← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
The Bridge: Slate’s Music Club 2025
00:40:10
Our critics’ roundtable recaps how Bad Bunny became imperial, Geese took flight and a trio of Demon Hunters made K-pop golden.
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- [00:00]
A
Hey everybody. This is Chris Melanfy, host of Hit Parade, Slate's podcast of pop chart history. Welcome to the Bridge. This is a special episode of Hit Parade, the Bridge, a recap of 2025, the year in music. With my colleagues in the Slate Music Club, we're making this show partially available to all Hit Parade listeners, our Slate plus members, the whole show. What is the Slate Music Club? For more than two decades, Slate convened a panel of critics at the end of each year to discuss the year in Music, the cultural trends that drove the musical zeitgeist, as well as our favorite albums and singles. We would share our thoughts in a series of written articles published just before the holidays. Starting last year, we turned the music club into a podcast conversation. We've convened a panel of smart folks to talk about music in 2025. So let me introduce our participants, all of whom have graced the Bridge before and one joining us for the Slate Music Club for the first time. First off, a return visitor, Julianne Escobedo Shepard. Julianne is a writer, editor and co founder of Hearing Things, an independent worker owned music publication. And she is the author of the forthcoming book Vachetta, about growing up Mexican American in Wyoming and the My of the American West. Next. She's not new to the bridge, but she is new to music Club. Lindsay Zolads. Lindsay is a pop music critic at the New York Times where she writes about a variety of current music and curates the paper's weekly newsletter, the Amplifier. I look forward to Lindsay telling me why I am wrong about geese. And as always, our host for this roundtable is Carl Wilson, Slate's chief music critic. Carl is a freelance writer and editor based in Toronto. He's the author of let's Talk About Love, A Journey to the End of Taste, and he writes the Substack newsletter Critic. Without further ado, I will turn it over to Carl.
- [02:11]
B
Thank you so much, Chris. It's an honor to have you share this time on Hit Parade with us. So with no further ado to get us started, I want to go around the table and ask each of you to name two of your favorite albums of the year. Julianne, let's start with you.
- [02:25]
C
Okay, well, two of my favorite albums this year were Cleo Reid's Country. Let us Remember what we're asking for. It's kind of like Cowboy Carter for leftists, but it's a really epic folk album about the state of work in the US from the perspective of a kind of beleaguered but still hopeful queer black Person living in New York. And my other album pick is Little Pimienta's La. It is a symphonic journey through Afro Colombian rhythms recorded with a Medellin philharmonic. Sounds a bit like another orchestral album that we have heard this year by Rosalia, but just on paper and it's quite epic.
- [03:42]
D
And Lindsay, my favorite album of the year is by a young New York band called Geese. As Chris alluded to before, I think we may have some haters in the room and I'm happy to argue with you about why I'm right. Their album is called Getting Killed. It's probably one of the most exciting rock records I've heard in years.
- [04:12]
E
Can you see? He said.
- [04:16]
D
It is strange and interesting and compulsively listenable. To me, it's just something I've been going back to a ton. So I know we're going to get more into the very divisive sounds of Geese. But another record that I really love from another young New York based rock band that's doing really interesting things about what it means to be a rock band in 2025 is this band Water from your Eyes. Also kind of strange art rocky stuff, but it seems a less divisive record than the Geese one. The record is called It's A Beautiful Place. It's this really lovely combination of sort of deadpan spoken word poetry combined with just really gnarly and exciting guitar sounds and all sorts of electronics going on. And it just really kind of spoke to something in me about the overwhelm of the modern condition. And these are two records too that I really clicked for me after seeing these bands live. Both of these bands I got to see this Fall in New York and I really liked the records before, but seeing something about the live music experience really just opened them up for me and made them feel like they were my two favorites of the year.
- [05:48]
B
So that's me and Chris, what about you?
- [05:51]
F
Well, I find that my role in these conversations is usually to talk about the consensus picks. So why don't I talk about two obvious albums that I think we all have opinions about? One would be Rosalia's Lux. I liked the Consequence review that called it a religious album that wasn't made for religious people. It's got lyrics in 14 languages, each corresponding to a different female saint. This, of course, is, you know, Rosalia's album that she did with the London Symphony Orchestra, but that almost even reduces the album because it's way too omnivorous to summarize merely as a classical album. It's kind of a masterpiece. So that would definitely be in my top two. And then I think we would all be remiss if we didn't also talk about Bad Bunny's debiter Armas photos, which is emerging as the possible favorite at the Grammys, let alone the subject of a forthcoming super bowl halftime show. This of course is Benito's album that is nominally reggaeton, but so much more than that. I called it before we got on the mic a boricua smorgasbord. It's an all encompassing Puerto Rican exploration of everything from salsa to all manner of Latin musics and it's a wonderful listen.
