2025 featured returning efforts from a number of artists I have enjoyed for years (including a new career highmark from one of my favorite groups), as well as some excellent outings from artists I only just got introduced to. Here’s my annual inventory of my favorite albums.

15) Taylor Swift, The Life of a Showgirl – There remains no bigger act in popular music than Ms. Swift, and her latest studio album is further proof that there is substance behind the success. Showgirl is a welcome blend of Swift’s pop, rock, and country sensibilities, and there’s a dreamy sheen that permeates every track on the album.

14) Florence + The Machine, Everybody Scream – Largely inspired by Florence Welch’s harrowing experience with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, Everybody Scream is a haunting exploration of tragedy and recovery. Both musically and lyrically, the album is awash with gothic imagery and soundscapes, and it uses a Led Zeppelin-esque juxtaposition of hard rock and Celtic folk to stunning effect.

13) Brandee Younger, Gadabout Season – Younger features her signature blend of the soft yet rhythmic jazz harp with subversive neo-soul grooves on her latest offering. Season also features a stirring musical intimacy that possibly demonstrates some influence from Sting’s early solo recordings.

12) Sabrina Carpenter, Man’s Best Friend – Building off the success of last year’s megahit Short n’ Sweet, Friend continues Carpenter’s infectious blend of pop and alt-country. However, she is isn’t simply rolling out the same formula, as there’s a blend of Jackson Browne-esque 1970’s west coast pop-rock that provides a unique flavor to her latest.

11) Lady Gaga, Mayhem – One of the biggest pop albums of the year was not only a well-crafted standalone album, it was also a puzzle box homage to several generations of pop artists, and part of the fun is unpacking all of the varying influences. “Zombieboy” is heavily indebted to Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl”, though probably the most fun pastiche is the equal part Prince and Nine Inch Nails love letter of “Killah”.

10) Terri Lyne Carrington & Christie Dashiell, We Insist! 2025 – This updated take on Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln’s 1960 Civil Rights opus We Insist (Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite) is sadly relevant but musically and socially vibrant. Like the best tribute projects, this updated version pays homage to the original while taking it in new and inventive directions to make it a living, breathing piece of art and social commentary.

9) Kokoroko, Tuff Times Never Last – A unique fusion of Afro-Cuban music, reggae, jazz, R&B, and probably a few other styles, Kokoroko have a sound that is highly refined and fully realized. Each track on Tuff Times Never Last is an ecosystem unto itself with seemingly endless layers of colors, melodies, and grooves to unpack, yet it maintains remarkable clarity in its texture and musical direction.

8) Geese, Getting Killed – With their rhythmically driving grooves, strategically deployed vocal harmonies, and crunchy guitars with noise-based textures, Geese are like a Grateful Dead for the post-punk era. Cameron Winter’s vocals resembled a deeper version of Thom Yorke’s mournful wail, and the balance straddled between chaos and control also harkens to the musical settings cultivated by Jonny Greenwood. In perhaps their most Radiohead-inspired track, “Trinidad” sounds like a tropical rendition of “The National Anthem”.

7) Wolf Alice, The Clearing – Wolf Alice’s fourth studio album ranks as one of the more eclectic rock albums in recent memory. Some tracks bear resemblance to genre contemporaries such as Spoon, Father John Misty, and Regina Spektor, but there are also traces of second line, jazz, and minimalism here. “Bloom Baby Bloom” sounds like a potential collaboration between St. Vincent and Steve Reich in all the best ways.

6) Giveon, Beloved – With its luscious strings, cascading flutes and harps, melodic bass lines, and warmly reverberating drum and guitar blends, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Beloved was a recently rediscovered 70’s soul record. Although everything instrumental on the album has a pleasantly retro vibe to it, Giveon’s vocals stand out as more clearly modern, sounding like a more low-register version of The Weeknd to create a unique cross-generation synthesis.

5) Dijon, Baby – Delightfully schizophrenic, propulsively whiplash, and eerily soothing, Baby sounds like the result of tossing an album each of Talking Heads, Janet Jackson, Elliott Smith, and Usher into a blender and then trying to reassemble it. The darkness that permeates the album is balanced with bright and ringing 80’s snare sounds and ample accessible hooks, and the constant emergence of new sounds in the texture keeps the music moving forward rather than serving as a distraction.

4) Amber Mark, Pretty Idea – The unrelenting optimism of Pretty Idea is, in many ways, the perfect antidote for 2025. With its synthesis of disco, pop, and R&B, this album is insatiably catchy, yet its jazz-tinged harmonic sophistication adds fascinating depth to the music. For example, the lead track “By The End of The Night” definitely shares some musical DNA with George Benson’s “Give Me The Night”, and like that earlier track, this music is instantly catchy yet subversively nuanced in its sculpting of distinct musical layers. Escapism is an underrated artistic quality in 2025, but the musical depth on display here elevates Amber Mark’s music beyond just a fun listen.

3) Olivia Dean, The Art of Loving – What is most fascinating about Loving is that every track exists in its own distinct sound world, yet everything meshes together into a cohesive tapestry. Each song features a distinct set of instruments and sounds for accompaniment, which range from finger-picked guitars, myriad acoustic and electric keyboards, and unique combinations of orchestral instruments, and these instruments provide a sophisticated and lushly emotive harmonic framework. Uniting everything, though, is Dean’s sultry, impassioned vocals, which blends effortlessly with every style thrown her way. This is an incredibly well-written, produced, and performed album.

2) Nate Smith, LIVE-ACTION – Jazz drummer Nate Smith deftly blends jazz, soul, and hip-hop on his seventh studio album, and his diversity in collaborations (he has drummed on records by Dave Holland, Chris Potter, Brittany Howard, and even Paul Simon) is reflected in the inherent eclecticism of this album. His rhythmic inventiveness is a particular highlight, as when the undulating opening ostinato of “Automatic” gives way to the cloud-parting angelic gospel vocal harmonies at the chorus, or the surprisingly infectious 11/8 groove that serves as the foundation of “Big Fish”.

1) GoGo Penguin, Necessary Fictions – Although they use standard jazz trio instrumentation, there are few groups who achieve as wide of a sonic palette as GoGo Penguin. Chris Illingworth’s acoustic piano is an orchestra unto itself with seemingly infinite colors achieved through percussive string muting and chasmic reverb. On their seventh studio album, GoGo Penguin have arguably reached a new pinnacle. Necessary Fictions maintains the same hallmarks of haunting melodies, intricately constructed grooves, and formal inventiveness as previous albums, and these areas are as refined as ever. What elevates this album is its embrace of new musical directions, including the dreamy folk influence in “Luminous Giants” and the anthemic post-rock of “Forgive the Damages”. There aren’t many groups who can simultaneously sound like The Bad Plus, Radiohead, and Tool, but then again, there aren’t any groups who sound anything like GoGo Penguin.