Great albums are part of the patchwork of your life - they can be heartening or inspiring, but above all else, change your life through connecting with someone else's story.
Here's our top ten albums that changed (and helped shape) our 2025...
P.S. Coup De Main's annual Best Songs Of 2025 list is out tomorrow!
#10. 'LOUDER, PLEASE' - ROSE GRAY
BECAUSE: "Feeling things fall into place in real time is blowing my li'l mind," says Rose Gray of the past year - one big never-ending party that has included opening for Charli xcx at LIDO and a sold-out U.S. headline tour. Gray was born on New Year’s Eve and you can hear it in her music - emotive pop anthems for running wild.
KEY TRACKS: 'Wet & Wild', 'Angel Of Satisfaction', 'Everything Changes (But I Won't)'.
#9. 'DEADBEAT' - TAME IMPALA
BECAUSE: "I used to think it was kind of a self-centred ego thing to want to make all your music all about you, but it's really not, it just makes the people listening to it think about themselves," reflects Kevin Parker on his time spent helping to create hits for some of pop's biggest stars. Returning this year with his first new album in five years, the Western Australia-based artist/producer has never sounded more heartfelt and creatively free.
KEY TRACKS: 'Oblivion', 'See You On Monday (You're Lost)', 'End Of Summer'.
#8. 'ROCKET' - DOMINIC FIKE
BECAUSE: "Rocket is not an album," declared Dominic Fike before dropping his latest offering, and although technically only a mixtape, this 12-track collection of both new and previously unreleased/unfinished songs is no throwaway release. "Massive error creates work for therapists," he raps in 'Epilogue' - a classic Fike witticism that also boasts emotional depths.
KEY TRACKS: 'Aftermath (Edit)', 'Sandman', 'Epilogue'.
#7. 'I QUIT' - HAIM
BECAUSE: Good things take time, and Haim only release a new album every three to five years, so you know it's going to be dynamite when everyone's favourite sisters come together with new music. "You think you're gonna die, but you're not gonna die," repeats Danielle Haim in the outro of 'Everybody’s Trying To Figure Me Out' and never have I felt more heard in a song.
KEY TRACKS: 'Down To Be Wrong', 'Everybody's Trying To Figure Me Out', 'Try To Feel My Pain'.
#6. 'MAN'S BEST FRIEND' - SABRINA CARPENTER
BECAUSE: Sabrina Carpenter is saying what we're all thinking, she's just the only one brave enough to commit the horny humour of a song like 'House Tour' to public record. But Carpenter contains multitudes, positing to a different personality on the relatable anthem 'Nobody's Son' ("There's nobody's son, not anyone left for me to believe in"), and somewhere in-between on 'My Man On Willpower' ("He's busy, he's workin', he doesn't have time for me / My slutty pajamas not temptin' him in the least"). No one is doing it like her.
KEY TRACKS: 'Manchild', 'Nobody's Son', 'My Man On Willpower'.
#5. 'WHO'S THE CLOWN?' - AUDREY HOBERT
BECAUSE: Writing a perfect pop song is extremely difficult, but Audrey Hobert makes it look easy. "I started writing songs for this album without realising that that was what I was doing," she explains. "It was January 2024. I had just signed a publishing deal at Universal because my best friend Gracie and I had spent the previous six months writing songs for her sophomore album - my first time writing music. I didn’t even realise what was going on, straight up. I was staffed as a writer on a Nickelodeon show. I had gone to NYU for television writing. I had never considered even trying to write music through all of this, even though I always had a great voice and was extremely interested in pop music. January 2024. Gracie and I had finished writing songs for her album. There was a day where I was in the mood to write a song again. I had never tried alone. I started typing out what was happening around me - I’m at my house, I had a drink, it’s windy out so the walls are creaking. I wrote for a while and then picked up the guitar sang it. It became the first song I wrote by myself, 'Wet Hair'." And that's the story of how Hobert delivered 2025's Best Debut Album to you.
KEY TRACKS: 'Sex And The City', 'Wet Hair', 'Phoebe'.
