The 10 Best Albums of 2025

"To make a list is immediately to begin second-guessing it. This year that's especially true below the Top 10, in my list of 20 runner-up albums, for which I had double that many candidates I could easily substitute in. That feels representative: It was a year of almost endless abundance in the realm of worthy, small-to-medium, inspired, and well-crafted works by newcomers and veterans alike."

"But on the big pop level, the action was much more muted. While 2024 saw the charts bubbling with exciting debuts and competition for space among young stars, there were only a few big stories there in 2025. In fact, the songs that were huge in 2024 were still sucking up all the atmosphere. Those that did muscle through tended to be in the vein of Alex Warren's "Ordinary," a title that describes the quality it has in aggressive abundance."

""Golden," from the Netflix anime smash KPop Demon Hunters, did liven up the late summer but was ultimately by a fictional band aimed at children, a group that by definition cannot grow, have an opinion, or make any other kind of lateral move. Meanwhile, the Taylor Swift bubble did not pop but audibly deflated some with the disappointing The Life of a Showgirl; Sabrina Carpenter stuck mostly to her (still effervescent) script on Man's Best Friend;"

The year produced an abundance of worthy small-to-medium albums from both newcomers and veteran artists, creating many near-misses outside the Top 10. Free-jazz stalwart Marshall Allen released two lively 2025 albums at age 101. On the mainstream pop level, breakthroughs were limited as massive 2024 hits continued to dominate the airspace. New mainstream successes often felt formulaic or child-oriented, and established stars delivered mixed results, from a deflated Taylor Swift release to Sabrina Carpenter's consistent work. Two notable exceptions were Bad Bunny's proudly Puerto Rican Debí Tirar Más Fotos and Rosalía's rococo operatic Lux, both ambitious and cosmopolitan.

Read at Slate Magazine