Top 25 Best Albums Of 2025
What a year it was! While pop stepped aside for a bit, a lot of niche artists came out with some of their best work yet. Let’s take a look at the best albums of 2025, according to Showbiz by PS Editor-in-Chief (me).
#25 Lotus by Little Simz
Lotus feels purposeful, mature, and confident — Little Simz is an artist fully in command of her voice. This record balances raw rap muscle with softness, restraint, and pristine sequencing. The flow of the production is very interesting, moving between heavy and softer moments, and the lyrical content is immaculate, especially toward the end of the album.
#24 Sleeper Hits by Soft Avalanche
Sleeper Hits is a remarkably self-assured debut, built on atmosphere, restraint, and emotional precision. Anders Ankerstjerne leans heavily into nostalgia, pairing dreamy, hazy production with introspective songwriting that tackles grief, mental illness, and memory with genuine warmth. It’s intimate, cohesive, and quietly ambitious — the kind of debut that signals real artistic longevity.
#23 Choke Enough by Oklou
Choke Enough is a quietly immersive debut that introduces Oklou as a compelling new voice in left-field pop. Co-produced by Danny L Harle and A. G. Cook, the album blends chamber pop and electronic textures into a hazy, wintery soundscape that feels both warm and unsettling. Its strength lies in atmosphere and cohesion: muted synths, sharp autotune, and echo-heavy production carry themes of loneliness, memory, and emotional responsibility like a half-remembered dream.
#22 Caroline 2 by Caroline
Caroline 2 finds Caroline expanding their sound without sanding down its edges. The album is hypnotic and immersive, built on dynamic contrasts between quiet introspection and overwhelming sonic bursts, with production that feels both raw and meticulously controlled.
#21 Private Music by Deftones
Deftones prove on Private Music that longevity doesn’t have to mean creative retreat. The album distills everything that made them timeless: crushing heaviness colliding with fragile intimacy, aggression dissolving into moments of eerie beauty. Rather than chasing reinvention, Deftones refine their core language, sounding ferocious, graceful, and emotionally charged three decades in.
#20 EUSEXUA by FKA twigs
FKA twigs returns in full command of her vision on EUSEXUA, a fearless electronic record that feels both deeply intimate and sonically untouchable. Twigs blends vulnerability with extremity, unpacking love, desire, power, and self-erasure through constantly shifting soundscapes that pull from IDM, trip-hop, trance, and glitch-pop. The album thrives on unpredictability—distorted outros, sudden beat drops, and vocals that move from fragile to inhuman in seconds.
#19 The Art of Loving by Olivia Dean
Olivia Dean presents The Art of Loving as a warm, emotionally precise album about growth, self-worth, and love in all its fragile forms. Her songwriting is clear and touching—never naïve, never cynical—capturing intimacy, fear, joy, and healing with remarkable clarity. Wrapped in smooth pop-soul arrangements and guided by her velvety, reassuring voice, the record lingers like a long conversation you don’t want to end.
#18 The Crux by Djo
Djo’s The Crux is his most emotionally grounded and complete album to date, striking a balance between playful theatricality and genuine vulnerability. Joe Keery leans into his eccentric instincts while sharpening his songwriting, delivering stories about dissatisfaction, escape, and the search for meaning with surprising sincerity.
#17 FURÈSTA by LA NIÑA
LA NIÑA’s FURÈSTA feels strikingly fresh while remaining rooted in a bold, unmistakable Neapolitan identity. The album blends traditional cantautorato and folk motifs with modern, Mediterranean-spanning influences, resulting in a stylish, powerfully expressive, and fiercely contemporary record.
#16 Let God Sort Em Out by Clipse
After more than a decade apart, Clipse return sounding not nostalgic, but razor-focused and fully present. Let God Sort Em Out thrives on tension: Pusha T and Malice trade cold, surgical verses with a chemistry that feels untouched by time, while Pharrell Williams builds a cinematic, slightly unsettling backdrop that modernizes their signature minimalism.