- [07:29]
D
Great.
- [07:30]
B
And for my part, I'll just quickly say that probably my top two albums of the year would begin with North Carolina band Wednesday and their album Bleeds, which is their sixth full length album and maybe the best example yet of their kind of compressed southern storytelling and country song structures married to a post punk squealy guitar melodrama. Sad and beautiful and I love it. And my other would be jazz master Cecile McLaurin Salvant with oh Snap. Which goes way off the conventional jazz singing path to bring both dance rhythms and avant garde pop textures. I like Kate Bush and Bjork to her music in ways I might suggest resonate with what Rosalia does on Looks, for example, and other trends of the year. Those are two of mine, but I would say Bad Bunny was something that probably all of our lists had in common this year. And given that his album is the most streamed in the world and has been ever since it came out in January, that seems like a logical starting point for discussion. Julianne, back to you. Can you expand on the significance of what Bad Bunny has accomplished this year?
- [08:54]
C
I mean, it's pretty fascinating to me because Bad Bunny has been globally famous for many years, but somehow his album that is dedicated to and very specific to Puerto Rico has made him even more famous to the point that he is angering the right for the fact that he sings in Spanish and he's going to be on the super bowl heaven for Fend. It's quite interesting because for a while now people were kind of wondering, his fans were kind of wondering whether or not he was abandoning the sort of political leanings that he had earlier in his career. I mean, one of my favorite ever Bad Bunny songs is called Estabien and it was an early single, It was after Hurricane Maria, in which he kind of summarized his feelings about Puerto Rico, the island, and about, you know, colonialism and about how the island was going to be okay. And he kind of almost went back to brass tacks for this album. You know, he has sort of lyrics about, you know, don't colonize my island anymore. But more so, it's political in the fact that he's bringing in, yeah, like salsa, Bombay, Plena, like, all of these sounds that are really crucial to Puerto Rican identity. And then doing what he does, bringing it into the current contemporary moment. It's just the most beautiful. I'm getting even chills thinking about it. This beautiful love letter to the island. And then, of course, rather than touring the world, he had all of his concerts, a slate of, you know, three months of concerts in Puerto Rico with the idea of bringing it back. And also, he didn't want to come to the US because of Ice.
- [11:08]
D
You know, something I really like about this record is the approach to history and the way he is sort of seamlessly able to bring these sounds of Puerto Rican past into the present. And it kind of reminds me, in a way of the last two Beyonce albums in that sense that it's heavily, you know, citational and referential, and there's all sorts of samples and guest appearances and just a whole history to really dig into. But it never feels like homework. It never. You know, it's still really fun, but it's layered and smart and just really textured at the same time. There's a lot of, like I said, sort of citations that you can dig into if you want to, but you can also just have fun with it and enjoy it as a really good time. And I think operating, you know, with ambition and scope on that level, you know, it does feel on par with what Beyonce is doing at this time in her career.
- [12:22]
F
Yeah, I hear the ambition, and I would even. I say this with admiration. I would call it an imperial album in the sense that it's the kind of album you make when you're at this stage of your career, and, you know, you can really push the envelope. I mean, right from the opening track, Nueva Y', all, which features El grande combo, like, you kind of know if you're in or you're out right from the open, from the jump. Like, when you hear what he's doing with El Gran Combo on the first track, You sense exactly what he's going for. And when you consider that he already had the number one album in America three years ago with Un Veno Sinti, which was kind of like the album I couldn't escape that whole year, you know, he's had that kind of album now more than once. And I think the reason everybody's so surprised, either pleasantly surprised, or horrified by the idea that he's going to do the super bowl, is that he has achieved something that no Latin artist of his stature has achieved before. And he's. He's kind of making the most of his imperial moment, which is part of what's kind of exhilarating about the album, honestly.
- [13:37]
C
Latin artist in the US of that stature.
- [13:42]
F
Yes. Yeah, right, exactly.
