The 100 Best Albums of 2025

Culture-shifting blockbusters, return-to-form statements, brilliant debuts, and more

The music world refused to stand still in 2025. This wasn’t a year for playing it safe. Across the globe and all over the stylistic map, music kept mutating in the weirdest, wildest ways. The artists behind the year’s best albums were taking big swings, not repeating past successes. Lady Gaga brought the mayhem for her most ambitious record in years. Rosalía made her deeply personal statement about sexual and spiritual transcendence. Bad Bunny traveled through time and space, from San Juan to Nuevayol. Pop visionaries like FKA Twigs and Taylor Swift made bold new moves.

Our list has everything from upstart country to Afropop to shoegaze to flamenco. We’ve got brash young indie bands like Geese and Lifeguard; we’ve got fearless rock storytelling from Wednesday and Craig Finn; we’ve got the underground rap poetics of Billy Woods and the radical clubland beats of Pink Pantheress. Some of these artists are rookies, some are legends — the 86-year-old soul queen Mavis Staples rules right next to the teenage kicks of Sombr. There’s comeback kids like Justin Bieber, who rediscovered his swag. Hayley Williams made her solo move, the Clipse proved hardcore never dies, Jeff Tweedy shared his hard-won Zen wisdom, Tyler Childers raised hell. We’ve got pop ingenues from Addison Rae to Olivia Dean. We’ve got melancholy brunettes, sad women, West End girls, man’s best friends.

These albums represent all different styles and beats and genres — but this is the music that kept us moving forward all year long. And it will be reverberating after the year is done.

Photographs in illustration

Noah P Dillon; Eric Rojas; Sam Waxman; Sugar Sylla

• Fuerza Regida, ‘111Xpantia’

  Fuerza Regida’s 111Xpantia feels like the band manifesting its next chapter while still owning the space it helped shape in corridos and Mexican music. It’s a homecoming to the group’s classic sound, but instead of pulling a full sonic pivot as on 2024’s Pero No Te Enamores, the musicians build on what already works. As JOP told Rolling Stone, “We tried to stick to the roots, but make that shit elevated.” And they did. Tracks like “Por Esos Ojos” and “Tu Sancho” hit with OG fans while pulling in a new wave of listeners. 111Xpantia is the record that solidified the Mexican American band as true stars. —T.M.

• Lola Young, ‘I’m Only F**king Myself’

  Lola Young isn’t one for pleasantries. “I just wanna fuck guys who don’t like me they don’t mind/Saying goodbye,” the rasp-voiced South Londoner declares on “F**k Everyone,” the woozy, bratty first song on her clamorous third album. Lines like that — where bravado and insecurity are locked in an endless battle of witticisms and pointed observations — abound on I’m Only F**king Myself, an unflinching look at disorder that uses the fuzzed-out riffs and goopy choruses of golden-age alt-rock to cushion, but not blunt, Young’s ripped-from-the-text-bubbles lyrics. —M. Johnston

• Not for Radio, ‘Melt’

  María Zardoya’s namesake band the Marías had a breakout 18-month stretch leading to a Best New Artist Grammy nomination. Zardoya’s first solo effort is dreamier and more intimate than her band’s jazz-tinged chill pop, with fuzzy guitars gathering around her spectral voice like gray-day cloud cover. On “Back to You,” her simply stated hope for reconciliation is cushioned by stormy pianos; “Not the Only One” has a gently psychedelic vibe, adding a hazy dimension to Zardoya’s negotiations of her heart’s boundaries. —M. Johnston

• Oklou, ‘Choke Enough’

  The debut album from avant-pop favorite Oklou is steeped in bleepy-bloop romanticism. The French musician (real name Marylou Mayniel) does wondrous things with synth loops and her plucked-from-the-heavens vocals, gesturing to myriad realms of electronic and pop music, as much as her classical training and regional French folklore. The result is a wonderland that often feels pixelated and impressionistic but never far from the natural world. Oklou reaches crystalline peaks on closer “Blade Bird” and “Take Me By the Hand,” a duet with Drain Gang’s Bladee that confronts uncertainty and anxiety with the clarity of touch. —Jon Blistein

