FROM THE STUDIO | The 2025 Tastemakers Survey Results
Every year around this time, the design team at GOAT debates, refines, votes on, and issues a ranked list of our favorite albums and songs of the past 12 months. While it may seem like an odd fit for an architecture and interior design firm to release yet another end of year ‘Best of’ list into an already overcrowded cultural milieu, there is a method to our madness. You see, this exercise is not necessarily for a wider audience, though we do happily share with you the results.
At GOAT, we feel that participating in the wider culture, consuming and analyzing art, and digging deeply into what we like and why we like it are key responsibilities that make us better, more responsive designers. We are constantly sharing, discussing, and refining our individual tastes, architectural and otherwise, with the rest of the team, seeking to understand one another better, as well as the people that choose to work with us. It is all about practice; we are honing our abilities every day to explain our perspectives on inherently subjective choices so that we may better express what we like, why we think our clients should also like it, and how we can learn more from one another.
Specifically, music is a constant source of inspiration and conversation in our studio. Every workday has a soundtrack, sometimes curated by one member of the team, sometimes it is collaborative, and occasionally it is entirely random. However, it is rare that the studio is quiet. This constant exposure to popular culture’s multitudes opens us up to alternatives that we may not come across otherwise. This is just one of the many benefits of having a diverse team from a wide variety of backgrounds with widely varied tastes.
Our methodology for creating our list is, frankly, ridiculous. I can say this honestly because I am the one that created it and imposes its rules with an iron fist. I have always loved lists for whatever reason and this is my annual opportunity to inflict this love on everyone else. Songs and albums released after December 1st of the of the previous year are all eligible (this is why Heavy Metal tops my last this year despite being a late 2024 release); EPs, reissues, and live albums are not considered (unless somebody makes a really good case); each individual’s list is shared with the full team in early December and we spend most of the month listening to each other’s picks in the studio, debating the convoluted rules to for repeats and tie-breakers, and moving & removing items much to one another’s consternation; finally, we rank choice vote our way through the full list of both songs and albums, create a compiled ranking, and come up with a fun visual way to share it with the everyone. The results are almost always a surprise: For example, I have been a huge fan of Clipse since the Lord Willin’ days but, on first listen, their reunion album this year fell a bit flat for me. However, the rest of the team approached it without that baggage and came away loving it, voting it their overall favorite of the year. This in turn, made me re-visit it and learn to love it from their perspective.
So, we understand that you may think this is a weird thing for us to do. We know that you have probably already sifted through several dozen of these lists and may not see much value in another one, especially from folks that are decidedly unqualified to be your music critics of choice. Yet, we share this anyway because we love it and we already spent the year making it. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find a new artist to love like Ho99o9 (pronounced “horror” for the uninitiated) or Art d’Ecco. Afterall, the ‘T’ in ‘GOAT’ does stand for ‘Taste’.
