As a whole, 2025 as a year in music was wild, eclectic, capricious, and... pretty good. This was a rough 12 months for a lot of people, but if your Spotify or Tidal account was paid up, music was as reliable an outlet as ever. As always, my annual best-of list came down to the wire, and whittling 20 pop/rock and 10 jazz albums proved more difficult than usual. I'll try to be more finicky in '26.
BEST POP/ROCK ALBUMS
1. Getting Killed, Geese. Aspiring to be Brooklyn's answer to Radiohead, morose frontman Cameron Winter quite possibly cobbled together a contemporary Kid A *and* Amnesiac. The Thom Yorke comparison (or Ian McCulloch, for that matter) is only somewhat unfair; this third album is Geese at their most artsy and unhinged. Witty and cryptic lyrics alternate on ebullient melodies and earworm hooks.
2. Virgin, Lorde. Each of Ella's previous albums were inspired by a drug; Pure Heroine was an unsubtle pun, Melodrama was fueled by Ecstasy, Solar Power was recorded in a haze of cannabis. Virgin is Lorde at her most sober so to speak, looking inward with eyes wide open. Her lyrics are intimate and bluntly honest; the onetime teen prodigy is pushing 30 and realizing she doesn't have all the answers.
3. moisturizer, Wet Leg. Arguably this year's biggest revelation was the arrival of Rhian Teasdale as a songwriter and frontwoman. Where their great first album was a showcase for Rhian and collaborator Hester Chambers, Chambers (and her well-documented stage fright) took a backseat to Teasdale's bravado. The album itself is a queer love manifesto; "Catch These Fists" is a rebuke to unwarranted attention from straight guys, and "Davina McCall" is an ode to... um, British TV star Davina McCall.
4. Pirouette, Model/Actriz
5. Phonetics On And On, Horsegirl
6. Sinister Gift, Panda Bear
7. Thee Black Boltz, Tunde Adebimpe
8. Only Dust Remains, Backxwash
9. For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), Japanese Breakfast
10. Perverts, Ethel Cain. Either you "get" the southern gothic weirdness of Ethel or you don't. She had two releases this year, one (see below) is a spiritual prequel to her 2022 debut Farmer's Daughter, a gorgeous slowcore/shoegaze concept album about a doomed teen romance in the Bible Belt, circa 1986. Perverts, however is the more daring and challenging listen. This is a droning 90-minute opus about religious indoctrination, sexual deviation, suicidal ideations, and family trauma that mesmerizes or befuddles, depending on who you ask. I suppose I'm in the former camp, but don't say I didn't warn you.
11. Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, Ethel Cain
12. Cover The Mirrors, Ben Kweller
13. Who Let The Dogs Out, Lambrini Girls
14. Forever is a Feeling, Lucy Dacus
15. Trash Mountain, Lily Seabird
16. Forever Howlong, Black Country New Road
17. Believer, Sister Ray
18. Eusexua, FKA Twigs
19. I Quit, HAIM
20. The Scholars, Car Seat Headrest
Honorable Mentions: The Future is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed, The Armed; Lifetime, Erika de Casier; Noble And Godlike In Ruin, Deerhoof; Patience, Moonbeam, Great Grandpa; Don't Tap The Glass, Tyler the Creator; Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan, The Mountain Goats.
Best Album That Required Google Translate: LUX, Rosalia
Best Album That Unfortunately Includes a Song About Travis Kelce's Dingle: The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift
BEST JAZZ ALBUMS
1. CREAM, Kassa Overall. Jazz covers of 90s hip-hop could've been a silly novelty, but Kassa (a prolific session drummer that also raps) pays respect to the songs he grew up with and avoids sampling those songs or the samples from the original recordings. Case in point: Digable Planets’ “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” reimagined as forceful hard bop, and the title track, which implies that Wu-Tang Clan could be something to f*** wit.
2. Concentrik Quartet, Nels Cline
3. Arboresque, Artemis
4. Even Keel, Mason Razavi
5. Labyrinth II, Nicole Johänntgen
6. The Vibe, Nanami Haruta
7. Square One, The Empress
8. About Ghosts, Mary Halvorson
9. Out Late, Eric Scott Reed
10. Solace of the Mind, Amina Claudine Myers
Honorable Mentions: Just, Billy Hart Quartet; Open Up Your Senses, Tyreek McDole; Words Fall Short, Joshua Redman; Poems Never End, Tony Tixier.
Best Jazz Reissue: Cookin’ at the Queens (live), Emily Remler. A self-described nice Jewish girl pretending to be Wes Montgomery, Remler left a fairly small discography prior to her death in 1990. Thirty-five years after Remler's passing, her dearth of live releases was rectified with this charming double disc set, capturing her guitar virtuosity live in Las Vegas in two sets, recorded four years apart.
BEST SINGLES
"Like a Woman," Lady Blackbird
"Get Dumber," PUP feat. Jeff Rosenstock
"Bethany," Craig Finn
"Tyrants," Sam Fender
"Balcony," Teen Jesus And The Jean Teasers
"Lover," Richard Ashcroft
"This is the Killer Speaking," The Last Dinner Party
"Mind Loaded," Blood Orange feat. Caroline Polachek, Lorde, Mustafa
"Lippy," Joy Orbison
"Horses," Jesse Welles
"Buddies On the Blackboard," Animal Collective
"Old Tape," Lucius
"Guess I'm Falling In Love," Spoon
“Children Of The Baked Potato,” Thundercat and Remi Wolf
"New to the Office," Hadda Be
"Allnighter," Twen
"Keep On," Lettuce
"7th Floor," Allie X
"Roulette," The Webstirs
"Rivers Run Red," The New Eves
BEST VIDEOS
1. "Denial is a River," Doechii. This delightful, surreal throwback to 90s sitcoms (with debts to "Too Many Cooks" and A24) dropped right after New Year's.
2. "Stay In Your Lane," Courtney Barnett. Alex Ross Perry of "Pavements" fame directed this bloody good clip set in a mental hospital.
3. "Party 4 U," Charli XCX. I've had birthday parties like this.
4. "No Front Teeth," Perfume Genius feat. Aldous Harding. Now *that's* my idea of a party!
5. "Abracadabra," Lady Gaga. I'm a sucker for top-tier choreography and cinematography, but when you put both together...
6. "Love," OK Go. Done with mirrors, and not in the Aerosmith fashion. I guess if this Chicago quartet has a new album out (Ancient Possible was their first since 2014) they're going to pop up on this list.
7. "Gethsemane," Car Seat Headrest. A little bit Ingmar Bergman, a smidge of Robert Eggers, a lot of synthy anguish in this chilling tale of resurrection.
8. "She is Afraid," Motion City Soundtrack. Ooh, a "Severance" pastiche!
9. "T-Shirt," David Byrne. That's an impressive collection.
10. "Who Laughs Last?" Lord Huron feat. Kristen Stewart. A cool noir with a propulsive beat, Stewart tells a creepy anecdote before Ben Schneider unveils the chorus.
Your thoughts?
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