Best Albums of 2025

RANKING

Including the genres Americana, Britpop, singer-songwriter and R&B, and circling the globe from Australia to the Isle of Wight, here is State of Sound’s top 10 albums of 2025.

by David Rea

13 December 2025

Photo: album cover for Jason Isbell’s Foxes in the Snow.

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10.

Pulp

Did 2025’s Britpop renaissance reveal a Britain longing for the less divided 1990s, or a reactionary strain in the national psyche, riddled with boneheaded sexism, homophobia and the rest? There has probably been more ink spilt over the meaning of Britpop’s return this year than there has been about any of the new music. Pulp’s eighth studio album, More, their first since 2001 was not only the best thing about the much-discussed second wave, it was one of the band’s best. The intervening decades might have blunted Jarvis Cocker’s wit a little, but the album still boasts throbbing disco beats, kitchen sink tales of romantic obsession, and more than one or two festival-ready choruses. And when Cocker is still able of writing these lines: ‘Love turns into a background noise / Like the buzzing of a fridge / You only notice when it disappears’ — then whatever Britpop really meant, you remember Pulp have always been capable of transcending it.

New Threats from the Soul

9.

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band

Imagine that a Benzedrine-addled Jack Kerouac dropped a little acid and hooked up with a progressive country rock outfit, and you might have some indication of what New Threats from the Soul is like. The lyrics come at you, the syntax unwinding wildly, delightfully refusing to make sense: ‘I left my wallet in El Segundo, I left my true love in a West Lafayette escape room / She had the kind of smile to get a blue swine in trouble / The kind of smile to get a violent one-or-two-time felon employed’.

There is subtlety and swagger, playful irreverence and heartfelt expression of pain. But better than all that New Threats from the Soul has an exhilarating sense of creative freedom — the opener and title track clocks in at 9.21 and ‘Monte Carlo/No Limits’ introduces some jungle beats in its closing minute — that only comes when genuine inspiration fountains through the cracks.

“Rhian Teasdale is a true original. As Morrissey 1.0 exploded frontman stereotypes in 1984 with gladioli spilling from the back pocket of his Levis, Teasdale has inscribed ‘Holy Spirit’ across her crotch and squats down like an insect on the cover of Moisturizer, wearing a terrifying smile Aphex Twin would have been proud of.”

Wild and Clear and Blue

8.

I'm With Her

The Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests every decision we make splits the universe into parallel realities. Every consequence of every choice we make is playing out in an ever-splintering Multiverse. If that's true, then I'd argue I'm With Her and Boygenius were once the same band, becoming two at some sliding doors moment. Perhaps it came in a dive bar late at night when they were asked if they wanted to do some tequila shots and smoke a joint. The answer ‘yes’ created Boygenius, the answer ‘no’, I’m With Her.

Philosophical piffle aside, the two bands really do have an improbably high number of things in common: both have three established female singer-songwriter members and frequently feature vocal harmonies; both seem blissfully free of ego friction and explore themes of sisterhood. If you played I'm With Her’s ‘Standing on the Fault Line’ and Boygenius’ ‘Cool About It’ (both melodic, acoustic-backed and sweetened with harmonies) to a layperson, they would probably assume it was the same band.

But they are, of course, entirely different. Boygenius have something of rock 'n' roll's ethos; they are outspoken and emanate sizzling combined energy. The video for ‘Emily I'm Sorry’ features Phoebe Bridgers singing in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, as monster trucks drive around her. I'm With Her, meanwhile, have a more tranquil synergy; they smile a lot, contentedly playing their Americana blend of violin, banjo and acoustic guitar. The video for the opening song on this year's Wild and Clear and Blue, ‘Ancient Light’, was made up of home movie footage of Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O'Donovan sitting at a picnic table and working in the studio.

But this album might see the dividing lines between the bands start to blur. All of the virtues of I'm With Her’s debut are present here: the virtuoso musicianship, cut-glass harmonies and timeless melodies mined from roots music. But this time, they begin to break out of their Americana enclave. ‘Year After Year’ displays a more incisive pop sensibility than anything they've done to date, and a little studio trickery on ‘Sisters of the Night Watch’ adds otherworldly atmosphere. Perhaps I'm With Her pocketed a little tequila and weed from the bar before the universe split.

Moisturizer

7.

Wet Leg

The angular, acid guitar riffs and metronomic drumming. The pulsing bass and half-spoken, half-sung vocal style. It could be some scuzzy club in London or New York some time after 1977. Except this is the Isle of Wight, an island off the South Coast of England, and it is 2025. On their second studio album Moisturizer, Wet Leg have given yesterday's rusty ramshackle post-punk a millennial makeover, tidying things up and giving it a little spit and polish. Mixed in with a dash of Sleeper, the Breeders and Pavement, there are a bunch of hooks as addictive as methamphetamine. And then there is the band’s unadulterated silliness. Their refusal to take themselves too seriously is a breath of fresh air.

The band's lead singer Rhian Teasdale is a true original. As Morrissey 1.0 exploded frontman stereotypes in 1984 with gladioli spilling from the back pocket of his Levis, Teasdale has inscribed ‘Holy Spirit’ across her crotch and squats down like an insect on the cover of Moisturizer, wearing a terrifying smile Aphex Twin would have been proud of. What more could you want from a pop group?

“The oft-made comparisons between Adrian Crowley and Leonard Cohen are reductive. ‘Laughing Len’ dispatched wisdoms from some higher plane, Crowley stays close to the ground, exploring the tangled world of romantic connections and disconnections.”

