Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd, and 2025 is coming to a close, which means we want to do what we typically do on this channel, and that's go over what Austen and I felt were some of our best videos on YouTube for the past year.

I think I would be remiss if I did not mention this double feature off the top and say that one of my most massive highlights of the year was doing my video where I announced that I won that lawsuit against Ronnie Radke, and then also had to do a follow-up response to this other video that he did, not just because of how hilarious the drama that started the whole thing is, but also just the story of the suit, which I was so excited to talk about once I eventually won.

You guys don't understand. I was sitting on that information of Ronald suing the wrong Anthony Fantano for months, and months, and months, and months, and I was just dying to tell you. Not telling you guys the moment that that happened was one of the most difficult things of my life.

Yes, again, interesting, entertaining video. But what's more important is the precedent that this lawsuit sets in future cases where overly litigious losers try to shut down journalists and commentators for just doing their job and platforming vital and important public information. I love the videos that we made around the suit.

The next pick is one that Austen did, which was one of our jokier videos of the year, which is one where I came to the support of none other than Will Smith. Austen says, "This video just makes me laugh every time I go back to it, especially the bit with Anthony constantly having to be reminded what Pitchfork is. I have it on good authority that he's still processing the album, too."

Yeah, even though the Will Smith album did land at the top of my worst albums of the year list, it's really an onion of an album, and I'm just always going back and learning new things and peeling back more layers. Give it two or three years. It's definitely a record I could see myself putting in a future video where I've changed my heart, I've changed my mind on an album. The only reason I don't like it right now is that I just don't get it.

All right, the next video that I wanted to shout out was one that I did earlier in the year where I talked about Kendrick not being your savior and all the discourse surrounding him in light of these Playboi Carti collaborations on the music album, which a lot of people, including me, found questionable, given the presentation of morality and sometimes godliness that Kendrick gives himself in his music and other public appearances.

"They judge you, they judged Christ. Godspeed for women's rights. They judge you, they judged Christ. Godspeed for women's rights."

But what does any of that mean in the face of these multiple collaborations where you are making music with a guy who is known to be physically abusive toward women? Multiple times over. The evidence of Carti engaging in this behavior is staggering. And of course, in addition to this, Kendrick's crossing over with Carti, it feels like he's rubbing our faces in it a little bit with lyrics, calling him his evil twin.

Now, part of the reason that I'm happy I did this video is, to be honest and put it bluntly, I feel like there were a lot of commentators in the music space who were too diluted and too pussy to acknowledge this. And rather than acknowledging that Kendrick is not our savior because he is a flawed human being and can make bad decisions sometimes like any person does. They were instead using that line to shield him from any criticism, basically arguing that because he's imperfect, we shouldn't be expecting perfection from him at all, thereby not critiquing him when he does something stupid.

Someone not being your savior doesn't mean that you aren't allowed to critique them or you can't expect them to do better. It just means you don't expect them to be perfect, and also you don't look to them like they're a Messiah or something, which, believe me, expecting someone to not make music with a known abuser of women, it's not a very high bar to clear.

It's not like Kendrick's career would have been over had he not made multiple midsongs with Carti. This is an obvious moral inconsistency from a man who tends to put his morals very boldly in his music. And we, as fans, who care about that messaging, are within our rights to point that out.

Next in our list of videos here is the Gene Simmons video that we did, which Austen is a big fan of. She says, "This would be my other shitpost pick, except it's not even a shitpost. Anthony was actually really excited to meet Geme."

Okay, Austen says "Geme" there because a running gag in the video is that I kept calling Gene Simmons, "Geme Sinnons," and if you don't remember, because not everybody saw this video, the joke here is that I was I'm asking for $12,000 from all of you to be crowdfunded so I could afford to pay Gene Simmons, very legendary, very famously rich bassist from the band KISS.

Because he had this weird thing going where he was choosing to charge one hardcore fan this amount of money to be a roadie for him. Yes, you are paying to work for Gene Simmons. I mean, also hang out with him, too, but really work for the guy. Gene didn't even go through with a lot of these shows. But next year, we can always try again.

Next video I want to shout out that we did this year that I personally was very happy with and proud of, and I feel like I wish I saw more people talk about was what was going on in this F**k Ticketmaster" video because the story here really truly is insane.

Not that we don't all collectively know as music fans how horrible Ticketmaster is, and the company's practices have basically ushered in this new era of digital scalping, which have led to skyrocketing ticket prices all across the music industry. I mean, if you're buying concert tickets with any regularity, you know this, you've seen this, you've experienced this.

But this video went over a new FTC lawsuit against Ticketmaster that came along with a thorough investigation loaded with details about how exactly all of this scalping is happening on their platform, and also the fact that Ticketmaster is completely aware of it, and they're just basically allowing it to happen because every single all time, these tickets get sold and resold, they make more profit. And I just feel like this is essential knowledge that all music fans need to be armed with, and it's an ongoing story we should all be paying attention to into the next year.

