My Top Albums of 2025
- Adeline
- Jan 3
- 10 min read
Updated: Jan 6
Favorite Tracks: Leaning Against The Wall, Thorns, White Horses
How does a band consistently release 10/10 albums over two decades? A question I ask myself when I play through every album by Wolf Alice. I'm always reminded of the art and labor of love music is when I listen to them, hearing every unique decision they make in their song composition and production over the years. While "fans" often mourn this shift from album to album, I believe this change always adds value to their discography, and something of a luxury and privilege to experience as a lifelong listener.
On The Clearing, Wolf Alice delivers notable tracks that are cinematic, sentimental, and carry angst, holding true to their core. Throughout the album, vocals from drummer Joel Amey are frequent and much more apparent, with "White Horses" being the ace up the sleeve, adding so much depth and expanding the realm that one would've tried to confine Wolf Alice to. I can't help but relieve telling Joel "nice chops" when meeting the band on tour, when I truly meant to say the percussion stands out more than ever on this album. From the inserted groove in the "Thorns", to the insane solo in the outro of "Leaning Against the Wall", it's pure bliss.
"Leaning Against the Wall" in particular is a huge stand out track for me. It's immersive, introspective, and emotional, delivering some of my favorite lines. The pacing drums in the verses, to a distinctive acoustic riff alongside a blooming synth and hip hop beats that give way to the most gorgeous, mind-blowing breakdown that I might have heard in the past 5 years. "Leaning Against the Wall" is mind blowing in writing and sonically, and probably my song of the year.
Everything from Ellie Roswell's pungent vocals to the lyricism attacking themes of family heritage, motherhood, and friendships, to the instrumentals, frequently featuring a string section, screams a maturing of the group on The Clearing. Where Blue Weekend certified Wolf Alice's legendary status in music, writes it in stone.
Favorite Tracks: Rewind, Yamaha, Automatic, Kindalove
According to various music sources, 2025 is the year of Dijon. But in all honesty, in the least pretentious, crate-digger manner, the past 4 years for me have been the year of Dijon. Thinking back to my first time hearing Dijon, randomly coming across the Absolutely film in 2021, I was trying to understand what about Dijon completely enthralled me from the beginning. I boiled it down to the pure sincerity in his voice found within his inflection, expressions, and lyricism. In a world full of break up songs and infidelity, Dijon's emotion, rawness, and devotion (purely unironic!) in the way he sings of love is unique, and so valued. And then to speak to his love of the game, in the niche references, subtle hip-hop samples, influences, and collaborations, reflect a man who knows music. This is a whole other aspect of his depth as an artist and something I think has been a highlight of him this year, best expressed on Baby and within all his collaborations this year.
Where a fear of marriage and having a child stifling you is prevalent, on Baby, Dijon sings of the opposite and a growing positive codependence, encapsulating the notion of being in love so much it hurts. This theme is consistent from start to finish, the album opening with a confession of love written in the perspective to his baby, and closes with gorgeous dreamy track "Kindalove", drenched in reverb and synths over lines of his allusions to a love so immense that no words suffice.
Oftentimes when I'm recommending Dijon, I realize that there is no explaining Dijon.
While this album already sounds so good in headphones, no loseless quality or hi-fi speakers could amount to hearing this album live (shoutout to Andrew Sarlo, my favorite producer across so many genre contexts).
While people often praise Dijon's production talent, I believe he's one of the best male vocalists out there lately, which again is something I see highlighted best in his live performances. I love an album that grows. I walked into his concert with established favorites off of Baby, and left with new ones, and still to this day my favorites on the album are shuffling around.
Favorite Tracks: Day One, From, There's A Rhythmn, Everything is Peaceful Love
As an "AUATC" and Big Red Machine enthusiast, SABLE, fABLE pans out like a dream come true, or more so like the continuation of one. Disc 1 is reminiscent of the Bon Iver we know, with the pungently remorse lament of "AWARDS SEASON". This sentiment is kept short to four tracks, transitioning to Disc 2, where Bon Iver has supposedly found the light.
