Pop

All the records that defined 2025

Our readers' choice of the most relevant albums of the year: they reflect freedom, fragmentation and experimentation

by Fernando Rennis

29 December 2025

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3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

In 2025, pop music has, at least in part, stopped pretending stability. Many of the year's most relevant albums reflect freedom, fragmentation and experimentation. These are irregular, sometimes unpredictable records that very often force us to reflect on our present time.

Geese - Getting Killed

The third album by New York-based Geese is chaotic, unpredictable and hypnotic. Behind the big talk about the band and its singer, Cameron Winter, lies a great truth: the presence of a great talent. 'Getting Killed' is a nervous, structurally unstable album, alternating between moments of angular rock, sudden melodic openings and bizarre passages. Fragmentary and full of percussion, the album expresses a great sense of freedom, an incredible desire to discover.

Mulatu Astatke - Mulatu Plays Mulatu

Astatke returns to his own catalogue, giving us all the elegance of his ethio-jazz. The vibraphone takes on a guiding function, while the rhythm sections avoid any spectacular gestures. Rather than reinterpreting, Astatke seems to observe himself from a critical distance. "Mulatu Plays Mulatu" is a record that works on time and rejects the idea of celebration. In fact, that of the 82-year-old musician from Gimma is a treatment of his songs that is sometimes even radical. Where there is no lack of improvisation.

Turnstile - Never Enough

With 'Never Enough', Turnstile continue their journey towards an expanded, more accessible but not completely pacified form of hardcore. The melodies are more evident, the production cleaner, but the band continues to move around an unresolved tension between physicality and control. Some tracks work precisely when this friction remains visible; others seem designed for a wider audience, sacrificing some of the initial urgency.

Bad Bunny - Debí Tirar Más Fotos

Bad Bunny constructs an album that reflects the condition of an artist immersed in a continuous flow of images and expectations. 'Debí Tirar Más Fotos' is long, often dispersive, but intentionally so. Reggaeton is here constantly interrupted by ballads, pop detours and almost diaristic moments. The lyrics revolve around memory, regret, the difficulty of retaining something in a hyper-documented present.

New Eves - The New Eve Is Rising

Probably the debut of the year. Four girls from Brighton who remain precariously poised between rural folk and punk loss of control, between a Patti Smith in a trance and the Raincoats on acid. 'The New Eve Is Rising' is eerie, poetic, energetic, at times experimental. It seems to come from a distant past, but speaks to us unfiltered about our own bleak present.

Blood Orange - Essex Honey

'Essex Honey' is one of Dev Hynes' most restrained records. The arrangements are restrained, built on discrete harmonic lines and measured instrumental interventions. The theme of loss runs through the album without ever being overtly stated; rather, it emerges through details, omissions, spaces left empty. It is an album that prefers describing rather than telling.

Lily Allen - West End Girl

'West End Girl' is, unambiguously, a record of rupture. Not just sentimental, but identity. After years of public exposure, Allen writes songs that function as lucid accounts of broken relationships, power dynamics and social disillusionment. The lyrics are direct, often ruthless, and underpinned by understated British pop that avoids any superfluous emphasis. More than a comeback, it is a realignment.

FKA Twigs - Eusexua

Broken rhythms, processed voices, constantly changing structures: in her first album in five years, Twigs is attracted by the physicality of bodies and how they interact with each other in an artistic, techno-inspired space. Sensuality is a ground for discovery, the club a free zone where the only fixed rule is to experiment. 'Eusexua' is a dynamic flow in which aggressive rhythms struggle with immediate melodies.

Bon Iver - Sable, Fable

In what could be his last album, Justin Vernon comes full circle, returning to his folk roots. "Sable, Fable" lets a certain feeling of optimism seep in and plays with its heterogeneous nature, shaking off decades-long labelling of the 'sad troubadour' Bon Iver. To do so, Vernon abandons cryptic writing in favour of a soothing luminosity.

Caroline - Caroline 2

"Caroline 2" further develops the band's emotional minimalism. The compositions move by micro-variations, with calibrated instrumental inputs and a careful use of space. The record avoids the typical post-rock climaxes, preferring a lateral progression. It is a record in which the London collective indulges in experimentation, holding on to a great deal of freedom.