best albums of 2025

sorry, i love a year in review list!

For the first Best of 2025 newsletter, I thought we could start with albums. For some reason I always think it’ll be easier to discuss music than it is to discuss film or literature, and then I end up sitting with page after page of handwritten notes upon realizing that if I’m awake, I’m rarely not listening to music. Do you know how many long walks I’ve taken this year with only my thoughts and my headphones for company? There’s a lot to talk about.¹

And maybe this is my confirmation bias speaking, but 2025 very much felt like an album year, in the sense that it seemed like more of us were listening to artists’ full albums rather than mere singles. Like we were more willing to be told a story, rather than a brief anecdote. Maybe not always, but enough times to make a difference. A song to me holds more water, more meaning, in the context of a larger project. It’s why albums like DeBI TiRAR MaS FOToS are so exceptional and, not for nothing, so popular. If you’ll allow it: an era shouldn’t just speak to an artist’s singular and personal style, but to the time during which they’re creating. To divorce the two is, to me, unnatural. An artist unencumbered by context might blend together a few bops, sure, but I want a story, not just a song of the summer.

So let’s dive in. We have ahead of us a variety: albums that meant a lot to me for a week, a month, a year. I love all the music I’m listing below, but we are attempting a kinda sorta vague countdown, which is so ambitious of me—I’m already nervous.

(P.S. Starting here with winter ‘24, I’m sharing my four seasonal playlists of the year throughout this review.)²

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Adrianne Lenker’s Live at Revolution Hall came out April 24 and became my constant soundtrack for a couple of weeks. I can’t say I’ve listened to it much since the spring, but Lenker has such a beautiful, lilting voice, and the album is recorded in such a unique, endearing way … if you enjoy folksy, country music and soft sopranos then I do not know what you’re doing not listening to this. It’s a lovely companion for a lazy morning. (Favorite: “free treasure & fire trucks.”)

Trousdale’s Growing Pains came out April 11, and one thing about me is I love a girl group. I never outgrew my obsessions with TLC and Destiny’s Child and The Chicks (née Dixie). Should I even mention my favorite Swedish girlies Klara and Johanna of the folk duo First Aid Kit? Because I think about their cover of “America” once a week. There’s something about the harmonizing that scratches an itch not scratched since high school choir rehearsal. Tl;dr: Trousdale is fun and their songs are what you want to listen to before a spring and summer night out. (Favorite: “Growing Pains.” Sorry for the lack of originality, but it is the titular track.)

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Here’s a very eclectic spring ‘25:

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Bon Iver’s SABLE, fABLE also came out April 11, which was not the vibe. Bon Iver is a strictly winter artist (it’s in the goddamn name)—like listening to Carly Rae Jepsen in January … doesn’t quite work, does it?? Nevertheless, I am always in the mood to give misery a chance, and it also happened to rain pretty much every single day in April, so I signed right up. Crazy how a man improbably named Justin Vernon has had me in a chokehold since 2008’s tumblr-famous For Emma, Forever Ago. Depression playlists were never the same. There was less classic dejection in SABLE, fABLE, though. Instead: a hint of hope, of turning the page, of newness. So, admittedly, begrudgingly … maybe spring was the correct season during which to unleash this album.

If Mr. Iver, spokesman for Moody Doom and Gloom, sees a hint of promise in the future, then what’s our excuse for the fatalism? (Favorites: “SPEYSIDE,” “Day One” (featuring Flock of Dimes and, spoiler alert, Dijon!) and “If Only I Could Wait” (I’m a white millennial girl, so at the end of the day of course I’m a sucker for a Danielle Haim feature).)

Madi Diaz’s Fatal Optimist came out October 10, which is a canonically perfect date for a sad album to be released. Diaz has been putting music out since her 2012 debut album Plastic Moon, but I’ve only been listening to her since 2021’s History Of A Feeling (“Rage” and “History Of A Feeling” are perfect tracks). The operative word in this offering is definitely “Fatal,” not “Optimist,” and I spent many an afternoon in early autumn donning a thin jacket and going on walks to listen to my fellow melancholic girl. It’s the ideal soundtrack to the falling of leaves. Make of that what you will. (Favorite: “Heavy Metal.”)

Olivia Dean’s The Art of Loving came out September 26 and to be honest, I’d be hard-pressed to find a girl who didn’t listen to it on repeat for weeks. It’s a break-up album, sure, but it’s more than that. It’s jazzy and bluesy and hopeful and forgiving and sweet. I lost about half of October to Dean’s dulcet tones, and feel absolutely no regrets over it. Like, god forbid a girl feel quietly sentimental. (Favorites: “Nice to Each Other” and “Close Up.”)

