The 6th Best Album of 2025
Fresh of the heels of one hook-laden pop album we have....a hook-laden hyperpop album! Gabby Start's Stem is #6.
Gabby Start first came on my radar when a huge idiot sent me a song they did with underscores called Loansharks. That track, and the EP it featured on, Boneyard aka Fearmonger, set me off on the hyperpop/indietronica path. Then when Underscores released Wallsocket in 2023 my favorite track from the album was Locals, which also featured Gabby Start. But I had never actually heard a Gabby Start track. So when I saw Stem get released last year, it being the first album Gabby's released since 2020, I had to check it out. And thankfully it was full of the ultra-catchy tracks just like Locals and Loansharks. And some of them don't even start with the letter L.
This album is also short and sweet, 30 minutes like the Beach Bunny album before it. And it's just as packed with earworm hooks. These two albums are pretty similar, I guess it makes sense they grouped up in the countdown. Straight musicality-wise these are probably too high, but man I can just throw these albums on whenever and have 30 minutes of singing and joy and love every fkn second, and isn't that what music is all about?