The best albums of 2025 so far

With the first half of 2025 behind us, it’s time for … uh, forget most. But there is still a lot to celebrate, especially with regard to things that have been constantly emanating from our speakers and headphones for months. In addition to the long -awaited return of Mother Monster (whoa! She makes pop songs again?!), We saw brilliant pivots of the greatest poets and visionaries of music. All of this offered an essential escape from the headlines (excluding ours) and a soundtrack to these high occasional people who put us pressure.

Here, Weekly entertainmentTop 10 albums so far this year (in a very diplomatic alphabetical order).

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Bad Bunny, Debí Tirar Más Fotos

Bad Bunny may be a global superstar, but he has never forgotten where he came from. After years to have been swept under the spotlight, the triple winner of the Grammys returned to Puerto Rico and allowed his roots the space to flower in bright colored for his sixth genre album, defying the genre, Debí Tirar Más Fotos (“I should have taken more photos”). Recorded Entirely on the Island, The 17-Track Reggaeton and Latin Pop Master Class Not Only Serves As His Love Letter to His Homeland, But also Captures The 31-Year-Old Singer Deftly Blending His Modern Stylings With Music Near and Dear to its Cultural Identity, include plena (“Debí Tirar Más Fotos”) Salsa (“Inolvidable Baile”), and Jíbaro (“Lo que le Pasó a Hawaii”). A joyful opus binding an artist to his inheritance, Debí Tirar Más Fotos will no longer feel significant – for him and his listeners – over time. A bit like a photograph. —Emlyn Travis

Good iver, Sand, fable

In the first lines of last year MartenJustin Vernon de Bon Iver looks in the mirror and sees an anxious foreigner trapped in a prison in his manufacture. But this EP, which also serves as a prelude to its fifth feature film, was a red herring. During the nine tracks that follow, Vernon – a solitary troubadour that launched his career with an album he recorded in an isolated cabin in Wisconsin in the middle of winter – throws his pensive sadness. Supported by a steel pedal, lapping beats and gospel-style voices, he turns his gaze outwards with gratitude and childish wonder (“damn, if I do not climb right now”, he declares in the exultant “everything is a peaceful love”). He is full of hope, exalted, even a little excited (“Get Your Fine Ass on the road”, he commands in the collaboration of Danielle Haim “I will be there”). On Sand, fable, Winter frost has melted. Vernon is ready to face the world and, more importantly, compete. —Jason lamphier

Destructive, Dan’s Boogie

Three decades after his career, Dan Bejar de Destroyer remains a reliable supplier of dense and dazzling compositions. The group’s 14th LP, produced by bassist John Collins, goes to only 36 minutes but feels extended. An orchestration attack fuels the track track, while others (“Bologna”, “cataract time”) are languid and in layers. Bejar’s smoked viola is our anchor, resembling an omniscient ghost that serenade us in a liminal space. His honest and often sardic observations (“women fill up and men collapse inward”) resonate through a thick cloud of dizzying pianos, jazz horns and sparkling synths. Maximalist and fascinating, the disc takes place as live comments for a lively metropolis – Ah, look at all the solitary people! He made a convincing case to stop to breathe urban smog. It can feel shit, but at least you live in the moment. —Allar nuss

Djo, The knot

After years spent demogorgons with a nailed baseball bat, Foreign things‘Joe Keery (alias Djo) has reintroduced in the world as the next Indie-Rock darling with her third full length vulnerable, varied, The knot. An exploration of the nostalgia for love and sorrow after the end of a relationship, the 12 -track album offers Keery to marry his conflicting emotions with a mixture of different genres, putting his sorrows at the level of the solitude of the 80s on “Delete Ya” thanks to an booming orchestral arrangement, on “Golden Line”. The scintillating doo -woppers of the 1960s did not lie when they sang that the rupture is difficult to do, but Keery manages to go to the other side with his always intact heart – and his music sounds better than ever. —Emlyn Travis

Fka twigs, Eusexua

“I am obsessed with alternative cultures and subcultures,” the guest host of Fka Twigs told Rupaul in an episode of Jimmy Kimmel live Last year, describing how she found herself in the Thrall of the Prague techno underground scene during the shooting The crow. The singer, producer, dancer and British actress has always operated from the outskirts, avoiding direct bangers for elusive and elusive mood pieces; What his songs are missing in the top 40, they compensate more than in vision. But her third studio album establishes the perfect balance between accessibility and experimentation, the twigs sliding perfectly in all kinds that it tries before folding it to its will. This includes, yes, techno but also the house, the drum and the bass, the industry, the trip-hop, the new age, Ray of light–Era Electronica, and – with the single 2024 “Perfect Stranger” – Elegant Pop with low frills. EusexuaPower lies in its interaction of cerebral and attractive, domination and submission, tension and release. Just push the twigs out of the external limits to the dead center. —Jason lamphier

