What Your Favorite Album of 2025 Says About You

Alex G - Headlights: You moved to Philly after going to a small liberal arts college where the Venn diagram between the DIY scene and the radio station was a circle.

CMAT - EURO-COUNTRY: You’ve been listening to Chappell Roan since she was on Atlantic.

Oklou - choke enough: You’re still playing Breath of the Wild all these years later. 

Lily Allen - West End Girl: You look at The Sun and you look in The Mirror; you do not look at the Harbour or the Disparaging Remarks section on Lily Allen's Wikipedia page.

Model/Actriz - Pirouette: Nothing gets you harder than staccato guitar harmonics; if it doesn’t sound like getting sexily stabbed to death, you're not interested.

PinkPantheress - Fancy That: You still check on your Neopets.

Addison Rae - Addison: You check on your Webkinz more than your dad checks in on you.

After - EP 2: Every morning you wake up and fly through the Windows XP desktop wallpaper on the way to your job as a GIF on a Hilary Duff GeoCities fanpage. You literally live in bliss, yet it feels strangely… empty? You sometimes think to yourself, "there's gotta be more to life", but then remember that’s also a pop song from 2003. You briefly wonder if nostalgia really is infantilizing and fascist until a sparkly synth clears your mind.

Sabrina Carpenter - Man’s Best Friend: You’re not sure if you love men or hate men in a way that may require years of therapy to unpack. You also wonder why Jack Antonoff called himself a “straight man with, like, lesbian chemicals” once.

Sombr - I Barely Know Her: You’re not sure if you love women or hate women in a way that may require years of therapy to unpack. You just realized that the album title was a pun.

Wednesday - Bleeds: You can tell if someone’s wearing camo authentically or inauthentically. You will perform a Mortal Kombat fatality on the next person who compares the breakup to Fleetwood Mac.

Rosalia - Lux: You may have completed Duolingo courses in 12 different languages with a Classical Music Appreciation Coursera on the side, but not even you understand why "Berghain" was the single.

Clipse - Let God Sort Em Out: You still say "if you know you know" about literally anything, even if it's culturally inappropriate.

Geese - Getting Killed: You petulantly correct anyone who thinks Long Island City is where Billy Joel was born. You always sound like you’re midway through falling down after leaning your chair too far back.

Goose - Everything Must Go: You’re a settled-down Deadhead who thought you finally connected with your 20-something kid on something, but quickly realized you were talking about different bands.

Silly Goose - Keys To The City: You're just one of those days away from slipping back into your old late-90s nu-metal self. If someone confuses Silly Goose with those jam-rock wusses in Geese and those hipsters in Goose, you’ll stuff them into a locker.

Los Thuthanaka - Los Thuthanaka: You wrote your graduate thesis on the history of Yamaha keyboards in Andean music. Congrats on your un-Master’s degree!

Bon Iver - Sable, Fable: You are the kind of person to ask “no Bon Iver?” in the comment sections of year-end lists.

Lady Gaga - Mayhem: You want to fight the hosts of the NY Times Popcast but deeply respect everyone who's been on Pop Pantheon.

Florence and the Machine - Everybody Scream: You were once pure incandescent feminine rage; now you are incandescent feminine exhaustion.

Lorde - Virgin: You’re about three years away from starting testosterone and/or scheduling your top surgery.

Miya Folick - Erotica Veronica: You're about three years away from breaking up with your long-term boyfriend and dating a woman. Or not! No judgement here!

Renee Rapp - Bite Me: You think anyone who doesn't want to date you is obviously suffering from compulsory heterosexuality, even if they're already out as a lesbian.

Benson Boone - American Heart: You suffer from compulsory metrosexuality.

Alex Warren - You’ll Be Alright Kid: You listen to “We Are Charlie Kirk” for the melody.

Great Grandpa - Patience, Moonbeam, Ice Cream, Taking Off Your Blue Jeans: Sorry, couldn’t resist. Great album though!

Justin Bieber - Swag: You're still confused and think Dijon and Mustard are the same person because Mustard's first name is Dijon. Regardless, you're standing on business.