• Guitarricadelafuente, ‘Spanish Leather’

  The latest from Álvaro Lafuente Calvo, who records as Guitarricadelafuente, is his most ambitious work yet. Moving away from the traditional sounds and acoustic-based influences of his earlier work, the 28-year-old Spaniard leans into pop hooks and dance-music-inspired textures, interspersed with gorgeous piano ballads like “Puerta del Sol.” “It’s about leaving the village behind,” the singer told Rolling Stone earlier this year, “and heading to the city to discover new things, to discover yourself.” The result is one of the most thrilling and adventurous records of the year. —J. Bernstein 

• Little Simz, ‘Lotus’

  British rapper Little Simz’s sixth album and first after a public split with longtime producer Inflo feels more like living in her skin than any project she’s done before. All of the album’s instrumentals are crisp, careful, and raw, whether they’re the rugged rock of “Thief” and “Flood,” the jazzy R&B of “Lonely” and “Free,” the softly orchestral lament of “Hallow” or the vintage Afrobeat of “Lion,” and her hard-earned sense of self-worth courses through every song. In the aftermath of an imploded childhood friendship, Lotus is a rigorous ode to the trauma and wisdom of truly growing up. —M.C.

• Zara Larsson, ‘Midnight Sun’

  Hailing from pop mecca Sweden, Zara Larsson wanted to celebrate the sun-drenched energy of a summer in her home country. Her fifth album traffics in high-energy dance-pop joy as she waxes poetic through tender scenes of short sundresses, late-night phone calls, and handprints left on her ass. The LP is most interesting when she’s a little naughtier; she threatens slashed tires and crashed cars over the stomp beat of “Pretty Ugly,” and “The Ambition” pulls a few pages from Charli XCX’s Brat. Those messier moments are where Larsson truly comes alive. —Brittany Spanos

• Japanese Breakfast, ‘For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)’

  Michelle Zauner’s fourth record may thrum with melancholy, but it’s way more than just “sad girl music.” For Melancholy Brunettes is an evolution of everything she’s done before — merging imagery both mythic and mundane with A-class instrumentation. Zauner grapples with the fickle nature of the muse — whether you’re a long-ago poet or a small-town strummer; see “Orlando in Love,” a Greek legend of a track that tells the tale of the titular poet and the sirens that drag him down. This LP is a folk tale, a small-town barroom yarn, a gothic novel, and a ghost story, all in one. —Brenna Ehrlich

• Nourished by Time, ‘The Passionate Ones’

  Marcus Brown is the sly R&B auteur who goes by Nourished by Time, from Brooklyn via Baltimore and Berklee. He turned heads in 2023 with his debut, Erotic Probiotic 2, but he aims even higher with the ambitiously high-strung futuristic soul of The Passionate Ones. It’s playful yet elegiac, as in the house beats of “9 2 5,” hyped up into an obsessive portrait of getting eaten alive by your day job, or the sped-up Labi Siffre vocal chirp that hooks the glam rock “Max Potential.” In “Baby Baby,” he teams up with British rapper Tony Bontana to shred capitalism. —R.S.

• Pulp, ‘More’

  It’s been almost a quarter century since Pulp’s last album, but the Sheffield, England, band is back. On More, Jarvis Cocker still embodies a raffish, witty cool that inspires varying degrees of aspirationalism and envy. Songs like the triumphant “Got to Have Love” possess a slow-burning grandeur that is made to send festival crowds into a frenzy, even as their arrangements feel more homespun than the orchestral flourishes of the band’s Nineties work. The results should give their generational cohort a glimpse of how getting older can be a chance to grab brilliance once again. —M. Johnston

• Charley Crockett, ‘Dollar a Day’

