2024’s music scene was rife with chart-topping releases and cultural landmarks – from the Kendrick Lamar-Drake feud to Brat Summer. Against that backdrop, 2025 was never going to compete on spectacle alone. Instead, it emerged as a more reflective year, with many artists leaning into more emotionally intentional projects. Japanese Breakfast turned inward on “For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women),” resisting the urge to recreate the euphoric immediacy of “Be Sweet,” while Justin Bieber surprised listeners with “SWAG,” a raw R&B pivot rooted in faith and introspection.
This year’s releases suggest a welcome shift away from the “viral moment” mentality that has shaped much of the 2020s, and in its place is a renewed emphasis on artistic growth and sincerity.
Here are my ten favorite albums of 2025
10. “Fancy That” by PinkPantheress
Including “Fancy That” here may seem slightly at odds with my earlier praise for unpolished music, but leaving it off would feel disingenuous. In under 30 minutes, PinkPantheress delivers a relentless run of sharp, addictive tracks, wielding samples in ways that feel unexpected and entirely her own.
What elevates “Fancy That” beyond a simple hit collection is its cohesion. The transitions between tracks, particularly through the sonically lush “Intermission,” are seamless, giving the album one of the most consistently electric atmospheres of the year. More importantly, the project signals real artistic growth, moving past the viral, bite-sized moments that defined her early career in favor of a fully realized album.
9. “Balloonerism” by Mac Miller
Although recorded over a decade ago, “Balloonerism” feels uncannily contemporary, with its original shelving now reading as premature. Mac Miller reportedly feared the project was “too out there” for its time, but in 2025, it fit comfortably alongside the year’s most forward-thinking releases.
The album showcases a range rarely matched elsewhere in Mac’s catalog, both sonically and thematically, as he grapples with mortality, the loss of childhood innocence and the search for meaning in a world that often feels futile. More than a standout posthumous release, “Balloonerism” arrives at exactly the right moment — a reminder that the world simply wasn’t ready for the brilliance of Mac Miller yet.
8. “SABLE, fABLE” by Bon Iver
Divided into two distinct halves, “SABLE, fABLE” stages an internal dialogue between opposing emotional states. The “SABLE” side is stripped and weighty, its sparse arrangements leaving little room to escape loneliness; “S P E Y S I D E” and “Awards Season” sound hollowed out intentionally, forcing Justin Vernon’s wavering voice to carry the full emotional weight.
The “fABLE” side never fully resolves that struggle, but it does try to soften its edges, with warmer, melodic tracks like “Walk Home,” shifting Vernon away from romanticizing isolation and toward imagining a life beyond it. Together, the two parts of the album suggest that acknowledging pain can be the first step toward imagining something better.
7. “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” by Bad Bunny
Built around the regret embedded in its title — “I should’ve taken more photos” — “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” treats nostalgia as evidence of what is being lost in a modern-day Puerto Rico shaped by government neglect and aggressive gentrification.
Across the tracklist, Bad Bunny makes it clear that pleasure and protest don’t have to exist separately. The politics never disappear, but they travel through danceable beats, flirtatious hooks and a sense of pride that feels rooted in place rather than packaged for export. The project is effective not just because it resists erasure through critique, but also through joy, celebrating Puerto Rican culture as something alive and worth dancing for.
6. “black british music (2025)” by Jim Legxacy
Jim Legxacy’s “black british music (2025)” skillfully walks a tightrope between humor and heartbreak, letting moments of absurdity — like the deliberately ridiculous ad-libs on “i just banged a snus in canada water” — give way to some of the year’s most quietly devastating tracks like “dexters phone call.”
That tonal contrast is exactly what gives the album its power, allowing levity and grief to coexist without undermining one another. Anchored by beautiful melodies and inventive sampling, especially on the standout “new david bowie,” the record sticks with you long after it ends.
5. “Vanisher, Horizon Scraper” by Quadeca
“Vanisher, Horizon Scraper” plays less like a traditional album and more like a film you listen to. Quadeca leans fully into scale and atmosphere, building a project that feels cinematic in both sound and structure.
That world-building is especially vivid on “WAGING WAR,” where dark, almost fantasy-like synths swell beneath Quadeca’s voice. The track feels like a key chapter in the album’s larger nautical narrative, framing the project as a kind of modern folklore about a man adrift at sea, battling self-doubt, fear and purpose against an overwhelming horizon.
4. “Oblivion” by Alice Phoebe Lou
“Oblivion” is an album built on trust: trust in small moments, in quiet songwriting and in the emotional weight of simplicity. Alice Phoebe Lou’s latest project is intimate and largely self-produced, stripping her sound back to gentle guitar, soft piano and the warmth of her voice. Nothing here feels overstated or performative; the restraint is purposeful and deeply felt — an approach I explore further in my full album review for The Dartmouth.
Rather than chasing reinvention, songs like “Sailor” and “Darling” linger without urgency. Lou’s patience gives each melody and lyric room to exist, allowing the album’s impact to surface quietly without demanding attention.
3. “NEVER ENOUGH” by Turnstile
From the jump, “NEVER ENOUGH” frames Turnstile’s effort in destabilizing the punk-rock genre from within, both sonically and emotionally, channeling the unrelenting pressure of standards just out of reach. Fleeting moments of instrumental experimentation such as the echoing saxophones on “DREAMY” and the wavering synths on “LIGHT DESIGN” prime the album for constant misdirection rather than straightforward aggression.
That approach peaks on “LOOK OUT FOR ME,” which briefly slips out of punk altogether. The song melts into an otherworldly, house-leaning groove, reframing its intensity through rhythm instead of impact. “NEVER ENOUGH” is strongest in these moments, proving Turnstile’s power lies in how far they’re willing to push punk beyond its usual borders.
2. “Live Laugh Love” by Earl Sweatshirt
Throughout his career, Earl Sweatshirt has confronted grief and addiction with unflinching honesty. “Live Laugh Love” marks a turning point, revealing Earl not just as a survivor but as a father, crafting an album that feels both optimistic and difficult to define.
That optimism never feels forced or unearned. A decade ago, it would have been impossible to imagine the same rapper who made the vulgar, rage-filled “Earl” making something as tender as “TOURMALINE,” yet that distance between who Earl was and who he’s becoming is precisely what makes “Live Laugh Love” so effective.
1. “Virgin” by Lorde
“Virgin” is the most emotionally fearless album Lorde has ever made. Rather than unveiling a new persona, she embraces contradiction, letting her identity to blur and reassemble across 11 tracks that feel as immersive as they are personal. From the fractured vocals that open “Hammer” to the record’s distorted final moments, the production mirrors an unstable sense of self, constantly stretched, obscured and reshaped.
Songs like “Man of the Year” confront gender, desire and autonomy with a bracing openness, sitting with uncertainty rather than offering comfort and capturing transformation as it unfolds. “Virgin” stands not only as Lorde’s best work yet; it feels like the defining album of 2025, because it understands that genuine becoming matters more than perfection or spectacle.
