Top 10 Albums of 2025
Better Late Than Never, These Are My Favorite Albums of Last Year
2025 was an interesting year for music and the reason I held off for so long for ranking my albums of the year was pretty simple- I was waiting for some more contenders. Every album on my list is great in their own ways, but some years feel a little more crowded when making a favorites list. I think 2025 will go down as a forgettable album year overall, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of gems to discover.
Some honorable mentions this year include Man’s Best Friend by Sabrina Carpenter, Something Beautiful by Miley Cyrus, viar aboys by Viagra Boys, Never Enough by Turnstile, Portrait of my Heart by Spellling, Liquorice by Hatching, the self titled Racing Mount Pleasant, Till the Morning by Brian D’Addario, Bloodless by Samia and Revengeseekerz by Jane Remover. All really solid albums I considered putting in here, but it’s hard with only ten slots. Let’s get on with the list!
10. Baby - Dijon
Dijon is among my favorite artists alive right now. His collaborations with Mk.Gee, who’s album last year Two Star and the Dream Police was high on my list of favorites and is genuinely an album I still listen to all the time, are nothing short of changing the way popular pop and rock music will be produced for the next ten years. Dijon and Mk.Gee probably had their biggest year yet as artists, helping produce the new Bon Iver and doing the impossible - producing the Justin Bieber album called SWAG and making it not awful. The two are pretty unstoppable and Dijon came out with his new album Baby, which I don’t like as much as I liked Mk.Gee’s album last year but I think it is his strongest album to date. Dijon can make a cool sounding soundscape on an album, which he does here. As far as songs outside of the context of the album, its can be sparse. On his last album, the song The Dress was a standout and is still in my opinion one of the best songs to come out in the last ten or so years. On this album, the big highlight is Yamaha, which is easily one of the best songs of 2025. It’s vibrant, infectious, hooky and produced to perfection. I don’t see how on Earth you could stay entirely still while listening to it.
9. For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) - Japanese Breakfast
I’ve made it no secret that I am a massive fan of Japanese Breakfast, and their last album Jubilee is one of my favorite pop albums of all time. That album is an infectious miracle, the sunshine vibes juxtaposed with all of the angst Michelle Zauner is still processing as she was writing her memoir Crying in H Mart makes that album a genuine stroke of magic. Her newest album, Melancholy Brunettes is not her best album but is still an album I think is stunning. I think this album got underrated throughout the year because the bar for Zauner at this point is so high. That is to say, much like the title promises this is a slower, more melodic and sadder album. This is Zauner stripping things down. There isn’t a track as danceable as her breakout hit on her last album Be Sweet. There’s not the spacey atmosphere of my personal favorite Soft Sounds from a Distant Planet or the rugged shoegaze of her first album even. This album, while sounding like her distinct sound, is a lot more influenced by ballad and piano and it’s really gorgeous to listen to. It’s in every way a calm down album for Japanese Breakfast and one I found really touching. My favorite track on the album is Orlando in Love, a lovely ballad that perfectly encapsulates the melancholy being portrayed on the album.
8. Written By - Ronnie D’Addario
The Lemon Twigs have made my favorite albums list for the last three years. Their album Everything Harmony was my favorite album of 2023 and now has cemented itself as an all time favorite for me and their follow up album A Dream is All I Know was high on my list last year as well. The Beach Boys esque baroque sunshine pop the duo has been producing the last few years has been nothing short of astonishing for me. This year, the duo worked on some different projects. Brian D’Addario released his solo album, one that I mentioned in my honorable mentions. It could have made the list, but I decided to include this Ronnie D’Addario album that both of the brothers worked on and helped produced. This is easily the most underrated album of last year. It only has fifty five ratings on rateyourmusic and it deserves so much more. Ronnie D’Addario is actually the father of The Lemon Twigs and with their newfound success, the duo decided to help get their father’s songs out in the world. It’s a wholesome achievement, other notable artists who helped get the album off the ground include Mac Demarco and the one and only Todd Rundgren. The result is a sonically dense album with so much gravitas to it. The album is filled with infectious hooks and beautiful arpeggios and still harkens to that wonderful sense of nostalgia and yearning that makes The Lemon Twigs discography so wonderful. My favorite track is Love Won Me Over, a wonderful and sweet track that is wonderful to play on a summer night.