  Cowboy singer Charley Crockett is wildly prolific: Over the past decade, he’s released a whopping 15 albums. He finally made his best one yet with Dollar a Day, his second album with producer Shooter Jennings. The LP plays like a mashup between a soundtrack to a spaghetti western and one for a 1970s crime film, as Crockett retells his origin story as a lean-and-mean street performer who resists being seduced by corporate Nashville. “Crucified Son” is a high-water mark — “I was born the lucky one,” he declares  — while “Tennessee Quick Cash” proves Crockett knows how to boogie. —J.H

• Horsegirl, ‘Phonetics On and On’

  After making some of the most righteous guitar noise since Sonic Youth split up on their 2022 debut, the Chicago trio graduate to subtler sounds and softer feelings on album two. Phonetics On and On opens up a whole new world for this band with its playful, minimalist studio approach (assisted by producer Cate Le Bon, who knows a thing or two about that). Trading howling feedback for tender-hearted ballads like “Frontrunner” and ambivalent singalongs like “I Can’t Stand to See You,” it feels like an instant contender for any list of great albums where a loud band mellows out. —S.V.L.

• Jim Legxacy, ‘Black British Music’

  U.K.-based musician Jim Legxacy’s talents lie in his nimble sense of songcraft. Take the cheekily titled “I Just Banged a Snus in Canada Water,” from his mixtape Black British Music. He’s effectively pumping himself up in the mirror, growling the hook, “I can’t let them do me like they did me as a kid,” which itself manages to carry within it a world of meaning. Black British Music expresses something deeply personal. Like Nas’s Illmatic, it paints a portrait of a young artist as informed by their heart as their surroundings. “There’s always gonna be mud,” he says on “Context,” but his music is remarkably hopeful. —J.I.

• Amaarae, ‘Black Star’

  On her third album, boundary-busting singer Amaarae dives straight into the club. From the stalagmite synths of leadoff track “Stuck Up,” Black Star is a sweaty, lusty thrill ride with Amaarae firmly in control of the pleasure sensors — for her and for any amorous targets she might pick up. Bringing along a VVIP list of guests — among them bedroom auteur PinkPantheress, funk legend Charlie Wilson, and hyperpop visionary Bree Runway — she whirls through dance music’s past and future with bravado and bluster. —M. Johnston

• Snocaps, ‘Snocaps’

  The first release by Snocaps — Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and twin sister Allison Crutchfield of Swearin’  — feels like a classic indie-rock record. “Brand New City” takes flight like vintage Guided by Voices, “Cherry Hard Candy” is a mid-tempo chugger that spits clipped couplets breathlessly, and “Avalanche” lands partway between the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” and the La’s “There She Goes.”  Blood harmonies alone would be reason enough to cheer this surprise debut, but the push and pull of styles here between two artists makes Snocaps such an especially compelling outfit. —Will Hermes

• Haim, ‘I Quit’

  Haim declared “single-girl summer” and kicked it off with I Quit, a cohesive, cathartic concept record on breakups and the hard-won independence you earn from them. “I’ll do whatever I want/I’ll see who I wanna see/I’ll fuck off whenever I want/I’ll be whatever I need,” Danielle sings on “Gone.” They back up that freedom with 15 songs full of effortless pop-rock scholarship. I Quit marks the band’s first album without co-producer Ariel Rechtshaid, Danielle’s former partner of several years. But what they prove here is that they never really needed anyone else besides themselves. —A.M.

• Karol G, ‘Tropicoqueta’

  Where exactly does an artist go after globe-spanning, stadium-size, record-shattering success? Colombian superstar Karol G turned inward. She began to think about all of the music that had inspired her childhood — baroque Eighties ballads, soaring vallenatos, merengue from dance parties in family living rooms in Medellin. What ended up pouring out of her was a bright, orange-hued compendium of 20 songs, all pulling from different parts of Latin-pop history — with an emphasis on the pop part. What’s accomplished here is carefree and breezy, interested in accessibility and relatability, stretching out like a mosaic of past and present. —Julyssa Lopez

• Lily Allen, ‘West End Girl’

