National Recording Registry Adds Chicago, Elton, Minecraft and More for 2025

Washington, DC (April 10, 2025)—Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, has named 25 recordings that will join the National Recording Registry, including releases by Elton John, Chicago, Mary J. Blige, Amy Winehouse and the cast of Hamilton.

The latest selections named to the registry span from 1913 to 2015, and span the sounds of folk, jazz, country, pop, comedy, sports, Latin, dance, R&B, tech, choral and musical theater. More than 2,600 nominations were made by the public this year for recordings to consider for the registry.

Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, Chicago’s debut Chicago Transit Authority, the original cast recording of Broadway’s Hamilton, Mary J. Blige’s “My Life,” Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black,” Microsoft’s reboot chime, and the soundtrack to the Minecraft video game phenomenon have been selected as some of the defining sounds of history and culture that will join the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

The 2025 class of inductees also includes Tracy Chapman’s self-titled debut album, Celine Dion’s 1997 single “My Heart Will Go On” from the blockbuster film Titanic, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans’ classic “Happy Trails,” Miles Davis’ jazz fusion album Bitches Brew, Charley Pride’s groundbreaking “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin,’” Vicente Fernandez’s enduring ranchera song “El Rey,” Freddy Fender’s breakthrough song “Before the Next Teardrop Falls,” and the Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like an Eagle.”

2024 National Recording Registry Inductees Announced

Chicago Transit Authority finished No. 1 in the public nominations this year. Other selected recordings in the top 10 of public nominations include “Happy Trails,” Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Blige’s My Life.

Also included are announcer Chuck Thompson’s radio broadcast of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, Hawaiian song “Aloha ‘Oe,” recorded in 1913 by the Hawaiian Quintette, Keith Jarrett’s 1975 album The Kӧln Concert, Thelma Houston & Pressure Cooker’s 1975 album I’ve Got the Music in Me, and Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman,” from 1972.

The recordings selected for the National Recording Registry this year bring the number of titles on the registry to 675, representing a small portion of the national library’s vast recorded sound collection of nearly 4 million items.