Some years glide by. 2025 absolutely did not. It lurched, snapped, fizzed, spiralled, and yet spat out moments of such clarity, chaos and brilliance that they somehow made the whole thing feel worth it.

As always, we’ve argued, sulked, shifted things up and down spreadsheets at 1am, changed our minds, changed them back, and eventually landed on a Top 100 that captures the full, messy shape of the year. Some of these records arrived with full blockbuster fanfare; others crept in sideways and refused to leave. Some are debuts that signalled a door blowing open; some are by artists who’ve never felt more in command. What they all share is that special jolt that something real was happening, whether it was shouted from rooftops or whispered into headphones.

That’s the version of the year we’re counting down over December, not the tidy narrative the machine likes to pretend exists, but the one we actually lived through. The one full of odd left-turns, tiny triumphs, emotional haymakers, ridiculous bangers, huge statements, quiet killers and albums that lodged themselves so firmly under our skin we’re still shaking them loose over the festive nut roast.

Across the next two weeks, we’ll be revealing the list bit by glorious bit. Just the albums that made our hearts race, our brains fizz and our year make a tiny bit more sense. From the cult favourites to the big hitters, this is 2025 as we heard it: brilliant, unpredictable, occasionally unhinged, and absolutely worth celebrating.

100-81 | 80-61 | 60-41 | 40-21 | 20-11 | 10-6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1

“Get back to your heart,” sings Djo, mantra-like, on the closing track of his third album ‘The Crux’. It’s a closing statement to a record that feels, in a lot of ways, like a catalogue of love and reignited passion. It isn’t just the stereotypical kind, either; of course, there are moments of romanticism and starry-eyed hope, but the love that seeps through ‘The Crux’ is a more multifaceted thing.

Each song is its own homage to an artist Djo loves, and the love he harbours for his family and friends is central to the album. Amongst the psychedelia, soft-rock and synth, though, there’s a lust for life at the core of the album. It’s a willingness to fall down, and behind, and have your heart smashed to smithereens, but to get back up again anyway. To know the cards are stacked against you, but to cling to your heart’s natural optimism in the face of that and throw yourself into things unwaveringly. It has moments of unsteadiness, of hurt and pain, but it returns to love above all else.

Unafraid to play with different genres and tones, and equally unafraid to be vulnerable and even scathing at times, ‘The Crux’ sees Djo at his most experimental yet. He tries on crisp, synth-soaked excellence on ‘Delete Ya’, favours earnest hopefulness as he finger-picks his way through ‘Potion’, and leans fully into his sentimentality by enlisting his sisters on backing vocals for ‘Back On You’. It’s light and yet profound, and filled with tracks that rattle around your brain for days after a listen - Djo is at his best when he’s chasing joy and love despite whatever is thrown his way, and ‘The Crux’ is a testament to that. NM

When it comes to Bursting Onto The Scene, it’s hard to think of an act that did that with quite as much force as Wet Leg. From the minute their sexy yet strange singles ‘Chaise Longue’ and ‘Wet Dream’ made their way into the ears of music fans across the globe, it was clear that the Isle of Wight two-piece were not just another flash-in-the-pan, one-album-wonder cult band. But just how do you follow a debut that caused such a cultural phenomenon?

Well, in short, you write ‘moisturizer’. A forty-minute foray into the swirly, uncontrollable nature of falling in love and finding yourself in the process, and bolstered by the addition of three now permanent musicians and writers, it reinforces Wet Leg’s status as one of the most exciting, enticing, and individual bands in music. The aptly punchy ‘catch these fists’ and impishly charming ‘CPR’ hinted at a palette that had expanded into newer, grungier tones while retaining the unpredictable, jaunty edges that make the band so addictive.

Ditching the Handmaid’s Tale frocks for cropped vests and knee socks, with enough bicep-flexing to give any number of gym rats a run for their money, was no gimmick either. It symbolised a band shedding expectation and digging into their strength. That strength? Well, it’s just being a bit weird, really. Beyond that, ‘moisturizer’ jolts unerringly from the sweaty, raunchy immediacy of ‘pillow talk’ through to the shoegaze-adjacent ‘11:21’ and unapologetically soft-hearted love song ‘davina mccall’. Closer ‘u and me at home’ soars with college-rock guitar, whilst ‘pokemon’ literally takes you on a journey ‘From the Isle of Wight to Tokyo’ through lofty alt-pop, before ‘11:21’ sinks into a low-tempo, dimly-lit yearning session. Bringing together bluntly vulnerable lyrics with Rhian’s cheeky, sly delivery, as well as an unflinching commitment to the bit, Wet Leg not only avoided Difficult Second Album Syndrome, they smashed it to pieces. If this album teaches you anything, it’s to lean into the madness. If it’s good enough for Wet Leg, it’s good enough for you. CP