  Rolling Stone declared Lily Allen’s West End Girl the “most brutal album of the year,” due to its masterful portrayal of modern love and loss amid revelations of butt plugs, condoms, and a husband who is quite possibly a sex addict — all set against honeyed pop scores. Here we find Allen, nearly 20 years after her debut, Alright, Still, delivering her most ruthless music yet, an odyssey of betrayal and heartbreak, a work where musical storytelling is laid out in its barest and sharpest form. —Charisma Madarang

• Cameron Winter, ‘Heavy Metal’

  Geese frontman Cameron Winter released his sleeper debut in late 2024, about nine months before his band’s excellent Getting Killed became one of the year’s breakout rock albums. On Heavy Metal, he shows a Harry Nilsson-esque knack for coaxing the weird from the poignant, and vice versa. The Seventies pop-rock palette clatters as it grooves, wobbles as it swoons, while Winter flexes his baritone from strung out and weary to high-wire alive. He courts destruction and love, disillusionment and transcendence, with awe, sincerity, incredulity, and suspicion. —J. Blistein

• Turnstile, ‘Never Enough’

  The Baltimore hardcore band’s much-anticipated follow-up to their massive 2021 LP, Glow On, is like a mysterious gallery — not so much a collection of tracks but a series of impressions that are more about a feeling than a message. “Dull,” produced in part by hyperpop innovator A.G. Cook, sounds like a boxing match, while the standout “Sunshower” is like a temper tantrum in a rainstorm, and the Eighties-tinged “Seein’ Stars” undulates like a late-night club track with almost indistinguishable additional vocals from Hynes and Hayley Williams. It’s a haunting collection that’s worth repeat visits. —B.E.

• Lorde, ‘Virgin’

  In some ways, Virgin sees Lorde return to the steely, electronic world of dance-forward synth-pop she explored on her 2017 classic, Melodrama, but the production here is much more sparse than her sophomore effort. There’s no party to emulate here (either to enjoy or escape from); it’s just Lorde’s signature lower register, delivering truth bombs one after the other, on tough topics from generational trauma to gender identity to body imaging. She sounds unleashed and fully free — one step closer to the person she wants to be. —Maya Georgi

• Jennie, ‘Ruby’

  The latest in this year’s series of solo projects from Blackpink’s four members, the quick-moving Ruby leans heavily into the ideas that dominated R&B-leaning pop in the 2000s and ’10s, sometimes updating them in intriguing fashion. If there’s any artist whose specter hangs over the album, it’s Rihanna. Not only does Jennie have an impressive ability to command the center of candy-coated pop-R&B, there are some moments that feel like if not direct at least second-generation descendants of the hazy introspection shown by the Barbadian mogul on her 2016 classic, Anti. —M.Johnston

• Jeff Tweedy, ‘Twilight Override’

  Wilco’s prolific frontman has described this triple LP as his humble effort to push back against the overwhelming darkness of life in the 2020s. Jeff Tweedy spends much of the album in a warm, comfortable folk-rock mode that he’s spent decades honing; if you’re looking for an overarching idea that connects all these songs, you might find it in “Feel Free,” where he shares some of the wisdom he’s accrued over the years in a series of mantra-like verses. Taken together, these 30 tracks amplify and enrich each other, adding up to a whopper of an album that rewards the time you spend with it. —S.V.L. 

• Sarz, ‘Protect Sarz at All Costs’

  Nigerian producer Sarz’s debut album comes nearly two decades into his career, six years after he made a name for himself with his and WurlD’s alté EP I Love Girls With Trobul and four years after his deliciously inescapable Afrobeats anthem “Monalisa” with Lojay on vocals. You’d think Sarz would have capitalized on any of these moments with a full-length project, but Protect Sarz at All Costs makes a case for perfection being unrushed. Each track is rich and sumptuous, bringing the best out of a diverse, elite cast of 17 collaborators (including Wizkid, Shallipopi, and Skillibeng) while uniting them under Sarz’s unique vision. —M.C.

