What to Do on New Year’s Eve
Also: Vinson Cunningham on his favorite songs of the year.
Few harbingers are more promising than the Swedish singer and producer Robyn. A sonic palate cleanser, she always seems to appear when we need her most. Her 1995 début, “Robyn Is Here,” signalled an alt-pop future. In 2005, her self-titled album bristled with a freedom from major-label concerns. 2010 brought the “Body Talk” era and its euphoric statement of purpose; she was a star dancing on her own. Nearly a decade passed before she reëmerged with her post-breakup opus “Honey,” in 2018. The singer, who officially returned from a seven-year hiatus last month with a new single, “Dopamine,” now grants a chance to revel in her latest comeback at Brooklyn Paramount, for a New Year’s Eve show dubbed “Robyn & Friends.”
Robyn plays Brooklyn Paramount on New Year’s Eve.Photograph by Nicole Busch
As the clock strikes midnight on 2025, d.j.s across the city will help patrons usher in the coming year. Two shows stand out in a sea of turntablists and selectors. The Nowadays hosts Aurora Halal and Avalon Emerson—the former a creator of Brooklyn’s long-running party series “Mutual Dreaming,” and the latter a mixmaster and producer whose 2023 album, “& the Charm,” expanded her electronic music into a hazy, whimsical pop expanse—go on at midnight and play until six. There’s also the Palestinian techno artist Sama’ Abdulhadi, a trailblazer for her scene, who broke through in Beirut and has since turned mixing into a kind of activism. In a Bushwick warehouse at 99 Scott Ave., Abdulhadi continues an essential outreach program.
There are alternatives to ringing in the New Year on the dance floor, for those seeking them. Since 2024, the Bronx rapper and producer Cash Cobain has defined the sound of sample drill, a New York offshoot of the Chicago-born hip-hop subgenre. His début album, “Play Cash Cobain,” was released in August last year, and his profile has been boosted significantly this year by collaborations with Drake, Justin Bieber, and Cardi B—and sample drill has gone national. Cobain embraces his newfound prominence at Panda Harlem. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the iconic jam band Phish, an improvisational hydra that has made a four-decade career out of free forms like psychedelic rock and jazz fusion. The band, formed in 1983, released their sixteenth LP last year, but the group places greater emphasis on the live experience, which samples that discography as if it is a singular, ever-evolving organism, and has drawn a cult following. Those looking to join the jam can find the band squatting in Madison Square Garden from Dec. 28 until the ball drops.—Sheldon Pearce
What to Listen to
Vinson Cunningham on some of his favorite songs of the year.
Bad Bunny, “BAILE INoLVIDABLE”
Bad Bunny’s unforgettable “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” hooked me from its first seconds—those dreamy, moody, synthy minor chords and Bunny’s reflective crooning cast a spell. Soon the song flips into a more traditional salsa, with perhaps my favorite lyric of the year: “Tú me enseñaste a querer; me enseñaste a bailar”—You taught me to want; you taught me to dance.
Haim, “All over me”
I am an unrepentant fan of Haim—those sisters just know what sounds good. I love the song “All over me,” off the wistful album “I quit.” It’s jangly, drum-heavy, full of yearning and earnest temerity—a sad-sounding song about running headlong into falsely happy carnal entanglement.
Dijon, “my man”
I first heard “my man,” by the up-and-coming R. & B. experimentalist Dijon, on his revelatory album “Baby,” in August, while spending a week in a small hotel in upstate New York. The song, which is haunting, downbeat, and made up of all kinds of noise—shattering synths and vérité birdsong—fit the environment so well that I still can’t hear it without seeing the small waterfall rushing outside my window.
Summer Walker, “Go Girl”
You know what I like? Hearing people talk a whole bunch of confident shit over good beats. If you like this, too, you will love the song “Go Girl,” by Summer Walker, featuring Latto and Doja Cat. There’s a line about slipping into a salt bath, on account of being very rich!
Summer Walker.Photograph by Scott Legato / Getty
P.S. Good stuff on the internet: