Hit Parade: The Bridge – Slate’s Music Club 2025

Podcast: Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Host: Slate Podcasts
Date: December 26, 2025
Panel: Chris Molanphy, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Lindsay Zoladz, Carl Wilson

Overview: 2025—A Year of Shifting Sounds and Global Voices

This special year-end edition of Hit Parade’s "The Bridge" brings together members of Slate’s Music Club to discuss the most impactful music of 2025. The roundtable, hosted by Carl Wilson and joined by Chris Molanphy, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, and Lindsay Zoladz, covers their favorite albums, industry trends, and the broader changes redefining the pop music landscape—including the surging global influence, the evolving state of genres, and what constitutes a "smash" song in today’s fractured music environment.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Favorite Albums of 2025

[02:10–07:29]

The panelists shared two of their favorite albums each, spotlighting both consensus blockbusters and personal niche finds.

• Julianne’s Picks:

  • Cleo Reid – “Country”
    “It's kind of like Cowboy Carter for leftists…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.” (Julianne, [02:32])
  • Lido Pimienta – “La”
    “A symphonic journey through Afro Colombian rhythms recorded with a Medellin philharmonic…just quite epic.” (Julianne, [03:16])

• Lindsay’s Picks:

  • Geese – “Getting Killed”
    “It is strange and interesting and compulsively listenable. To me, it's just something I've been going back to a ton.” (Lindsay, [04:16])
  • Water From Your Eyes – “It’s a Beautiful Place”
    “A lovely combination of sort of deadpan spoken word poetry…really gnarly and exciting guitar sounds and…electronics…kind of spoke to something in me about the overwhelm of the modern condition.” (Lindsay, [05:26])

• Chris’s Picks:

  • Rosalía – “Lux”
    “A religious album that wasn't made for religious people…lyrics in 14 languages, each corresponding to a different female saint…way too omnivorous to summarize merely as a classical album. It's kind of a masterpiece.” (Chris, [05:57])
  • Bad Bunny – “Debiter Armas Fotos”
    “Nominally reggaeton, but so much more…an all-encompassing Puerto Rican exploration of everything from salsa to all manner of Latin musics, and it’s a wonderful listen.” (Chris, [06:43])

• Carl’s Picks:

  • Wednesday – “Bleeds”
    “Compressed southern storytelling and country song structures married to a post-punk squealy guitar melodrama. Sad and beautiful and I love it.” (Carl, [07:41])
  • Cécile McLorin Salvant – “Oh Snap”
    “Brings both dance rhythms and avant garde pop textures alla Kate Bush and Björk…resonates with what Rosalía does on 'Lux'.” (Carl, [08:06])

2. Bad Bunny—A Puerto Rican Love Letter and Political Statement

[08:54–13:42]

The panel lauded Bad Bunny’s massive, culturally specific, and politically engaged new album.

• Significance:
  “He kind of almost went back to brass tacks for this album…lyrics about, you know, don't colonize my island anymore. But more so, it's political in the fact that he's bringing in…all of these sounds that are really crucial to Puerto Rican identity.” (Julianne, [09:45])

• Politics and Pop:
  “He’s making the most of his imperial moment, which is part of what’s kind of exhilarating about the album, honestly.” (Chris, [12:21])

• Comparison to Beyoncé:
  “He is sort of seamlessly able to bring these sounds of Puerto Rican past into the present…it never feels like homework. You can also just have fun with it and enjoy it as a really good time.” (Lindsay, [11:07])

3. Rosalía’s “Lux”—Genre-Bending, Multilingual Opus

[13:44–17:00]

“Lux” defies classification and underscores the era's genre-melting tendencies.

• Artistic Transformation:
  “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.” (Julianne, [14:34])

• Academic and Epic:
  “She is kind of an academic artist in certain ways…all these stories of artists and saints and mystics embedded into each song along with relationship songs and saucy bits of drama…both soap opera and spiritual quest.” (Carl, [15:14])

• Mockery of Genre Constraints:
  “If there’s one thing I’ve been writing about this whole decade, it’s the kind of mockery we’re making of genre…it's getting impossible to categorize anything.” (Chris, [15:51])

4. The Decline of “APop” and the Rise of Polyglot Pop

[17:01–18:27]

Globalization and streaming are reshaping what’s considered “mainstream”:

• American Pop as Just Another Category:
  “Dave Moore…proposed the idea of something called 'A Pop,' by which he meant American Pop or Anglo American pop. The idea that that might be becoming a category that is just one among the many.” (Carl, [17:34])

• Non-English Language Albums Leading the Year:
  “With both of the years defining albums being primarily non-English language records…it also speaks to this new kind of polyglot and multi genre musical universe that maybe streaming has made possible.” (Carl, [17:48])

5. K-Pop’s Transformative Year and the Erosion of Genre Borders

[18:28–21:44]

K-Pop’s global expansion—and mutability—mirrors music’s shifting landscape.

