1.01.1 - "Have you seen the charts?" - My Top 10 New Albums 2025
So, this is weird.
I've spent so often starting these blogs by linking to my ongoing spreadsheet of the 1000 albums I was listening to in 2025 and now I don't have to do that any more. I did it, it's finished (kind of*), but all the old muscle memory is still there. I'm still posting the albums I'm listening to on Bluesky because I can't bring myself to let go of the ritual. I knew I had several things I wanted to write here about the experience, and I had a spare hour so I started to do that - open Blogger, find the link to the spreadsheet - wait, I don't need that any more. Do I make a grid of albums I'm listening to? Well, that doesn't make sense for what I'm writing, so what the hell do I make my header image?
It's a strange and uncomfortable new world I live in, without my musical project crutch to lean on.
I said somewhere back in the back catalogue of my writing over the past year that one of the things I most enjoy is people releasing year end lists of their favourite albums. Official, unofficial, friends and strangers alike, there's a joy to a year end list because it lets you know if there's something you've missed, something which has slipped through the cracks or you're just not in the right circles to pick it up as a recommendation organically. Some of my favourite albums have come to me through other people's year end lists, and every January I assiduously comb the length and breadth of social media to see what people loved in music in the last year.
Turns out, in 2025, I did a pretty good job of keeping on top of new releases. Finding a way to listen to over 1000 albums in a single year will really focus the mind in that regard. In fact, quick sidebar since we are here. I'm going to, as part of my multipart wrap up of this project post a bunch of stats and figures about my listening last year because if my career as a forecaster has taught me anything, it's that people cannot resist a beautifully formatted line graph and decadently detailed pivot table. However, in the interest of putting a bow on this as this is my first post of 2026, here's my final scoreboard as of December 31, 2025:-
Anyway, as I was saying, it turns out I listened to a decent amount of the new music which came out in 2025, and so for the first time - since I have this microscopic platform to do it from - I thought I would make a list of my ten favourite albums from this year in the hopes that someone else finds an album they never knew but grew to love on there, or even just some inspiration for something new to listen to in January when the dark closes in and we are all miserably back in our jobs.
So, let's start with some honourable mentions.
That feels better, if my posts don't have a tessellated album cover image I get anxious
The fact that I couldn't really narrow the list down to 10 without excluding some albums I think are great is a testament to the quality of music that got released in 2025. There are albums in the image above that might be inside my top 10 had I spent more time sitting with and listening to them repeatedly - Getting Killed by Geese**, Snocaps by Snocaps, and Constellation for the Lonely by Doves all fit into that category. I think there's a very good chance that in a vacuum, Lady Gaga's MAYHEM is the best pop album to be released in a year full of heavy hitters - I just did not listen to it with the same intensity as I did some of the others and it didn't make the top 10 as a result; Man's Best Friend was a hard cut number 11 on the list because I had my doubts about Sabrina Carpenter's longevity and the album promotion but it's such a thing of joy it blew away all my doubts. Parasites & Butterflys was my favourite new Metal album of the year and I was devastated to miss seeing them live this year because both Catherine and I were pretty sick the night of the gig and coudn't face driving a four hour round trip in the dark to see Nova Twins in Manchester. Wolf Alice's The Clearing is slowly growing on me through multiple exposures, as is mouisturiser from Wet Leg, two albums that initially I didn't like as much as their previous output but am slowly growing to appreciate the newer songs now I've had a chance to sit with them for a while; there's a degree of truth to that in regard to Lorde's Virgin as well, though I like it considerably better than her third album, she will always be haunted by releasing two back to back classics as her first two albums.
All of these albums are great and worth your time, they're just not my personal favourites of the year. Talking of which...
Number 10 - i quit by HAIM
What do you do when your band of sisters all go through breakups with significant partners in the same eighteen month period, one of which is also the producer of your three previous albums? Well, turns out you write an album full of devastating and angry and emotional songs about how things fall apart and how you deal with them, then put them on a record you produce yourself and you put it out into the world. It's not trying to make broader points about gender and society like Women In Music, Part III was, instead this is an album of catharsis and new beginnings, a slate of pop-country-rock diary entries which work perfectly. I saw this tour and while that shouldn't influence my thinking it's probably the difference between this album and Man's Best Friend being number 10 - there's an incredible energy to a HAIM live show that I can't recommend highly enough. In a year where a bunch of artists I like released new music, this had the potential to go in a bunch of directions (I wasn't incredibly sold on the lead single Relationships) but ended up making a solid impact on my listening this year.
One track I'd recommend to a new listener: Everybody's trying to figure me out
There's an implicit bargain associated with that relationship though, and that you have to actually listen to what gets recommended to you and give that person some feedback because that way they know they're not wasting their time or yours. I'm extremely fortunate to have cultivated a wide group of people from around the world willing to send me a message, an email, a BlueSky DM and say "I think you might like this". This network of human connection, this building of mutual interpersonal relationships is more powerful, better curated, and more likely to show you something truly unexpected which redefines your relationship with an artist than any "Discoverability Algorithm" drawn together by unfeeling machines making lowest-common-denominator recommendations. Go out, find people in your life - family, friends, internet mutuals or strangers off the street for all I care - just make sure they are people, not corporations, and say to them "give me something to listen to, and I'll do it and I'll tell you what I think". It's incredibly powerful.