7. The Passionate Ones - Nourished by Time
I love discovering new artists in a calendar year. A lot of my favorite albums each year come from artists I already love releasing albums I really connect to, but I had never heard of Nourished by Time until this year and I will continue to keep an eye on him and his music. The Passionate Ones has one of my favorite soundscapes of any album this year. The atmosphere of this album is euphoric. It perfectly articulates multiple genres including r and b and bedroom pop and creates an album that makes you feel like you are floating. This album came out around the time I went to Toronto last year and I listened to it a lot when I would walk around the city at night, this album made the city come to life. It’s the perfect reflective, nighttime album. A lot of the songs are about reflection, contemplations and the never ending questions that will never get answered in this life. It’s a wonderful and soulful record that I’ve found myself periodically coming back to, it’s a peaceful listen. The standout track on the album to me is Idiot in the Park, I think it perfectly incapsulates the sound of the album but is also a fun and catchy song that has a great groove to it.
6. Forever, Howlong - Black Country, New Roads
Black Country New Roads is in my opinion, one of the single best bands making music right now. Their last album Ants From Up There is considered by many to be the best album of the decade so far. It’s up there for me, I think it’s front to bottom a perfect record. Which is why fans of the band were disappointed to hear lead singer of the group Issac Woods left the band after that album’s release. The interesting new direction the band was taking, having not a single lead singer but multiple singers Hyde, Kershaw and Ellery was one that was going to completely change the dynamic of this band and their distinct sound. Especially since all of the new singers are female vs Issac, his baritone voice was a staple for the bands distinct sound. They first experimented with their new sound in a live album released in 2023 and I was relived to hear that they still sounded great. I think there’s an argument to make that the band could have easily pulled a Joy Division to New Order change of identity- but they didn’t. This is their band no matter who’s in charge of the vocals. This version of the band is a lot different than the Issac Wood iteration. If anything, the songs sound a lot prettier now. For some fans, this means it sounds a lot more conventional and less interesting but I disagree. This album in particular, is so lush in atmosphere and dynamic in sound. The tracks are long and epic in scope. There’s so much instrumentation going on in every song and it’s all paced and produced to perfection. They haven’t lost a beat and if anything, going this drastically in a different direction was probably a smart move for the band. If you can’t beat the legacy their last album has already cemented in culture, it’s time to define a a new sound. They did this with flying colors. The best track on the album is besties, the lead single. This is a cute, sunshiny tune about making music and being friends and the memories attached when you make art. It’s such a nice little song I love a lot.
5. Private Music - Deftones
2025 was the year I finally fully got into the band Deftones. I’ve heard about this band for years and had listened to a few of their albums and enjoyed them overall but there was something there that didn’t entirely click with me until this year. I sometimes struggle to connect with metal music because of the monotony of sound at times, even if I acknowledge the complete and total triumph it is as a musical genre. I can’t even imagine playing a full show at that intensity. Deftones is an interesting band though - because some metal heads would tell you they are a child’s first metal band because they are a bit more melodic than several of their contemporaries. Deftones seres not only as nu metal, but in extension has a lot of elements of shoegaze attached as well, which makes them one of the more sonically interesting bands making music right now. Private Music in my opinion is among their best albums to date. This album is a bit more stripped down from their usual loud bombastic sensibilities, however goes a lot harder than an album like their release Gore that fans are still divided on to this day. This album functions more like a hard rock album and I love it for that. The album perfectly articulates angst for about anything you could have angst about and it’s one I can see resonating for a lot of people looking to release their anger. My favorite track on the album is one of the best songs of 2025 in my opinion, I think about you all of the time, one of the most reflective songs of last year. A song that perfectly distillates the pure heartbreak that longing can bring on someone that still winds up being an excellent rock song to jam out to. It’s an all timer in the Deftones discography.
