Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Albums of 2025: What Their List Gets Right (and What It Misses)

2025 was a restless year for albums, and Rolling Stone’s “100 Best Albums of 2025” list leans into that chaos. From Lady Gaga and a long‑awaited ClipseRosalía and art‑rock shapeshifters Geese, the ranking captures a year where pop got stranger, rap got more introspective, and genre borders continued to blur.

Instead of coasting on legacy acts or algorithm‑friendly hits, 2025’s best albums—at least according to Rolling Stone—double down on personality and risk. It’s a list designed to spark arguments in group chats and music forums, which is exactly what a year‑end canon should do.

Collage of artists featured in Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Albums of 2025
Official Rolling Stone artwork promoting the “100 Best Albums of 2025” feature.

Below, we break down how the list reflects the current music landscape, where it nails the discourse, and where it quietly reveals Rolling Stone’s ongoing tastes and blind spots.


2025 in Music: A Year of Risk, Restlessness, and Reinvention

Even before the list dropped, 2025 felt like the hangover after a decade of streaming, TikTok hits, and tour‑economy burnout. Big artists were either taking massive creative swings or disappearing entirely for a cycle. Smaller acts, meanwhile, were treating albums like dense worlds rather than playlists—records meant to be lived in, not just skimmed.

Rolling Stone’s write‑up pitches the year as one where “the music world refused to stand still” and “this wasn’t a year for playing it safe.” That’s not just blurb copy; it’s a pretty accurate read. Across pop, rap, rock, and experimental scenes, the standout records had a few things in common:

  • High‑concept pop that felt theatrical, not just playlist‑ready.
  • Rap albums leaning into storytelling, memory, and moral ambiguity.
  • Global sounds from Spain, Latin America, Africa, and Asia dominating conversation.
  • Indie and art‑rock obsessed with texture, narrative, and weirdness.

Against that backdrop, a canonical “100 Best Albums” list isn’t just a recap; it’s a snapshot of whose risks the industry is willing to endorse.


Headliners of the 2025 List: Lady Gaga, Clipse, Rosalía, Geese and More

Rolling Stone foregrounds a handful of names as emblematic of 2025: Lady Gaga, Clipse, Rosalía, and Geese. Even without the full ordered ranking in front of you, that short roll‑call tells a story about what the magazine thinks matters right now.

Vinyl records and album covers spread on a table
Album culture in 2025 is still tactile, even in a streaming‑first world.

Lady Gaga: Pop Maximalism with Teeth

Every time Gaga drops a major record, there’s a reflexive debate: is she chasing hits or chasing art? Her 2025 project lands in that rare space where she’s doing both. Rolling Stone’s decision to spotlight her here suggests an album that leans more into maximalist pop theater than algorithm‑safe singles.

“Gaga isn’t just building choruses this time—she’s building entire worlds.”

It fits the late‑career arc of Gaga: a return to spectacle, but with hardened stakes and veteran confidence. Think: a post‑Chromatica artist who has fully integrated her Broadway, jazz, and pop instincts.

Clipse: Legacy Rap that Refuses to Coast

A new Clipse album landing on a 2025 best‑of list carries serious narrative weight. They’re not just nostalgia bait; they’re a benchmark for how legacy rap duos can age without going soft. Rolling Stone’s inclusion suggests a record that embraces:

  • Dense, morally conflicted storytelling.
  • Beat choices that nod to the Neptunes era without cosplay.
  • Grown‑man reflections instead of forced “youthful” energy.

Rosalía: Global Pop as Avant‑Garde

Rosalía’s presence is almost inevitable at this point. She’s become the shorthand for global, hybridized pop—flamenco, reggaeton, and experimental electronics held together by big‑screen drama. By highlighting her again in 2025, Rolling Stone is quietly acknowledging that Spanish‑language and Latin‑adjacent pop aren’t “niche” any more; they’re core to the global mainstream.

Geese: Art‑Rock’s New Standard‑Bearers

For Geese to share headline space with Gaga and Rosalía says a lot about 2025’s rock moment. They’re part of that post‑post‑punk wave—art‑rock that’s playful, wiry, and concept‑driven without being joyless. Their placement signals that guitar music’s relevance in 2025 isn’t about “saving rock,” it’s about bending it into new, jittery shapes.


Even if you never scroll past the top 20, the “100 Best Albums of 2025” reads like a map of where genre lines melted this year. The ranking doesn’t just separate pop, rap, and rock; it tracks how they bled into one another.

Producers and songwriters in 2025 tore through genre boundaries, blurring pop, rap, and experimental sounds.

