The Pop Corporation

Before we round up the stuff from 2024 that we thought was great, we’re going to have a little fun predicting what might happen next year in the world of music. Outside of music, you have to wonder if those stupid Marvel films are going to trudge on. They probably will. Of course, it’ll be all eyes on the legal troubles surrounding Diddy, but that’s serious journalism, and we’re saving that for another day.

We want to know what people will be listening to. We want to predict what things will come lurching back over the horizon. What surprises will there be? What new genres will fight their way out? What will the new drug be? What will the influencers be pushing on us? What will big record companies try and repackage?

Let’s have a guess.

TOP KNOT STADIUM FOLK RETURNS

Thanks to the inexplicable popularity of middle class kids converting vans to travel the world and calling themselves Digital Nomads, and crystal bothering Nu Agers shilling for pennies online with vague spiritual guidance, 2025 will see the unwelcome re-appraisal of bands like Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers, and Fleet Foxes.

Centrist North London dads will dust down the Red Wings boots that have been gathering dust in the back of the wardrobe, that they bought because they liked the idea of hiking but never got around to it – in addition to that, they’ll marvel that top knots are great for covering bald spots a la Gareth Bale. Your IG feed is going to feature a helluva lot of rich kids on yoga retreats. The Guardian will do a piece about Stadium Country saying how unfair we all were to write it off, because of course they will. In conjunction to this, ‘hop forward’ bullshit IPAs will plague perfectly good pubs too.

DAD APPROVED MUMBLE RAP

After years of complaining about Mumble Rap and Soundcloud Rappers, hip hop loving dads are going to return to their first love of The OG Mumblers like MF Doom and start shouting about Ab-Soul and other MCs who are drilling down into loops and breaks that are almost incomprehensible in flow, with beats so syrupy and slowed down that you’ll wonder if they’ve been produced with dirty baking trays out of your oven.

HOUSE MUSIC THAT IS FUN

Look, things have been serious as cancer for ages now. Doof Doof music for a while now, has erred on the side of industrial strength techno, thanks to hipsters loving the milquetoast kink scenes of Berghain. However, the world won’t let up with the bad news and heavy messages, so we’re going to need some fun with a whiff of spirituality about it. Enter uplifting house music. Bring us Gospel House! Great for taking party drugs, great for uplifting the soul and forgetting your troubles. Like disco before it, we’d expect a bit of glamour on the dancefloor in 2025.

UK GARAGE DOESN’T COME BACK

There’ll almost certainly be a hit that sounds like UKG/Speed Garage, because every year, there is and we all love it. Then, buoyed by its success, we’ll all convince ourselves that it’ll be coming back and we’ll have a glorious summer of Speed Garage, 2 Step and the rest! And like every other year since the heyday of the genre, it won’t come back at all, and we’ll just have that one hit which we’ve dutifully added to our ‘UKG JAMZ’ Spotify playlist. Shame. ONE DAY!

G-FUNK 2.0

Look, the impact of Kendrick’s ‘GNX’ LP and Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg teaming up again can’t be underestimated and, after years of dominance from Atlanta, the West Coast is going to make a big comeback in 2025. Maybe. The Yacht Rock documentary that just aired in HBO means that smooth, adult jams are back in vogue again too, so if we add these things together, and are we going to get a new twist on G Funk? We’re down for that, if so.

The purists are going to start writing pieces about how important E40 is, so he’ll get another day in the sun, Kendrick is doing the Super Bowl, and there’s a load of young artists who will be filtering all of this and releasing some good music next year.

GROT ROCK FOR SUPER MODELS

Black leather jackets, sunglasses inside and skuzzy guitars that strangely don’t move your body or soul, sleazy NYC-esque rock ‘n’ roll will return, but it won’t be because there’s a spate of great new bands, but rather, heroin chic is definitely coming back, and young models who only have cigarettes as their square meals will need some partners to hang off the shoulders of. In lieu of decent bands who don’t ever hang around in model baiting circles, gingivitis-having lead singers who prey on people 15 years too young for them will get a leg-up in the music press by sheer proximity to damaged young people.

The Tumblr and TikTok dadrock girlies will be sharing photos of Kate Moss from when she was hanging out with Chief Scab-bag Pete Doherty and idolising dangerously thin lewks, complete with baggy knee highs and oversized belts, and we’ll shudder at the thought as the bands, models, fans, hangers-on, when they all start talking about The Doors like they’re a decent band. The snob in you is going to be sorely tested and someone’s probably going to fall out of a window and die, and Grazia will write about it as much as Rolling Stone will. The ghost of Anthony Bourdain will probably appear as The Kills bizarrely get referred to as ‘seminal’.

