Sting, Beck, Wu-Tang Clan, and More Help Kick Off Record Store Day 2025 Official List Launch

Record playing was always a ritualistic experience for Sting. “To take the record out of its sleeve and lovingly with two fingers, put it on the turntable, and then carefully put the stylus on the record, and then you’d hear that hiss, that sizzle, that crackle, that white noise,” recalled Sting during an intimate audience during a Record Store Day event on February 6. “That was important because it told you that you were entering a sacred space. It wasn’t digital silence. It was something that said something special was going to come right now, only a few seconds.”

Along with Sting, Beck, Wu-Tang Clan producer Mathematics, Stephen Godroy, co-owner of Rough Trade, Sharone Bechor of Rock and Soul—which recently celebrated 50 years in business in New York City—and more were among the special guests at the launch of the 2025 official list, months before the 2025 edition of Record Store Day on April 12.

This year, the RSD list features more than 300 titles from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Queen, David Bowie, Grateful Dead, Prince, The Doors, Rage Against the Machine, Sly and the Family Stone, Talking Heads, Tom Waits, Thin Lizzy, The Cure, The Killers with Bruce Springsteen, among hundreds of other exclusives.

Sting is also part of the RSD lineup with STING 3.0 LIVE, a live album featuring solo hits and Police classics, recorded at concerts throughout North America. The album also features Sting’s “Be Still My Beating Heart,” “I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart),” “Never Coming Home,” and “Can’t Stand Losing You,” which have never been released, until now, as live versions.

“I miss that ritual,” Sting later added of record playing. “I know that streaming services provide any recorded song ever recorded in history—instantly—but what it’s sadly done, as well as all that positive stuff, is actually commodified music. It’s like coffee. You can turn it on, you can turn it off. You don’t know where it’s come from. You don’t have liner notes. You don’t know where it was recorded or who played bass on it.”

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He added, “I’m so grateful to your community, for keeping that sacred ritual alive. It’s one that I think we should generate more and more.”

Growing up in Northumberland, England, Sting remembers his mother sending him to the local record store to buy American albums. “We had a coal mine, a shipyard, 20 pubs, two record stores, and a church,” said Sting. “I bought ‘Great Balls of Fire’ by Jerry Lee Lewis, ‘Dream’ [‘All I Have to Do is Dream’] by the Everly Brothers, ‘Peggy Sue’ by Buddy Holly, ‘Bama Lama, Bama Loo’ Little Richard. My mother had a very wide taste, and you could go on to the record store and listen to the record before you actually purchased it. So I would sit in the little booth and then play it again and then play another one, and go home with this artifact.”

Back then, albums from America were a treasure to be found at a local record shop in Northern England. “American goods [records] had this magical quality about them, with the RKO 45s … Again, it was that ritual of putting it on,” he said. “The record player was a learning tool for me because there were four speeds, 16, 33, 45, and 78. I would play 45s at 78 so I’d hear the bass. I would hear the clarity of what the bass player was doing. And then if I wanted to learn a difficult guitar lick that was really fast, I’d switch it down to 16. So I’d slow it down. It was a teaching tool for me.”

Before Beck shared some of his earliest experiences shopping at record stores, RSD co-founder Michael Kurtz played the Record Store Day Song of the Year, Beck’s cover of George Harrison‘s “Be Here Now.” Originally released on Harrison’s 1973 album Living in the Material World, the RSD exclusive of “Be Here Now” is a double A-Side 12″ single featuring Beck’s 2024 mix of the song and Harrison’s original with proceeds going to the Material World Foundation.

“The song, to me, feels like a friend,” said Beck. “It’s like a friend just putting their hand on your shoulder [saying] ‘It’s okay.’ I grew up with the Beatles. A lot of their music was like, ‘The world’s f–king crazy—it’s gonna be okay.’”

He continued, “The Beatles always had that—all of them did that. They had that middle section where the whole song takes off. You think it’s great, and then it just goes to another level. Ozzy Osbourne said something I remember reading when I was very young. He’s like, ‘Every great song has a fantasy section.’”

Beck recalled shopping at stores like Aron’s Records in Los Angeles—which closed in early 2025 after 40—when he was younger and only had enough money to buy one album per month. “I was one of those kids who could only afford one record a month, so it was a very important decision,” shared Beck. “I’m surprised they didn’t kick me out, because I would be in there for nine hours picking ‘the one,’ almost like a divining rod, like ‘Please God, show me which one’s the right record to get.’ If you got the wrong record, you were just bummed out, but I would still listen to that record, because I paid for it, over and over.”

Without the internet growing up, Beck said, records were “the only connection” to what was happening in the world. “All these records were like little clues to what was happening,” he said. “You stumble onto a Nick Cave record: ‘What the hell is this?’ You read the liner notes, and then see he’s playing, and then go to that show and see all the weirdos in town there. It was where you found clues.

“We love our record stores,” added Beck, “and I still think vinyl is the best object of music that music ever made.”

Longtime Wu-Tang Clan producer and collaborator Mathematics discussed his 2 LP set limited edition (to 5,000) Black Samson, The Bastard Swordsman: Wu-Tang, The Saga Continues Collection, the first release by the collection since Once Upon a Time in Shaolin in 2015 and The Saga Continues with Math from 2017. With cover art by Mathematics, who also designed the original Wu-Tang Clan logo, each album jacket features unique “1 of 1” cover art.

“It all starts with a thought,” said Mathematics, who always appreciated going to record stores like Rock and Soul and Music Factory in Queens, New York, and other shops where he could play the album. “Music is an emotion, and it’s how you feel,” added Mathematics on piecing together collaborators on tracks. “Once I hit a certain groove, a certain point, I start hearing the voices, because voices are instruments, too. Once I have that and a certain concept, I start reaching out … and start building on it. And once we get to a certain spot, I don’t let them hear it until it’s finished.”

He added, “After everybody is happy with it, I take it a bit further. … That’s the thing about music. Sometimes it’s like a baby. You have to feed it. And as it grows, it changes, it develops. … It’s just something in me that knows it’s complete.”

Mathematics’ 1 of 1 cover art for his RSD exclusive is the first in vinyl art history. “When a person goes in a record store and buys that record and they know ‘Nobody else has this but me,’” he said, “it’s something special.”

This year, Post Malone also serves as the RSD Ambassador and is releasing Post Malone Tribute To Nirvana, his 2020 live-stream performance of Nirvana covers, featuring blink-182’s Travis Barker on drums, guitarist Nick Mack and bassist Brian Lee. All the proceeds from the sale of the vinyl will benefit the MusiCares Addiction Recovery/Mental Health division. Malone also shows up on another RSD exclusive this year with a double-sided 7” vinyl single of “Fortnight,” his 2024 collaboration with Taylor Swift.

“The whole energy in a record store is just super inspiring. I feel at home,” Malone shared in a statement. “It’s really an unexplainable feeling to hit up a shop and dig through crates, just see what grabs your eye.” 

Check out the 2025 Record Store Day Official List here.

Main Photo: Annie Forrest / Courtesy of Record Store Day