny and the male gaze all loom large even to the arms-length fan – but it remains a big shadow over her work, and the more I read the more I admire her for refusing to compromise on what she wants to do, even as it (surely, I don’t know) must take a toll living in that universe.
The lyrics, the world she paints is bleak, playing up against the world she lives in. Pushing back against that onslaught of criticism, making it front and centre of her work, that brutal glory, turned against its creator. Ocean Blvd – at my newbie eyes – bares this beautifully and powerfully. At its high points, it’s breathtaking. It’s bleak and catches in the throat. There’s a frankness and personal feel to it, and yet it’s cryptic and full of contradictions. But it’s a fascinating and engaging listen. Having been the first album of hers I’ve knowingly listened to in full it’s hard to compare against, but I realise I’ve underestimated her and feel a bit foolish for that. I loved Video Games, her laconic but powerful delivery, the whole 60s-tinged femme fatale style, the heavily stylised videos, all overflowing with ideas. It just sort of passed me by as I went for the familiar, and the new, that just never really landed on her records.
Yes, I’ve not connected with her music as I have with others but there’s something very real going down. The lead single, A&W (the root beer for sleeve-friendly abbreviation, but really the devastating American Whore) is at the vanguard. Firing back at critics’ lazy views, owning the pejorative personas they paint her with, and turning it back on itself. Opening with piano chords and guitar, her vocals feel at their most invasive. Almost deliberately light and sunk into the midrange but it’s all more powerful for it. And you can’t get away from the chorus: ‘‘it’s not about having someone to love me anymore / this is then experience of being an American whore”. Christ. And like all great long songs, it’s a shapeshifter. A second part that drops into electronic, elastic bass and sharp percs, and twisted vocal phrases, taking on a different power altogether. The final stanza, with it’s repeated phrases, looking back to a lover that wanted to only be with her when he was high, both calling out his behaviour, but also perhaps her self-destruction.
There are moments all through the album of breathtaking nihilism, none more so than the title track’s ‘open me up, tell me you like me, fuck me to death, love me until I love myself’ is her withering beauty (yes, there is a tunnel, I’ve discovered, but it’s closed). A line that catches, but also that feels both exhilarating to hear, and bleak to listen to again and again. There’s a fragility to her music that plays against some of the more belligerent, combative tones of her output.
Another standout for me was with Father John Misty. They seem very apt bedfellows – and I’ve since found out this is her third collaboration him – though FJM’s dripping cynicism seems a mite more laconic and detached, where Del Rey’s feels more pointed and sharpened and real. But the story – I think – about an affair with a married male musician, feels both hopeful and doomed to fail.
There are a lot of memorable other moments here, in fact the collaborations across the album stand out: from John Batiste’s harmonies and vocals on Candy Necklace, the haunting Paris, Texas with SYML, and lament of Bleachers on the late-album Margaret. I’m still not sure what to make of Peppers (which features Tommy Genesis) but they all stand out in their own way. There’s engaging use of electronic flourishes throughout too, not just on A&W, but also memorably on Fishtail, which provides colour alongside the piano and guitars that dominate the album. I’m also intrigued by the Judah Smith interlude. The modern preacher, its message seems at odds with LDR’s fanbase (she’s been in his congregation), especially the LGBTQ+ element, when Smith’s historical views on non-Christian ‘lifestyles’ are pretty prejudiced. Perhaps she’s focusing the words on herself. As ever, it doesn’t feel as direct or clear as it could be. Perhaps Del Rey enjoys the confusion.
But let’s also talk about the elephant in the room. The album is long. Really long. And we all know our struggles with long albums. Not just The Ascension. Also Dragon New Warm Mountain. I have my ‘60+ minute hip-hop album problem’ too. It’s not just the cliched attention span issue, but 40-50 minutes is my sweet spot. So 78 minutes I have truly struggled with. I haven’t even got through he whole thing in one go. Partly just logistics, but also just having little full hour windows or more to listen in my life. So it’s a fractured experience. And one I’ve not managed to break.
I think, inevitably, the album sags. On their own, all the tracks have merit, but I have ended up going to remove 3 tracks from it: Kintsugi and Fingertips, which don’t seem to lend huge contrast, and also lately the Jon Batiste Interlude, which is striking, but I’m not sure it feels like a hole without it, and at least it’s a 62 minute version that’s more possible to digest.
As a whole, I’m not sure if I’ll love this album, but I’ll definitely come back to big chunks of it. There are songs on it too striking not to be remembered, but will it spark an overdue love affair with Lana? That’s probably optimistic. But she hardly needs my affirmation: she’s got all the dedication she needs from people with much more invested in her music than me. And that’s a pretty good thing to exist.
In episode 7 of our podcast, alongside McCartney, we bring a favourite cover to the table. But what makes a good cover? Why do you connect to it? Do you have to love the original? Or is loving the original a reason to doubt any rework of that track? Do you need to be reverential or do something totally different? Like any music, it’s such a personal thing, that we probably all have different views on it.
For me, (Guy), you have to bring something new to the party. What is that? I can’t define it, but it is all about the feels. And here’s some of my favourite covers, from the sublime (Jeff Buckley) to the ridiculous (The Fall). What do you like, and why?
Well, I was going to say “who saw that coming?” but we’ve been here before. As it’s been said, when you no longer tour and live as a relative recluse, you can control whatever the public sees of you. So it’s no surprise that after The Next Day, which skewered his early years whilst nodding in reverence to them, that David Bowie spent 2015 making a follow-up, confounding us all again with the title track in November. I have to confess I took a little time to finally listen to this, as I wanted to watch the video rather than just the audio. And it stopped me in my tracks. In fact I ended up stood on Cheapside in my lunch break with my mouth open.
