The Best Albums of 2025 (Part 3)

A ranking and review of the top 100!

Read about No. 100-76 here and No. 75-51 here!

#50: Lexie Liu, TEENAGE RAMBLE 
Lexie Liu treats hyper-pop as an expansive playground, pairs nonchalance with a nagging sense that she actually does care, and sees flippancy as fertile ground for playing tricks on audiences. She revels in getting people to search for meaning where there is none, like when she coins a potential figure of speech in “TEENAGE RAMBLE”: “I got laundry in my basement”! She also enjoys leaving audiences in the dark as to how much of her persona is genuine and how much can be chalked up to melodrama or irony. She groans about feeling so embarrassed that it makes her want to “kill someone” in “ADRENALINE,” and she insists she’s ready to quit her job entirely over a stressful deadline in “TEENAGE RAMBLE”! The answer to “Is she for real?” seems less likely to be “Yes” when considering her most macabre moments. “FFFFF” pairs a song about lustful cravings with a vampiric music video, and “DEEPER & DEEPER” is a sensual song about an underground tryst that sounds like a choir performing at a haunted rave! Her “just messing with you” mannerism is most apparent on the last song, “CIGARETTE - DEMO.” The outro includes this telling statement: “I feel like I’m disappearing… keep talking like someone’s listening / But trust me, it’ll pass / It’s all just in our heads, right?” It’s as much a meta take on pop stardom as it is a nonsensical comment, and that mix of joking and not is what keeps Lexie Liu’s music so interesting. 

#49: ENHYPEN, DESIRE : UNLEASH
As written about at length previously, ENHYPEN’s sprawling narrative is so much more than a vampire story. It uses vampires as a conduit for deep messages, and those messages remain relevant in DESIRE : UNLEASH, through the music videos, songs, and short film. Their vampire characters continue to raise questions regarding the following: what meaning life can have if it has no specific start or endpoint, what kind of legacy someone can leave if they never leave, what it truly means to be human, what immortals miss out on when they have no sense of space and time to firmly live within, and what it really means to have an insatiable craving. Read more here! 

#48: BLUE ENCOUNT, Alliance of Quintetto 
Alliance of Quintetto is a satisfying soundtrack for an existential crisis! It stays relatable by pairing its many questions about the meaning of life with a source of motivation to keep searching for it. … It would be reductive to say these songs are about going from having zero self-worth to having some; the band tackles more emotional nuances than that. The ways they do so are just as strong instrumentally as they are lyrically. Like how some turbulent life phases are experienced as waves that come and go, while some turbulence feels sudden and instant, some songs use instruments and sound effects to craft periods of rising and falling action, while others are all-at-once outpourings. Read more here!

#47: i-dle, We are
In hindsight, (G)I-DLE was laying the groundwork for i-dle, talking that talk so i-dle would be ready to walk the walk. (G)I-DLE sang about being confident, while i-dle show more than they tell. Their confidence is more overt now, as proven by starting “Good Thing” with saying “Goodbye, baby!” and with SOYEON giving herself a major haircut in the music video. The other songs on We are have the same theme as “Good Thing”: a willingness to say and do things that are hard to take back. (G)I-DLE said they were willing to be themselves no matter the social costs. … i-dle now prove it.

Other aspects of We are that allow i-dle to shine: the genre-hopping, which lets different voices steal the show on different occasions; the members’ hands-on roles, with each one writing and/or producing at least one of the tracks; and each member making a scene in public in the “Good Thing” music video! i-dle are the ones with “We” in their album title (in contrast to (G)I-DLE’s “I” series of titles), yet their autonomy is more apparent than ever, showing how self-empowerment and sisterhood can be strengthened simultaneously. Read more here!

#46: Gen Hoshino, Gen 
The moral of Gen Hoshino’s story is summed up by a line on Gen’s opening track, “Create”: “The meaning of life is to play with life itself.” Gen Hoshino takes a mix-and-match approach, stacking and sorting instrumental and vocal layers like games of Jenga. … Language is treated as a living and pliable thing as much as sounds are. Gen Hoshino overlaps trilingual verses in “Memories” and includes trilingual lyrics in “2.” He also embraces the malleability of mood, with inconsistent sincerity - his voice is comically low in “Sayonara”! - and polish, with some songs utilizing analog more than digital sounds and others doing vice versa. Read more here!

#45: [Alexandros], PROVOKE
This rock album is an emotionally unstable series of outbursts, with lyrics that read like unhinged poetry and instruments that are often escalatory, gathering the momentum of running down a hill. (This “quickly snowballing out of control” feeling is best captured by “Coffee Float.”) There is depth beneath the tantrums, though, as best summed up in “EVERYBODY KNOWS”: “Someday we’ll fade away / Everybody knows / In the end it’s another day… Let the words come out / Until it becomes real.” The song helps listeners see, “Oh, so that’s what this is all about!” [Alexandros] feel an urgency to spill their guts, turn their ideals into reality, and do both before it is too late. They cannot be hasty about turning days from ordinary into extraordinary, and their songs convey a frantic and deep-seated fear of opportunities going to waste... Read more here!

