Best Albums of 2025: #45-31

First of three posts.

Somehow I ended up with three posts worth of best albums of the year. This is the first one, and we’ll count down the other two over the next week or so.

As always with these things, I’ve tried not to get stuck in a rut with any one genre. I’ve got pop, jazz, country, ambient, metal, noise, electronica, world, dub, hip hop, rock—who knows what else? No classical this time…I’ll try to do better on that next year I guess.

Feel free to tell me what your favorite albums of the year are in comments. Hope you find something here you hadn’t heard!

Oh, and as always, if you find my writing/curating pleasing/valuable, please consider becoming a paid contributor so I can keep on keeping on. It’s $5/month, $50/year.

45.
Waylon Jennings
Songbird

Minor Waylon from the vaults, but minor Waylon is still pretty awesome.

44.
Cryptopsy
An Insatiable Violence

Technical death metal longtimers prove they can still do the thing.

43.
Lola Young
I’m Only Fucking Myself

Insouciantly catchy pop punk, with no fucks to give but a good many fucks to say.

42.
Various Artists
Song Sung Blue (Music From the Motion Picture)

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson’s versions of Neil Diamond classics show that slightly ragged, slightly amateurish schmaltz is sometimes the best schmaltz

41.
Yeule
Evangelic Girl Is A Gun

Oceanic glitched out shoegazey alternapop.

40.
Julien Baker and Torres
Send A Prayer My Way

Indie rockers embrace their mutual love of folk and country for a set of loosely intense and/or intensely loose songs about queer love, queer memory, queer regret and heartbreaking harmonies.

39.
Henry Canyons & Fresh Kills
Educated Guesses

“Usually on the move like a luge”—jazzy indie rap, which rolls like a gently off-kilter downhill conveyance system.

38.
Demi Lovato
It’s Not That Deep

Lovato adds hyperpop to her retro disco influences for an album of sexy dance-floor bangers with just enough hiccups to keep things interesting.

37.
Rachael and Vilray
West of Broadway

In the tradition of jazz musical theater standard classics, brought to you by an extremely talented songwriter and one of the most impressive jazz vocalist currently working.

36.
Songhoy Blues
Héritage

Laid back groovy acoustic Tuareg Sahel blues.

35.
Nadah El Shazly
Laini Taini

Dreamy crystaline Middle-Eastern tinged electronica.

34.
Nadja
cut

Ambient ugly pretty slabs of doom/drone/post metal sludge.

33.
Natsuki Tamura, Satoko Fujii
Ki

Classical-tinged romantic trumpet/piano jazz duets, teeteringon the verge of silence.

32.
Billy Woods
Golliwog

Deep goth hip hop, with a who’s who of indie rap lending their flow to tales of vampires, zombies, early death, eviction, and paranoia over minor key horror film production. The beats sound like they’re stalking you.

31.
The Bug vs. Ghost Dubs
Implosion

The two DJS in turn deploy spectral grimy throbbing dubs for lying on the dance floor paralyzed.