Best Albums of 2025

Compared to the movies released in 2025, there’s no denying that the musical offerings were slightly more exciting and arguably more billable as being part of a “cultural phenomenon” (here’s looking at you, West End Girl). Below are twenty-eight of the brightest spots in album releases this year (and no, The Life of a Showgirl definitely doesn’t make the cut).

1) FKA Twigs, Eusexua (January 24): No stranger to kicking off the year with new music (see also: Caprisongs), the release of Eusexua at the outset of 2025 was a much-needed breath of fresh air amidst the gathering storm of the American political climate. For while Twigs might be British, her music is plenty beloved “across the pond.” Inspired by her time filming The Crow in Prague (for while the movie was a flop, it at least inspired Eusexua), Twigs frequented various raves and clubs during her off time from shooting and felt inspired to create what amounts to her own version of the sound that Madonna helmed on Ray of Light. To be sure, Madonna’s influence is all over both the sound and visuals of the record, whether it’s “Girl Feels Good” or “Perfect Stranger.” All signaling yet another sign of everyone’s desire to return to a simpler time: the late 90s.

2)  Oklou, Choke Enough (February 7): Even Oklou (who also collaborated with Twigs at the end of 2025 on a song from her deluxe version of the album called “Viscus”) seems to have that desire on her debut album, Choke Enough. And, after years of slogging it out to get her name out there with mixtapes and EPs, Oklou was finally “big enough” to furnish listeners with her enchanting and entrancing debut. A thirteen-track ambient odyssey through soundscapes that simultaneously challenge and soothe at the same time, Oklou also worked with Danny L Harle and/or Charli XCX’s “go-to guy,” A. G. Cook, on many of the tracks—names that signaled just how certain it was that she had truly “made it” as an “indie darling” of the industry. But no matter what kind of success she had this year, Oklou appears to remain committed what she told Interview earlier this year: “It feels like the ultimate goal is this quest for the most sincere thing you could ever do.” And that’s a very rare feat in the current climate of mostly manufactured “authenticity.”

3) Banks, Off With Her Head (February 28): In certain ways, it feels as if Banks’ fifth album, Off With Her Head, came out longer ago than 2025. Perhaps because 1) so much has happened since the beginning of the year and 2) it was one of those records that ostensibly got “lost in the shuffle” once other, more “blockbuster” releases started coming out in the spring. But to overlook Off With Her Heard would be a grave mistake. After all, it features a saucy banger of a collaboration with Doechii (Banks tapping her for said collab before she hit the mainstream big-time with her appearance at the 2025 Grammys) called “I Hate Your Ex-Girlfriend.” But that’s hardly the only track that stands out on the often trippy (sonically speaking), emotional roller coaster of an album. Other notable mentions include “Delulu,” “Move” featuring Yseult and “Candy.”

4) Selena Gomez & Benny Blanco, I Said I Love You First (March 21): For many, this record might read as more “cringeworthy” than “worthy” of being called one of the best albums of 2025. Indeed, it appears as though most critics conveniently forgot that it existed when making their end-of-year lists. But to ignore I Said I Love You First as an album of bops would be a mistake. In fact, there’s nary a skippable track on it, whether it’s a slow, existential jam like “Younger and Hotter Than Me” or a gushing mid-tempo love song like “Sunset Blvd” or a danceable ditty (courtesy of some co-writing help from Charli XCX) like “Bluest Flame.”

5) Kali Uchis, Sincerely, (May 9): After experiencing both the extreme joy of having her first child with Don Toliver and the extreme pain of her mother’s unexpected death in early 2025, the result is something as bittersweet as Sincerely, Uchis’ fifth and most personal album to date. Filled with homages to what it means to be both a mother and a child, Uchis’ voice is at her most angelic, particularly on songs like “Heaven is a Home…,” “Sugar! Honey! Love!,” “All I Can Say” and “Angels All Around Me…” (the punctuation of each song [not to mention the intentional comma in the album title] is obviously key). Undoubtedly aware of the album’s majesty, Uchis was one of the many artists this year to offer a deluxe edition of her record several months after its release, titled Sincerely: P.S., which featured the standout single “Cry About It” with Ravyn Lenae.

