Music writers pick their favourite albums of 2025

The Independent

Music writers pick their favourite albums of 2025The Independent

Transcript

00:00My name is Hannah Ewens.

00:01I'm Rishina Kwanath.

00:01Ellie Muir.

00:02I'm a music writer at The Independent.

00:04I'm the music editor at The Independent.

00:05These are my picks for albums of the year.

00:07These are my top three albums of 2025.

00:13My first pick for album of the year would be

00:16the critically lukewarm but culturally iconic swag by Justin Bieber.

00:30A lot of people think that this album is a bit silly,

00:33or I should say the lyrics in this album are a little bit silly,

00:36but it's probably the album that I've listened to the most this year.

00:40The production is really gorgeous, sounds a little bit spacious,

00:45like you're in a church, but also really intimate,

00:47like you're just at home with Justin Bieber and he's in the next room singing to you.

00:52My first pick is Rosalia, Lux.

00:54This is just the most hands-down ambitious,

00:57extraordinary album of the year for me.

00:59It is just phenomenal in its instrumentation, approach,

01:03just the breadth of the musicianship and the scope of it is incredible.

01:15It uses 13 different languages.

01:17It uses the London Symphony Orchestra, Pulitzer Prize-winning conductor,

01:21and in all of that she's exploring these incredible themes of faith,

01:25love, heartbreak, and identity as a woman,

01:28and she does it all in the most beautiful, complex way.

01:31It's a very challenging record,

01:33but I think it's one of the ones that really demands your attention and for good reason.

01:37My top album of the year is Addison Rae's Addison.

01:41The songs Diet Pepsi and Aquamarine have really sort of defined the year.

01:46I actually got the pleasure of seeing her in London perform this year,

01:57and I haven't been to a concert that's had that much of an amazing energy.

02:07Her rebrand this year has been something to really marvel at.

02:10She's gone from being this TikTok star from the TikTok HQ, The Hype House,

02:16and she was that girl doing those traffic control style dances on TikTok during lockdown,

02:21and she's become basically the sort of breakout pop star of this year,

02:25and a sort of it girl within her own right.

02:28So yeah, I'm a big, big fan.

02:30Next up is Lily Allen's West End Girl.

02:32So a very different album, but I think just incredible for its transparency.

02:37Lily Allen has always been known for her very candid songwriting,

02:41and I think this is probably the epitome of that.

02:53It kind of came after her very public breakup from Stranger Things actor David Harbour.

02:58She's described it as a mix of like fact and fiction,

03:01so we don't know the ins and outs exactly of what is true and what isn't,

03:05but what we do know is that her songwriting is just extraordinarily frank.

03:09My favourite song on West End Girl is probably Pussy Palace.

03:13I think just because this was the song that really struck me as again,

03:16sort of like the core of the honesty on this record.

03:19Her narration is extraordinary.

03:20You feel like you're in the moment with her riding the L train,

03:24going up to this apartment and finding this stash of sex paraphernalia,

03:28and it really gets you in the gut.

03:30It's just so blunt in its approach.

03:32I think there's no kind of sugarcoating it at all,

03:35and I think that just speaks to Lily's prowess as a storyteller.

03:39There's this lyric that really stuck with me from Pussy Palace,

03:41which is hundreds of Trojans, you're so f***ing broken.

03:44Somehow finding sympathy in the other person for their situation as well.

03:48She's not just kind of poor me-ing the situation.

03:51It is generally a very empathetic thing as well,

03:54despite the kind of awfulness of that situation that she finds herself in.

03:59My second pick for Album of the Year would be Tyler Childers' Snipe Hunter.

04:04If you have been wanting to get into country music,

04:07and you haven't known where to start, this could be a good one for you.

04:11It's rousing and very fun, and I listened to it on a road trip that I took with my friend around Montana.

04:28There's also a very fun song, which is called Biting List,

04:35which is about Tyler imagining that if he was a rabies-ridden dog,

04:41he would especially bite this person who is number one on his hate list,

04:47which I just think is a very fun idea,

04:51and I'm surprised that no one's ever written a song like that before.

04:54My second favourite album of the year is Fancy That by Pink Pantheress.

04:59This album inspired maybe the biggest TikTok trend of the year from her song Illegal.

05:03My name's Pink and I'm really glad to meet you.

05:07You're recommended to me by some people.

05:10Hey, ooh, is this illegal?

05:14Hey, ooh, it feels illegal.

05:17She's only 24, but she's got such a knowledge of music and the history of music

05:22that's really something to marvel at.

05:24This album is nine tracks and it spans across pops past and present, Jersey Club, EDM, Garage, House.

05:34There's really not a genre that she doesn't touch.

05:37What Pink Pantheress does best is reimagining genres from the 90s and noughties and sort of sampling them.

05:44She samples so much music in her own record and reimagines it for her younger audience.

05:49My final pick for album of the year would be FK Twig's Eusexua.

05:55The concept is her entering a club at the beginning of the night,

05:59wondering what's going to happen and how this night might impact her.

06:03And then it goes through her night dancing, feeling really like sexually free.

06:08And of course, experiencing Eusexua, which I think is essentially

06:13what most people would call feeling like collective euphoria on the dance floor.

06:19She talks about men being beautiful and wanting them to heal and women being beautiful

06:26and wanting them to kind of find themselves sexually.

06:29And obviously with the concept of the album being on the dance floor

06:33and dancing around people is a way to do that.

06:35My third pick, but by no means last, is Little Sims Lotus.

06:39This record is just incredible and Little Sims never releases like anywhere near a mediocre album.

06:44Her arms are always phenomenal.

06:46But this one, I think in particular, she didn't really promote it that much.

06:49She's been going through like a particularly hard time in her career.

06:52She just sued her friend and longtime collaborator Inflow,

06:57alleging that he didn't pay her back for, I think it was £1.7 million.

07:02She'd ended a relationship with her manager.

07:04She had to cancel a tour due to financial issues in the US.

07:07For her to come out with this record, it just bristles with revenge and venom,

07:11but also nuance.

07:13I think the Lotus is a sign of peace, symbolises reawakening,

07:17and her eyes are fully open on this record.

07:19My third favourite album of the year is BPM by Sudan Archives.

07:23She's maybe a more lesser known artist from Ohio.

07:26She's gonna flip this, fly to the middle, right back, travel the distance.

07:32She likes it when we fall, she's so sadistic.

07:36She's really been on a mission since her debut in 2019 to reimagine the fiddle.

07:41So she sort of blends violin music with electronic, frenetic, glitchy Jersey club music.

07:48I've been a fan of hers for a while and this album really captures what she does best,

07:53but this one's a bit more trap-inflected and it's a bit more underground and club-inspired.

08:00My favourite song from the album is called Bugs Life.

08:03It's got these swirling synth lines and it's really quite chaotic,

08:08but I think it really captures the entire album and it's genre-melding nature.

08:13Whenever she releases an album, it always makes it onto my top three.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended