The 15th Annual Expert Witness Poll: Voting thread

Plus: You can finally pay me for this! Scroll down for details!

Vote for your favorite music of 2025!

Albums: Split 100 points among your top 10 albums of 2025. No less than 5 points and no more than 30 for each album; whole numbers only. You may include older albums that in your judgment had their greatest impact in 2025.

Singles: Name your top ten singles. If you listened to a song/track outside of the context of an album, it counts as a single. Asterisk rule: You may put an asterisk by one single to give it an extra half-point. If you don’t put an asterisk by any single, the half-point will go to the first single you name unless you state your list is unranked. The asterisk doesn’t have to be assigned to your number one single (you might decide to vote tactically.)

EPs/mini-albums: Name up to five EPs or mini-albums. Assign an average of 2 points to each of these EPs, with each entry getting no less than 1 point and no more than 5; no zeroes. (So if you name one EP it gets 2 points, while if you name 5 EPs you can split 10 points.) It’s left to your judgment as to what counts as an EP/mini-album, but “shorter and fewer tracks than The Beatles’ Second Album” (26:25, 11 songs) is a good rule of thumb. Vote for EPs in the albums poll as well if they have given you comparable pleasure to your favorites there.

Special category: Singers! Who are your current favorite singers? Name up to five (if you list more, names after the first five will be ignored.) Rappers may be eligible if you think they’re “melodic” enough. No points for rankings; I’ll just count things.

Anyone reading this is eligible and encouraged to vote. Ballots from the kinds of people who don’t usually vote in music nerd polls are especially encouraged.

Three ways to vote:

• Post your ballot as a comment on this post. If you want to plug a longer or better annotated list elsewhere, please include a link.

• Post your ballot in the relevant thread in the (private) Expert Witness Facebook group. (To join the group, email me and we’ll work out how to do that. Be warned that if you got a Best New Music from P4K, someone or another has probably made fun of you in there.)

• Email your ballot to bradluen@yahoo.co.nz with “Expert Witnesses Poll 2025” in the subject line.

Deadline: Sunday 18th January at 11:59 pm in some existent time zone.

2014–24 results are here. 2011–13 results are here.

The Semipop Life Monetization Plan!

I’m finally turning on paid subscriptions so I can pay other people to write for me.

Just tell me the cost first

Monthly subscribers: $8/month.

Annual subscribers: $80/year. That’s two months free!

A+ subscribers: $150/year.

What will paid subscribers get?

There’ll be a paid-only column most Wednesdays. Planned regular features include:

• Guest columns. This is why I’m asking for money: to pay people who know more than me about a topic to write so that I don’t have to. The frequency on these will depend on how much revenue we get.

• Semipop Life Classic. I have a bunch of writing that predates Substack; I’ll port the salvageable stuff here.

• Notes on Not Music. As you may know I have interest and to a much lesser extent expertise in a number of things besides semipopular music. Expect brief notes on books, comics, a Consumer Guide to Velázquez, etc.

• Lists. Oh my gosh do I have lists.

• Shop talk. Behind-the-scenes glimpses of the glamorous Combination Music Blogger/Statistics Lecturer lifestyle.

Guest columns will be made public after some timelag, once I figure out how to do that in Substack.

To remind myself this isn’t my actual job, I’ll put a nominal cap of 400ish words on my weekly contributions (someone start a prediction market on how long it’ll take me to break this.) Guest columns will be as long as required.

A+ subscribers get no additional content: just the satisfaction of knowing you’re supporting the Semipop Life project, plus I’ll be more likely to listen to your request to review the Clown Core discography once the check clears.

What will free subscribers get?

The same thing you already get every week. You’ll notice little change aside from me occasionally begging for money: I’ve posted without fail on 297 consecutive Sundays and it’s too late to stop now. The flagship Semipop Life column and regular features of highly varying popularity (The Bullpen, Odds & Ends, Video & Audio) will remain free, as will year-end albums and singles lists. Polls and commenting on free posts will still be open to all. One possible downside is that some large-scale projects might be broken up into smaller paid posts: my long-planned Semipop Life Guide to AI (that’s never going to happen because it goes out of date faster than I can write it) would be better off dripped out on Wednesdays disguised as book reviews.

Where will the money go?

My plan is to make no money out of this and pay out all net proceeds to guest writers. If paid subscriptions go about as well as I expect them to, I’ll be able to afford to give writers non-great but hopefully non-insulting compensation for their work. If the scheme goes better than expected, I might be able to make contributing worth the time of freelancers I don’t know personally. If the scheme goes badly then I guess I’ll be out of pocket; you’ll notice if Popeyes makes my end of 2026 things-I-ate list. Writers will also receive a complimentary annual subscription, so if you’re too broke to pay, you can offer to write something (a call for pitches will go out when I have some idea of how things stand financially.)

Please note I reserve the right to raid Semipop Life funds to cover unplanned expenses, like if for some reason I need to get the hell out of Indiana quickly. Just saying.