The next video that Austen wanted to shout out was our Timbaland AI video, with Austen saying, "A good chunk of our videos this year address the blight of AI-generated music, but nowhere is the anti-artist ethos behind AI-generated music laid as bare as in this video we made about Timbaland signing a Suno singer-songwriter called Tata."

At one point, we show a clip Timbaland reposted where music executive Ray Daniels extols that AI can't talk back. "Get you something that don't talk back. What is better than the AI artist that don't talk back?" But yeah, the video and the way Timbaland acts, the stuff that Ray Daniels says is so freaking dystopian.

If you really, truly want to know the intentions behind these execs and big-name producers who embrace this AI stuff, look no further than this video and never take their surface-level claims that, "Oh, this is just helping creativity and keeping things interesting. It's technology we have to embrace. It's the future." No, you guys are just literally using it to rip off and control artists.

Also want to shout out a very good follow-up conversation we did on this topic with none other than Curtis King, as he was doing some digging, too, and found footage that essentially proved Timbaland's Suno beats are literally ripping off other producers' work, rhythm for rhythm. You heard that? Pay attention to that.

Next video I want to shout out was the one that we did about Drake losing his defamation lawsuit against a UMG over Kendrick's "Not Like Us." Because as dark and as bad as things were over the past year, this story was actually one of the bright spots of 2025.

For this man to have his completely bogus and stupid ass lawsuit tossed out like the garbage that it is because it had no basis in reality. And all he was doing with these discovery asks and updates to the lawsuit was harassing his haters, harassing Kendrick fans and content creators, and even Kendrick's family itself by putting his dang kids in the lawsuit.

Because why would you ask for proof from a record label about whether or not an artist's kids are or his or hers? You have to be the biggest loser on the planet to do that shit. And I mean, Drake literally is a loser because he lost this lawsuit.

The next video that Austen wanted to shout out was our Thom Yorke video, where finally this man decides He had decided to speak up on the issue of Israel-Palestine, which I mean, at this point, it took him so long, his is comments were really not necessary. And I think that was pretty much proven by how on the fence and both sidesy the whole statement was.

Austen says, "My priority with this one was to convey as much information on the genocide in Palestine as possible to as many people as possible. It didn't really matter to me who was expressing the self-important or both-sidesy sentiment of Thom's post. Though it was apparent to me that we might have put too much stock in the band potentially using their platform for good in a video we posted back in 2017, and especially in light of some flippant comments Thom and Johnny have made recently. I can't say I stand by every word of this video. None of it is drama, in my opinion."

Austen's also donated money to UNRWA in the aftermath of this video, and we'll put a link here for others to do the same if they choose.

The last thing I wanted to shout out this year. Even though 2025 for this channel was not super interview-heavy, I would say, we still had some great and essential conversations that I feel like you guys should check out if you haven't seen them already.

And these are conversations with none other than Liz Pelly, who just put out a great book about Spotify and the streaming industry this year titled Mood Machines. We had a great convo with her about everything in that book and what's going on in the music industry today with streaming.

We also talked with artists like Jamie Stewart about Xiu Xiu's decision to remove their music from Spotify, which was an interesting and admirable campaign of activism a lot of artists took on this year.

We had a great conversation with none other than the Swiftologist, which I think a lot of people going into that convo thought we were going to get along a lot less than we actually did. But I mean, in reality, I don't have any hatred toward Taylor Swift or a lot of her fans in my heart. It's really just the most psychotic ones who are completely unhinged and are completely unable to criticize her in any way whatsoever.

But no, I actually love my conversation with the Swiftologist, and I would be totally down to do more in the future. It seems like a lot of people got a lot of entertainment out of that video, and we had a good conversational chemistry going.

Talking with the author of this new book about MF DOOM was actually really awesome, too. The conversation there was super thorough, and hopefully, that is a read that a lot of you are able to get into in the future if you haven't checked out the book already.

Also love being able to do an in-person sit-down with Ninajirachi. That was fantastic, obviously, since her new record is one of the biggest electronic breakouts of the year. Hopefully, I can make more of these in-person interviews happen in the future.

Okay, as you can tell from the shirt change, I forgot to record this clip, so I'm coming back now to also shout out on behalf of Austen, the cool Tim Pool video that we did where he was freaking out over Laura Jane Grace because obviously, she has some very strong political opinions. And also just happens to be trans, which is reason enough for Tim to attack her, despite, as he claims at one point, being a fan.

"I am an OG fan. OG, of course, for those of you who don't know, means original gangster."

We also did another video recently on the channel, of reacting to more bad music alt culture talking points on this Timcast Bullshit channel, featuring a few dorks who seem to believe that goth and punk and underground music culture wasn't political back in the day, and now it's just gone woke, and the wokeness in the alt music scene is destroying everything.

Thank you very much for watching. Those are Austen and I's top picks for the videos that we did in 2025. You guys are the best.

Anthony Fantano, content, 2025, forever.