Last year, my top 10 list was packed with pop bops and feminine energy (Kylie Minogue, the Last Dinner Party, all-night dance parties by Faux Real and the Dare, a Brat Summer that lasted all year long). But 2025 was the year when Euro-Anglo rock ‘n’ roll frontmen went bold and baroque, dominating my playlists while seemingly dividing the rest of the music-listening and music-list-making world.
Yes, aside from the inevitable and much-deserved Lily Allen inclusion, this just might be the most polarizing year-end albums ranking of my entire obsessive-countdown-compiling career. (Two of the artists on this actual list, the Darkness and Yungblud, even made headlines this year with an ongoing feud about their artistic merits!)
But hey, the heart and ears want what they want. And what my heart and ears, as well as my rubbed-raw nervous system, insatiably hungered for throughout this bonkers/bummer year was music that was unsubtle, audacious, elegant, and escapist — haters be damned. However, I do have wildly swinging musical moods and wide-ranging tastes, so I’ve also included 33 very honorable mentions. So, keep scrolling, and let’s do it all over again in 2026.
10. Ima Robot – Search and Destroy
For some dumb reason, in 2025 some dumb revisionist music historians randomly and wrongly decreed Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ perfectly pleasant “Home” the worst song of all time. But those internet trolls should’ve been funneling all that energy in a more positive way, by celebrating the unearthing of this long-lost 2006 treasure from Zeros frontman Alex Ebert’s electro-rock supergroup. It’s quite astounding that a band that sounded so utterly of-the-moment, futuristically flash-forward, and vacuum-sealed-’80s back in the aughts still sounds so funky-fresh more than two decades later. But Ima Robot’s quirky, herky-jerky post-rock (think Queen, Devo, and Andrew WK jamming at a Berlin disco circa 1982) still slaps. Forget the Zeros and get with these indie-sleaze heroes, who have finally come home.
9. Garbage, Let All That We Imagine Be the Light
Much speculation has been made about the future of Garbage, but if their eighth album ends up being their last, suffice to say they are not going quietly or gently into that good night. One would expect no less, of course, from the fierce, formidable, and forever flame-hearted/haired Dame Shirley Manson, but on this electrogoth fever dream of a record, for which she recorded much of her vocals at home in an opioid haze while recovering from double-hip replacement surgery, she often sounds uncharacteristically vulnerable. She confronts her own morality, or at least her own fragility, atop a dark, dense, and dystopian bed of super-producers Butch Vig, Duke Erikson, and Steve Marker’s analog synth hiss and angular guitars, and is at her most beautifully broken on “The Day That I Met God” — a first-take writing demo that she recorded in her bedroom, in her pajamas, on an afternoon when she, according to her stream-of-semi-consciousness lyrics, “found God in Tramadol.” But she’s still full of fire on tracks like the opening rallying cry “There’s No Future in Optimism,” and especially on the deliciously attitudinal “Chinese Fire Horse,” an anthem for all the unapologetically ungracefully aging women of Generation X. On that rebuke, inspired by Manson’s ludicrous experiences with ageist journalists repeatedly asking her when she’s planning to quit music, she snarls and snarks, “Just a fucking minute/Who you talking to?/You must be mistaken, or you are drunk/And failed to read the room/I may be much older, so much older than you/But I’ve still got the power in my brain and my body/I’ll take no shit from you.” Hell yes. So, perhaps rumors of Garbage’s retirement have been greatly exaggerated, because on this record the alt-rock innovators sound reborn, and they still sound like the (slightly optimistic) future.
8. Sloan – Based on the Best Seller
Canada’s finest never, ever disappoint. They’re such a consistently excellent import, in fact, that it’s all too easy to take the Nova Scotian gods’ greatness for granted after 33 years. Like all of Jay Ferguson, Chris Murphy, Patrick Pentland, and Andrew Scott’s worthy predecessors, this, Sloan’s 14th studio album, comes across like a lovingly compiled mixtape or some really awesome K-TEL compilation of ’70s AM radio gems — swaggeringly swerving from flying V-brandishing, drumstick-twirling, muscle-car cock-rock to soft-rock mellow gold as the hits keep coming. Sloan are blessed to have four sublime songwriters among their ranks, and all U.S. powerpop fanatics living in Canada’s basement are very blessed to have them.
7. Damiano David – Funny Little Fears
On his stellar and surprising solo debut, Måneskin’s formerly leather-sheathed Italian stallion transforms into an Armani-suited pop crooner — fully leaning into the camp of his Eurovision era and the world of musical theater introduced to him by his now-fiancée Dove Cameron, and singing more beautifully and purely than his day-job band ever allowed. He penned an ambitious 72 songs for this passion project during a quarterlife crisis, and standouts among the 14 tracks that made the cut are the majestic “Silverlines” with electronic auteur Labrinth; the teen-heartache prom ballad “Next Summer” with Jason Evigan and Sarah Hudson; and especially the Hudson/Evigan avoidant anthem “Born With a Broken Heart” (three minutes and 28 seconds of elegant, eloquent euphoria, complete with an Old Hollywood mini-movie music video and torn-from-his-diary lyrics that make it hard to believe that English isn’t David’s first language). Funny Little Fears didn’t garner nearly enough attention this year, but it showcases one of the most convincing and thrilling male pop reinventions since post-One Direction Harry Styles.
