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

Militarie Gun may have started life as a hardcore project, but ‘God Save The Gun’ finds the Californian punks truly embracing their alt-rock and power-pop sensibilities. That’s not to say it doesn’t rock – you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better mosh-pit anthem than the electric ‘B A D I D E A’ – but they’ve instead added huge swathes of colour to their already kaleidoscopic palette. That such art comes from a low point in songwriter Ian Shelton’s life – namely the realisation of his addiction – only adds further weight to an already exceptional album. RM

Miso Extra is someone who radiates joy. That effervescent and idiosyncratic quality is bursting out of her debut album ‘Earcandy’. It’s a genre expansive collection that is frothy and frivolous at its most upbeat but also gently tender and life affirming at the same time. The misoverse can be a liminal space between the artificial and the deeply human real world and ‘Earcandy’ is the perfect midpoint between the two states of mind. A record that can equally feel at home in the club or in some idyllic forest retreat. MY

Pill-punk is here, and it's everything we were promised. Sledgehammer dance instrumental propel VLURE's debut forwards as lead singer Hamish holds court with lyrics about nights out, nostalgic youth and sheer euphoria like a man in the centre of a hurricane. A mix of old favourites and new classics, 'Escalate' has been a long time coming, but when no other band is even coming close to making music like this, the wait was worth every second. JH

What’s most striking about ‘You Are The Morning’ is how it announces its ambition. jasmine.4.t isn’t trying to reinvent the singer-songwriter wheel or posture as the next great indie auteur. She’s doing something far braver: building a world tender enough for the people who rarely get one. The album isn’t framed around trauma, even though trauma flickers through it. It’s framed around community.

Being the first Brit on Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records might sound like a headline, but in practice it’s the least interesting part; what matters is how naturally jasmine’s voice sits among the boygenius orbit, not as an echo but as another point of light. The songs that land hardest - ‘Skin On Skin’, ‘New Shoes’ - do so because they’re willing to step into the uncomfortable places most albums gesture at from afar. jasmine doesn’t dramatise her need for affirmation; she just acknowledges it, which is its own kind of defiance. Then come the moments of undeniable togetherness. ‘Best Friend’s House’ feels like a gathering more than a track, a reminder that chosen family is often the only kind that holds. And the closer, ‘Woman’, bolstered by the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles, sounds less like an ending than a declaration: visibility not as spectacle, but as fact.

For a debut, it’s astonishingly self-assured. For a queer record in a world still learning how to hold queer stories, it feels absolutely necessary. DH

NewDad have become one of 2025's most championed indie bands, the sort people recommend with real affection. 'Altar', their second album, shows precisely why. It captures the strange split of being a Galway band now based in London, growing up fast in a city that never stops, while still longing for the calm of home. 'Other Side' opens with a gentle ache, and from there the record drifts into a dreamspace that mixes 90s alt-radio glow with feelings you usually keep to yourself. 'Pretty' shimmers with longing, 'Sinking Kind of Feeling' hits like someone reading your thoughts back to you, and 'Roobosh' channels the humour and bite Julie Dawson has talked about embracing in her mid-twenties. These songs hold fear and small flashes of bravery in tandem. 'Altar' feels like NewDad telling their story with absolute clarity, and it lands like a friend who tells you the truth while also offering a biscuit. FN

Kevin Parker’s most stripped back and raw record with Tame Impala finds one of the the 21st centuries modern musical wizards embracing a more instinctive approach as ‘Deadbeat’ eschews lushness and perfection for jagged edges, pulsing techno and a fuck it attitude that gives Tame Impala a new lease of life. Hypnotically funky and aggressively direct on the Bush Doof influenced techno of ‘My Old Ways’ and ‘Dracula’ and full on pulverizing dance floor assault on ‘Ethereal Connection’ the album highlights different sides to one of the most enduringly influential and vital acts around. MY