LANDFILL INDIE IRONY OVERLOAD

To coincide with Grot Rock’s ignominious return, those who like things a little less handsy will welcome the return of the relative safety of Landfill Indie. The Kooks are not a swear word in some circles you have to remember and, with indie always being a cyclical affair, to complement the Stadium Folk and Grot Rock, you’re almost certainly going to get Shoreditch PR kids who work for celebrities for no pay, rent paid for by hedge fund parents, they’ll be digging their private school mate’s group who unashamedly likes the music made in one of the lowest ebbs of British rock music. It’ll be a love born of irony, that turns into non ironic listening, just like we saw with the resurgence of country music in 2024, and the Nickelback/Creed resurgence before that.

Guitars worn high, impossibly skinny jeans that approach jeggings territory, Chalamet curls, skinny ties and the kind of choruses that you will feel aggrieved by, but will concede are catchy. If we’re lucky, a new Franz Ferdinand will emerge from the pack. If we’re unlucky, The Dare will spawn a number of Indie Sleazealikes, and we’ll all whine about it when we see them on the Glastonbury TV coverage.

AI HAS ITS FIRST HIT AND THE SUBSEQUENT PEASANT’S REVOLT

Some stupid tech bro makes a viral hit with some AI tools and, thanks to scamming the algorithm and SEO, everyone suddenly gets very irritated as a slew of copycats briefly make the charts so unbearable that the various law-makers have to re-write the rules of what enters the pop charts. Daniel Ek – Spotify’s billionaire boss – says something wildly out of touch and, kickstarted by someone old like Neil Young, scores of artists start pulling their music from all streaming services.

In the middle of all this, Snoop Dogg does a guest rap on an AI track and doesn’t get cancelled, because he’s Snoop, and he’s basically a meme now and it’s nigh-on impossible to stay angry at him. Grimes meanwhile launches 17 different AI versions of herself and she becomes more wealthy than Belgium. No-one knows what’s going on.

NO NEW BOARDS OF CANADA ALBUM

No chance. Cross your fingers as much as you like. They’ll continue to hover over the world of electronic music like a ghost, and we’ll all wonder if they’ll ever come back. Which they will, in 2026, with an album that you can only hear if you make a pilgrimage to a remote pagan church in the Orkneys, and one track will last for an entire calendar month. 2025 though, radio silence.

ACID SOPHISTO-JAZZ

When music becomes more mechanical, out come the musos. While wine-bar chillout breakbeat music makes a mild appearance in Q2, to coincide with Kruder & Dorfmeister going on tour, what really takes hold is some kind of melding of The Brand New Heavies, Jamiroquai, Erykah Badu, and late period Steely Dan.

All hopes of seeing the line between chin-stroking and irony are completely lost as jazz clubs are suddenly inundated with students from music colleges wanting to show how they can incorporate hip hop into fusion jazz and New Orleans brass band music. Jools Holland will have at least two of the groups on his Later show, and sit in with one. It’ll be impossibly middle class of course, and one group will surprise everyone by winning the Mercury Music Prize and it’ll all carry on nicely with itself, before one of the band is revealed with having a dad who runs the company providing the missiles currently flattening huge swathes of the Middle East and it’ll all get weird.

NEW LATIN POP FORCE

While Spanish-sung pop has had pop fans in a chokehold for ages, 2025 will see Argentina and Brazil taking the crown with their hyperactive pop. There’s already stirrings of fabulously weird stuff coming from there and, while record collectors have been focusing on the new psychedelic music from Sao Paulo and the like, Brazil has learned from other Latin American cousins that they don’t need to water down what they do. Argentina’s music will hopefully lean on the excellent scally-raps of RKT music, and the track above shows you what all these things could end up sounding like.

The Drag Queens are going to love the carnival wigs and makeup, the beats are going to be infectious and pure party, and we’re going to be treated with Friday night music that doesn’t quite fit any previous mould that pop has given us to date. Kali Uchis will team up with some firebrand neighbouring hottie, Megan Thee Stallion will do some summer banger that incorporates Latin RKT drums, and K-Pop will look pale and conservative in comparison and go away to lick its wounds.