6. Ghost – Skeletá
The bombastic, theatric, operatic metal Swedes have become unlikely stadium-rock superstars over the years, and with every album, the backlash by wet-blanket-wrapped rockist detractors has seemingly swelled along with their devoted Congregation. However, when one such hater recently bitchily dismissed Ghost as “the metal ABBA,” it was clearer than ever that the good Papa V Perpetua and his band of merry Nameless Ghouls had gotten it right on Ghost’s sixth mega-opus. As if being compared to the almighty ABBA, in any way, could ever be considered an insult!
5. Lily Allen – West End Girl
This zeitgeist-capturing record was such an event, such a moment, in 2025, inspiring dozens of thinkpieces and at least two viral SNL clips, that I almost don’t know what to write about it at this point. Allen was certainly never one avoid messiness, mince words, or miss her target, ever since she debuted in 2006 with the gleefully nasty breakup song “Smile.” But even by Allen standards, the dirty-laundry-strewing West End Girl is absolutely eviscerating in its wittily and coolly delivered female rage. And now Allen’s ex, David Harbour — once best known as a Stranger Things actor, now better and probably forever known as a world-class fuckboy/love-bomber/narcissist/toxic masculinity posterboy/sex addict/gaslighter/butt-plug-hoarder — could only wish that she’d written music about him as relatively benign as “Smile.” Throughout West End Girl, the cringey, creepy scenes from Allen and Harbour’s coerced open marriage unfold and unravel in what feels like real time — from the unsupportive Harbour’s jealousy over Allen’s budding theater career, to Allen’s devastating discovery of her new groom’s emotional affairs (and, of course, her discovery of that infamous Duane Reade shopping bag). And Allen narrates it all in her breezy, beguiling, sing-songy manner, which only renders her confessions more startling — yet somehow also relatable, and maybe not so surprising or startling, for any woman who has suffered a brutal romantic betrayal.
4. The Darkness – Dreams on Toast
There’s nearly nothing that gladdens my little rock ‘n ‘roll heart more than the fact that Justin Hawkins and his British brigade are riding high again, two decades after they were written off as one-hit wonders. I never stopped believing in a thing called the Darkness, and the band had a real moment this year. They finally released their long-gestating documentary (or Darkumentary, if you will); that supposed one hit, “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” shot back to No. 1 after a clip of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce belting it at the U.S. Open Women’s Final went viral; Justin’s music-critique podcast, the aptly titled Justin Hawkins Rides Again, was a viral sensation; the Darkness announced their first major arena tour in 20 years; and their eighth album, Dreams on Toast, debuted at No. 2 in the U.K., their highest chart placement since 2003’s Permission to Land. And it couldn’t have happened to a more awesome gang of rock ‘n’ roll lifers, who against all odds have stayed the course and outlasted trends, even when there were diminishing returns (as the ever-clever Hawkins quips on the Dreams on Toast anthem “Walking Through Fire,” they “never stopped making hit albums, it’s just that no one buys them anymore”). The Darkness’s latest instant classic skewers tired macho-rock tropes (“Rock and Roll Party Cowboy”); faces shaggy-head-on the realities of middle age (“Mortal Dread,” “I Hate Myself”); and loopily veers from campfire country (“Hot on My Trail,” “Cold Hearted Woman”) to speed-metal headbangery (“The Battle for Gadget Land”) to swooningly romantic, ELO-style blue-sky pop (“The Longest Kiss”). And the Darkness do it all with the catsuited camp humor and glass-shattering falsetto flamboyance that made OG fans believers in the first place. Let’s all toast to the Darkness!
3. Pulp – More
My Anglophilia was in even fuller force than usual in 2025 (spoiler: my top five album picks were all by U.K. artists). But in a year when Oasis pulled off the comeback of the century, it was this Britpop comeback that thrilled me the most. (Back in the ‘90s, my answer to the great “Oasis or Blur?” conundrum was always either “Suede” — who also released a great record this year, by the way — or “Pulp.”) Nearly a quarter-century after the last Pulp album, Jarvis Cocker and company are still in a different class all their own. Cocker’s observational and often self-deprecating lyrics have possibly only grown even more sharply witty with age, but unlike 1998’s nihilistic midlife-meltdown This Is Hardcore, this record, as hinted by its bold title, is unexpectedly celebratory. Sure, “Tina” is a sad, Sliding Doors-style stalker song about a love affair that never happened, and “Grown Ups” is an all-too-relatable lament about life’s all-too-speedy transition from young, starry-eyed hipsterdom to suburban middle-aged malaise. But the meet-cute story-song “Farmers Market” is a sweetly hopeful ode to all the unexpectedly possibilities of late-in-life romance, and the centerpiece “Got to Have Love” — a hands-in-air disco anthem absolutely intended to be played for the festival masses and Hollywood Bowl crowds (if you didn’t see Pulp play this song on tour, were you even living in 2005?) — is pure elation. Plus, that latter track features one of the best grown-up realizations in Cocker’s lyric book: “Without love, you’re just jerking off inside someone else.” I’m so delighted that the much-missed Pulp decided to meet up with us in the year 2025.