6) MØ, Plæygirl (May 16): Despite being over a decade into her career (and, like Lorde, still having “only” four albums to show for it), MØ remains a criminally underrated artist. Although she had plenty of recognition at the outset of her career, particularly after gaining international success with the Major Lazer single, “Lean On,” in 2015, the pureness of her musical intentions was something she called into question with 2022’s Motordome (this after the continued accolades for her sophomore album, Forever Neverland). Which, although well-reviewed, was an album that MØ acknowledged as what can be called “hit grabs” (in lieu of “cash grabs). Thus, she decided to get “back to basics,” so to speak, by listening to her own inner voice to create Plæygirl. Filled with unique sounds, styles and lyrics, MØ pulls her listener in immediately with the trance-inducing “Meat on a Stick,” a soul-baring number that includes such lyrics as, “I can feel my body crying, but I’m pushing on/If you wanna make it better, make it while I’m young.” The “feels” on the album don’t let up until it’s over with MØ emotionally eviscerating her listeners with a surprisingly standout cover of Avicii’s “Wake Me Up.”

7) Sparks, Mad! (May 23): Still among the greatest to ever do it, Sparks consistently proves that there’s a reason they’ve been around for so many decades. With Mad!, Sparks taps into the general sentiment of being alive in 2025 (and, from the looks of it, in 2026 and beyond). And it’s with the opening track, “Do Things My Own Way,” that Sparks makes their own version of Frank Sinatra’s seminal track, “I Did It My Way.” For, if any band has done it their way for the entirety of their career, it’s Sparks. This means writing a song like “JanSport Backpack” (this album’s version of “The Girl is Crying in Her Latte” from the 2023 album of the same name). On the surface, it might seem “simplistic,” but the underlying meaning of lyrics like, “We all need time, time to ourselves/But don’t we owe someone in Hell?…/JanSport backpack, she wears a JanSport backpack” are tacitly communicated with the music, as much of a “vocal character” as the Mael brothers. As for some of the album’s other highlights, there’s “Hit Me, Baby” (not to be confused with “…Baby One More Time”), “I-405 Rules” (an offbeat love letter to Los Angeles’ most infamous freeway) and “Drowned in a Sea of Tears.”

8) Miley Cyrus, Something Beautiful (May 30): In what seems to be another case of an incredible album not quite getting its due this year, Miley Cyrus’ ninth album, Something Beautiful, was positioned to be a “blockbuster” album, what with its summer release date and accompanying film of the same name. A “visual album” that Cyrus was hospitalized for, namely after writhing around on Hollywood Boulevard for the “Walk of Fame” portion of the film and incurring an infection on her knee. But to create art is to suffer. It’s just Cryus likely wishes that suffering might have generated a little more interest. In any case, it’s worth mentioning that “Walk of Fame” is one of the best tracks on Something Beautiful, along with “Every Girl You’ve Ever Loved,” “Reborn” and “Give Me Love.”

9) MARINA, Princess of Power (June 6): After taking a four-year break from releasing music (who is she, Lorde?), MARINA returned with the grandness of Princess of Power (and with a title like that, how could it be anything but grand?). An album that, when it’s not serving cunt (à la “Cuntissimo”), amounts to a thirteen-track gut punch. This in the sense that the wisdom, revelations and “mind rewiring” MARINA gleaned as a result of her newfound love of psilocybin a.k.a. mushrooms is shared with unbridled candor. And, although intermixed with more than just a dash of jubilance on heart-wrenching songs like “Butterfly” and “Everybody Knows I’m Sad,” the growing pains of leaving her thirties/girlhood behind are evident across the album (and also something she addressed in her precursor, of sorts, to Princess of Power, which was her first poetry book, Eat the World).

