The 50 Best Albums of 2025 So Far (Staff Picks)

Blockbuster albums have dominated the charts in 2025. Look at the Billboard Hot 100 at various points this year and you’d have seen multiple songs in the top 50 from Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet, Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, Kendrick Lamar’s GNX and GloRilla’s Glorious, among others — many of which are still excelling on the chart even as we reach the year’s halfway point. The problem with that from a 2025 perspective, of course: Those big-ticket albums were all originally released in 2024.

Yes, we’ve had a bit of a problem getting 2024 — a period of releases too big to cycle through them entirely within 12 months — out of our system so far this year. Slowly but surely, however, 2025 has been catching up: We’ve seen culture-moving albums from established superstars Bad Bunny, Lady Gaga and Morgan Wallen, as well as level-up projects from ascendant artists Playboi Carti, Fuerza Regida and Turnstile, and some highly exciting debut LPs from newer hitmakers like Central Cee and Addison Rae. And those are just the current big names: As always, there were also plenty of new underneath-the-mainstream names who took us by surprise, as well as old favorites taking new directions we never saw coming.

You can find all of those in our staff list of the 50 best albums of 2025 so far. Check them out — presented alphabetically by artist below — and let’s all pledge to do a better job cutting the cord with 2024 for the second half of the calendar year.