CAPC’s Favorite Music and Podcasts of 2025 – Christ and Pop Culture

Over the last few months, the CAPC team has compiled a list of our favorite pop culture artifacts from the previous year. Unlike most year-end lists, we don’t claim that these are the “best.” Rather, these are the things that brought us the most joy and satisfaction throughout the last 12 months.

For 2025, our favorite music and podcasts included an exploration of the Satanic Panic, a hang out with friends, atmospheric post-punk, the return of folk heroes, and of course, Tay Tay.

My Home Is Not In This World by Natalie Bergman

Back in 2021, Natalie Bergman released Mercy, a powerful and haunting album about grief and faith inspired by her father’s death at the hands of a drunk driver. As I wrote in my review, “the album’s emotional heft comes from Bergman’s attempts to balance her belief in, and need for, a loving God with the horror and sorrow of her father’s death, which would seem to challenge the very notion of a loving God.”

Jump ahead to 2025, and Bergman is now in a very different place in life, married and with a child of her own. As such, My Home Is Not In This World is less concerned with grief as Bergman celebrates her newfound life and professes her love for her family. On “Song for Arthur,” Bergman sings to her young son, “For three long years I couldn’t leave my own bed/‘Til you gave me a reason,” while “Looking for You” praises her husband: “How did I go on without you?/My tears had been dry for so long/Now I thank God that I found you.”

Even so, the album’s strongest moments still evince a restlessness and yearning not all that dissimilar to Mercy‘s tone. But rather than sorrow, these sentiments flow from realizing the emptiness of worldly desires and pursuits. “You Can Have Me” is a heartbreaking plea to settle down and resist fame’s allure while the title track finds Bergman admitting “All my life I never felt like I belong” while still finding comfort in life’s humble pleasures (“I want to go outside/Tell the trees that I love them/Open my eyes/See the children in the garden”).

—Jason Morehead

Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Mike Cosper

If you weren’t a church kid during the ’80s and ’90s, then I’m not sure I can fully explain to you what it was like to believe—with every fiber of your being—that there was a network of Satanists who were kidnapping, torturing, and sacrificing kids all over the nation. It’s obviously ridiculous now, but at the time, it was completely plausible thanks to grifters like Mike Warnke and Beatrice Sparks and worries over the effects of heavy metal and Dungeons & Dragons. No matter how ridiculous it sounds, though, the Satanic Panic led to the ruin of numerous lives, from those who were falsely accused of committing horrific acts to those who were led to believe that they were victims of those acts.

It’s a convoluted story, to be sure, its roots lying in conservative concerns over the ’60s counterculture, with its sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, and alternate spiritualities. But Mike Cosper, who previously hosted the acclaimed Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, does yeoman’s work unpacking it all. Sometimes it still proves a bit too convoluted, with Cosper going down one too many rabbit trails. Overall, though, Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a fascinating account of a truly bizarre era in the history of the American Church, one whose effects we’re still experiencing thanks to events like the January 6 insurrection and the popularity of conspiracy theories like QAnon.

—Jason Morehead

Good Hang with Amy Poehler

You, like me, may have heard the phrase “male loneliness epidemic.” There is a friendship crisis in America, particularly among men. I would, however, go so far as to assert that there is a friendship crisis in America that isn’t unique to men or women; it has become increasingly hard to make and keep friends or build real-life community as adults in the modern world. This is why the (now Golden Globe-winning) podcast Good Hang with Amy Poehler made such an impression on me from its very first episodes. 

As an elder millennial and longtime fan of the sitcom Parks and Recreation (for which Amy Poehler is probably best known), I was the target audience for Good Hang, which launched in March of 2025. I tuned in for the anecdotes and laughs but I was not prepared for how moved I would be by the deep connections and loving friendships. On each Good Hang episode, Poehler (who seems to know and have an abiding affection and enthusiasm for everyone) interviews someone conversationally in a way that makes you feel like you’re hanging out with them. Before the interview, she calls a friend of the guest and invites them to “speak good behind [the guest’s] back,” and then she surprises the guest with the nice things that were said about them. While all of these things are, of course, great, what impresses me the most about the show is what is revealed about friendship through the course of these conversations. Multiple men, in particular, have unabashedly lauded their male and female friends, laughing and even crying when relating stories of their interactions, and making it clear that their friends are like family.

