Grief inspired so much of the year's best music and that's something AI won't ever feel

"The most acclaimed albums of 2025 make for impressively eclectic listening. Surveying them does not reveal much in the way of obvious musical trends. There's very little similarity between Rosalia's heady classical approach to pop on Lux and Lily Allen's conversational disclosures on West End Girl. You could broadly group CMAT's Euro-Country, Bon Iver's Sable, Fable and the Tubs' Cotton Crown together as alternative rock but they don't sound anything like each other."

"And the year's best-of lists are sprinkled with albums that brilliantly defy classification: Blood Orange's Essex Honey leaps from old-fashioned indie to Prince-y funk; on Black British Music, Jim Legxacy sees no reason why UK rap can't coexist with distorted guitars, pop R&B and acoustic bedroom pop. But it's hard not to notice how similar they are thematically: a large swathe of the Guardian's albums of the year seem consumed by loss."

Acclaimed 2025 albums display wide musical range, from Rosalia's classical-inflected pop to Lily Allen's conversational songwriting and varied alternative-rock offerings. Several records resist classification, exemplified by Blood Orange's movement from indie to Prince-like funk and Jim Legxacy's fusion of UK rap with distorted guitars, pop R&B and acoustic bedroom pop. A recurring thematic thread centers on loss: breakups, parental and sibling deaths, memorials for friends, and suicides inform many records. Nostalgia and the passage of time also recur, producing elegiac tones and middle-age reflection in releases by Pulp and Bon Iver.

Read at www.theguardian.com