Lorde's fourth album, 'Virgin' has the air of someone who stepped out into the sun, blinked in the light a bit, then quietly came back inside and shut the curtains. It isn't really a return or a reinvention of anything; it's simply a refusal to tidy up for public consumption. She called it "100% written in blood", and for once, the hyperbole undersells it. Working with Jim-E Stack, Lorde pares everything back to a tactile, almost hand-built palette. There are close-mic'd pianos, percussion favours impact over sheen, and electronics leave the burr on. The writing follows suit, blunt and steady where they once might have flinched. Stepping away from Jack Antonoff gives her room, but it's what she does with the space that lands. 'Virgin' isn't loud, showy, or eager to please. It's simply honest, in a way that suggests Lorde is done asking for permission. DH

Newly sober and energised by a love for hyperpop, 'Stardust' is up there with the best of Danny Brown's output. His trademark goofiness, yelping vocals, and glitched-out, abrasive instrumentals are all on full display, but catchy hooks from the likes of Underscores and 8485 elevate the album beyond the underground rap sphere and into something more club-ready. Not only is Danny in the most positive place he's been in years, but he's proved it was never the drugs which made him such a compelling artist in the first place. JH

Reneé Rapp’s second album makes her debut feel like a warm-up lap. It's a pop record that isn’t trying to impress so much as take up the space it deserves and leave everyone else to sort themselves out how they wish. There’s a new directness to the writing and a bite to the production that suits her. It's less about immaculate sheen, more about the punch-the-air-pleasure of hearing someone say exactly what they mean without sugar coating it first. The thematic through-line can wobble, the mood shift abruptly, but that adds to the whole. It's messy yet confident, brattish in its attitude and bold of intent. Through it all, Rapp stitches the parts together, often by force of personality alone. ‘BITE ME’ is the moment where a star stops waiting to be taken seriously and simply assumes the position. DH

Lola Young’s third album, 'I’m Only Fucking Myself' lands at a moment when a lot of pop might be glossy on the surface, but its biggest thrills are coming from women being brazen about both the sexy and unsexy parts of life. Lola pushes that even further. She opens with 'FUCK EVERYONE', an unapologetic setting out of her stall, then slips into 'One Thing', which flirts with lust and humour like it’s never been easier. Tracks like 'd£aler' dig into the sober nights, and 'SPIDERS' unpacks anxiety with the kind of honesty 2025’s soundtrack desperately needed. Lola keeps things intimate and messy and true; a lacerating journey through the mind of an artist who seems to thrive on wading into the murky waters of self-reflection. 'Post Sex Clarity' gives us lines like “When I finish it’s not the end of you and I” that hit sharply because she isn’t sugar-coating. When 'ur an absolute c word' closes the album, it doesn’t feel tidy; it feels human. This is pop that accepts the unfinished and makes it sound exhilarating. FN

Only David Byrne could write a song about sharing a blueberry tart with the Buddha while keeping a straight face, and 'Who Is The Sky?' is filled with similar flights of fancy from one of the most unique figures in music. What if moisturiser made you look like you were three years old? What if indeed. Tied together by instrumentation from Ghost Train Orchestra, it's one of his most cohesive, and best, albums in years. Lean into the absurdity and let yourself enjoy the former frontman of Talking Heads meowing like a cat. JH

Sabrina Carpenter has always been an incredible pop star. Last year’s ‘Short and Sweet’ album was her mainstream breakthrough with multiple smash hits and a stranglehold on the charts. This year’s follow up, ‘Man’s Best Friend’ is a witty, lyrically bawdy and melodically brilliant album that is deeply and unquestionably Sabrina. Working again with her core team of Jack Antonoff and songwriter Amy Allen, the trio cook up a brightly upbeat pop sound. No line is too risqué, no subject is too taboo. This is the sound of a pop star cashing in all their credit and laughing all the way to the bank. MY

Ethel Cain’s universe has never been small, but ‘Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You’ deepens it in striking ways. Positioned as a prelude to the tragedy of ‘Preacher’s Daughter’, the album traces a relationship doomed long before either person notices the cracks, letting slowcore, folk and post-rock spill into long, flickering passages that feel devotional rather than dramatic. Cain produces with a deliberate rawness here: tape hiss, room tone, and breath all sit at the edge of each track, grounding the lyrical mythology. It’s a record obsessed with the versions of ourselves we fall for and the wreckage we quietly accept along the way. DH

