The 80 Best Albums of 2025
The best albums of 2025 challenged orthodoxies, created new genres, and spanned a vast range of musical styles and traditions, while looking forward.
PopMatters Staff
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The 25 Best Folk Albums of 2025
The year’s best folk albums transcend genre boundaries, yet each entry remains firmly grounded in the folk ethos of connection and storytelling.
The Best Music of 2025/Feature Sub Head/Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Lists/Music/Music Features/PopMatters Picks
The 25 Best Pop Albums of 2025
The 25 best pop albums of 2025 radiate with unstoppable playlist power, much-needed sweet escapism, self-reflection, self-criticism, and killer melodies.
The Best Music of 2025/Feature Sub Head/Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Lists/Music/Music Features/PopMatters Picks
The 25 Best Americana Albums of 2025
The Best Americana has never been better with the quality of music, diversity of styles, and the artists’ demographics in terms of race and gender.
The 100 Best Albums of the 2000s
With the benefit of hindsight and wanting a bit of nostalgia, PopMatters travel back to the 2000s in search of the decade’s best albums.
The Best Books of 2024
PopMatters Best Books of 2024 include a broad range of nonfiction, many books on music, short fiction, a novel that turns a Mark Twain classic inside out, and much more.
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The 30 Best Album Re-Issues of 2024
The year’s best album re-issues include rock legends, essential R&B artists, classic pop, jazz, alternative rock, global beats and so much more.
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The 25 Best Rock Albums of 2024
As always, rock was a guitar-led extravaganza in 2024 with artists drawing from an ever-widening musical well. These are the 25 best rock albums of the year.
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The 18 Best Jazz Albums of 2024
This was another year of riches in the best jazz and creative music, with barriers between the tradition and the avant-garde melting away.
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The 20 Best Americana Albums of 2024
Americana has never been better with the quality of music, diversity of styles, and the artists’ demographics in terms of race, gender, and wealth.
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The 80 Best Albums of 2023
The best albums of 2023 challenged orthodoxies, blended and created new genres, and spanned a vast range of musical styles and traditions, while looking forward.
The Best Films of 2023
Our best films of 2023 include A-listers exploring new ground or new wrinkles in the familiar, lesser-knowns of singularly surprising work, and gut-punch comedies.