Number 9 - Glory by Perfume Genius
I would never probably have listened to this album were it not for this project, I knew nothing about Perfume Genuis or their music and honestly I put this on to listen to as I found it in a list of "the best albums of 2025 so far" back in September. It immediately grabbed me within the first minute of listening, commanding attention with a haunting, sensitive vocal and an understated piano sound woven through with electronic noise which evoked Illinois era Sufjan Stevens for me. You know I hate a reductive comparison, but there's an unmistakable through-line of introspection, harmony, experimentation and deep sadness which blends into something which had me rapt from the start, and even though I didn't get to this album until December, and I was deep in the trying-to-hit-1000-album panic attacks, I was so taken by this album that I listened to it three times through in the same day just to make sure it was as good as I initially thought.
One track I'd recommend: The title track Glory might be the most beautiful two minutes in music this year.
Number 8 - Everybody Scream by Florence + The Machine
Sat in my backend dashboard of this site is a half-written article from the end of November***, just before my existential crisis about hitting 1000 albums, which is all about Florence. I'm not going to try and rehash that here, but she's an artist who, for me, has defined a significant part of my relationship with my now partner of 18 years, a creative force which is a constant companion to our time together. Now on their sixth album, Florence shows no sign of fading inspiration or a lack of righteous anger. Driven by a near death experience, a crisis of faith and a brutal honest sharing of opinions about her male counterparts in the music industry, Florence excels when she has something driving her, and this is an album of deeply powerful emotion. This isn't an album of spitting fire and rage like Lungs, or trying to reconcile love and death through loud catharsis on Ceremonials, instead Everybody Scream stalks you inexorably through it's twelve tracks, a steady, measured assault on the mediocrities we've accepted and an appeal to aspire to something different, even if that involves a leap into the unknown.
One track I'd recommend: One of the Greats builds into some of the most incisive "oh damn" lyrical flourishes of all time.
Number 7 - From The Pyre by The Last Dinner Party
I don't pay much attention to chatter about musicians, especially in the British press, but you have to wonder whether the idea of a group of young women who are art school graduates making popular music didn't give a bunch of people an easy target to be mad at. Despite the various slings and arrows aimed at them, Prelude to Ecstasy would have been on my Top 10 of 2024 if I'd written one, and an immediate follow up album, combined with relentless negative attention had all the warning signs of what could have been Difficult Second Album Syndrome. I should have had more faith. It's an album so unashamedly taking the stylings of the titans of glam rock - Sparks and David Bowie by way of T. Rex, Debbie Harry and Kate Bush - and packaging it with the sentiments evoked by deeply modern issues which speak directly to the crowds of twenty-somethings who sing along with every venue-filling, audience-pleasing chorus and bridge. My only complaint about this album is the lack of an opening Prelude like one on Prelude to Ecstasy because I thought that was a great gimmick and I was sad to see if abandoned.
One track I'd recommend: I love the bridge on Agnus Dei, and if the audience at the TLDP gig I saw in November last year, I am not the only one.
Number 6 - More by Pulp
There isn't a band in the world I would bet on with more confidence to deliver on the idea of releasing a new album more than two decades removed from their last studio album and somehow make it work seamlessly into their incredible discography than Pulp. The snide and the cynical are absent here, twenty years passing have given Jarvis Cocker and Pulp a perspective which feels like optimism as activism, as active resistance against a world in which its hard to be optimistic, and the infectious energy of the music on this album could make a believer of anyone in the power of love. It's still immaculately crafted, intelligent and funny and brilliantly observed as all Pulp albums have been, and it doesn't feel like a cynical cash in, a band rounding themselves up to pay the bills with a nostalgic reunion; instead, Pulp have more to say, and they do it with effortless brilliance here.
One track I'd recommend: Got To Have Love could have been released after Common People and been number one in 1996. A Sunset might be the second most beautiful two minutes of music released this year.
Number 5 - The Life Of A Showgirl by Taylor Swift
There was so much good Pop music released this year and this is probably my most contentious, against-the-grain-of-music-critics opinion but this is my list, and there isn't a pop record I listened to more this year than The Life Of A Showgirl. I wrote an article about it which give my initial thoughts a week after release and they haven't really changed; I don't think it's the best Taylor Swift album by any mark, but I'd take a B+ Taylor Swift album over 99% of anything else that is released that year. She's an incredible musician who seems to have enjoyed making a happy, upbeat and playful party album after albums of introspection and emotional chaos, and that, I think, is what has made people mad this year. You all need to calm down.
One track I'd recommend: I love Actually Romantic. Come at me, Charlie XCX stans.
