As has become a yuletide custom, I give you a list of the ten albums that I have enjoyed the most in 2025, albums which I have kept coming back to throughout the year.

The value of music, as the value of any art, lies in the eye of the beholder, so my list may not necessarily be equal to your list. Still, I hope it inspires many of you to listen to albums you might otherwise have missed.

80% of of all the listening on Spotify is supposedly to no more than 20% of the tracks available. Which means you are probably missing a lot of good stuff. The whole purpose of my blog is to bring to the forefront new music that wouldn’t normally get the attention it deserves. As my logline says: I hunt the best music so you don’t have to.

Below you will find my final 10. Click on the album title, and you will be taken directly to Spotify.

I have also put together a separate playlist with the top 10 albums , found here:

And – as a special treat, an extra playlist with all number ones since 2013, a playlist beyond compare, 13 years of musical greatness.

So, these are my top ten choices of 2025. (Some of the albums might have been released in 2024, but reviewed by me in 2025. )

To see how others review the album, I have added quotes from other blogs and publications.

In Medias Res – Zimmermann

Zimmermann impresses with well-written lyrics, confident and recognizable melodies, and masterful production. As far as debut albums go, this is pretty good. The reason I say «pretty» is because it’s clear he has the potential to go even further.

Under Dusken

Animaru – Mei Simones

Mei Semones is a name to watch…. her music is cozy, yet expansive and, while expertly crafted, displays a rare level of excitement and curiosity to expand the imagination…. Animaru is as gorgeous as can be, and undeniably triumphant as a debut. Mei’s music has all the exuberance of a sprint imbued with the mindfulness of sitting with your eyes closed; it fits just about every occasion.

SputnicMusic

Backstage – Jay-Jay Johansson

Once again, Jay-Jay Johanson delivers an album as full as an egg, brimming with different styles, influences, and emotions. In this 15th release, we find his enduring love for jazz (“Ten Little Minutes»), morphing at times into classic lounge music («Glue”). «How Long Do You Think We’re Gonna Last?» is a soul-infused song à la Burt Bacharach, with a ‘disenchanted crooner’ lyricism that’s signature Johanson… Backstage is anachronistic, dreamlike, and deeply melancholic…

Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

The Diary of Living – Adam Melchor

Adam Melchor opens his soul on ‘The Diary of Living,’ a breathtakingly honest, emotionally expansive, and achingly raw album that transforms grief, memory, and growth into some of the best folk music this side of the 21st Century….This is Melchor at his most vulnerable and honest – singing not only for himself, but for the friends he’s lost, the family he loves, and the person he’s become. There’s no veneer, no filter here. Just a man and his voice, guitar, and feeling – raw, unflinching, and full of heart.

Mitch Mosk, Atwood Magazine

The Secret of Life: Partners Volume 2 – Barbra Streisand

The woman who served us «People», “Evergreen,” “The Way We Were” and more than 100 other singles doesn’t need to record another album. She barely needs to leave her surely-gardenia-scented bedroom. But Barbra Streisand 83, has always been not just indefatigable, but interested: in creating, in songcraft and in pushing herself. After 60-plus years in show business, she’s earned the right to drop the New York hustle ingrained in her DNA and take a breath. Her 37th studio album… is that breath. It’s a cozy, comforting audible hug from a parade of familiar friends, including Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Josh Groban, Sting, Ariana Grande and Mariah Carey. Even Bob Dylan hopped aboard this love train.

Melissa Ruggieri, USA Today

LIAR (Love Isn’t a Right) – Tanita Tikaram

‘LIAR (Love Isn’t A Right)’ is a truly stunning album, beautifully recorded and produced, and with perfectly judged arrangements, all topped off with Tikaram’s unmistakable voice. This is an artist at the height of her powers. Is it ‘Ancient Heart, part 2’ as some would have it? Certainly not if that would imply that she’s been essentially plagiarising her much younger self. It is, however, very clearly the same woman, writing to the same quality and about some of the same concerns. But it comes from a more experienced, more mature perspective, with decades more life to draw inspiration from. It’s different to her debut, and so it should be. It is, though pure Tikaram and her best album in years. It’s moving, thoughtful and musically as near perfect as anything human ever can be.

Hera Says

Remembering Now – Van Morrison

It would be very, very easy to go overboard when discussing Van Morrison’s new album, Remembering Now. The 79-year-old Northern Irishman’s latest release, … has been hailed as his best in decades. It’s not such an absurd claim...If it is missing the volcanic energy of his early work, that’s probably fair enough, given the man is now pushing 80. But there are times when this album seems as spiritually optimistic as any he’s ever put out. “Haven’t lost my sense of wonder,” he insists, in the title lyric of the album’s third song. For the first time in a long while, we’ve reason to believe him.

Louis Chilton, Independent

The Art of Loving – Olivia Dean

…It’s exceptionally well made but feels entirely natural; it’s mainstream commercial pop, but laudably devoid of obvious cliches. If Dean’s debut seemed like an artist trying to find their place in the landscape by ticking relevant boxes, The Art of Loving seems like someone finding their own voice. The sight of Olivia Dean battling a cartoon K-pop band in the charts’ upper echelons is proof that pop in 2025 is a business you can’t really predict, but still, The Art of Loving’s success seems a foregone conclusion.

Alexis Petridis, The Guardian

West End Girl – Lily Allen

It’s hard not to wonder whether West End Girl is going to get the reception it deserves for its boldness and the quality of its songwriting: it would be a great pop album regardless of the subject matter. Perhaps some listeners will view it as too personal to countenance. Or perhaps fans who have grown up alongside Allen, now 40, will find something profoundly relatable in the story it has to tell about modern relationships.

Alexis Petridis, The Guardian

A Matter of Time – Laufey

There’s a gaggle of young artists bringing a new audience to jazz, but no one is doing it with as much pop pizzazz as Laufey. With two albums and a Grammy to her name by the time she was 24, she could have rested on her laurels. Instead the Icelandic-Chinese singer-songwriter, now 26, has taken the time to fall in and out of love, and produce a gorgeous third album full of longing and more than a little feminine ire…This is a no skips album that will leave you humming refrains for days afterwards. I’m prepared to call it now as my album of the year — and not just because of the delightful dream ballet interlude in the middle.

India Block, The Standard

Happy New Year – See you in 2026