10) Addison Rae, Addison (June 6): Not be outdone by her Brat mentor, it hardly seemed like a coincidence that Addison Rae chose to release her debut, Addison, almost the same day as Brat was in 2024 (June 7). To be sure, there’s no denying that Charli XCX was instrumental (no pun intended) in ensuring that, sooner or later Addison would have to be taken seriously by the music industry, and not forever pigeonholed as a “TikTok star” (this term being something of an oxymoron). Indeed, Addison’s “old soul” nature had her wanting far bigger things for herself than mere social media app glory. What she wanted (and wants) was a stardom like Madonna’s. So no wonder M’s influence, too, is all over the record, with Addison and her producers, Luka Kloser and Elvira Anderfjärd, openly citing Ray of Light’s sound as their inspiration, even going so far as to use what “Frozen” would call “the key” to capturing the sound: the Korg M1 synthesizer. So it was that Addison brought an “old” sound to new material…and made it entirely her own, with hypnotic songs like “Aquamarine,” “Fame is a Gun” and “Headphones On” being the most glittering examples of that.

11) HAIM, I Quit (June 20): Among the few notable “rock chicks” of the year, HAIM set themselves apart from other bands in their genre by leaps and bounds with I Quit. A nod to what was once an “inside joke” between them—to quote Jimmy (Johnathon Schaech) from That Thing You Do! while doing soundchecks—the title was slapped down as a “temporary” whim, but then just felt so right as to be unthinkable to change to anything else. Besides, it matched the fuck this/it energy of their vibrant, self-assured songs, including “All Over Me,” “Relationships,” “Down to Be Wrong” and “Everybody’s trying to figure me out.”

12) Lorde, Virgin (June 27): Though the Recording Academy might have been foolish enough to exclude Virgin from its list of nominations, there’s no denying Virgin is very award-worthy indeed. From the second Lorde kicks off the record with a guttural-sounding intro to “Hammer,” it’s evident that she means business. That she’s got something Very Important to say. This being part of why Lorde famously waits so long (always four years, to be exact) to release another album. And this signature Seriousness/Weighty Subject Matter of Lorde’s is no exception to the rule on Virgin, during which Lorde wrestles with everything from gender fluidity (“Man of the Year”) to pregnancy tests (“Clearblue”) to her eating disorder (“Broken Glass”) to the end of a serious long-term relationship (“What Was That” and “David”).

13) Kesha, Period (July 4): In what marked a truly momentous milestone in her career, Period was the first album Kesha was at last able to release as an independent artist (and on her very own label, Kesha Records, to boot), free of Dr. Luke’s control. And, although the circumstances of their settlement remain murky, the result was clearly pleasing enough to give Kesha something to celebrate about on Period. For each track is pure joy, even ones (like “Freedom”) that allude to how long she was enslaved by the shackles of a bad contract. Then, of course, there’s all out kooky bangers (as only Kesha can create) like “Joyride,” “Yippee-Ki-Yay” and “Boy Crazy.” In short, Kesha was back and better than ever in 2025.

14) Ava Max, Don’t Click Play (August 22): Another album that isn’t likely to make many mainstream lists this year, Don’t Click Play is Ava Max at her most self-assured despite the loss of her longtime collaborator (and boyfriend), Cirkut, who reportedly ended up in a relationship with Max’s other long-time collaborator in co-songwriting, Madison Love. It was the kind of high drama/betrayal that sent Max into “vengeance is mine” high gear, with that sense of drive and intensity apparent across the album, but especially on dancefloor-ready fare like “Lovin Myself,” “Sucks to Be My Ex” and “Know Somebody.”

Blood Orange, Essex Honey (August 29): In what marks arguably the most emotional album of 2025, Dev Hynes a.k.a. Blood Orange’s Essex Honey is, like Kali Uchis’ Sincerely, very much influenced by the recent death of his mother. In addition to dealing with the loss, Hynes also grapples with his own mortality as a result. Hence, the elegiacal tone that remains a constant, even in moments as “upbeat” (at least musically) as “Westerberg” featuring Eva Tolkin and Liam Benzvi or “The Train (King’s Cross)” featuring Caroline Polachek. Both of these songs possessing lyrics that are prime examples of Hynes reconciling with his own approach toward “middle age” (e.g., “And you squint to see the truth/That there’s no longer your youth” and “The worst is yet to come”). Which is just a hop, skip and a jump from death, n’est-ce pas?