2025 felt like the year that artists rediscovered the impact of collaborations. With big names, such as Justin Bieber and Dijon, Sam Fender and Olivia Dean, Mumford and Sons and Hozier, and the whole Railroad Revival Tour. One collaboration that stood out most to me though, is the conglomeration of talent that formed on the track "Day One". I could forever gush about Dijon, as proven above and beyond this article, but Flock Of Dimes? What a lethal pull. I had to pinch myself when I first read this track list, something straight off of my self-acclaimed unconventional 2021 Spotify Wrapped. With a deep knowledge of Jenn Wasner's (Flock of Dimes) songwriting, what stands out to me most on this collab is that the lines she sings sounds like something she would write, and I just love when a collab is more than just a voice lent.
With the mix of 80s-like synth, steel guitar, and elements of soul that frequent the album, SABLE, fABLE is just purely optimistic. In "There's A Rhythmn", lush harmonies present the barest Justin Vernon's voice has ever been, the track just sounds clean, holding close to the "less is more" theory in music. Danielle Haim offers vocals on "If Only I Could Wait", reminiscent of her features on Vampire Weekend's Father of the Bride, becoming a female voice of reasoning in the Alternative/Indie music realm.
SABLE, fABLE is the brightest Bon Iver has ever been, earning the title of my album of the summer. Where Bon Iver's music has always felt deeply personal and almost feelings enclosed in a box, SABLE, fABLE lifts the cloud of sorrow off of Bon Iver. It feels made with the intention of outward retrospectives professions. Professions of regret, love, questioning, and the possibility of new beginnings. It's filled with lines of lessons learned and revelations, alluding to the fable part. If this is any indication of the future sound of Bon Iver, then I can't wait to for more.
Favorite Tracks: Nostalgia's Lie, Remember My Name, Arm's Length, Little Bit Closer
People Watching was a much anticipated release of mine, being a longtime Sam Fender fan (how has it been over 6 years since Hypersonic Missiles was released?). People Watching is not short of Fender's glimmering guitars and atmospheric anthems. I couldn't imagine these songs being performed in anything else besides arenas and stadiums, which I think alludes to the kind of artist Sam Fender is.
People Watching hones in and expands on previously explored themes of Fender's, drawing similar sentiments from "The Borders". While Hypersonic Missiles was teeming with internalized emotions of guilt, anger, and conviction, People Watching strives to share these with the world, as if to empathize across these feelings. This sentiment is echoed in the harmonies by Brooke Betham, and the rhetorical questions poised throughout the album, Fender nails down the art of making music for the masses, while still leaving room for something deeply personal.
People Watching closes with a gorgeous ballad, something I've dreamed of from Sam Fender since his gut-wrenching cover of "Winter Song" by Alan Hull. "Remember My Name", a heartfelt tribute to his grandparents, is solemn and filled with yearning, unfolding in a Buckley-like manner. With The War on Drugs' Adam Granduciel producing this album, the shared elements between the two just feel so natural rather than a replication, making it feel as if I got a The War on Drugs and Sam Fender album in the same year.
Favorite Tracks: God Loves Weirdos, Wild & Rotten, Groove In Gotham
Hope We Have Fun dives into that Indie Folk Rock era of the late 2010s, and diffuses it. It's full of great explosive indie-rock to the quintessential acoustic folk tracks. I'd be lying if I didn't say Nathaniel Rateliff's feature on "Wild & Rotten" wasn't what drew me into listening to this album, but I'm so grateful it did. There's something so tender about an artist with such a prominent voice, taking the backseat to do harmonies that brings out the tender element of the track.
Maybe it's the collaboration on the album, maybe it's the spirit of the music, but "Groove in Gotham" to me is equivalent of Nathaniel Rateliff's "Parlor". It's the outlier on the album that disrupts any sort of linearity to be found in the album, and draws from the spirit of the album, laying down a heavy base line to let loose to. My favorite track on the album is "God Loves Weirdos", which might just be one of the most sonically satisfying songs I've heard in the past few years. The song is dreamy, vulnerable, and slows down time. Lead singer Matt Quinn's voice strains and warbles, captures the vulnerability and being completely immersed in love so well. I found myself playing this track on repeat, dangerously loud in my headphones multiple times this year. Hope We Have Fun is solid music from a realm that I didn't realize I missed.