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Summer ‘25, folks:

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Rosalía’s LUX came out November 7 and within hours was littering every single one of my group chats with “!!!” and “wait have you guys listened to lux yet???” and “it’s so good i cannot deal.” I even write this today, to you, as a girl with tickets to see Rosalía in April, despite my historic aversion to large concerts. The way this album quickly took over musical discussions briefly (briefly) made me feel bad for Lily Allen, whose (very good) West End Girl was released two weeks earlier.

I took myself on a long morning walk the day LUX came out, so I could listen to it in one go with only fellow passersby to distract me. And I imagine that I wasn’t the only one. I love when artists take big swings, and I especially love it when those swings work. (Favorites: “La Perla” and “Magnolias.”)

Dijon’s Baby came out August 15, but since famously the eighth month of the year was my personal ninth circle of hell, I didn’t get to it until September. Which is fine, because that’s when I was ready to hear it. I knew about Dijon because like most people alive on this earth, I, too, heard “The Dress” last year and immmmmediately rushed to add it to one of my little playlists. This summer, I heard “DEVOTION,” from Justin Bieber’s SWAG, and I was like … is this my new favorite song?? Because yes, I thought, finally, someone’s bringing Yearning™ back!

And then I listened to Baby and reader … I was spellbound. My introduction to the album was via “Yamaha,” which is a PERFECT song and makes me feel like the main character in a 90s romcom. It makes me feel like I’m walking on AIR and falling in LOVE. All songs should feel like this! This or I Am the Saddest Person To Ever Live. No, wait—Falling In Love, I Am the Saddest Person To Ever Live, or Getting Ready To Go Out. These are my three favorite album categories. Listening to Dijon’s Baby is like Getting Ready To Go Out and Fall In Love. Two out of three! That’s crazy. I can’t wait to hear what he does next. (Favorites: “Yamaha,” “my man,” and “Kindalove.”

(To read more: Alex Lewis wrote beautifully about Dijon and his artistry in “Fear the Turtle,” and Pitchfork profiled him (as Artist of the Year) earlier this week.)

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Fall ‘25, which might actually have been my favorite playlist of the year:

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And now for the Best of the Best, are you even surprised?

Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS came out January 5 and quickly became the soundtrack not just to my year, but all of my friends’. Do you understand how special it is, to start playing an album at any type of gathering and know there’s a 99% chance people will start singing along?

I hate this lady, by the way. But we can’t deny the cultural durability of this moment.

I wrote this back in February and I stand by it, mostly because of my prophetic powers:

A little bit wild, to be honest, that the first week of January brought what’s sure to be one of my favorite albums of 2025, courtesy of Bad Bunny. It’s masterful. It begs you to forget the shuffle button exists.

The fascinating—if not inspiring—thing about Bad Bunny is that he is not, as some people would like to believe, an overnight sensation. He’s been releasing music since 2016, slowly finding his sound and growing his audience. For years he’s been honing his craft, proving himself for nearly a decade, coming out with single after single, then album after album: DTMF is his seventh studio album. And now, almost a full year after this explosive 62-minute Production™ was released, nearly everyone I know, people of different backgrounds and nationalities and spoken languages, people who unlike my Miami circle haven’t been listening to Benito for years … we all have a varied handful of favorites from the same album. It’s magic. (My favorites: “DtMF” and “BAILE INoLVIDABLE.”)

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I was going to add a long section about my non-2025 favorites, since they naturally took up quite a lot of my listening time. But I’ve already written too much, so I’ve collected them into a playlist I chose to name, for reasons that frankly escape me, Atemporal Hyperfixations. The pretentiousness allegations do sometimes come from inside the house, don’t they?

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1. And, much as I’ve tried, I am simply not an audiobook girlie. I fear I need to see words in front of me to absorb them.

2. Briefly, I’ll just say that I’m aware I should cancel my Spotify membership. They’re running ICE ads and they pay Joe Rogan so much money and artists not enough and, insult meet injury, I originally joined the platform back in 2011 (?) from a link shared on twitter by Justin Bieber back when you needed an invite to open an account, like all of a sudden it was 2003 and I was ten years old, receiving a special invitation from my mom’s best friend to create a brand-spankin’ new gmail account. Except that instead of au revoir hotmail, I said au revoir limewire. (For Reasons™, please rest assured that I of course only used limewire in the strictest of legally permissible ways. Naturally.)

Anyway, all this to say that: yes, I know. Spotify is bad. So is Apple, but I guess Apple isn’t running ads for the American gestapo, so there’s that. Not an insignificant plus. Inertia remains my best friend and the devil on my shoulder, but quitting the streaming platform is on my to-do list.