There aren’t enough concept albums written about the humble service station. In fact, there weren’t any until Antony Szmierek’s sublime debut album, transforming the bland and the beige into a swirling journey through the stars, anchored to life on Earth through lyricism that combines the everyday with the extraordinary. From the pulsating title-track right through to the final bars of wonky keys at the end of misty-eyed closer ‘Angie’s Wedding’, ‘Service Station At The End of the Universe’ ensured that Antony catapulted himself from poet to pop-star-in-waiting. He’s a storyteller for the modern age, the Shakespeare of Stockport, and he’s only just getting started. SA

ROSALÍA has never been the easiest pop icon to pin down. Every era arrives with a new idea to inhabit and a new set of rules to test. ‘El Mal Querer’ turned scholarship into pop myth, rebuilding flamenco with the certainty of someone who knows the source material and the circuitry. ‘Motomami’ blew that image apart, an internet-age self-portrait that moved at feed speed and still carried unmistakable authorship. It put her in galleries and in memes, on festival posters and timelines, and left her with something even rarer: room to choose the next move without asking permission.

‘LUX’ uses that space. Four movements; the London Symphony Orchestra under Daníel Bjarnason; a chorus of women’s voices drawn from different traditions; thirteen languages folded into the musical fabric. None of this plays like a prestige exercise. It’s a framework for a particular kind of elevated pop. The album presents itself like a cathedral that opens at dusk and lets the street in. The architecture is vertical rather than restless; lines climb and settle where ‘Motomami’ ricocheted. Orchestras and choirs aren’t there to gild the edges but to carry weight: the sense of pulse when there’s no drum kit, the oxygen a synth would once have supplied. You hear how different vowels and consonants pull the line into new shapes, how pronunciation becomes part of the rhythm of a phrase.

The record establishes its grammar early: pieces that tell you, without fuss, how high the walls are and how the light falls. The pivot is clear in the way the material expands and contracts, resolution earned rather than engineered, the orchestra acting as a protagonist rather than ornament. The uneasier modern thread tightens as the scale grows, voices gathering and peeling away, harmony doing the lifting rather than sheer volume.

If you came for the instant hit rate of ‘Motomami’, you won’t find it here. ‘LUX’ demands a different kind of attention and repays that investment with interest. SA

For many, Addison Rae’s transformation from TikTok star to the freshest voice in pop has come as a surprise. But for the few who’d been paying attention, they knew Addison had this in her all along. A million miles from her first single, the rent-a-tune ‘Obsessed’ that dropped in 2021, there’s a sense that it was never the way Addison wanted to introduce herself to the pop world. But, having the nerve of all the pop greats who came before, she knew getting her foot in that door ASAP was crucial.

In the years between, she’s acquired co-signs from Charli xcx, A. G. Cook, and Arca, revamped an old Lady Gaga demo for her scrapped tracks EP ‘AR’, and started building her own pop legacy with lead single ‘Diet Pepsi’. So while the internet tripped over itself with claims she was forcing a rebrand, Addison was tinkering away making a debut album for the ages.

Made in collaboration with only two other writer/producers, Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser, ‘Addison’ comes straight from the heart. A stark portrayal of young womanhood performed with simultaneous wide-eyed innocence and striking emotional maturity, it’s a record that unpacks Addison’s relationships with herself, her partners, her family, and the limelight. It’s also chock full of bangers. The glittery ‘New York’ heralds her arrival as pop princess living her own dreams, ‘Money Is Everything’ is a windows-down screamalong, while ‘Fame is a Gun’ stands out with its whip-smart lyricism and sugary delivery. On the more diaristic cuts, she plumps for trip-hop; the wistful ‘Times Like These’ sounds like it was plucked straight from Copenhagen’s budding alt-pop scene, while ‘Headphones On’, already the definitive track, wraps the album up in a way only Addison could, with manifestation, acceptance, and optimism.

A combination of her career beginnings, relentlessly sunny demeanour and unapologetically big dreams make Addison the ideal heir to the pop throne, but they also mean many doubted her artistic ability. Luckily she never listened to any of that, and on ‘Addison’, Rae cuts through all the noise to deliver thirty minutes of pure magic. AF