4. The Crux - Djo
It’s just Joe Keery’s world and we are just living in it. It is insane to see how his career has taken off within the last few years, but especially this year. With Stranger Things ending, wrapping up his role as fan favorite character Steve Harrington and that helping propel his song End of Beginning off his last album to become a number one hit in the country. I’m just happy for the guy. He seems like a really nice dude who advocates for the right things and keeps most of his personal life to himself. Djo has been a music project I’ve followed for a while since I’ve been a big fan of the show Stranger Things and really enjoyed his last two albums. I think his newest album, The Crux, is his best album to date. This album reminded me a bit of the last few Lemon Twigs albums. He is harkening back to a Beach Boys sound here, but it also reminds me a bit of the cult classic rock band Jellyfish. The songs on this album are so well produced and have so many layers behind them and the lyrics being about Joe Kerry’s own coming of age story hanging out with his cast and crew and discovering his own values among the Hollywood system I think makes this album feel more poignant than what a lot of his contemporaries are putting out. This is one I revisited a lot over the last year, it’s so easy to listen to but that doesn’t make it any the less an impressive feat of songwriting and production. The best song on the album in my opinion is Potion, a song that would fit perfectly on an album like Rumors by Fleetwood Mac, which is maybe the biggest compliment I could give a song.
3. Equus Caballus - Men I Trust
Equus Caballus is the best Men I Trust album they have ever released. I have loved the band for a long time (I even got the chance to see them in concert a few years ago), I find their bedroom pop sensibilities to be really engaging and they create such a rich vibe. For me, they’ve always been more of a singles band than an entire album band because their sound has always stayed in one lane. With Equus Callabus the band expands their sound without loosing their identity. This album feels like it takes that indie pop and mixes a lot more heavy synths into it and incredibly hooky baselines. Several songs on this album got suck in my head after I listened to it. This led Men I Trust to be one of my most listened to artists last year. The song on the album Come Back Down might very well be my song of the year. It was my most listened to song on my Spotify Wrapped in 2025. The song feels like cruising late at night in the Summer, rolling down the windows in your car and breathing in the warm air. It’s a mixture of yacht rock production akin to The Doobie Brothers and heavenly vocals you would hear on a Cranberries song. It’s brilliant and well worth the listen.
2. Vanisher, Horizon Scraper - Quadeca
Quadeca is one of the most unique musical artists working today. Originating as a YouTube music reviewer, he expanded to becoming a YouTube rapper, with at first mixed results. The man has just continued to improve his craft and defy the expectations of his audience. Vanisher, Horizon Scraper is not only experimental hip hop, it’s a folk album, it’s art pop and even at times it’s electronic. This album is unlike anything I’ve heard before and it stayed with me the whole year. I really loved his mixtape from 2024, Scrapyard and included it in my albums of the year that year. I believe he built what he learned from his previous projects and created his opus here. This is a concept album and the album does weave together a really cinematic soundscape of being stuck on an island and all you have are your thoughts. At times, the album reminded me of The Gorillaz Plastic Beach album- which is one of my all time favorite records so that’s the highest compliment I can give something. A lot of songs stood out to me. Dancing Without Moving is a gorgeous and sweeping track that stays true to Quadeca’s R&B roots, Monday and Godstained are incredible folkish songs that are produced to perfection but have a progressive edge to them that make them stand out from your typical millennial burger tune. For my favorite track, I have to go with Forgone because it is one of the only songs from 2025 (or in recent memory) to get me emotional. It’s a powerful seven minute ballad that feels like every all encompassing thought you’ve ever had coming to you at once. It’s a miracle of a song on one of the best albums of last year.
1. Getting Killed - Geese
Getting Killed by Geese was the big indie hit of the year and a predictable number one choice, but seeing this band blow up to astronomical heights was a highlight of 2025. Their last album, 3D Country, is one of my favorite albums of the decade and this was an amazing follow up. Frontman Cameron Winter in this album is able to reinvent what rock sounds like in the 2020’s. He takes some of the post punk sensibilities of a band like Talking Heads with a gnarly and rustic country sound that makes for a bombastic listening experience. This album is bold, in your face and engaging all the way through. It will cement it’s way into the mu indie core music scene forever and it deserves all the acclaim it’s gotten. The best song on the album in my opinion ended up being the biggest hit from it, Au Pays du Cocaine. This is a lush and gorgeous song that breaks up some of the harsher sounds presented earlier in the album, creating a perfect song to listen to on the beach or when you are sailing. It’s a song that in simply feels like freedom.
That is my very late list of my favorite albums of 2025! What are some of yours? Comment below and let me know!