We can see so much talk about “toxic” relationships, people, and masculinity on social media, but on Good Hang, I’ve listened to many of Poehler’s guests talk about friendships in which I see the goodness of God. It’s a reminder that good friendships are vital, and we should be loose with our praise of others and unreserved in expressing our love for the people in our lives. And it’s given me hope that maybe in doing these things, loneliness can be something we work at curing together.

—K. B. Hoyle

I Felt Called by Fine China

On their earliest albums, like 2000’s When the World Sings and 2002’s You Make Me Hate Music, Arizona’s Fine China did absolutely nothing to hide their love for ’80s icons like New Order and The Smiths. Not that I’m complaining, mind you; I love a good Johnny Marr-esque riff as much as the next music nerd. But in recent years, bandleader Rob Withem began expanding and deepening Fine China’s sound, incorporating atmospherics and ambience à la late-period Talk Talk and Windham Hill.

After exploring and perfecting this new sound on a couple of EPs, Withem and his collaborators dropped I Felt Called. Arguably Fine China’s most ambitious recording to date, I Felt Called still contains plenty of solid pop moments replete with bouncy melodies and jangly guitars (e.g., “Fraught with Danger,” “Say Please”). But thankfully, Withem doesn’t feel constrained to three-minute pop formulas, and on songs like “No Long Face” and “Desert of My Dreams,” he lets his songs linger past the seven-minute mark, luxuriating in shimmering guitar tones and delicate synths.

“Desert of My Dreams” is particularly affecting as a result. Set against a backdrop of sweeping keys, Withem uses nostalgia (“At the ocean, on the shore/I sleep like a child/And all I know is memories of yore”) to explore existential yearnings for things that this world can’t provide. When he cries out “Do you run long?/I have run long” on the song’s chorus, I feel it in my bones.

—Jason Morehead

Rushmere by Mumford & Sons

Mumford & Sons’ latest album feels like lying on a porch on a hot summer’s night and looking up at the sky while thinking about what it means to be here: the love, the pain, the regret, the desire, and the change. It puts you in the mood to examine all of the different pieces of lived experience with an even-keeled acceptance. However, the acceptance of the human condition that pervades Rushmere is not synonymous with resignation. Every one of these songs navigates the tightrope that each of us walks every day: a recognition of the reality of our situation and a desire to change it.

There’s something of U2’s approach to a few of the numbers on Rushmere, particularly “Truth” and “Anchor.” Much like the Irish rock band, the English folk-rock group have made music in their new album which embraces the balancing act of seeing in ourselves the failings that we are naturally party to as broken human beings while recognizing a deep yearning to keep working, keep trying, and keep failing; as the lyrics in “Surrender” remind us, “[T]here’s some death on the vine.” That yearning runs consistently throughout the album alongside the much-deserved return of the Mumford banjo. What was previously an instrument of whimsy and playfulness on their early albums has made a reappearance on Rushmere with an unmistakable strength that comes from experience.

Rushmere takes us on the journey that every one of us knows inside and out, drawing a finger along the highs and lows, the pitfalls and triumphs, of being a flawed human striving for Christ. We feel a sense of overwhelm with “Blood on the Page” and a simmering rage with “Where it Belongs.” We feel dismay at injustice with “Truth,” at the “liars in the honest places.” And in “Carry On,” we feel frustration at the gap between the love Jesus had for people and what we actually show each other. But we also feel determination in the title song with its request to be used for something worthy (“Light me up, I’m wasted in the dark”). And in “Monochrome,” we simply feel hope: “There is life in the ground beneath your feet. Restoration.” Mumford & Sons’ new album truly is a snapshot of human experience, recognizable not just for people living in 2025 but for all who have come before and who will come after. It is “a whole life in a glimpse.”