- [13:45]
B
And maybe transitioning from exactly that point out to. Although not to Latin, but to another Spanish language artist. If Bad Bunny started the year, we could say the big event of the last couple of months has been the release of Rosalia's looks truly epic album from this Barcelona based singer crossing opera and flamenco and multiple other genres. I guess one of the questions is what's going on in pop music that something like this could be one of the albums of the year? You know, Rosalia, its last album, felt very much like a bid for pop success on pop terms. This has turned, you know, 180 degrees in the opposite direction. So how does that speak to the moment?
- [14:34]
C
You know, this year has been sort of, as pop music goes, kind of all over the place and kind of other than Bad Bunny and Rosalia, there hasn't really a kind of unifying album and it's been sort of fractured. And you know, I think it kind of comes back to both who she is as an artist, which is that she is kind of an academic artist in certain ways. And I think she just might have gotten like a little bored and wanted to like, do something super ambitious, clearly, because, you know, she was out here on duolingo. Like what?
- [15:15]
B
Yeah, I mean, a couple of years of what sounds like almost full time work in the making and all of these stories of sort of artists and saints and mystics embedded into each song along with, you know, relationship songs and saucy bits of drama as well, you know, both soap opera and spiritual quest. Chris, you were the first to mention this. Further thoughts on Rosalia.
- [15:51]
F
I mean, if there's one thing I've been writing about this whole decade, it's the kind of mockery we're making of genre at this point. You know, the. The fact that it's getting impossible to categorize anything. You know, you think about some of the albums that crack the top five this year, like Leve. I hope I'm pronouncing her name right. This, of course, is the person who spells her name L, A, U, F, E, you know, is classified as classical and jazz and pop. And you know, about five other things.
- [16:21]
C
Oh, what a curse it is to.
- [16:24]
D
Be a lover girl.
- [16:30]
F
And this Rosalia album, what is it? You know, it's not a flamenco album purely. It's, you know, not strictly speaking a classical album. Even though the LSO is backing her up on I think virtually every track. She's got Bjork on there. And again, all the languages. I mean, the first single from the album is Bergain, which starts off with German.
- [17:01]
D
Yeah.
- [17:01]
B
And if you dig into the credits of that album too, it's still, you know, there's actual American pop producers mixed in there as well. It's really, it's really speaking all of those languages at once in an immigrant way. Which is one thing that I'd point out. With both of the years defining albums being primarily non English language records. It makes me think about a series of posts that the music critic Dave Moore wrote earlier this year where he proposed the idea of something called apop, by which he meant American Pop or Anglo American pop. And the idea that that might be becoming a category that is just one among the many. So an equivalent of J Pop or K Pop, but apop. And whether that speaks to the decline of the American hegemony or something, something else darker, it also speaks to this new kind of polyglot and multi genre musical universe that maybe streaming has made possible. While we're on the subject, let's talk about K Pop for a bit. It was a pivotal year for K Pop, but not always in its original forms, you know, with Netflix's K Pop Demon Hunters and the song golden from that. And yet there were also kind of fresh developments coming out of the Korean music industry itself. Chris, I know you have some thoughts about k pop in 2025.
- [18:29]
F
You know, this is all happening while BTS are still on hiatus. So we're seeing what happens when they leave the room. And K Pop is defined by other artists. One chart feat that has gone relatively unremarked, but Billboard has been reporting on, is that the K Pop group Stray Kids have had eight straight number one albums they literally haven't missed. And yet what's weird about Stray Kids is that, you know, they're still not really getting on the radio. K Pop has been in this weird, liminal space for most of this decade where these artists, you know, top the album chart on the regular and the albums don't really wind up blanketing the airwaves or scoring big crossover hits. And what was fascinating to me about K Pop Demon Hunters is that it showed that there is an audience for this and there is a venue for this. Now, of course, K Pop Demon Hunters, not unlike, you know, BTS's dynamite, is a polyglot hybridized product that is not purely of Korea, but maybe that's the future. Look at what Cat's Eye is doing right now. Cat's Eye is using the K Pop model, but it's not strictly speaking, a Korean group. Even defining what K Pop is has become problematized in, I would say, a healthy way.
