I’ve always thought that posting my yearly music report on a public platform is a deeply embarrassing thing to do, because everyone’s taste in music is so niche and siloed — the kind of thing nobody really cares about, since the odds of finding any resonance are just too low.
I can’t make heads or tails of 90% of the artists and albums my friends flaunt on WeChat Moments, basically all sitting at the “never even heard of them” level, so I just click in, chuckle, and scroll on. But this is my own personal blog after all, so let me grudgingly serve up a little self-expression.
And to satisfy my appetite for subjective takes, personal bias, and offensively sharp opinions, I hereby unveil a private rating system — BrightFork, which has 0 to do with Pitchfork.
BrightFork won’t just have reviews — it’ll have an award ceremony too. What follows is the 2025 BrightFork Awards:
🎵 Annual Song: Close to the Edge 🎵
No contest: my favorite song of the year is that fun fact pinned in the markdown on my GitHub profile — Close to the Edge by Yes.
The arrangement is just so grand and airtight. I’d also call it the single greatest track I’ve ever heard in all of rock. Of course it’s the title track of the album, and the other two songs are decent, but there’s a real gap between them and this one. What I love most is the bridge from p.3 into p.4 — beneath all that meticulous arranging you can genuinely feel some kind of tidal surge of life, even a restlessness, a vitality. It’s that deep emotional resonance that’s almost impossible to carry through sound alone, and honestly I can’t describe it any further.
💿 Annual Album: Hit Me Hard and Soft 💿
My most-played album of 2025 is a bit of an atavistic pick: Hit Me Hard and Soft by Billie Eilish, which shipped back in ‘24.
It’s already a pretty hot album, so it hardly needs an introduction. Truth is I’ve been listening since last year, but it only claimed the crown this year. Maybe going to Haikou to see Kanye last year is why it had its peach plucked by a hotter album — still not over that.
The record has no shortage of bangers, and even the toilet-tier tracks are easy on the ears. But the most important reason it won is that it’s genuinely perfect work BGM — whenever I’m free I just loop the album at low volume and hammer out code. Under a play-count judging standard, it’s very hard to lose.
🌟 Honorable Nominee: Illinoise 🌟
As for the ones that missed the rk1 title but still earned an honorable nomination, the first that came to mind is Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens — a fairly old album, born just a few days after me.
A very alive, very fun record. These past couple of days I’ve also been working through another of Sufjan’s albums with sky-high reviews, though I don’t seem to quite get it.
Stay tuned for BrightFork！ Maybe I should systematically rate everything I’ve ever listened to, or extend this rating system to other domains?
View BrightFork collection →