2. Yungblud – Idols
To call Dominic Harrison’s fourth album “epic” would be the understatement of the year. The record’s gauntlet-throwing lead single — a sort of please-allow-me-to-reintroduce-myself statement song called “Hello Heaven, Hello” — is a nine-minute, multiple-time-signature, three-act mini-rock opera that practically makes Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell,” Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain,” or My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade” seem like exercises in economy and restraint. And it’s accompanied by a cinematic music video starring a shirtless, horseback-straddling, Prometheus-winged Yungblud posing and preening against black-and-white backdrops of cranked-to-11 Marshall stacks and Discovery Channel-worthy aerial shots of medieval snowscapes. Such a potentially frontloading album-opener would be a daunting act for most artists to follow, but clearly, Yungblud is not like most artists. Sometimes he does wear his influences on his Burberry sleeve — for instance, the cheeky Cool Britannia of “Lovesick Lullaby” evokes Parklife-era Blur (complete with Harrison’s Phil Daniels-esque rap), while the soaring and storming “The Greatest Parade” brings to mind Black Market Music-era Placebo, and the closing piano ballad “Supermoon” sounds like a lost cut from either the Velvet Goldmine or Hedwig soundtracks. Other songs are reminiscent of the swirling shoegaze of Catherine Wheel, the chiming post-punk of pre-Joshua Tree U2, the ‘60s-meets-‘90s college-rock psychedelia of Kula Shaker, the Charlatans, and Stone Temple Pilots’ Vatican Gift Shop, or pretty much every era of David Bowie. But despite all that, and despite the album’s impudent title, Idols never sounds an exercise in nostalgia. It’s all so utterly unexpected from the new-school punk/pop provocateur, and it’d almost seem like a parody, if it wasn’t so clearly sincere and undeniably great.
1. Luke Spiller – Love Will Probably Kill Me Before Cigarettes and Wine
The audacious title of the stunning solo debut by the Struts’ frontman reflects all the ambition and emotion held within. The years-in-the-making project was inspired during Spiller’s rare between-tours downtime, when he was penning poetry and deep-diving into mostly classical music and Scott Walker albums, and his first two symphonic tracks created during this era of dark-L.A.-night-of-the-soul-searching were so fantastical, he actually pitched to them to be James Bond themes. And while didn’t happen (which is totally 007’s loss), there was no turning back after that. The result is a literal labor of love, in all love’s forms, but most of all, these 10 cinematic epics form a love letter to ex-pat Spiller’s second home of Los Angeles. “Hold me like Hollywood held you,” he croons on the classically noirish L.A. concept album’s title track, wearing his tattooed heart on his glittery sleeve, while he goes all Lauren Canyon on the sentimental seasick/lovesick Jason Falkner collab “She’s Like California,” and he so perfectly and specifically captures the wonder and anything-could-happen promise of late-night romance on “Magic at Midnight in Mel’s Diner”(which is as explosive as anything the Struts have ever recorded). For anyone in love with Los Angeles, or just in love with love, Love Will Probably Kill Me Before Cigarettes and Wine is heady, addictive stuff. (Now, can we please get Spiller to sing the next Bond song?)
VERY HONORABLE MENTIONS:
AFI – Silver Bleeds the Black Sun
Billy Nomates – Metal Horse
Blone Noble – Life’s New Adventure
Coyle Girelli – Out of This Town
Elton John & Brandi Carlile – Who Believes in Angels?
Foxy Shazam – Animality Opera
Franz Ferdinand – The Human Fear
Jake Wesley Rogers – In the Key of Love
Jason Isbell – Foxes in the Snow
John McKay – Sixes and Sevens
Lady Gaga – Mayhem
Lambrini Girls – Who Let the Dogs Out
Lucy Dacus – Forever Is a Feeling
Lydia Night – Parody of Pleasure
Mareux – Nonstop Romance
Margaret Cho – Lucky Gift
Miles Kane – Sunlight in the Shadows
Olly Alexander – Polari
Orville Peck – Appaloosa
Perfume Genius – Glory
Peter Doherty – Felt Better Alive
Peter Murphy – Silver Shade
Public Enemy – Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025
Sextile – Yes, Please
Skunk Anansie – The Painful Truth
Suede – Antidepressants
The Horrors – Night Life
The Ting Tings – Home
The Weeknd – Hurry Up Tomorrow
The Wombats – Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come
Tunde Abimpe – Thee Black Boltz
Viagra Boys – Viagr Aboys
Wet Leg – Moisturizer