#4. 'GETTING KILLED' - GEESE
BECAUSE: "I’m getting killеd by a pretty good life," sings Cameron Winter on the title-track from Geese's third album, 'Getting Killed' - an ode to the trials and tribulations of generational anxiety. The New York band have a knack for soundtracking hard feelings ("You can change / Baby you can change and still choose me" in 'Au Pays du Cocaine' is another highlight) into outlandish dramatisations that feel both familiar and unfamiliar. Much has been made of Geese's seemingly fast ascent this past year, but 'Getting Killed' is just further proof that they're here for good.
KEY TRACKS: 'Islands Of Men', 'Husbands', 'Au Pays du Cocaine'.
#3. 'THE CRUX' - DJO
BECAUSE: Joe Keery is a self-described over-thinker, and on this third album, we find him endeavouring for a balance between one's own ambition, positive manifestation, and trying your best to live in the present (and enjoy it). 'The Crux' is a creative exploration of life's complexities, and the album cover depicts Keery dangling precariously out a third-floor hotel window, poised to move on from a transitionary limbo state - finally ready to remap his interior and shape a shiny new future. Usually a private person, Keery openly runs the gamut from feeling unmoored in 'Link' ("I just graduated / Top of my class / Furthest from last / So why do I feel so bad?"), to fully supported in 'Back On You' ("Well I’ve got friends / Who never spin the truth / And they can trust in me"), and hopeful on 'Potion' ("I'll try for all of my life just to find someone who leaves on the light for me").
KEY TRACKS: 'Potion', 'Delete Ya', 'Crux'.
#2. 'BABY' - DIJON
BECAUSE: Following up 2021's ingenious 'Absolutely', Dijon's second album 'Baby' proves it's a myth that lightning cannot strike repeatedly in the same place. There's a visceral physicality to Dijon's songwriting ("I love it when you tie my tie / Tight around my neck / And double-love it when you’re all dolled up" in 'Higher' really delivers) that runs ultra hot on 'Baby', imbibing the entire album with an extra dimension of effusive feeling. Delving into his own experiences of new-found fatherhood and unbridled connection, Dijon understands what it means to be human, painting a disarmingly honest portrait of life's inescapable growing pains - thorns and all. 'Baby' is the sound of a self-assured generational artist that is running rings around the status quo.
KEY TRACKS: 'Yamaha', 'Higher!', 'Baby!'.
#1. 'EGO DEATH AT A BACHELORETTE PARTY' - HAYLEY WILLIAMS
BECAUSE: Nothing breaks like a heart. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as broken heart syndrome, is a condition that can be triggered by emotional stress - i.e. that physical pain you feel in your heart when you're emotionally hurt. Cardiologists have yet to determine the precise cause of broken heart syndrome, but experts believe that a sudden increase of stress hormones can temporarily stun the heart and mimic the symptoms of a heart attack. So, when Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams confides, "Nothing could compare to the potential greatest love of all time / The pleasure and the agony's all mine," in 'Love Me Different' from her third solo album, it hits, well, different. 'Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party' is a comforting reminder that you're not alone in the world, and if you're the same age as myself and Williams, it's extra fun to sing along to the bridge of 'Glum' ("On my way to thirty-seven years / I do not know if I'll ever know / What in the living fuck I'm doing here / Does anyone know if this is normal? I wonder, I wonder"). Free falling from opener 'Ice In My OJ' ("I got ice in my OJ, I'm a cold, hard bitch / A lot of dumb motherfuckers that I made rich"), to penultimate closer 'Good Ol’ Days' ("Who knew the hard times were the good ol' days?"), and ricocheting everywhere in-between ("I thought you were gonna catch me / I never stopped falling for you / Now I know better, never let me / Leave home without a parachute" from 'Parachute' is also devastating)... if surviving emotional turmoil was an Olympic sport, then Williams would have gold in the bag.
KEY TRACKS: 'Love Me Different', 'Mirtazapine', 'Whim'.
If you want to listen to all ten albums, one after the other / all together, then this playlist is for you:
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