Dijon - Baby: At any given moment, you have three different classic 90s R&B albums playing on three separate tabs, but not only does it work, it sounds weirdly accessible, skillfully updating sophisti-pop for the post-Blonde era.

Black Country New Road - Forever Howlong: You have lifelong PTSD from your fights in the RateYourMusic comments section. You don't listen to Ants From Up Here anymore, but you still listen to Regina Spektor on incognito mode and donate to Anera every time you want to hear "Samson" again.

Big Thief - Double Infinity: You have lifelong PTSD from your fights in the Indieheads subreddit, but it wasn't about Big Thief, it was about whether David Gray counts as indie.

Water From Your Eyes - It's A Beautiful Life - Your autism and ADHD are constantly fighting; you are both eternally hyperfocused and restless. You used to fight in the Stereogum comment section until they took away downvotes and you realized it was a lost cause.

Bad Bunny - DeBÍ TiRAR MS FOToS: Because of you, a lot of people learned that Puerto Rico is part of the United States.

Morgan Wallen - I’m The Problem: You’ve promised you’ll remember Puerto Rico is part of the United States, but you were barely even convinced about Miami, so no one expects you to change.

Earl Sweatshirt - Live Laugh Love: You finally bought a grill this year and realized the “I just wanna grill for god sakes” meme was right.

Jason Isbell - Foxes in the Snow: After the divorce was finalized, you brought your buddies to that Springsteen biopic just so you could mock it together. It felt like old times, for a while. You snuck into One Battle After Another after and didn’t like it until the Tom Petty needle drop, which alone caused you to post on Bluesky that it “knocked your socks off.”

Hayley Williams - Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party: You’ve deleted all your Haylor fanfic from AO3, but you suspect Hayley saw it anyway. You live in fear of the next extremely specific song dropping out of nowhere.

Lucy Dacus - Forever Is A Feeling: You’re Julien Baker.

Julien Baker and Torres - Send a Prayer My Way: You’re Lucy Dacus.

Samia - Bloodless: You like making critics’ jobs way too easy.

Indigo De Souza - Precipice: You like making critics' jobs way too hard.

Taylor Swift - Life of a Showgirl: You’re Travis Kelce‘s penis.

Fletcher - Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me?: You’re thinking about dating men again, but you’re not sure whether you really want to or it’s the unconscious psychosexual effect of life under an authoritarian government. If you can’t beat em, date em!

Eliza McLamb - Good Story: You frequently think in phrases like “the unconscious psychosexual effect of life under an authoritarian government”, and you can’t turn it off.

The Ophelias - Spring Grove: You tried telepathically apologizing to an old friend about your falling out, but you only transmitted the words “piss in a cup”.

Ethel Cain - Willoughby Tucker, I Will Always Love You: You’re thinking of moving back to Florida and finding a guy to really sink your teeth into. If you can’t beat em, eat em (wait, actually your next boyfriend eats you in the next record, timeline-wise… do I have that right? The lore is complicated.)

Twenty One Pilots - Breach: You infodumped Brandon Sanderson lore on a date and they not only thought it was charming, you’re happily married now. You’ll always struggle with your mental health, but as long as you have your best friend who everyone on the Internet thinks you’ve kissed, you’ll be okay.

Various Artists - K-Pop Demon Hunters OST: Your parents met over a Zoom date where they bonded over the Stormlight Archives. They’re so happy you’re as fixated on this as they were on their own nerdy stuff growing up. You will probably never listen to other K-Pop, otherwise you’ll realize what a brazen copy “Golden” is.

Bruce Springsteen - The Lost Albums and Nebraska '82: You're not online and don't understand any of this list. Your grandchild got this set for your birthday - they’re starting testosterone and/or getting top surgery and want to reconnect since you’re the only one who got their pronouns right immediately. They got tickets to One Battle After Another in 70mm because you heard from a younger friend it “knocked [his] socks off”. You’re gonna fuckin’ love it, man, enjoy! 

Oklou, CMAT, and Alex G blurbs written by Max Freedman