Metropolitan Mixtape: December 2025

The year in review

Here we are again

Tobias Sturt It’s that time of year again: carols on the playlist, Christmas movies on the box, annual round-ups in the inbox.

The Metropolitan year seems to be taking a predictable shape. Everything generally ticks over: new pieces go out and new subscribers come in, both at a predictable rate. Then Rowan writes something that goes viral and a whole bunch of new readers show up en masse. This year it was her piece ‘I’m not watching ‘Anora’’ that earned a few hundred fresh subscriptions. Fortunately, most of you seem to have stuck around, despite most of our content not being hot takes about porn. We’re now closing in on 1500 subscribers, which is really something (this time last year we were kvetching about not reaching 1,000). We’re delighted to have you all here.

Back in the normal world, the two things that drive regular weekly subscriptions are recommendations and Notes. We get a lot of new subscriptions from other Substacks that recommend us; thanks in particular, this year, to Sandy and Conal. But the real driver is, slightly to our surprise, Notes.

I was slightly suspicious when Substack introduced Notes, because it felt opposed to the core offer.Substack was supposed to be newsletters in your inbox, not in yet another ‘walled garden’ app. However, it has proved to be a crucial part of the community. We already had a fairly rigorous self-imposed social media calendar, putting out posts every day on Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook, so we just added posts on Notes to that regimen. The other platforms seem largely ineffectual, but the Notes posts seem to work. They seem to drive not just ‘follows’ but also subscriptions, bringing in a pleasantly steady stream of new readers.

Substack has something of a ‘reputation’, especially on platforms like BlueSky, but, frankly, we wouldn’t be getting new readers or finding our audience without their community tools and platform. Generally the advice on building a big audience for newsletters is ‘be famous somewhere else and bring your fans to Substack.’ We’re not famous (thank goodness) and have absolutely no audiences on any other platforms, so these kinds of features really help us reach new readers.

All of which is to say, please do share stuff on Notes if you use it — it really does make a difference for us.

Metropolitan Wrapped

The most popular stories this year were:

1. I’m not watching Anora

2. Are we… the baddies

3. Charlotte Raven

4. The Wire, but make it Keeley Hawes

5. Canon Fodder: Easy Rider

We only had one guest post this year, but it was, at least, a cracker, taking in gravitational waves, the sound of the Universe and sex:

The most popular playlist this year was June’s, which was a splendidly upbeat one.

In the interests of balance, the least popular piece this year was our piece on The Pink Panther, should you be looking for some viewing appropriate to a Bank Holiday in the next week:

Thank you

Thanks first of all to all of those readers who have liked and restacked and commented. It really does make a difference to hear from people who have enjoyed (or, in the case of ‘Easy Rider’, been enraged by) our pieces.

A by no means exhaustive list includes: Lou Tisley, Rosie Millard, Mapledurham, Oliver Johnson, Robert Machin, Kerstin Rodgers, L. E. Mullin, Richard Ashcroft, Victualis, Eliot Wilson, Whitney McKnight, Luke Honey, Dra, Chris Norris, Stroness, Hayley Dunlop, Promachos, and Sarah Ditum.

Then there’s the extended Metropolitan family: Annette Richardson, Chris Waywell, Finbar Hawkins, Lucy Thomas, Adam Goodfellow, Ross Sleight, Adam Frost, Kate Williams, Margaret Fiedler MacGinnis, Simon Stephens, Polly Heath and Emma Whitehead (apparently our most prolific recommender this year; thank you, your ladyship).

An extra special thank you to Herr Doktor Peter Wolf of the Paris Observatory for his splendid piece, but also for being an indefatiguable reader and commenter. Thanks, Pete.

And finally thank you to actual family, who read it all and say absolutely nothing: Morgan, Bella, Pippa, Jon and Caroline.

Happy New Year!

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If you’re in need for something restfully seasonal to read/listen to now that all the fuss is over, can we suggest our sister Substack, Christmas Stories, and this year’s serial: The Wish List?

The Wish List - Item 1