16) CMAT, Euro-Country (August 29): Perhaps unlike anything else you’ve heard in 2025 (or any other year, really), Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson a.k.a. CMAT stepped up her game with her third album, Euro-Country, a smorgasbord of country-meets-pop-meets-Irish fare. To the point of Irishness, CMAT’s complicated relationship with her homeland is a key aspect of the record. And, knowing that her country might take some of the album’s songs “the wrong way,” she was sure to open Euro-Country with “Billy Byrne from Ballybrack, the Leader of the Pigeon Convoy,” which is a sample from a 1985 RTÉ documentary she saw about pigeon homing in Ireland. So it is that she, er, homes in on Billy Byrne saying, “Howya, Tony? Howya? It’s grand here, Tony. Lovely, nice clear sky. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a slight, a slight west wind here. What time are you now? Yeah, see ya later. Okay All the best, Tony. See ya.”

To her, this piece of dialogue was the ideal way to commence the record because, “A lot of this album is criticizing Ireland, which is something I love more than anything else in the world. So, I wanted something that captured my love for it and to show people I wasn’t coming from a snotty place. One day, I randomly came across a documentary, and this scene happened. Billy Byrne is about to free a lot of pigeons, and this is a phone call that he makes from a telephone box that’s in the middle of a beach. He sums up everything that I love about Ireland: its weirdness, its beauty and its warmth.”

And then, right after, she adds the one-two punch of speaking in Gaelic during the seamless transition into the intro of “Euro-Country,” as if to further assert that she means “no harm.” But she still has plenty of things to say about her problematic country, addressing its changes and capitulations after not only becoming more “Euro-fied,” but adopting the euro itself when it joined the EU in 1999, this still being an era when Ireland was called the Celtic Tiger as a result of its economic boom. One that busted in 2008, and which CMAT calls out in the damning “Euro-Country” bridge, “All the big boys, all the Berties/All the envelopes, yeah, they hurt me/I was twelve when the das started killing themselves all around me/And it was normal, building houses/That stay empty even now, yeah/And no one says it out loud, but I know it can be better if we hound it.” With so much truth told throughout the album, it’s no wonder the cover is styled after Jean-Leon Gerome’s painting, Truth Coming Out of Her Well.

17) Sabrina Carpenter, Man’s Best Friend (August 29): Another musician with some clear country predilections this year was Sabrina Carpenter with Man’s Best Friend. And though it might have seemed as if it was her sophomore album since she wasn’t really “born” into the mainstream until 2024’s Short n’ Sweet, it’s actually her seventh record. And obviously, she’s already seasoned enough, at twenty-six, to know what works best for her…which is a lot talking (rightful) shit about men and making sexual innuendos aplenty. On this record, Carpenter fine-tunes that skill of hers to perfection, as best showcased on songs like “Manchild,” “Tears” and “House Tour.”

18) JADE, That’s Showbiz Baby (September 12): When it wasn’t the year of Man’s Best Friend, it was the year of JADE, who came out of the Little Mix gate swinging, starting with her unforgettable performance of “Angel of My Dreams” at the BRIT Awards on March 1, followed by the release, two weeks later, of the third single from That’s Showbiz Baby, “FUFN (Fuck You for Now).” Further exhibiting JADE’s range, that single would soon be contrasted by the vulnerability of “Plastic Box” (both tracks inspired by JADE’s boyfriend, Jordan Stephens—even if he was the inspiration for “FUFN” in a dream she had). As the album rollout continued, more layers to JADE were peeled back with the release of “Unconditional,” a song about her mother’s struggles with lupus over the years. And one that, while writing, she asked of herself, “How can I write a really sad song that we’re all going to want to shake our tits to?” This, in fact, is the essence of how JADE operates as a solo artist, and something she further proved on the deluxe edition of the album, titled That’s Showbiz Baby! The Encore (featuring yet another hit in the form of “Church”), released before year’s end.