• Eric Church, ‘Evangeline vs. the Machine’

  Eric Church has never paid much mind to fulfilling expectations, and instead of shying away from the gospel sounds he debuted at the country fest Stagecoach in 2024, he brought the choir with him into the studio and doubled down with orchestral strings and horns. The result is a record that is both dazzling and challenging, upending the idea of what country music is — or at least the type of country music that first made Church a Nashville star. It is also a masterwork, furthering cementing Church’s legacy as a try-anything artist, one with more in common with David Bowie or Bob Dylan than his Nashville peers. —J.H.

• Florence + the Machine, ‘Everybody Scream’

  Florence Welch began working on Everybody Scream after experiencing an ectopic pregnancy, a complication that can be life threatening. She has always had a flair for the gothic, but the specter of death hangs over the LP as brightly as sunlight. Her poetry and the music around it dig fully into clamor and chaos. The fractured sea chantey “Kraken” and the frantically ­fluttering “Witch Dance” feel on the verge of fraying, while the body-horror elegy “Drink Deep” rises from a primordial muck. The result is a dazzlingly thundering statement of finding catharsis by getting loud. —M. Johnston

• Teyana Taylor, ‘Escape Room’

  This is Teyana Taylor’s most vulnerable work yet. Escape Room powerfully chronicles the process of navigating grief, trauma, acceptance, and new beginnings. “Bed of Roses” is the kind of forward-looking R&B Taylor is known for, where the promise of new love shines through. But Escape Room isn’t about Taylor running away from her hurt, but rather toward it. It’s a meditation of what liberation can be in love and life, challenging listeners to understand that healing — be it heartbreak or bodily injury — is sometimes best done among your tight-knit community. —M. Jordan

• Pinkpantheress, ‘Fancy That’

  Pinkpantheress takes a quick spin through the club on the 20-minute Fancy That, drawing energy from turn-of-the century British bangers, and the sort of brazen sampling that made hip-hop and dance music so exciting back in the day. Basement Jaxx disco-funk stomper “Romeo” gets flipped on “Girl Like Me,” and Jaxx DNA appears elsewhere on the mixtape. Elsewhere, Fancy That chops up Jessica Simpson and Panic! at the Disco and teams Victoria Walker up with “indie-sleaze” brat the Dare on “Stateside.” The upshot is nine crispy song nuggets that don’t overstay or overshare. —W.H.  

• Jade, ‘That’s Showbiz Baby!’

  The first solo album from Jade is a fun, frothy pop record where the former member of the X Factor-formed girlband Little Mix thrills in the dance floor’s unpredictable abandon and her own power. On the sumptuous insecurity chronicle “Plastic Box,” she shows how she can easily swing from a full-throated belt into a cloud-borne coo, and on the hiccuping kiss-off “Glitch,” her upper register melds with the trap snares and keyboards surrounding it to form a glittery matrix. Throughout the album, Jade is a winking eye at the center of a giddy, hooky pop storm. —M.Johnston

• Lifeguard, ‘Ripped and Torn’

  Chicago’s Lifeguard have their own wonderfully brash power-clang guitar attack, kicking off their debut with the frantic “A Tightwire” and keeping the buzz going for 12 jagged songs in barely over a half hour, without a pause for breath. “Like You’ll Lose” is steeped in the dub-wise throb of the Raincoats, Gang of Four, or the Pop Group. You can also hear the Pacific Northwest roar of Unwound, the stick-to-the-ribs crunch of their Midwest forebears like Arcwelder, and a surprising amount of early-2000s NYC dance punk. Yet Lifeguard turn it all into their own style of craftily melodic body-slam punk hooks. —R.S.

• Justin Bieber, ‘Swag’

  If Justin Bieber was looking to answer all the “what the hell’s happening to this guy?” headlines, he couldn’t do much better than Swag, because the musical energy and imagination here is Just at his most confident. Serious question: Has he ever done as a song as appealing as “Butterflies”? A song this open-hearted, this melodic, this effusive, with a bittersweet R&B tune and pop uplift, plus a quivering guitar hook that comes straight from (of all people) the Smashing Pumpkins? Swag isn’t just Bieber out to prove he’s doing OK — he’s out to top himself. —R.S.