As a statement of intent it’s pretty powerful. While I loved The Next Day, for all the parallels to his classic albums, lyrically it was very much in the moment, skewering his character, ageing, his legacy, and proving he still has the edge that made his music so alluring when I first listened in my teenage years. But while the words on Blackstar do find some common ground with The Next Day, that’s mostly where the comparison ends. There’s been a lot (and I mean a LOT) of frothing of about how avant-garde it is, as if he’s turned into John Cage, genetically spliced with Roni Size and Miles Davis, but I’d take much of that with a pinch of salt. For anyone that’s familiar with Radiohead’s more experimental (recent) work, or the likes of Flying Lotus, or Bjork or any other more outre albums of the last two decades (let alone all sorts of electronic music), it’s not that far-fetched, but I guess the praise is in someone of Bowie’s stature and reputation still feeling so fresh, raw, and willing to experiment. After all, I can’t think of many (any?) artists approaching 70 that would do this, or do it with so much success or style. Especially when they’ve had forays into more experimental work with such varying results. I can see how die-hard classic era Bowie fans (especially those who are the same age as the Thin White Duke) may struggle with it, but really forget the hype, and just listen: this is outstanding work, a potential classic in the making, even after a few listens.
The title track’s first half echoes so much of Radiohead to me, and this isn’t a statement of either artistic laziness or pastiche, (just think Thom Yorke singing instead, and it’d be one of their best works itself) but high praise. Coupled with a deeply disturbing video that burns itself onto your consciousness, with Bowie as some sort of excommunicated (punished?) preacher stating prophetic, abstract lines as adolescents convulse and shake in the background, it’s affecting from the start. Who knows what it’s about? There’s been discussion (denied by Bowie’s team) that it’s referencing ISIS, but really it’s the ambiguity that’s the point here. The dead ‘Spaceman’ (Starman? a nice touch either way), the huge candle, the eclipsed (black) star; there’s huge, broad stylistic strokes at play and then, just as you wonder where it can go from here, it slows and shifts into what feels at first like familiar Bowie, its sax and swagger, all offset by the harsh, discordant, repeating chorus. I’m massive fan of long opening tracks on albums (Station to Station, or Elton John’s Funeral For A Friend), after all, isn’t that what albums are for? As an opener you’d think it’s hard to live up to, but it’s a case of setting the scene.
There’s almost breakbeat-ish, brash rock in Tis A Pity She’s A Whore, then a self-effacing Lazarus, which was written for a stage version of The Man Who Fell To Earth. Sue, which is Bowie to d’n’b (in a good way, thankfully) and echoes things like Squarepusher. Similarly, Girl Loves Me goes heavy on percussion and electronics, but they never take over the song itself. Dollar Days and I Can’t Give Everything Away again talk of death and loss and age and the past. Even a few listens and I’m hooked, and you can only applaud the constant reinvention of a man that could’ve ‘retired’ in 2003 and had a legacy as good as anyone in music.
Bowie continues to confound, and this may be the best thing he’s done since his Golden Years.
So, I’m late to Lorde’s album, only by a couple of months, but it’s been worth the wait. The hype’s been around for months and months, following her single, Royals, earlier in the year, which I’d realised had permeated my brain thanks to the peerless 6Music, which seems to sow the seeds of records I like without me even realising it on a weekly basis (see also: Midlake).
Let’s look at the facts: Lorde is Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O’Connor (yeah, Lorde’s easier, isn’t it?), a 17-year old New Zealander from Auckland. She first came to prominence with her Love Club EP back in the second half of last year (when she was still 15!), and this album was produced by local Joel Little. What’s it like? Well, it’s very modern electronic pop, if we’re going to get all genre-y. You can see the influences – she’s often cited James Blake’s sparseness – and it’s pretty stripped back, with clever, barbed lyrics, very much showing a love for hip-hop, but putting it in the prism of a girl that, at the time, had never left her home country, it’s pretty startling that it’s actually written by someone that’s tucked away in the end of the southern hemisphere. And that’s not being patronising, it’s just that it’s an unlikely result of such a situation, especially in terms of her age (one lyric on the album states “pretty soon I’ll be on my first plane”, which says it all).
But it’s a great example of lyrics and songs that a 25-year old over here may have written, but likely with songwriters and other producers behind her, as soon as the hype machine took hold. While those not in the know (or too lazy) dismissed her as another record-company construct, she’s the opposite, arriving as a pretty fully-formed artist, most likely a product and a benefit of the cultural or musical isolation of sorts. There’s hints of stuff like James Blake, Massive Attack’s more Spartan arrangements, Lana Del Rey’s languid style (which she’s also stated as an influence) and most obviously the xx (minus the guitars). Most of the album’s dubby pop, but there are a few dancefloor moments too. And there’s a good slab of irony in there, which sings to my ears. Having been to NZ a few times – and this is no slight, as it’s an amazing place – the ennui that also sits throughout the album isn’t faked. Small-town life out there is pretty dry when you’re near to Auckland, let alone coming from London.
I’ve only had a week or so with this album, so my opinions aren’t fully formed yet either, but it’s clear that Lorde’s a precociously talented artist. There’s a bit of a dip in the middle of the album, but then considering that I was busy drinking cider and scooting around Surrey in my Mini at 17, and she’s writing music like this, I can’t really get my head around just what it must take to do that at that age. And most of all, it’s refreshing to have someone emerge like this from an unlikely location, without the taint of record companies and hype or being pushed to work with producers or use songs written for her. Only time will tell how she develops, and one would hope that, while she absorbs the expanding world around her, it doesn’t affect her ability to do what she does.
She’s touring now, especially in the States, where I think her songs will go down as well as they do in the UK, and I can’t wait for her next album.
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