Number 4 - Burnout Days by flipturn
Another dumb project success story. In January of 2025 I spent the afternoon at my friend Matt's house where while puzzling our way through the miniatures game we were playing, he exposed me to a selection of albums from his collection he thought I might like, one of which was Shadowglow by flipturn. Of the five albums I listened to that day, that was the one that stuck with me, called me back, and was the first album to make me break my own rule and go back and listen to it a second time, and a third time when I could instead have been listening to something different and new. Five weeks after that, flipturn released Burnout Days and I bought tickets to their UK tour in November, possibly a record for the shortest gap in my life between hearing a band for the first time and buying tickets to see them live. This album is a propulsive ball of energy, a crashing wave of sound that feels like an accelerator pushed to the floor and an endless horizon ahead. To me, flipturn combine the intricate post-rock wall of sound of Explosions In The Sky with a kind of Sam-Fender-meets-The-Kings-Of-Leon vocal flair that works perfectly over it. Also they sold an incredibly comfortable and warm sweater as part of their merch for their tour and it's kept me warm all winter. A+, no notes.
One track I'd recommend: The title track is like an entire 300 mile road trip in under 4 minutes, but you should really just listen to this entire album.
Number 3 - No Hard Feelings by The Beaches
I don't remember at all how I ended up listening to 2023's Blame My Ex by Canadian all-women indie rock band The Beaches and that annoys me. It's entirely possible it was some kind of end of year list like this one, but the only thing I can say for sure is it wasn't through TikTok even though the internet tells me that Blame Brett ended up being one of those TikTok songs from that year. No matter how it happened, I enjoyed the hell out of it, and as a result, the insidious algorithm that tracks my listening habits was excited to tell me there was a new album by The Beaches out in 2025. No Hard Feelings came out while we were on holiday in Australia and I was relentlessly listening to music from Australia only, so I ended up waiting until our holiday was done to listen to this album. Its a 20+ hour flight from Sydney to London and I must have spent half of it listening to this. 2023's hetrosexual drama has been replaced with 2025's "dating women is also a disaster", and I can't say what it is I find so compelling about this album, but it lands musically right in my strike zone. The Beaches aren't doing anything revolutionary with the form, but damn if every song on here isn't pop-rock glittery perfection and listening to it just makes me smile.
One track I'd recommend: I'm going to see The Beaches in five weeks time, where I am going to be the only nearly fifty year old white hetrosexual male screaming the lyrics to Last Girl At The Party during the encore.
Number 2 - EURO-COUNTRY by CMAT
I don't understand how it's possible for me to still see CMAT in small music venues. I don't understand why she's not a massive star, I don't know why you're not hearing Take A Sexy Picture Of Me or Running/Planning or Lord, Let That Tesla Crash on the radio constantly. What I do know is that if this album is not near the top of every single UK based best albums of 2025 list there has been a critical failure of music journalism from which we will never recover. I wrote effusively about why I love CMAT on this blog last year and you should just go read that, then listen to this because its the smartest, funniest and interesting album to come out of Europe in the year of our lord 2025, and would have been number one on my list were it not for something truly unexpected.
One track I'd recommend: No. I refuse. You should listen to all of If My Wife New I'd Be Dead then Crazymad, for me then this whole album and I will accept nothing less. You can thank me later.
Number 1 - Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party by Hayley Williams
If there's one thing that 2025 and this whole musical journey has made abundantly clear to me it's that you should make an effort to surround yourself with people who will, out of the blue, hear something and think about you, then send you a Whatsapp message which in turn delivers to you your favourite album of the entire year. Like this:-
Georgie's message at the start of August might have fallen on deaf ears or got shuffled to the back of my mental to do list otherwise. I wasn't expecting a solo project from the lead singer of Paramore to deliver the truly most unexpectedly introspective, self-aware, vulnerable and brilliant album of the year. I didn't think it was possible for someone to interpolate the chorus from The Bloodhound Gangs The Bad Touch and make it meaningful and devastating. I didn't think it was possible to write a pop-punk celebration of your own reliance on anti-anxiety medication. I didn't think it was possible to write the most concise summation of the collapse of social systems the US South as four minute musical tirade which has remained stuck in my brain for five months without pause. I didn't have any expectations for this album or what it could be - I was expecting something just, I guess, more like Paramore. That lack of preconceptions left me completely blindsided; I was expecting the CMAT album this year to be good, funny, smart, well written and full of songs I couldn't pry out of my renegade subconscious. I wasn't expecting all that to be true of this album as well, and so it sits here as my favourite album of the year without real competition.
If you think you know what this album is, or will be, if you've dismissed it out of hand as some self-indulgent solo project from the singer in a pop punk band, you're only letting yourself down. It's a singular creation that will occupy a significant part of my listening in the coming year, of that I am sure. So, take my recommendation, a stranger (or not) on the internet. Go, listen to this album, all the way through, and then tell me what you think. That's how it starts.
Happy New Year.
* I have about 200 albums still to write about throughout the course of the next few months before I am officially done, but the listening part is over.
** I'm still going back and forth with Geese if I am honest. I find the music they make extremely interesting but I'm struggling to get past Cameron Winter's vocal delivery which really doesn't sit very well with me. This one is still a puzzle I'm trying to solve.
*** Proof if proof were needed:-
