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Liam Neeson may have said it best this year, summing up this disgusting moment in history with the line in Naked gun reboot. The bumbling son of Leslie Nielsen's Lt. Frank Drebin, he is a man lost in the modern world, trapped in a time and place he cannot understand. “Electric [cars]hmm?” he growls. “I remember when only three things were electric. Eels, chairs and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago!”
Look, we all felt it. This year has been a disaster for our morale, our nation, whatever you want to put “our” before. But what was happening throughout our entire culture, from top to bottom, was a struggle against surrender. Fight the despair you feel as you watch everything you hold dear being bulldozed at warp speed. People wanted to laugh—as the crowded theaters at Neeson did—and howl, and get angry, and feel.
voices of the year — music, art, film, television and podcasts that converged in 2025 — spoke about this daily struggle. We turned to our favorite artists not just to numb the destruction and betrayal we see around us (though we needed some of that), but to point to the possible futures we can imagine. Was it Ryan Coogler using music as a cheat sheet to our sordid national history in Sinners or the creation of Lady Gaga chaos like a party in a burning house, we looked for people who had something to say, voices that gave us something to do with our hearts other than bleeding, and something to do with our rage other than waste it.
When Stephen Colbert he was fired immediately after he used the word “bribe” on television in reference to the benefit his channel received from the White House debacle. It was the biggest and most shocking television story in years. Colbert turned it into a rallying cry. “In September 2025, I have never loved my country more desperately,” he said on stage after winning an Emmy two months later. “God bless America. Stay strong. Be brave. And if the elevator tries to run you down, go crazy and fight your way to the top floor!”
It remained the biggest, most shocking TV story of the past few days – for days. Then Jimmy Kimmel was thrown into the late-night carnage after he told jokes the president didn't like. This shouldn't happen in this country, or what? When ABC suspended him, it was chilling to see how the nation rallied around the cause of the late-night talk show host—by definition the safest and most important of mainstream comedy—as if it were some birthright we suddenly had to fight for. But this time it worked, as public outrage forced the network to bring Kimmel back. All we know about the next time is that there will be one.
When Colbert had another job, he played his old one The Colbert Report The character “Blame America Last”, he came up with the principle of “Vikality”. As he stated: “The revolution will not be tested!” This has proven to be prophetic as there are more and more Vikials in our era. Google's artificial intelligence races forward in its quest to destroy sources of information or ideas beyond its own glut of algorithmic brain rot, while the feds escalate their attacks on non-corporate discourse. (Do you remember the word “college”?)
So, 2025 was a year full of moments, eras, vibrations, all in search of one or two minutes that made sense. Artists were looking for connections that did not exist before: Bad Bunny put his home not just on the map, but at the center of it, with his landmark performances in Puerto Rico, his blockbuster album and the announcement of his first Super Bowl halftime performance. in Spanish, which caused a lot of indignation. FKA Twigs stuns with her erotic New Age electric yurt. K-Pop Demon Hunters brought to life a planet of fast-paced neural adventure so light-hearted it was a shock to remember that this is the planet we live on. Mariah Carey performed heroic duty when, asked if she planned to go into outer space (as other celebrities have done in a humiliating product placement stunt), she chuckled: “I think I've done enough.” This says even more about the 2020s than “I don’t know her” did about the 2010s.
Harry Styles celebrated Oscar night by turning up unannounced for the Tokyo Marathon, and then did it again a few months later by running the Berlin Marathon incognito. He even showed up in St. Peter's Square for the election of the new Pope, once again proving that he is the biggest DGAF star in the history of F and its uninitiation. (Harry, by the way, ran both marathons faster than the actual Oscar, thanks in large part to Adrien Brody, Meryl Streep's AI-enhanced accent. Rumors that he had finally finished his Best Actor acceptance speech could not be confirmed at the time of publication.)
There were signs of life on the screen. Brutal satire included among the biggest TV events of the year Studio And South Park and dark drama Adolescence, TaskAnd Pitt – not to mention what the hell you would classify Hunting wives. James Gunn gave us the Superman of our time. Pedro Pascal was everywhere, from The Last of Us To Eddington, saving the planet in Fantastic Four and Dakota Johnson's feelings Materialistsunintentionally the laugh-out-loud rom-com of the year.
On stage I saw live performances by octogenarians who refused to take the easy way home—Neil Young, George Clinton, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon. Most of them had nothing to talk about right now; they served as a reminder of how many inevitable futures they had seen, ups and downs. Willie Nelson picking out a guitar to perform “Funny How Time Slips Away” at 92 was not just an inspiration, it was a challenge: what do you do with your slipping away?
We entered the year with a superb Bob Dylan biopic in which Timothée Chalamet finds acoustic tradition in his ghostly electric cheekbones; we ended it with a great Bruce Springsteen biopic in which Jeremy Allen White did the same thing to his sweat glands, born to work. Both films took entire scenes from Purple rain because we all want to be princes like Colbert. It's great how Hollywood continues to prove that America is still madly in love with rock star stories, the kind that the actual music industry can't figure out how to sell.
Justin Bieberconsidered by many to be a sad victim of social media burnout, is back on business with amazingly excellent Swing, then returned just a few months later with a less than stunning sequel Swag II, which included Biebs' seven-minute oral sermon on the Garden of Eden, “The Story of God.” Cardi B is back with her long-awaited second album. Am I Drama? Andre 3000 released an album of piano solos that he recorded on his phone almost ten years ago. Dead & Company played a number of concerts for Grateful Dead60th anniversary of the company with the intention to move forward; The Dead also released a cookbook with a brilliant title Dead in the kitchen.
For Taylor Swiftthe general catharsis of the Eras Tour has given way to hardcore fun The life of a dancer. In a world where it's easy to get distracted by the calculations of discursive mathematics, this was an invitation to put cultural narratives aside and just listen to some fucking music for a few minutes. Result: an album worth arguing abouta gift she had given us many times before. One of the brightest signs of life all year: One battle after another, with Paul Thomas Anderson turning an old Thomas Pynchon novel into a popcorn movie about dead revolutions coming back to life. It accidentally summed up the moment perfectly – funny, poignant, elegiac, gritty, full of energy, with stellar performances from Chase Infinity, Teyana Taylor and Benicio del Toro. Leonardo DiCaprio was an unlikely anti-hero for our time, stuck by his phone, trying to remember the password to answer the question “What time is it?” In 2025, he was not the only one faced with this question. But the artists who responded constantly reminded us that tomorrow is here.