- [20:11]
D
Yeah. And maybe it's the beginning of a future where that's even a category that doesn't matter so much. You know, I, I, I have not watched K Pop Demon Hunters myself, I must confess, but my understanding is that, I mean, I love Golden. That was probably honestly my favorite pop song of the year. It's so irresistible and inescapable and just that ascending pre chorus, it's beautiful. But it is aimed towards a young audience that isn't making the distinctions between genre yet, isn't making the distinctions between, you know, where music is coming from and who's producing it. Sometimes even like who's singing it. Is it a real band that actually exists or is it this fictitious band from the movie? You know, I think something that is really interesting about that whole phenomenon is that it's coming out of, you know, this, this youth oriented product and film and genres only matter when you get to be a certain age too. Like any sort of category, I think it's reaching a lot of viewers and listeners before they're making those distinctions. And then they will grow up to be adults that maybe don't care about those distinctions or don't make those distinctions in the things that they're listening to and consuming. So that's something that I find interesting about the whole phenomenon.
- [21:45]
B
Let's go back to our album list for a bit. Lindsay, you and I were the ones to name rock records and among our top picks, you with Geese and me with Wednesday. So let's fight it out a little.
- [21:55]
D
All right.
- [21:56]
B
It feels like a long time since there's been the kind of buzz around a rock band that there has been with Geese this year, and more specifically with a rock band fronted by a man. Anybody looking back over most of the past decade might have thought that that whole idea was just so are rock dudes back? And more seriously, what's happening that that's making this band, you know, really set new standards for what 21st century rock can be?
- [22:24]
D
Yeah, I have to say I'm, I'm kind of surprised at how popular Geese have become and how much. I have seen this record on a lot of year Endless. But I've also talked to as many people who just hate it and can't get past the sort of initial barrier of the frontman Cameron Winters voice he has. You know, I wrote about it in my Albums of the Year list and I compared his voice to cilantro. It's one of those things where you either have the gene where it is beautiful and delicious to you or it just makes you recoil and.
- [22:57]
F
Or it sounds like soap.
- [22:59]
D
Yeah, exactly.
- [23:00]
E
Baby, you can stay with me and nobody would care.
- [23:11]
D
So I happen to love it. And I think his voice is very stirring and emotive and really beautiful in its own strange, off kilter way. I also have people in my life that think he sounds like a Muppet or sounds like he's in pain. And I'm like, yeah, that's also a compliment to me. Keep going. But I'm struggling to put a finger on exactly what it is about this band that has become such a phenomenon. But I think it's something that is even picking up some speed just in the last few months, you know. Cameron Winter also released a really interesting and acclaimed solo album at the end of last year called Heavy Metal. That Barry Stickler's Reason. But I did get to see him play some of the songs from it live earlier this month at Carnegie hall of all places. And it was just such a fascinating, powerful show where they're really just. You could feel the connection in the audience to this very singular and strange performer who seems to be representing something new and maybe something so new that we don't even quite understand what it is yet. But I think to go back to that point of Is Rock back, I kind of think it never went anywhere. There were just people doing things that maybe weren't as interesting with it as bands like Geese or Carl. I also really like the Wednesday record and have liked their past few records as well. And to go back to my other pick of Water from youm Eyes, these are bands that are sort of growing up with the weight of rock history and having this sort of meta awareness, you know, just from the availability of everything on streaming. And they're also finding a way to be both like reverent to that history and also to kind of mock it and ironize it a little bit. So I think to be a sort of Gen Z rock band again, you have to understand both the ridiculousness of it but the necessity of taking it seriously in this way too. And I just Hear that balance struck in a really interesting way on both of these records. But I'm very curious to hear what the rest of you think about the Geese record, because it's also just the most divisive and argued about rock record I can remember in a long time. And that just makes me excited even when people hate it. Like, it's just generating such strong reactions. And I think that in and of itself is a positive that we. There's actually like a rock record to argue about. I can't remember the last time that happened.
- [26:08]
F
I mean, for me, it's the Merryweather post pavilion of 2025 in the sense that I will never understand its appeal and yet I accept that people love it.
- [26:19]
E
Four Walls and it For Girl.
- [26:28]
F
I really have given that album multiple tries. I. I think I'm the philistine. It's just not penetrating for me. I think there was one track that stood out for me. It's Islands of Men, smack in the middle of the record that I was like, oh, if it were more like this, I'd probably like this record better.
- [26:45]
E
You have seen Island.
- [26:53]
F
I've tried Taxes multiple times. That's the single, the. The highlight track everybody's on. And I don't know, I'm just not hearing it. And it's not necessarily just the voice. There's something a little Captain Beefhearty about it that I should like.
- [27:17]
D
Sure.
