Best New Showtunes of 2025 - Literally!

[EDSOSLO858]

Posted: 12/27/25 at 4:37pm

It's around that time of year where "best-of" lists are compiled and published. 

In 2025, we had many new musicals that premiered in NYC and all over the world - and with it, some brand-new songs. Let's list our favorites below, but the twist for this thread is, they have to have been performed for the very first time in a fully-staged production at some point in 2025, OR they were newly written for a 2025 mounting.

For example:

• Anything from OPERATION MINCEMEAT and DEAD OUTLAW - does not count.
• No jukebox musicals or revivals, obviously.
• Any new songs that were written for the Broadway mountings of REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES, THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES, and REDWOOD count. Thus, do not include "Still" but feel free to add "Daydream," for instance.
• World premieres absolutely count, from regionally to the UK and beyond. (This should probably make up the bulk of this thread.)

Let's hear it!

[steve.sometime]

Posted: 12/27/25 at 5:08pm

• Santa Cruz (Night Side Songs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F05rhTkF0Mo
• Crush (Beau): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWv0q7HZOOA
• Digging (Mexodus): https://m.soundcloud.com/brian-quijada-913852263/black-and-brown-instrumental
• Childish Thing (Milions): https://www.adamguettel.com/millions

Edited to add notes: Both Beau and Mexodus have had productions before 2025. 2025 is the year they premiered in New York. You could argue that previous productions are developmental and the NY ones are the finished version. But I understand if they don't qualify.

Updated On: 12/27/25 at 05:08 PM

[EDSOSLO858]

Posted: 12/27/25 at 5:38pm

I’ll chime in:

• ”The Stars” and “In the Leaves” - REDWOOD
• ”A Woman Knows” - REGENCY GIRLS
• ”Keep Up” and “Dawn Patrol” - THE HEART
• “What’ll It Be” - TWO STRANGERS (CARRY A CAKE ACROSS NEW YORK) (New orchestrations and mostly new lyrics first heard in Boston make me sorta-kinda count this.)
• “The Explorer and the Bear” and “Marmalade” - PADDINGTON

And a special shoutout to the bridge of “Here and Now” from 13 GOING ON 30, one of the better MT bridges I’ve heard in the last several years.