West End Girl

6.

Lily Allen

West End Girl made a strong argument that the album was still a vital art form in 2025. Only a novelistic 14-song LP could bring the story of a marriage break-up so alive, tracing the long sad arc of its demise in chapters full of spiky, eye-watering detail. With a full suite of big, glossy tunes thrown in, Lily Allen confidently reaffirms her place as one of 21st century pop’s best.

Measure Of Joy

5.

Adrian Crowley

If you caught the Netflix series House of Guinness this year, you might have heard Adrian Crowley’s heartbreaking song of fraternal abandonment, ‘Brother was a Runaway’. Then again, given the song’s understated sparsity, it might have passed you by. Like ‘Brother was a Runaway’, Measure of Joy’s keynote is carefully tuned understatement. The instrumentation is kept to a minimum, the stories stripped to the sinew and bone.

The oft-made comparisons between Crowley and Leonard Cohen are reductive. ‘Laughing Len’ dispatched wisdoms from some higher plane, Crowley stays close to the ground, exploring the tangled world of romantic connections and disconnections. Crowley's music might better be compared with Bruce Springsteen’s paired-back, show-not-tell storytelling, on songs like ‘Wreck on the Highway’ from The River. But forget Cohen and Springsteen: Crowley is a singular artist — out with the foxes at dawn, swimming in quarries and leaving messages in Parisian churches. His huge and commanding voice (rich and distinctive, full of sadness and longing) is something to be lauded. With the hugely deserved exposure from House of Guinness, one hopes it will be.

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Twilight Override

4.

Jeff Tweedy

‘It's the bloody Beatles’ White Album, shut up!’ So responded Paul McCartney when asked if the Beatles’ 30-song opus should have been a single album. Whether you think The White Album is a self-indulgent farrago or a nobly ambitious magnum opus will likely mirror how you feel about Jeff Tweedy's latest solo album — which, intriguingly, also contains 30 tracks — Twilight Override.

There is crunchy pop-rock, chamber pop and indie folk. ‘Parking Lot’ is a spellbindingly hallucinogenic spoken word piece. ‘Lou Reed Was my Babysitter’ is a punchy homage to, well, Lou Reed. And there isn't a duff track in between. This is Jeff Tweedy's most teeming and consistent solo album of his career.

‘Creativity eats darkness,’ Wilco’s frontman said in the album's press release. Its generous length could just land it second place in the ‘2025 Best Artistic Response to our Dark Times Award’, just behind Mavis Staples’ Sad and Beautiful World. But it would have made a better single album, I hear you cry. It’s bloody Jeff Tweedy's Twilight Override, shut up!

Sad And Beautiful World

3.

Mavis Staples

Take a deep breath, it's going to be alright. There is love in the world. There is hope and humanity. It might sound schmaltzy spelled out in black-and-white lettering on a luminous screen, but expressed by Mavis Staples’ voice it sounds like a simple and welcome truth in a turbulent world. Artists of Staples’ standing tend to turn to The American Songbook for numbers to cover. But Staples has cast her net across far-flung waters, catching rarities such as Tom Waits’ ‘Chicago’. Now in her eighth decade, Staples pours every day of her long years into these songs, deepening them with feeling, and making the originals pale away.

READ OUR REVIEW >>

Foxes in the Snow

2.

Jason Isbell

The confessional love song is like an open window onto an unmade bed – any passing stranger can casually glance in on the romantic intimacy. The genre discloses the secrets of the heart to a public of millions. ‘My life is an open book,’ Neil Young sang on ‘Wrecking Ball’, ‘You read it on the radio.’ That private/public liminal space has rarely been as compelling as on Jason Isbell’s stunning Foxes in the Snow, a meditation on love, telling of a relationship’s end and another’s beginning. (Isbell recently divorced his wife, singer-songwriter and violinist Amanda Shires, and began a new relationship with visual artist Anna Weyant.)

Recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York with just his voice and Martin 0-17 acoustic guitar, it is a record which oozes creative confidence during a period of great personal change. As for the oft-discussed idea that Isbell is the Townes Van Zandt of the 21st-century or, as others have suggested, John Prine handed him the torch of Great American Songwriting, I have no idea. But Isbell’s weave of melody and rhyme can draw a gasp. The album confirms his remarkable ability to find the universal in the particular, and reveals a tiny slither of ice in his big, generous heart.

The Resurrection Game

1.

Emma Swift

‘People thought it was too intimate,’ Joni Mitchell said of her album Blue on Apple Music in 2022. ‘I think it upset the male singer-songwriters. They’d go, "Oh no. Do we have to bare our souls like this now?”’ Emma Swift has not only written an exceptionally intimate album, baring her interior world on all sides, she has transformed her blue soul into a beguiling and emotionally complex set of songs.

Swift’s 2020 album of Bob Dylan covers, Blonde on the Tracks, won comparisons with Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball and lavish praise from Greil Marcus. Consequently The Resurrection Game, her first album of all original compositions, arrived with great expectations. It exceeds them all. She is a lyricist of rare talent, precise and original, able to coin lines that remain with you long after listening. Her voice is strong and true, with a purity of tone and character all its own. And her gorgeous vocal melodies are given new inflections by Jordan Lehning’s deftly sensitive string arrangements.

The song is not the singer, of course, but knowing this album’s backstory, you reach its final song wondering how Emma Swift ever survived the journey, and feeling thankful she had the courage and talent to transform it into something so perfectly beautiful.