- [27:18]
F
But it's not. It's not catching on with me. So I'm in De gustibus no disbutandum mode on that record.
- [27:28]
C
It's weird because I actually feel kind of indifferent to it, but I do. I think that Cameron Winter's voice is really interesting. It's giving me Tom Verlaine and it's giving a little Lou Read. But I think the phenomenon outside of like the critical argument is really interesting. Just in, like, what you said, there hasn't been a rock band that has been so famous so fast. Like, if I'm not mistaken, like, P.T. anderson was filming that solo show at Carnegie, was like, what?
- [28:03]
D
Wild. I know, I know. And also famous in like a very Gen X approved way.
- [28:09]
C
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, as like an ex or zillennial or however you want to call it. Like, it definitely reads to me as sort of a Strokesy phenomenon, but, like, I hated the Strokes. It's like non corporate Strokes. But I think it's really interesting and I also think it kind of speaks to what we're talking about of like the genre kind of melting into a puddle in in the gutter. Who was that? The producer, Kenny Beats.
- [28:49]
D
Yeah.
- [28:49]
C
Yeah. So it's so interesting that they're like, let me find Kenny Beads who, like, produces, like, Smoke Dizza and, like, do this album.
- [29:04]
D
I think he found them, actually. He heard a demo of theirs or something and was like, I gotta produce these kids. You know, one other thing that I find interesting about it, and I was thinking about this after seeing Cameron Winter's show recently, that they kind of get this label of the first great Gen Z rock band and et cetera, et cetera, and are talked in this very generational thing, generational way, as though what they're doing is tapping into something specific right now. But if you listen to the songs, and a lot of this conversation is centered around Cameron Winter as a songwriter, as a really interesting lyricist who uses language in a really strange and unexpected way. If you look at the lyrics on paper and listen to the record, you know, with a focus on the lyrics. There's no phones on this record. There's no, like, social media. There's no trappings of sort of what we think of as, like, modern 2000 and 20s life. And I think that is something kind of refreshing about it. Like, he's singing about these big concepts of love and spirituality and this quest for meaning. You know, he's doing it in a very, like, oddball, sometimes, like, dryly humorous way.
- [30:27]
E
The Lord has a lot of friends, and in the end he'll probably forget he's met you before.
- [30:36]
D
But it's not a record that is speaking directly to the current moment. But I think in being so oblique in the way that it is speaking, it sort of is embodying, I think, maybe like a hunger for something that isn't trying too hard to sound of this moment, is instead, just trying to sound very true to the people that are creating it and what they're interested in and what they like. So I think that's something that is kind of responsible for some of this phenomenon and why I find it just very refreshing and strange and hard to really put a finger on.
- [31:16]
B
Yeah, maybe speaking to the vacuum of meaning and anxiety caused by things in the moment rather than directly to the moment itself. I'm one of those people who put the Cameron Winter album on my list rather than the Geese album, because I think my problem with Geese is the band, but in ways that I haven't been able to put my finger on. Exactly. But we need to move on, so I'm going to leave it.
- [31:37]
D
Yeah, Everyone. Everyone wants to debate this record.
- [31:40]
B
Speaking of genres that, you know, have been called dead at various times. I think we need to talk for a sec about the year in hip hop as well. In some ways, you know, this year started off with hip hop feeling like it was having a moment with Kendrick at the super bowl with that incredible halftime show and, you know, Kendrick at the Grammys and Docci at the Grammys. There was a moment of what felt like recognition that had been long denied happening there. And then the rest of the year felt like it did not work out that way. Julianne, maybe you can speak to that.
- [32:13]
C
Yeah, I mean, I do think that we're at this point where I think that Dochi especially is, like, the great hope for hip hop right now and that, you know, she is doing what a lot of, like, we like to call old heads, really, like, in that she is, you know, doing rapity rap. But also, you know, it doesn't feel like she is, like, trying to throw back. I'm making so much money. I'm all over the net. I'm moving so fast. No time to process. I think that part of the problem is that the biggest story in hip hop this year was the trial of Sean Combs. And I think that it didn't have anything to do, per se, to the lack of singles or big rising artists in this specific year. But I think it left a pallor. And you had said something, Carl, in our emails about how is it that hip hop is going through its ugly, awkward phase in the same way that rock did in the 80s, where it's just, like, it's just aged enough where it's in a slump? And I think, like, that is definitely true a bit. But I also think that so much of it has been overtaken by Latin music and by reggaeton, and that, you know, I think the most interesting stuff is kind of melding hip hop together with other genres. I think of. And this is obviously not a pop thing, but I think of this group from the Bronx called Planta Industrial, which is. They're rappers from the Bronx who also grew up. They're Dominican. They grew up listening to reggaeton and dambo and also, like, punk. And so that was what kind of the most interesting hip hop album of the year to me, because it brought all of these genres and these sort of, like, omnivorous interests into one album. But I really do think we're just in a kind of slump. A lot of the biggest stars are either buried, sorry, Drake. Or just making music. And Kendrick took over so much of the year last year that it's Almost like everyone needed a breather.