—Sophie Pell

The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor Swift

Did we really need another Taylor Swift album? In 2025, Swifties resoundingly said “Yes.”

The Life of a Showgirl, released after the conclusion of the Eras Tour, came on the heels of The Tortured Poets Department—which, quite frankly, felt a little tortured. (Now don’t get me wrong: I still love listening to “Down Bad” while downing some Ben & Jerry’s with my sorrows, but that’s an album for certain occasions of life.) Swift’s latest album, though, felt like turning a fresh page. If Tortured Poets was an exercise in endurance, Showgirl was an orange-and-teal infused, unapologetic return to joy.

America noticed, and was, yes, ready for it. The Life of a Showgirl became the fastest-selling album in history, and I don’t think that’s just because of marketing (as some naysayers might claim). I think it’s because the album tells a story some of us have been starving for: a woman choosing happiness and singing about it unapologetically. In this era of moody seriousness—of prestige sadness—Swift gave us something oddly radical: buoyancy. So many expected an album about her tour to be a complaint, and instead, it became a pop anthem with lyrics that make you want to dance around the house, the car line, and yes, even the airport terminals. It makes listeners feel like you want to be a showgirl on tour—not down bad on your couch for yet another day.

My 10-year-old daughter and I saw The Official Release Party of a Showgirl documentary in theaters together, and we came home with “Opalite” stuck in our heads. (And with the new knowledge that opalite is not only Travis Kelce’s birthstone, but also a synthesized stone that symbolizes creating your own happiness in the midst of sorrow.) In the middle of a troubled year, coming home and singing about happiness on my daughter’s karaoke machine after school felt, one could say, like a small kind of grace.

If the fate of Ophelia is drowning in grief, then Swift refuses the tragic ending. She turns it around instead, glittering, singing, and insisting that joy is not naïve but necessary. And honestly: who doesn’t want to dream about being Elizabeth Taylor every once in a while, too?

This, I think, is why The Life of a Showgirl mattered as a cultural phenomenon in 2025. It was a reminder—almost a permission slip—that joy is not the opposite of seriousness. No: in the Christian imagination, joy is what we practice in the middle of sorrow because we believe sorrow doesn’t get the final word. I’m enjoying this new era for as long as I can because knowing Swift, she’s already announced the next one by the time you finish reading this sentence.

—LuElla D’Amico

Anything at All by Denison Witmer

I’ve been a fan of Denison Witmer’s heartfelt brand of indie-folk for nearly 30 years now, ever since I first heard 2000’s Safe Away, which was produced buy The Innocence Mission’s Don Peris. For 2025’s Anything at All, Witmer teamed up with long-time friend Sufjan Stevens, and the pairing proves absolutely magical.

Stevens’ trademark embellishments and orchestrations enhance and deepen Witmer’s gentle songs without ever becoming overbearing or squelching what makes them so special in the first place: Witmer’s hushed voice, contemplative lyrics, and delicately picked acoustic guitar. The resulting album is precisely what we need during these fraught and overwhelming times: a call to let go, step back, and find refuge in the natural, God-given rhythms of nature, vocation, and family.

On “Older and Free,” Witmer rejoices in the chance to get away from it all and spend a few days alone in the wilderness (“Older and free/To do as I please/Beholden to no one else/For the first time in weeks”) while “A House With” celebrates the mundane pleasures of birds and plants. (My wife is both an avid birder and lover of plants. As such, this song took on some especial meaning for me in 2025.)

“Clockmaker” finds Witmer—who owns his own carpentry business—appreciating the work of one’s hands while also acknowledging the bittersweet passage of time. Finally, “Slow Motion Snow” is an eight-minute rumination on what it means to live a good life as both a father and friend. Witmer’s lyrics—”Now I like awake and thoughts fill my mind/Have I made good use of my friendships and time?/I take day by day, all you can do is try”—take on an added poignancy thanks to Stevens’ lush production and arrangements.

—Jason Morehead