146. Looking back at the highlights of 2025

28 December 2025

I’ve retreated to my study for a few hours. With a cup of coffee in my hand, I look out of the window, where people in thick coats are shuffling past. Most passers-by are staring at their phones whilst their dogs pull them along. The weather is cold but clear. The sun streams in through my window and, in the pleasant warmth, I leaf through old notebooks and read my blogs. This is how I’m putting together my review of the past year, as I’ve made a point of doing every year since 2022. These are my highlights of 2025 in the fields of music, films, books and games.

Music

SABLE, fABLE by Bon Iver was the first album this year that I couldn’t get enough of. On the record, Justin Vernon sings about a few dark years (on the side called SABLE) and then rediscovers the light in his life (on fABLE). On Everything is Peaceful Love, nothing stands in his way and he sounds full of joy: “Damn if I’m not climbin’ up that tree right now”. Great album.
I wrote this in October: I’m only listening to Geese these days. That’s still the case. The album Getting Killed is my favourite of the year. I was completely blown away by this band from New York, who’d already made a few records but only really broke through this year. I became an instant fan of singer Cameron Winter. As a solo artist, he releases fairly understated tracks, but with Geese he shows he’s equally at home with inimitable, experimental music. This band is giving the rock genre a jolt and shaking things up. The best song of the year comes from Getting Killed and is called Au Pays du Cocaine.
Matt Berninger (of The National) released a solo album that Get Sunk is called. He wrote the songs as he was recovering from a bout of depression and began to see beauty in the little things in life again. Bonnet of Pins is an instant hit and on Nowhere Special Berninger mumbles delightful one-liners.
On lieve monsters, it’s all about fear and anger. It’s about doubt, about sometimes just not knowing. And that that’s okay. Conceptually, Sef has been a master in recent years. On lieve monsters, there is more room for electronic sounds and he experiments with contrasts between lyrics and music. My favourite remains Voor alles bang — a reworked chorus from Wende, who wrote the song to lyrics by the late poet Joost Zwagerman.
On the journey back from Valencia to Amsterdam, LUX by Rosalía really grabbed me. It is an ambitious album featuring bombastic orchestras, the singer’s incredible vocal flourishes and perfectly balanced electronic music. With the translations to hand, I learnt that Rosalía sings about saints and her own quest for spirituality. And yet she keeps both feet firmly on the ground. Above all, she wanted to make a human album, and you can hear that. The fragile track Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti is perfect for these dark days.

This was the year of Oasis. When the British band split up in 2009, I thought I’d never see Liam and Noel together on stage again. This year, it finally happened, on the hallowed ground of Wembley Stadium in London. Together with my friends (who eventually numbered around 90,000), we sang along for two hours to a rock-solid set of greatest hits. The Gallagher brothers were enjoying themselves, and we even more so. The advantage of such a long break is that everyone was desperate for this reunion tour. It turned into an ecstatic experience. Arm in arm with your stranger of a neighbour, men crying and then belting out Live Forever until you’re hoarse.
The support act for Oasis was The Verve’s singer Richard Ashcroft. The perfect warm-up. His Lucky Man and The Drugs Don’t Work had already made an impression, but the moment Bittersweet Symphony kicked in and the whole stadium rose to its feet as if the national anthem had begun is something I won’t forget in a hurry.
I went to see Bob Dylan two nights in a row in Amsterdam. As it happened, I had a perfect view of the singer behind his piano — the other side of the hall could only see a tuft of hair. But even with a perfect view, you can barely see Dylan. It’s amazing how that works. The first evening was rather chaotic, but during the second concert everything fell into place with a beautiful rendition of Desolation Row and a new arrangement for It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. And then that harmonica – there’s nothing more beautiful.
In February, Jack White blew me away. The rock star dedicated his show at TivoliVredenburg to Gerrit Rietveld and therefore played five tracks from the album De Stijl, which he made 25 years ago with The White Stripes. It became even more special when a replica of a Rietveld chair (from the Centraal Museum) was hoisted onto the stage, so that White could sit on it with his guitar and play a little solo. Unforgettable.
I’ve never heard it so quiet during a concert as at Cameron Winter. And I must say I’m almost lost for words about that performance; it felt so special. Winter is an up-and-coming phenomenon with immense talent. The 23-year-old American (just like the 84-year-old Dylan) manages to get away with barely showing himself and still captivating an entire venue. Solo behind a piano, with his back half-turned to the audience, a voice to die for and superbly played. The sort of concert you simply had to be at.

Far too few people are talking about Train Dreams, a beautifully shot, contemplative film set in the North American forests at the beginning of the twentieth century. A lumberjack faces a major tragedy, after which he struggles with the enormous void in his life. What is the meaning of life? What is he doing it for? What will he leave behind? Whilst watching the film and afterwards, you can happily mull over these kinds of philosophical questions. Brilliant work.
Blues horror film Sinners is worth watching if only for the musical scene halfway through the film. Sinners tells a story set in the 1930s in the Mississippi Delta, and you can feel the sultry atmosphere through the screen. It’s about two brothers (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who open a bar for the black community. Their nephew Sammy has a great talent, which he uses to attract strange guests. Director Ryan Coogler takes his time to unfold his story, but ultimately it becomes a wild ride and is one of the best films of the year.
I sometimes wake up drenched in sweat from the images in the documentary Ocean with David Attenborough. Using gigantic nets, fishing boats (trawlers) scrape across the ocean floor to catch fish. They destroy everything in their path. I found the images scarier than anything you see in horror films. Fortunately, there is also much beauty to be seen in the film, and the elderly Attenborough remains optimistic and hopeful for the recovery of the underwater world.
What more can I say about One Battle After Another? It is yet another ridiculously good film by director Paul Thomas Anderson. It’s about a father and daughter, but just as much about (the overthrow of) power. Everyone in this film has something to fight for. Memorable characters, a wonderfully nerve-wracking soundtrack and chase scenes to die for.
In the summer, Weapons was the horror sensation everyone was talking about. The film is about children in a primary school class who get up at exactly 2.17 am and run into the darkness with their arms outstretched. Only one child from the group stays behind; the rest never return. What happened to them is unravelled from the perspective of various colourful characters. Highly recommended for its mystery, which, thanks to its deeper layers, invites you to watch it again.
The most surprising film on this list is simply on YouTube and is called LISTERS. It’s about two stoner brothers who set off in a van to spend a year birdwatching in South America. They find themselves in a world of fanatical birdwatchers trying to spot as many species as possible. The documentary was made by amateurs, but the footage of the birds they capture is incredible.