19) Lola Young, I’m Only F**king Myself (September 19): Shooting into the spotlight as if out of a cannon after the success of “Messy” in 2024, Lola Young’s third album, I’m Only F**king Myself was highly anticipated. And rightly so. For there’s no denying that her lyrics are some of the rawest and most unbridled the music industry has seen in a while. In fact, there’s a reason she’s been heralded as Britain’s “next generation” answer to Lily Allen. Except that Young is perhaps even more willing to put her personal life on display as candidly as possible (well…maybe not). That much was made clear when, after a series of, for one reason or another, rough performances, Young ended up collapsing onstage at the All Things Go festival a little over a week after I’m Only F**king Myself. In this sense, too, Young’s “self-sabotage” somewhat mirrors Lily Allen’s when her 2009 sophomore record, It’s Not Me, It’s You, was going to really take off stateside. When she recalled the “massive tour” that was planned to promote the album in the U.S., she recalled to Miquita Oliver on Miss Me?, “I answered this question [at customs about doing drugs] honestly when I could have not answered it honestly, and I would have been able to have gone right through, plain sailing. It meant I had to cancel my tour, and the record company pulled out all the funding from all of that album promotional schedule, and things stopped going as well as they should have and would have gone… It completely changed things; I was a priority act in America. The album was heading up the charts and was going to really exciting places, and then it wasn’t because I couldn’t get in the country anymore.” For Young, the easy part (for now) is getting into the country. The hard part is pulling herself together long enough to do so. But it’s not as if she didn’t warn people with an album title like I’m Only F**king Myself, complete with self-sabotage anthems like, “Spiders,” “why do i feel better when i hurt you?” and “Not Like That Anymore.”

20) Doja Cat, Vie (September 26): Although not everyone has fully understood the brilliance of Vie, it takes more skill than one realizes to totally re-create the sound of a particular decade convincingly—in this case, the 1980s (which is exactly why Jack Antonoff is the producer for the job). Not only that, but to immerse oneself completely in the fashions of the day while promoting said album, as Doja Cat has done for the press tour and the concert tour for Vie. Transporting listeners to a theoretically simpler time (yet also still a time when the Orange Creature still seemed to loom large), highlights of the record include “Jealous Type,” “AAAHH MEN!,” “Gorgeous” and “Stranger.”

21) Zara Larsson, Midnight Sun (September 26): At last getting a bit more credit where credit is due this year (this, in part, as a result of serving as Tate McRae’s opening act on the Miss Possessive Tour), Zara Larsson warmed hearts as the chilly months of fall approached with her fifth album, Midnight Sun. Although Larsson released the first single for the record, “Pretty Ugly,” in March, it was with the title track that she really established the mood and aesthetics of the album (complete with a video that majorly channeled the one Madonna made for “Love Profusion”). She kept the momentum going as the summer started to wrap up with another single, “Crush” (which has a more than somewhat unusual video concept). But these three “previews” of the album were just the tip of the iceberg (to use an “anti-summer” cliché). Because some of the best songs on it that didn’t get their “moment in the spotlight” as singles are “Girl’s Girl,” “Eurosummer” and “Hot & Sexy.”

22) Tame Impala, Deadbeat (October 17): After five years spent away and (mostly) working on Deadbeat, well, it just goes to show that Kevin Parker a.k.a. Tame Impala is anything but that. Though putting a “neon sign,” so to speak, above his head to tell the world he’s a deadbeat is part and parcel of his wry sense of humor. For Parker knows, even if only “deep down” that he’s one of the hardest working perfectionists in the business (maybe even more than Lorde—thus, taking even more time than she did to release his next record). From the instant Parker pulls his listener into the world of Deadbeat, it’s a slow burn into the emotional “My Old Ways.” A song that anyone—whether they’ve ever been an alcoholic or not—can relate to. Because everyone knows what it feels like to sink back into toxic habits as a coping mechanism. But “My Old Ways” is hardly the only indelible song on the record. There’s also the likes of “Dracula,” “Loser,” “Piece of Heaven” and “End of Summer”—all amounting to Deadbeat being well worth the five-year wait. Because, you know, however long Parker needs to “get it right.”