Favorite Tracks: Best Laid Plans, Metal, Mother Pray for Me
From the vibrant colors of the album cover to the music videos, the inherent fun never leaves The Beths. Within The Beth's discography, there's Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Man, and on this album, we arrive to Man vs. Self. On Straight Line Was a Lie, The Beths trade glistening guitars, leaning further into rock, while still pulling elements from that bedroom indie rock sound they've mastered.
Straight Line Was a Lie offers the remorse and self-loathing sentiment that you'd find in a Green Day or Fall Out Boy album (insert your typical 2010s emo song), but instead it's delivered with the saccharine sweet, yet appropriately edged and monotone at times, voice of lead singer Elizabeth Stokes. "Metal" is the track most reminiscent of previous work of The Beths, which I can't help but imagine Obama listening to this track from now on as it made his yearly list. The candid "Mother Pray for Me" sees The Beths at their most intimate, a song that feels so personal, covering the cyclical nature of concern in a mother-daughter relationship, singing from a place of that coming-of-age helplessness in the obligation of worry.
The album closes with one of my favorite tracks of the year, "Best Laid Plans", which picks up the pace to close in an organized ruckus that sort of absolves the aforementioned worries in the tracks before. The Beths brave diving into rock reminiscent of the late 90s, a sort of kerrang, jangle hearing some The Talking Heads, U2-esque, Coldplay circa Adventure of a Lifetime, especially in the astonishing outro. There's some songs in the world that I can only attribute my liking for, by saying I'd pay an absurd amount to hear just the one song in isolation live, and "Best Laid Plans" is one of those. If the phrase "to be quite frank" was an album, it'd be this one.
Favorite Tracks: Long After Midnight, Not Yet Free, Theo
I hope the presence of a Bon Iver, Dijon, and Flock of Dimes album on my list encapsulates the jaw drop moment I felt when seeing "Day One" on the track list of SABLE, fABLE. Jenn Wasner has always had one of my favorite voices, and the way she wields it tells me she knows the power it holds. It's mature, grounded, and definite, yet so freely flowing, a combination that's perfect for delivering lines of a deep empathy that surpasses the logic of "an eye for an eye", a theme explored on "The Life You Save". Where artists often write about a search for an answer, Jenn Wasner sings about her conclusions and the realities that live at the intersection of them. It's what enthralled me by her when discovering Head of Roses back in 2021, and still to this day does.
With a cascading guitar riff that paints the song like a mosaic, "Long After Midnight" delivers some of my favorite lines, Jenn Wasner captures an understanding that acknowledges imperfections of unconditional love and the cost of it. The Life You Save offers conclusions that some may see as brash, but truths that only one who plays the role of a mediator would understand.
Favorite Tracks: Like Love, Pain & Love, Please Don't Move to Melbourne, NORK
This summer, I took the time to tune into TripleJ's Hottest 100 countdown, featuring exclusively Australian tracks throughout history. Listening to this countdown made me realize there's a persistent feeling of sunshine that prevails in the Australian music scene. Lyricism cast aside, the instrumentals always manage to sound warm and bright, for instance with The Beths, Babe Rainbow, Gang of Youths, and Ball Park Music to mention a few. It makes me wonder and crave whatever's in the water over there.
To me, Ball Park Music has always had the ability to capture a sort of adolescence, but instead of wrestling with it, they embrace it. On Like Love, it's found in the tracks like "Please Don't Move to Melbourne", which begs someone to do just that, and in "NORK, an acronym for the line "no one really knows" repeated throughout the song, that dwells over a slow gorgeous acoustic guitar. "Like Love" sets down the electric guitars, and delivers an acoustic ballad that renders things of the world incomparable to love. Everyone's just in love in the realm of music this year, and I love it.
Honorable Mentions
In holistic loving and good listening, here are some other notable albums I had in rotation from 2025!
Ace - Madison Cunningham
man oh man ! - Martin Luke Brown
Between You and Me - Flyte
The Art of Loving - Olivia Dean
Small Talk - Whitney
SOMEONE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN - Arlie
Belong - Jay Som
Wither - HAFFWAY
Accelerator - Bad Suns
Ditto - Brotherkenzie