Haim, I stopped

Although it is registered as a break in rupture, the fourth Azout LP of the widest act of sister in Los Angeles embraces the entire emotional spectrum of disorderly modern romance, frustration (“relationships”), desire (“everywhere”), sorrow (“try to feel my pain”) and the shameless sentimentality (million years “) impeccable. I stopped Double on the summer sounds that populate the best work of Haim, attracting the focus of their live drums, smooth guitar riffs, bouncing bass lines and blurred synths. But the rich sunny production, of the former multi-instrumentalist of the Vampire weekend Rostam Batmanglij and the main singer Danielle Haim, continuously module during a song, leaving many songs With arrangements surprisingly different from those they started. In addition, it’s nice to hear the other brothers and sisters from the trio getting behind the wheel, with alana brilliant The most bubble song on the album (“Spinning”) and Este bringing back to the most melancholic house (“Cry”). —Wesley Stenzel

Lady Gaga, Grabuge

After having experienced Americana stripped on Joanne and Cyberpunk dance music on ChromaticaLady Gaga has triumphantly emerged from quickly Forgotten shadow of Joker: madness in Deu with GrabugeHis most eclectic album to date. Through 14 intense energetic tracks, our pre-eminent Gonzo Pop Princess offers him a point of view on the funk inspired by the Prince and Bowie (“Killah”), the industrial grunge (“Celebrity” Perfect “), Retro Glam-Rock (” Vanish Into You), Moonstreck Findy Halloween Bops (“Zombieboy” ” Beast “), moonstreck Soft-rock (“die with a smile”), and the best song by Taylor Swift unwritten by Taylor Swift (“How does it want me”). Meanwhile, the album opening trifecta – “Disease”, “Abracadabra” and “Garden of Eden” – Find Gaga revisiting the Gothic theatricality and the hyper -combatant stammering choirs of its first tubes. The result is both a return to the shape and a breath of fresh air from one of the most reliable voices of the biz. —Wesley Stenzel

Perfume genius, Glory

Over the past 15 years, Mike Hadreas’ discography has gone from sparse and LoFi piano ballads to baroque-pop and vice versa mosaics, and on its seventh LP as a genius of perfume, there is once again a duct for the sublime. Although stylistically elastic, Glory Remains thematically coherent while Hadreas, a vocal contortionist, tightens his breathless bellows in a fade managing while he sings to be desperately tangled in his past trauma (“I always run and hide when a man is at the door”). Its production has always seemed strangely intimate, as secrets shared in confidence, but this album is its most collaborative version to date. With the longtime producer Blake Mills and his co-scriptwriter and romantic partner, Alan Wyffels, Hadreas brings the New Zealand Folk Artist Aldous Harding in the fold for the single “No Front Teeth” competition, which vacillates between picturesque Americana and fast rocks. The whole record is a high thread balance, but it never curls under the weight of its beautiful contradictions. –Allaire Nuss

Turnstile, Never enough

The turnstile is the favorite group of your favorite group. Warm well maintained Baltimore for too long, hardcore heavy goods vehicles have made massive waves with 2021 Shine, Propel them beyond the competence of unconditional initiates and present them to the hungry masses of rock. Anticipation was an upper sky for their next outing, and Never enough Book of seismic goods. Like his predecessor, the album is an Odyssey that weighs the genre, skating by House music (“Look out for me”), Bubblegum for Bruisers (“I Care”), Ceremonial Woodwinds (“Sunnshower”), Disco (“Seein ‘Stars”) and, of course, furious, Riffs of guitar. These are kinetic and kaleidoscopic songs woven in a transparent way like a tapestry that continues to change the color. Never enough Never feel swollen or too ambitious; In this fable, Icarus flies away. –Allaire Nuss

Kali Uchis, Sincerely

What time f — Ed-up to be alive. Kali Uchis solution? Close the curtains, pour the cab, draw the bath and pass the next time to lounge in incredibly sexy and sophisticated slow jams that evoke Motown, Doo -Wop, R&B of gold and the soundtrack to a private strip. The American artist Columbian said that his fifth album concerned “finding beauty in pain and taking good” – he is dedicated to his late mother and inspired by the birth of his son – and he is better appreciated as a whole. This is a record to get lost. It is never more visible than on the culmination “losing my composure”, which changes the tempos halfway to fight against lush harmonies and spine that recall “come” from the 80s. Going to SincerelyThe charms and you will swear that you have brushed your shoulders with the sublime. —Jason lamphier