I was deeply impressed by *At the End of the War, the voluminous novel by Bert Natter. The book is about a concentration camp during the Second World War. The son of SS-Oberstormführer Karl goes missing whilst the child was fishing with his older brother. As the Allies rattle at the gates, Karl tries to find his son. Over 630 pages, you follow the story through constantly shifting mini-chapters from the perspectives of a total of 31 characters. That sounds overwhelming, but it’s so skilfully woven together that you never lose the thread. Things happen in the novel that will give you a knot in your stomach, but because Natter works with constant cliffhangers, you can hardly put the book down. It is a crushing work; I can’t put it any other way. Recommended read.
I read the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman. A classic of its genre. It is an autobiographical work by Spiegelman about his family’s history in Auschwitz. In one timeline, Spiegelman talks to his father about what happened to his Jewish parents during the Holocaust. In the other timeline, those memories come to life. In the book, the Jewish people are depicted as mice and the Germans as cats. But even in this style, the stories remain harrowing. Spiegelman makes it abundantly clear how a war changes people forever and how its aftermath also burdens later generations with trauma.
James is a retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written by Percival Everett. In this novel, you experience the story from the perspective of the enslaved James, who travels with Huck when he runs away from home. Everett gives a brilliant twist to the classic and seizes the opportunity to make James a far more human figure. The novel retains its adventurous tone, yet is at the same time satirical and bitter in nature.
Thomas Heerma van Voss sought out elderly Dutch writers who had drawn a self-portrait for the literary magazine De Revisor in 1977. He wanted to ask them how the authors saw themselves back then and how they are doing now. This has resulted in the collection De prullenbak heeft veel plezier aan mij touching, entertaining and sometimes poignant portraits. Some writers have fallen into obscurity and are no longer published, yet they continue to write.
Slowly but surely, I am making my way through the oeuvre of the writer A.L. Snijders. This year I read his substantial collection Tat Tvam Asi, comprising very short stories. The pieces are often no longer than a page and a half, but the texts are richly layered. Here is a lesson in putting things into perspective in a single paragraph: “When I got home, there was a note about a dead cat that had died peacefully after a long life. Its owner had come to terms with it, but was sometimes overcome by brief moments of intense grief. He asked if I could find some words of comfort. I wrote: ‘The cat is dead, you are grieving, the birds are relieved.’”
Photographer and blogger Craig Mod wrote Things Become Other Things, a remarkable book in which he collects his memoirs as separate vignettes. Mod takes a long walk through Japan (where he lives) whilst reflecting on his life. His writing is not necessarily addressed to the reader, but to his late childhood friend Bryan. This results in emotional passages, which Mod skilfully alternates with sharp observations of encounters during his walk and almost corny fart jokes. With beautiful black-and-white photographs.

This year I played Death Stranding (2019) and immediately followed it up with the sequel released this year: Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. In the first instalment, creator Hideo Kojima was primarily focused on world-building, so in the second he had more scope to concentrate on the story. Once again, you play as Sam Bridges, who walks and drives through desolate landscapes to deliver parcels. Meanwhile, he connects isolated people to a network, allowing them to reconnect with one another. The internet, but not ruined, so to speak. Death Stranding 2 smooths out many of the rough edges from the first instalment and tells an incredible and bizarre story that I thoroughly enjoyed.
For a while, I was captivated by Blue Prince. You play someone who inherits a mysterious estate, and with every passing day, the layout of the mansion you enter changes. Every time you open a door, you choose which room appears. If you do this cleverly, you’ll slowly but surely uncover the secret hidden within the walls.
Ghost of Yotei is the perfect follow-up to Ghost of Tsushima from 2020. There’s a new story, about a woman seeking revenge after her family is murdered. But at its core, it’s another game where you tick off tasks across a vast Japanese landscape. Normally I’m not too keen on that, but with this series I just can’t get enough of it. The story is good, the gameplay is strong, and I appreciate that a blockbuster from Sony like this dares to force the player to pause and reflect.

Acknowledgements

Slowly but surely, the number of blog posts is approaching 150. An incredible number. For almost three years now, I’ve been writing every week about what’s on my mind. That’s quite a high pace, and I spend a few hours on it at the weekends. So it’s great to hear from you all regularly. Comments are always welcome, either below the blogs or by email. Tips too.

I’ll keep writing in the coming year. I am thinking about making a few changes in the new year. You’ll see for yourselves. Subscribe to my newsletter if you haven’t already; you’ll be doing me a favour.

Wishing you a wonderful New Year and a happy 2026.

You’ve just read blog post №146, written during the week of 22–28 December 2025. Subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll receive it free of charge in your inbox every Sunday.