• Stray Kids’ Chart Feat:
  “Eight straight number one albums, they literally haven’t missed…yet…they’re still not really getting on the radio.” (Chris, [18:50])

• Hybridization:
  “K Pop Demon Hunters…is a polyglot hybridized product that is not purely of Korea, but maybe that’s the future…even defining what K Pop is has become problematized in, I would say, a healthy way.” (Chris, [19:12])

• Audience Perspective Shift:
  “It is aimed towards a young audience that isn’t making the distinctions between genre yet, isn’t making the distinctions between…where music is coming from…sometimes even like who’s singing it.” (Lindsay, [20:29])

6. Rock’s Contentious Resurrection: Geese, Wednesday, and the ‘Gen Z’ Band

[21:44–31:36]

Rock’s status is hotly debated—especially around Geese, the most divisive band of the year.

• The Debate Over Geese:
  “He has…a voice where you either have the gene where it is beautiful and delicious to you or it just makes you recoil.” (Lindsay, [22:36])
  “For me, it's the Merriweather Post Pavilion of 2025 in the sense that I will never understand its appeal and yet I accept that people love it.” (Chris, [26:07])

• Generational Differences:
  “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.” (Lindsay, [24:43])

• Meta-awareness and New Meaning:
  “There’s no phones on this record. There’s no social media. There’s no trappings of modern…life. He’s singing about these big concepts of love and spirituality and this quest for meaning.” (Lindsay, [29:39])
  “It's not a record that is speaking directly to the current moment. But I think in being so oblique…it’s embodying a hunger for something that isn’t trying too hard to sound of this moment.” (Lindsay, [30:36])

7. Hip-Hop’s Transitional Year: Stalls, Scandals, and Hopes for the Next Generation

[31:40–37:59]

The panel agrees hip-hop is awaiting a generational shift.

• Star Power in Stasis:
  “The biggest story in hip hop this year was the trial of Sean Combs…and I think it left a pallor.” (Julianne, [32:37])
  “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.” (Chris, [34:43])

• Doechii as Hope:
  “Dochi especially is the great hope for hip hop right now…she is, you know, doing rapity rap, but also…it doesn’t feel like she is, like, trying to throw back.” (Julianne, [32:13])
  “I was, on the one hand, delighted to hear Dochi booming out of my radio in 2025, but also kind of wishing…like, I would love an actual album from her.” (Chris, [36:15])

• Cross-Pollination and Decline in Mainstream Impact:
  “It’s gotten so subsumed and absorbed into other genres, whether it’s…what Shaboozi is doing or what Jelly Roll is doing.” (Chris, [36:33])

• Endurance of Legacy Acts:
  “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…Outkast’s ‘Speakerboxxx/The Love Below’ 22 years ago, which is crazy.” (Chris, [35:07])

• Cardi B’s Anticlimax:
  “What should have been the biggest hip hop album of the year…was the new Cardi B album—kind of didn’t really seem to do anything.” (Julianne, [37:03])

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Bad Bunny’s Impact:
  “It's just the most beautiful. I'm getting even chills thinking about it. This beautiful love letter to the island.” (Julianne, [10:35])

• On Rosalía’s “Lux”:
  “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 Björk on there. And again, all the languages.” (Chris, [16:30])

• On the generational shift in rock:
  “If you listen to the songs…There’s no phones on this record…He’s singing about…big concepts of love and spirituality and this quest for meaning.” (Lindsay, [29:39])

Key Timestamps

• 02:10–08:54: Panelists’ favorite albums of the year
• 08:54–15:14: Discussion of Bad Bunny’s album and political/cultural significance
• 15:14–18:27: Rosalía’s “Lux,” genre fluidity, and global pop
• 18:28–21:44: K-Pop’s year, Stray Kids, and blurring of genre lines
• 21:44–31:36: Rock’s new vanguard and the Geese debate
• 31:40–37:59: Hip-Hop’s “awkward” moment, generational frustrations, and Doechii as a bright spot
• 38:01–38:32: Wrap-up and tease for Slate Plus members (content ends here)

Conclusion

This year’s roundtable highlighted several defining themes for 2025: the ongoing globalization and multilingual turn in pop, the collapse of genre boundaries, and the generational transitions happening (or waiting to happen) in both rock and hip-hop. The episode reflects both the exhilarating evolution of new stars and sounds, as well as the nostalgia, frustrations, and debates that always accompany a changing cultural landscape.

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