Elton John reveals his favourite tracks of 2025 feat. EsDeeKid, Lola Young, Olivia Dean, Chappell Roan

Elton John’s Rocket Hour returns this Saturday for its penultimate show of 2025, as Elton celebrates the voices that shaped his year in music, in addition to a special conversation with Turnstile frontman Brendan Yates following the breakout success of the band’s fourth studio album ‘Never Enough’.

Across the episode, Elton celebrates the emerging sounds and his favourite hits from across the world this year, including Merseyside rapper of the moment EsDeeKid and soul talents Elmiene and Olivia Dean, as well as Little Simz, Lola Young, Chappell Roan and Turnstile, to name a few.

Elton explains: “For me…the greatest reward I can think of in music is seeing a young artist persevere and then blossom into the big star that they become and just go with it. It’s fantastic. It keeps me alive and it inspires me. I’m 78 years old and I’m still a working musician…I’m still making records and I’m still involved in music. Seeing people like Olivia Dean and Channel Tres and Blood Orange and seeing how they’re doing and how far they’ve come and how brilliant and how their music has made me so happy. That’s fantastic.

And the more you find new music, the more inspirational it gets. It’s a constant delight and a constant surprise to hear what you’re not expecting to hear.””

Fresh off celebrating Rocket Hour’s 10th anniversary in November at Apple Music’s new studios in Los Angeles with a milestone episode featuring Olivia Dean, Blood Orange (Dev Hynes), Channel Tres and Apple Music’s own Zane Lowe, Elton welcomes Baltimore talent Brendan Yates to round off a memorable year of guests. In the interview they discuss a landmark year for his band Turnstile, the success of their new album ‘Never Enough’, performing to 10,000 people at London’s Alexandra Palace and why live performance is essential to the band’s identity.

Please see the full list of Elton’s favourite tracks of 2025 here –

Sombr – 12 to 12
Royel Otis – Say Something
Nectar Woode – Ama
Little Simz – Lion (feat. Obongjayar)
Olivia Dean – Man I Need
Turnstile – SEEIN’ STARS
Blood Orange – The Field (feat. Durutti Column, Tariq Al-Sabir, Caroline Polachek & Daniel Caesar)
Chappell Roan – The Subway
Lola Young – d£aler
SIENNO SPIRO – Die On This Hill
Ledisi – This Bitter Earth
RAYE – WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!
The Womack Sisters – I Just Don’t Want You (To Say Goodbye)
Rex Orange County – Take a Drive
Elmiene – Useless (Without You)
EsDeeKid – Century

Elton and Brendan discuss Turnstile’s landmark year, ‘Never Enough’ being one of his favourite albums of 2025, and how this year has been a breakthrough one for them…

Elton John: ‘Never Enough’ is one of my favourite albums of the year… ‘SEEIN’ STARS’ is in my top 20 tracks of the year. Things have really started to happen for you guys, right?

Brendan Yates: Yeah, there’s been such a crazy whirlwind of things happening in the last year or so, but that means so much. Thank you so much for saying that. And I’m glad that we’re able to make this happen, because I know we’ve been so busy on the road and there was a couple of missed windows where it was just the time zones were different, but I’m glad that we were able to make this happen.

Brendan on Turnstile’s recent sold out London show at Alexandra Palace, and if the band have had time to write new music while on tour…

I think writing is hard. To sit down and write while in the midst of touring and traveling is very difficult. But I think in that time there’s always small things that are being collected, voice notes, thoughts, small things that I think once the window opens up where you’re stationary, you have a collection of a lot of things. So I think I’ve just been in that mode a little bit.

Brendan on the importance of performing live to Turnstile…

Absolutely. Yeah. I think for us, making the songs is one process that gets this… It’s half of the process, but playing it live, and especially for our band, the live exchange is very important for our band with the live environment and everything. So even now, the record’s been out for six months or so, but I feel like the songs are still taking new shapes every night when we play them.

Brendan on the meaning of songs evolving over time…

As far as just songs taking different meanings over time, they just mean different things and resonate in different ways. And I think they’ll infinitely do that…

Tune in and listen to the show in full this Saturday (13th December) at 5pm GMT on Apple Music 1.