Pop: Theater over Minimalism

Between Gaga and other marquee names, the list tilts toward bigger, bolder pop albums—projects that feel like self‑contained spectacles. The minimal, moody pop of the late 2010s still exists, but Rolling Stone clearly rewards:

  • Concept records with coherent visual aesthetics.
  • Albums that sound like they were made for tours, not just TikTok snippets.
  • Vocal performances that go for drama over understatement.

Rap: Memory, Morality, and Middle Age

With Clipse and other veterans in the mix, 2025’s rap entries lean into grown‑up themes: regret, responsibility, and what it means to cash in on stories of your own past. That doesn’t mean the list ignores younger voices, but it does suggest Rolling Stone prioritizes cohesive, narrative‑driven albums over pure singles runs.

Global Pop and Hybrids

Rosalía’s placement is part of a larger pattern: artists blending regional styles—Latin, Afro‑pop, K‑pop, amapiano, baile funk—into albums that feel native to their scenes but legible to global listeners. The list positions this hybridization not as a trend but as baseline reality in 2025.


Where Rolling Stone’s 2025 Album Rankings Succeed

Any “100 Best Albums” list is part curation, part branding exercise. For 2025, Rolling Stone gets quite a few big things right.

Many of 2025’s best albums were built with live shows and communal listening in mind.
  1. It embraces risk‑taking pop. Choosing artists like Gaga and Rosalía sends a clear signal: theatrical, challenging pop is worth taking seriously as album art, not just hit‑making.
  2. It respects veteran rappers without turning the list into a nostalgia trip. Clipse’s appearance doesn’t feel like a token legacy pick; it’s part of a coherent through‑line about storytelling, craft, and aging in hip‑hop.
  3. It gives space to adventurous rock bands. Geese and their peers are treated as vital, present‑tense acts, not as “rock’s last hope” headlines.
  4. It reflects a globalized listening culture. Even when the list centers Western markets, the inclusion of Spanish‑language and hybrid records acknowledges the reality of how people actually consume music now.
“Across the globe and all over the stylistic map, music kept mutating in the weirdest, wildest ways.”

That line from the feature isn’t just nice copy—this year’s ranking mostly walks the walk.


Blind Spots and Weaknesses in the 100 Best Albums of 2025

Still, this is Rolling Stone, a legacy magazine with its own gravitational pull. The 2025 list, for all its breadth, shows a few familiar weak spots.

Person browsing a record collection in a dimly lit room
For every album that makes a year‑end list, countless cult favorites remain just outside the frame.
  • Indie and underground scenes are present, but not central. Bands like Geese get attention, yet whole ecosystems—DIY rap, Bandcamp‑driven ambient, hyperlocal scenes—inevitably get compressed into a handful of token picks.
  • Genre‑specific outliers can get flattened. Hyperpop’s descendants, metal, and more abrasive experimental records usually sit on the fringes of lists like this, even when they define the year for their communities.
  • Commercial reality still matters. The list is more adventurous than it was a decade ago, but breakthrough scale and cultural visibility still seem to tilt the playing field, especially for pop.

None of this makes the list “bad”—it just means that, like any canon, it reflects the vantage point of a specific outlet, with specific readers and advertisers in mind.


How to Read the List: As a Playlist, a Canon, and a Time Capsule

The most productive way to approach Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Albums of 2025 is to treat it as three things at once: a playlist, a canon bet, and a time capsule.

  1. A playlist: Use the list to fill gaps in your 2025 listening. If you loved the Gaga record, jump sideways to smaller pop or electronic albums that share some DNA but never hit your algorithm.
  2. A canon bet: These picks are Rolling Stone’s wager on what will still matter in ten years. Pay attention to which “small” albums get prime placement—that’s often where the tastemakers are sneaking in their long‑term favorites.
  3. A time capsule: The clustering of styles—global pop hybrids, introspective rap, theatrical pop, weird guitar albums—will tell future readers more about 2025 than any one record can.
However you stream it, 2025’s best music was built to be experienced as full albums.

Final Thoughts: 2025 Wasn’t Safe, and That’s the Point

Rolling Stone’s “100 Best Albums of 2025” sells itself as a portrait of a year that refused to play it safe—and, for the most part, it delivers. Elevating artists like Lady Gaga, Clipse, Rosalía, and Geese in the same breath underlines how strange and pluralistic this era of music really is.

No single ranking can capture every cult favorite, every micro‑scene, every album that meant the world to a small circle of fans. But as a snapshot of what the broader industry and a big‑tent magazine think “mattered” in 2025, this list is revealing. It cautions against nostalgia, rewards risk, and reminds us that the most interesting records often sound a little wrong on first listen.

If 2025 was any indication, the real battle for the rest of the decade won’t be albums vs. singles—it’ll be between safe, frictionless listening and the kind of bold, idiosyncratic projects that end up on lists like this in the first place.