If The Michigan Daily Arts desk had its own Spotify Wrapped for 2025, it would probably be pretty eclectic. Film Beat “Conclave”-d and traveled to Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. Our Digital Culture Beat preserved some internet history and unearthed some as well. We opened up about sex and our undying love for the art of clowning. Our Music Beat dove into Ethel Cain, and Ethel Cain a second time. The Books Beat discussed their favorite opening lines at the start of the year, and just last month shared their — you guessed it — favorite final lines. The TV Beat traveled to Austin, Texas for the SXSW Festival and challenged “Ted Lasso.” And our Style Beat stared at stairs for a bit before reflecting on the Met Gala with SHEI Magazine.
You can be sure that we had a Metropolitan, vintage girl summer (and we were so obsessed that we blasted that shit on repeat.) In the winter, we returned to our Magic Tree House-filled childhoods, star-gazed and bed-rotted, ran a marathon and lived to tell the tale. We embarrassed ourselves silly in front of strangers, experimented and decided the soft launch ain’t that bad. We predicted the winner of the 2025 Booker Prize and reviewed some pretty cool video games.
As we let go of 2025 and allow ourselves to dream onward, Daily Arts writers across all beats have taken this moment to award the year’s achievements (being crowned the TV Beat’s “Best Ragebait” is surely some sort of accomplishment) and remind us that, despite the chaos of it all, there’s still some pretty damn good art being made.
A New Year’s cheers to that!
Managing Arts Editors Cora Rolfes and Campbell Johns can be reached at corolfes@umich.edu and caajohns@umich.edu, respectively.