- [34:43]
F
I mean, I've been saying this since at least last year, but. But the fact that we're still talking about Kendrick and Drake and Sean Combs, my issue with hip hop right now is that I'm waiting for a new generation to take over. We're still talking about the same rappers we were talking about 10 to 15 years ago. And I don't want to take anything away from the year Kendrick had because it was stellar on, you know, every level. And it spread across two years, you know, because he dropped GNX at the end of 2024, and it basically dominated 2025. By the way, if any album at the Grammys is going to beat Bad Bunny, the actual favorite album is gnx. And if it did, it would be the first hip hop album to win album of the year since no Joke Outcasts speaker box, the love below 22 years ago, which is crazy.
- [35:31]
B
If this world was mine, I take it Enemies in front of God Introduce them to that life.
- [35:40]
F
I like gnx. It's not my favorite favorite Kendrick album. But, you know, on the other hand, enough already. Like, maybe a rap album needs to win. But I think the reason we're placing so much hope in Dochi, who, my name checked, is one of my two favorite albums of 2024. And technically it's not an album, it's a mixtape. And she hasn't technically released what she calls a debut album yet, is that I think we're just waiting for the mantle to be picked up by a new generation. You know, Dochi, briefly, for, I don't know, a couple of weeks, had the most played song at radio this year with Anxiety, which is this five year old track that she rebooted and has a big Gaultier sample in smack dab in the middle of it. I was, on the one hand, delighted to hear Dochi booming out of my radio in 2025, But also kind of wishing like. Like I would love an actual album from her or I would love it if Denial Is a River was the track I was hearing out in the world. So I also think Julianne made a good point about how it's gotten so subsumed and absorbed into other genres, whether it's, you know, what Shaboozi is doing or what Jelly Roll is doing. You know, everybody's kind of pulling bits of hip hop and glomming it onto what they're doing. I. I feel like it's kind of in a holding pattern right now.
- [37:03]
C
It's weird too, because, like, what should have been the biggest hip hop album of the year. Like on paper was the new Cardi B album kind of didn't really seem to do anything. I mean and she was out here working like she was in my neighborhood in like a bodega, just like signing stuff, pregnant. And I actually really like that album, but I just, it didn't really register on a bigger level. I mean, you know, I always feel like living in New York, you can kind of tell what's popping by just what people are playing from their cars. And guess what? I I'm still hearing Nueva Yol by a Bad Bunny and I have not heard a single Cardi B song.
- [37:54]
F
I guess you can go way too long. Seven years might have been just a little too long to wait for a follow up album.
- [38:00]
D
Yeah.
- [38:01]
B
So on that note of things that have stalled or paused and things possibly to hope are coming over the horizon, I think we should pause our conversation here and say goodbye to the non Slate plus listeners and resume a little bit with talking about chart action and our ideas about what might be coming in 2026 and other things in the second part of our conversation.
- [38:33]
A
Thanks for listening to part one of this special episode of Hit Parade the Bridge with the Slate Music Club. You won't want to miss part two. We discuss the charts in 2025. Why so many 2024 hits kept hanging around. Which aging millennial superstar did the pop comeback better?
- [38:56]
F
Taylor or Gaga?
- [38:58]
A
And what musical happenings we're wishing for in 2026. Want to hear the rest of our conversation? Just sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, but all of Slate acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com hitparadeplus now through the end of December, you can get 50% off a Slate+ membership. Just go to slate.com hitparadeplus and use the promo code hit50 once again to join. That's slate.com hit parade plus promo code hit50. Thanks. This episode of Hit Parade, the Bridge was produced by Kevin Bendis. Special thanks to Mia Lobel and Joel Meyer for making this special show possible. And I'm Chris Melanfi. Keep on marching on the 1D.