• Olivia Dean, ‘The Art of Loving’

  At 26, British singer-songwriter Olivia Dean doesn’t purport to have mastered the art of loving. But she is having a damn good time trying. On “Nice to Each Other,” lush harmonies cushion the blow of her call to keep things casual, and her impenetrable confidence makes an undeniable hit out of “Man I Need,” where she quips, “I kinda like it when you call me wonderful.” Dean’s star power is radiant and fueled by more than just charisma. The Art of Loving finds its strength in pockets of restraint where Dean’s more melancholic moments put down roots. —L.P.

• Carter Faith, ‘Cherry Valley’

  North Carolina native Carter Faith created her own utopia on Cherry Valley, one of the best country debuts in recent memory. Over 15 tracks, the 25-year-old mixes traditional country with countrypolitan gloss and a dash of Nineties twang. The results are exhilarating, especially the wonderfully spiraling “If I Had Never Lost My Mind…,” with its massive vocal crescendo, and the smoldering “Betty,” about a man-stealing modern-day “Jolene.” Faith isn’t afraid to push boundaries: “Sex, Drugs & Country Music” is a portrait of a woman who knows exactly who she is and where she’s headed. —J.H

• Billy Woods, ‘Golliwog’

  Billy Woods rose out of the Brooklyn rap underground as a virtuoso poet, one of hip-hop’s most independent and brilliant minds over the past two decades. On Golliwog, he goes for an album full of horror stories. It’s a densely poetic, totally masterful tour de force where Woods lets his expansive imagination run loose in a dystopia where the real-life monsters are scarier than anything he could invent. Golliwog is a horror show that demands — and replays — close attention. But it’s an album that offers no comfort — for Woods, the monsters are everywhere, and survival means keeping on your toes. —R.S.

• Silvana Estrada, ‘Vendrán Suaves Lluvias’

  For her second album, 28-year-old Mexican singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada focused intensely on the formal beauty of her melodies, enlisting Arcade Fire arranger Owen Pallett for exquisite orchestrations featuring winds and strings. The result is a self-produced album of extraordinary tenderness that evokes the trova ethos of such Latin giants as Silvio Rodríguez and Mercedes Sosa. On the fearless existential reckoning of “Un Rayo De Luz,” the fairy-tale whistling of “Como Un Pájaro,” and the wistful contours of “Dime,” Estrada combines the earthy grit of a folk rebel with the glamorous luminosity of a jazz diva. —E.L. 

• Taylor Swift, ‘The Life of a Showgirl’

  With her 12th studio album, the biggest pop star in the world shoots into a fresh echelon of superstardom — and hits all her marks. From the first Fleetwood Mac-inspired drumroll and melancholy keys of “The Fate of Ophelia,” Taylor Swift and Max Martin chart a new sonic path to create a tight 12 tracks bursting with iridescent color. She’s bolder than she has been, embodying a dick-slinging music mogul in “Father Figure,” topping herself in the tortured corniness department, and closing it out contemplating her next act on the showstopping title track — proof that despite the rock on her finger, she’ll always be married to the hustle. —M.G.

• Earl Sweatshirt, ‘Live Laugh Love’

  Earl Sweatshirt has become known for rhyming in hushed tones over melancholy production, a sound that’s birthed an entire wing of like-minded indie rappers. But that’s just one part of his artistic arsenal. On his latest album, Sweatshirt proposes that sometimes rap superiority can just be about a strong pen and the power of language, breakthroughs, and life lessons can be as resonant as anthemic hooks and slogans, and it can all happen over tailor-made beats that are indifferent to mass appeal. Live Laugh Love is the kind of rap mastery that shuns maximalism for pristine, unadorned poetics. —A.G.