23) Lily Allen, West End Girl (October 24): Talking of long hiatuses, there was also the return of Lily Allen this year. And bad pet owner or not, Allen’s artistic cachet couldn’t be denied in 2025. What’s more, because everyone had slept on her work for so long, with many missing out on the majesty of 2018’s No Shame, the “surprise” of how good West End Girl is turned out to fan the flames of obsession, even by those who had never paid much attention to Allen or her work before. By now, everyone is well-aware that the “unnamed” husband referred to in each song is David Harbour, who Allen married in 2020, and seemed, at least for a while, to have a “fairy-tale” romance with—that is, if you feel that moving to Carroll Gardens is a fairy tale (which it sort of is in the sense that most people can’t afford to). More specifically, into a townhouse that has been endlessly scrutinized after listeners revisited Allen and Harbour’s extremely foreshadowing 2023 episode of Architectural Digest’s Open Door series (and yes, she definitely referenced some highly specific interior design “pieces” during her SNL performance of “Sleepwalking”). Despite uprooting her entire British life (as mentioned on “Nonmonogamummy” when she sings, “I changed my immigration status/For you to treat me like a stranger”) and suffering from some severe trauma as a result of “getting into bed with” Harbour (literally and figuratively), perhaps it was all worth it if it managed to smoke Allen out of her unspoken retirement from the pop star game.  

24) Florence and the Machine, Everybody Scream (October 31): As for someone who would seemingly never dream of retiring from that game, Florence Welch poetically unleashed Everybody Scream onto the world on the day of the witches a.k.a. Halloween. And with this album, Florence and the Machine continued the occultish motif (both visually and sonically) established on 2022’s Dance Fever—and puts it on steroids. What’s more, Everybody Scream at last goes into the “nitty gritty” of Florence Welch’s previously unnamed “health scare,” which was a life-threatening ectopic miscarriage. Hence, the often gory, macabre and maternal imagery peppered all over the album. Along with Welch’s continued wrestling over whether she’s made the right choice to be a “rock star” over a mother, along with her vexation over how male musicians can not only “have it all,” but are far more prone to be called “One of the Greats” without needing to do half as much as a woman for that kind of recognition.

25) Allie X, Happiness Is Going to Get You (November 7): An under the radar gem, Allie X’s Happiness Is Going to Get You (affectionately abbreviated to HIGGY) marks the least amount of time she’s waited to release a new album, pushing this one out just one year after Girl With No Face. However, like CMAT and Sabrina Carpenter, it seemed as if the concept and lyrics for HIGGY just flowed through Allie X, begging to be funneled out through the persona of the Infant Marie, a Victorian(-esque) woman with such thought-provoking demands as, “Is Anybody Out There?” As ethereal as it is touching, other notable numbers include “Reunite,” “I Hope You Hear This Song,” “Uncle Lenny” and “Learn to Cry.”

26) Rosalía, Lux(November 7): To quote Lady Gaga, “Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before.” That’s all that needs to be said about Lux, whose lyrics are inspired primarily by the lives of saints that Rosalía spent three years mostly in seclusion studying various hagiographies. So yes, she has a perfect right to dress like a nun (in “straitjacket” pose) on the album’s cover.

27) FKA Twigs, Eusexua Afterglow (November 14): Just when you thought FKA Twigs might be slowing down, she releases an entirely separate “companion album” to Eusexua called Eusexua Afterglow. Not only that, but she also reissued Eusexua with a few track tweaks (a maneuver that some might find more jarring than “exciting”). Not that there was any need to, for it’s obvious that Afterglow is in a class of its own, featuring such celestial bops as “Love Crimes,” “Hard,” “Cheap Hotel” and “Predictable Girl.”

28) Pebe Sebert, Pebe Sebert (December 12): Though it might be an “out of left field” choice to some, the release of Pebe Sebert’s “lost” self-titled album proved that Kesha, far beyond reasons of being Sebert’s daughter, had plenty good reason for choosing it as the first album (well, after her own) she wanted to release on Kesha Records. Filled with unique gems that are equal parts prescient and kooky (e.g., “Hard Times Ahead,” “City’s Burning” and “The Ice”), those who discount Pebe Sebert as one of the best records of 2025 (in spite of being recorded in 1984) don’t know what they’re missing. Besides, its genuine 80s-ness just goes to show why someone like Doja Cat would want to re-create such a sound on Vie. So it’s only appropriate that an album out of the past punctuates a year that has been majorly haunted by the 80s (complete with a certain Orange Ruler in the U.S.).