It would’ve been fair to temper your expectations going into a Deftones album in 2025. Three decades since they first got swept up in the nu-metal tsunami and quickly made themselves outliers, Deftones have gone from strength to strength, and their tenth album, ‘Private Music’, made sure to push this idea even further. Finding new soaring highs, and an enigmatically powerful thunder from the get go in the form of the rollicking introductory ‘My Mind Is A Mountain’ - not to mention Chino Moreno still breaking hearts and taking names - this new era of Deftones shows that their power and might hasn’t wained, and with them headlining next years Outbreak, this latest coming proves them unstoppable. SL

Cutting out the lo-fi and embracing expansive instrumentation, broadened horizons and an enlightened mind, cult star Alex G delivers his strongest collection of songs yet. ‘Headlights’ is an album full of slowly expanding wonders. Little sonic epiphanies that glint in through the window like the flashes of light that illuminate the mandolin led lead single ‘Afterlife’. It’s bolder, brighter and more dynamic from an artist who has lost none of his quiet weirdness in exchange for melodic openness and inquisitiveness giving the most lucid insight yet into the world of Alex G. MY

Spiritbox treat ‘Tsunami Sea’ like a stress test for how much intensity and emotional clarity a metal record can hold at once. Where ‘Eternal Blue’ introduced their meticulous, almost architectural approach to heaviness, this album scales everything up: sharper djent edges, wider melodic swings and a production style that lets the atmosphere hit as hard as the breakdowns. Courtney LaPlante is in frighteningly good form, slipping between whispered urgency and serrated power, while guitarist Mike Stringer builds riffs that bend and shimmer rather than simply crush. It feels like Spiritbox claiming new territory, proving they can be genre leaders without following any of its supposed rules. AW

‘choke enough’ feels like Oklou writing her way out of a maze she built herself. The album never settles on one emotional frequency, instead drifting between trance-washed crescendos, soft-spoken confessionals and glitchy fragments that sound like you’ve walked in on a private moment. There’s structure underneath the haze, though: ‘choke enough’ folds its themes of boundaries, emotional overstretch and self-redefinition into songs that curve rather than follow straight lines. Oklou’s greatest trick is making complexity feel weightless, and ‘choke enough’ doesn’t announce a new chapter, so much as reveal the scaffolding she’s been building all along. AW

‘Cosplay’ doesn’t begin with a grand gesture so much as a glitch. Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen write like they’re trying to remember a dream before it slips, letting pop riffs, electronic blurs and sharp-edged guitars overlap until the line between them dissolves. ‘Waxwing’, with its warped nod to ‘Hey Mickey’, sets the tone: familiar shapes refracted through something unsettling. What makes ‘Cosplay’ compelling is how unforced the experimentation feels. Nothing arrives as a statement; everything emerges in the moment, curious and off-kilter. Sorry aren’t reinventing themselves so much as widening the frame, letting the contradiction and sputtering energy define the picture instead of the pose. DH

HAIM have always known how to turn real life into something cinematic, but ‘I Quit’ pushes it further. Their first album in five years takes a run of break-ups and bad timing, and turns all of it into sharp, self-aware pop. ‘Relationships’ establishes the mood, produced with Rostam and packed with the kind of off-hand details only they can deliver. ‘Everybody’s Trying to Figure Me Out’ zooms in on panic and pressure, while ‘Down to Be Wrong’ leans into something more widescreen. Even the deluxe edition duet with Bon Iver feels like a natural extension of this era’s honesty. It isn’t an album about giving up. It’s the sound of letting the dust settle, taking a breath, and refusing to pretend things are tidy. SA

‘Lotus’ arrives with the confidence of someone who no longer needs to grip the wheel. Little Simz has always been a sharp writer, but here she leans into fluidity: jazz touches, warm chords, a looseness in the pocket that lets each verse exhale. The shift isn’t softness, it’s clarity. ‘Bloodclart’ snaps into focus with a grin; ‘Lotus Flower’ blooms slowly, carried by Rhodes and the kind of lived-in wisdom only she can deliver without sounding self-serious. The album’s stacked guestlist - Obongjayar, Sampha, Yussef Dayes - never overwhelms her orbit. They feel like people stopping by a house she spent years building. ‘Lotus’ is Simz letting go of the need to be definitive, and becoming definitive in the process. DH