• Sabrina Carpenter, ‘Man’s Best Friend’

  With Sabrina Carpenter’s innuendo-laden wit at the helm, her seventh album zeroes in on the updated Seventies pastiche that worked so well on hits like “Espresso” and “Taste.” She’s a little bit ABBA and a lotta bit Dolly: The Pennsylvania native hits a charming Southern twang over swathes of synths, airy guitar riffs and funky, nu disco beats. Her new songs are united in their grooviness as Carpenter’s heartbreak and disappointment in her male options take her on a thoroughly modern tour of dating, embracing, and then flipping the script on the humiliation ritual that is being a woman who dates men. —B.S.

• Addison Rae, ‘Addison’

  When Addison Rae was ascending on TikTok with viral dances and beauty deals, the millions that followed her may have never anticipated where she would be five years later. But Rae has become an expert at reminding people to expect the unexpected. Her self-titled debut is energetic and inventive, a true pop fan’s pop album. With touches of Ray of Light Madonna and In the Zone Britney Spears, Addison is meant to get you moving. But it’s the moments she lets you in that help the album shine more brightly, like the nods to family discord and anxiety that peek out of “Times Like These” and “Headphones On.” —B.S.

• FKA Twigs, ‘EUSEXUA’

  Throughout the unpredictable Eusexua, FKA Twigs disappears into the deepest corners of the club world. She mashes up techno beats, house production, and unforgiving industrial tones, creating a space that she’s described as “so euphoric” that one could “transcend human form.” The album is at its most compelling during its weirder turns, feeling more like it’s aiming to be mixed into sets at the Panorama Bar in Berghain than finding streaming hits. The focus is complete freedom and impulse. She recharges and transforms, becoming stronger and at times even unrecognizable. —J.L.

• Playboi Carti, ‘Music’

  The Atlanta rapper’s 2020 album, Whole Lotta Red, is a foundational text for dozens if not hundreds of extremely online acts. With Music, Playboi Carti seems decidedly aware of his potential as a generational talent. There are a handful of moments where synthesized washes burble and soar, the net effect of arena lights splashing onto a crowd of thousands. As Carti stands on the mountaintop, he finds himself looking back at his journey as well as admiring the view and puzzling over his inevitable descent. Even when he slips into an uninspired chant or exhausts with his monomaniacal focus on drugs, women, cars, and taunting opps, he still magnetizes as a unique pop star. —M.R

• Hayley Williams, ‘Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party’

  Hayley Williams surprise-released Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party this summer after she initially uploaded the collection of songs on her website via an old-school web player. But if the rollout was a little loose, the album is her most focused music yet. Never has she sounded more certain or free — taking sonic influence from anything from Phoenix to TLC. “You were at my wedding … You could’ve told me not to do it,” she shouts on “Parachute.” That kind of romantic trauma is a theme throughout the record, but Williams emerges ready for a new life, where the possibilities are endless. —M.G.

• Wednesday, ‘Bleeds’

  “You sent my nudes around/I never yelled at you about it ’cause you died,” Karly Hartzman sings on ‘Townies,” delivering one of many startlingly great lines on Wednesday’s sixth album. Bleeds still contains elements of the North Carolina band’s original fuzzy, feral shoegaze sound, but there’s also sublime creek rock, like the beautiful banger “Wound Up Here (By Holding On),” and the honeyed ballad “Elderberry Wine.” These shifting sonic landscapes, combined with Hartzman’s fearless, razor-sharp lyrics, make for a wild Southern gothic odyssey — one you’ll willingly take again and again, regardless of how dark it gets. —A.M.

• Tyler Childers, ‘Snipe Hunter’

  Tyler Childers has been preaching his righteous Kentucky gospel for 10 years, and the Rick Rubin-produced Snipe Hunter triples down on the trailblazing he’s known for. He sings about hunting and Hindu scripture while name-checking songs by everyone from Cyndi Lauper to Stephen Foster and exploring new sonic territory like garage rock to Phil Spector pop. There’s a riff about koala STDs on “Down Under,” and Hare Krishna chants open the Scottish folk-inspired ballad “Tom Cat and a Dandy.” Snipe Hunter makes every risk feel natural, establishing Childers as arguably the most visionary artist in country music today. —J. Bernstein

• Clipse, ‘Let God Sort Em Out’

  In the first decade of the 2000s, there were few hip-hop acts with standards as exacting as the Clipse. Their first album since 2009 shows that Pusha T and Malice are still the ice-cold lyrical kingpins you remember. “P.O.V.” is a showcase for their finest luxury-car wordplay (“The only Audi here is driven by my au pair”); “EBITDA” makes a memorable hook out of the biz-school term for “earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization”; “F.I.C.O.,” as in credit scores, recounts high-stakes turnpike trips vividly enough to send a chill up your spine. The songs that aren’t named after acronyms are just as excellent. —S.V.L.

• Geese, ‘Getting Killed’

  The idea of rock music being “taken in a new direction” seems like a pretty strained concept in 2025. But then here come Geese with their incredibly original third album, taking rock music apart and jamming it back together again into something bracing and anxious and smilingly strange. Every song teems with unsettled discovery — from the warped soft-rock slow dance “Cobra” to the clattering, hymn-like luster of “Taxes” to the gut-punch boogie of “Bow Down.” “You can be free,” Cameron Winter moans without a hint of irony. If you can be as free as these guys, you’re doing pretty great. —J.D.

• Dijon, ‘Baby’

  Dijon’s music has elastic relationship to time and place, surfing between eras, genres, and moods, creating something as kaleidoscopic as it is familiar. Throughout his second album, fragments of sounds — fiery ad-libs, golden age hip-hop samples, whizzing, inverted vocal riffs — jut out like beams of light piercing through the pitch black of night. Baby is indeed best described by that all-encompassing word, experimental, but Dijon can occupy a space closer to traditional R&B too, concluding “Kindalove” with a thematic summation: “When I need it you shock me with your love!” he belts, having just done the same to us. —J.I.

• Rosalía, ‘Lux’

  Rosalía has proven herself to be pop’s most provocative chaos agent, and Lux sounds like absolutely nothing else in music right now. Her irreverence is what makes the album such a shock to the system — she’s drawing from the greats but going for Mozart with baddie energy, Bach with a blunt in the mouth. Ultimately, the album succeeds because every song is deeply thought out and wildly heartfelt, tying back to heady ideas of what the hell we’re all doing here. She contends with pain and loss, anger and grief, sex and desire, love and worship, while trying to get a better understanding of who she is, the way she loves, and the spiritual forces that move her. —J.L.

• Lady Gaga, ‘Mayhem’

  In the lead-up to Lady Gaga’s latest album, Mayhem, there was a lot of talk about Gaga returning to her roots. For Little Monsters, it had been too long. Gaga feels like her most authentic self from start to finish on this album, as she embraces — and evolves — her core sounds. On one of the most sonically ambitious and diverse albums of her career, she combines Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie, Prince, and her Fame Monster-era self. The result is the strongest pop album of the year. —B.S.

• Bad Bunny, ‘Debí Tirar Más Fotos’

  On his sixth album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, Bad Bunny brings listeners along for his triumphant homecoming with 17 songs that traverse Puerto Rico’s rich kaleidoscope of genres. It’s homegrown, jubilant, and fresh as Benito takes the best moments from Un Verano Sin Ti and pushes the limits of his continuously experimental sound into the unchartered territory of Puerto Rican folk music and salsa. Despite its hyper-specific cultural focus, or maybe because of it, Debí Tirar Más Fotos conquered 2025. It could be heard on the streets of New York, San Juan, and beyond — and helped Bad Bunny make history. The star became the first to host a residency at Puerto Rico’s El Choli, and he will bring the No Quiero Ir De Aqui Tour to the global stage in 2026, stopping to headline the Super Bowl halftime show and maybe even pick up one of the six Grammy nominations he’s up for along the way. The album and its dominance this year are a testament of where unwavering Borican pride can take Bad Bunny. —M.G.