#44: DOYOUNG, Soar
As DOYOUNG digs deeper into the thematic terrain of his first album, YOUTH, on Soar, he also expands his “wings” stylistically. Both albums share a preference for band-music influences and a mix of rock-influenced pop and balladry, but Soar adds extra improvisational-seeming twists, folksy-yet-modern touches, and string flourishes. Soar also goes further with its analogies, adding “wind” to the list of go-to metaphors while still mentioning the “lights” and “waves” from YOUTH. Those “lights” and “waves” have sustained his spirit, and Soar elaborates on why and how… Read more here!

#43: YUJU, In Bloom
In thoughtful and eloquent ways, YUJU looks inwards to make sense of what a relationship was really like. She finds words for hard-to-pinpoint feelings that come from not just bittersweet nostalgia, but from difficulty disentangling deja vu from anemoia. She wonders how many of her impressions of a relationship she has gotten all wrong, and the fear that the answer is “most of them” compels her to promptly document fresh-in-her-mind recollections. The sense that she is in a race against time collides with a sense of cosmic yearning. … YUJU elegantly pairs interstellar metaphors with a down-to-earth demeanor. Read more here! 

#42: MINNIE, HER
To say that the HER era is multidimensional is an understatement. A layered story that conflates as much as it contrasts, it unfolds through vocal changes, song lyrics, visuals, and subject-orientation shifts (constantly changing among first-person, second-person, and third-person forms). By design, every time a viewer and/or listener gains a sense of certainty in how to describe MINNIE, new reasons to doubt that description appear. The slippery story makes for fascinating social commentary on the nature of identity: who shapes it, who defines it, how malleable it is, and how many simultaneous forms it can take. Read more here!

#41: Rainie Yang, Only in Echoes 
Rainie Yang proves to be a seasoned performer, making the true art form that is using one’s singing voice efficiently seem easy. The best songs are the pop pivots, particularly “Yes, but?,” which keeps its vocal and instrumental intonation changes on parallel paths. On the other hand, the album’s many ballads offer words of wisdom deserving of their slow, deliberate pacing. Whether a ballad is more rooted in strings, piano, or guitars, she makes it a useful template; when her tone sounds purposefully restrained, it lets the heavy subject matter hold a more prominent presence. When she addresses how tempting it can be to lie or get into other bad habits, how the loudest presences are not necessarily those of the most courageous people in the room, and why it is actually a mistake to seek entirely clear answers, listeners can truly hear her. Additionally, her times spent singing with delicacy and caution do not betray a core of steadfast strength, like the kind she sings about people having when they address “elephants in the room” (aka “The Elephant We See”). 

One more piece of evidence of Rainie Yang being an effective messenger is the new and improved version of “Ambiguous,” which keeps the melody of the original but now has her production credit and matured worldview. 

#40: SUHO, Who Are You 
Once it hits listeners and viewers what they have really just seen and heard, the confusion dissipates as to why this breakup album sounds primarily joyful! The album starts with “Who Are You,” in which SUHO argues he and his significant other should “skip the sad, boring stories,” move past a “cliche breakup scene” that would be “so uncool,” and end their story today: “By tomorrow, we’ll both be free.” He says it should not be a question of whether a breakup is imminent, but “Who’s gonna be the first to leave?” The following songs recall days when the relationship’s flame burned hotter. The B-sides address their spark (“Light The Fire”), describe the physical symptoms of love (“Medicine”), let loose like it’s someone’s “Birthday,” and wish for a moment together to last forever (“Golden Hour”). Then, “Fadeout” answers the “Who’s gonna be the first to leave?” question from the first song, and it’s not SUHO: “At the end of a long movie / Left alone, I call out to you / Even if I answer your monologue from the past… already too late.” SUHO remembers that holding on “would be a broken cliche,” and he “blame[s] [himself] / For ignoring [the] clear foreshadowing.” The reason SUHO should have known how this would end is… Read more here! 

#39: MIYEON, MY, Lover 
The fictional story told through these songs and videos is about the eternal tragedy awaiting those whose love becomes conflated with possession. The exposition is laid out in “Reno,” and MIYEON gives the opening monologue, which says in part, “I’m blocking my ears. Some moments remain vivid. I can’t forget him. When aiming with the gun -” 

The songs after “Reno” describe the aftermath of the killing through lyrics about assessing the damage and reconciling her lover’s physical absence with his remaining and all-consuming presence in MIYEON’s mind. … MY, Lover​ is a layered look at what drives people to deceive both themselves and one another. It subverts the standard breakup album, spinning a fictional yarn that weaves a fascinating web worth unraveling in endless directions. Read more here! 

#38: The Crane, Same Stories, Different Narratives
These songs are not exactly confident, but they are not not confident either! The Crane does not tout his strengths nor wallow over his weaknesses. “This is me; nothing to be done about that” is essentially his message, and that comes through the loudest and clearest in “take it or leave it.” He describes his many flaws: not being a fast learner (“[I]t took me / More than a decade / To see things that way”), showing disrespect (“Guess we all have to hurt some feelings sometimes”), and lacking the motivation to change for the better (“I’ll be just the same… I heard what you said / But my schedule is tight / And I don’t wanna change”). He learns the wrong lessons from his shortcomings, seeing them as story sweeteners, which explains why his music indulges in them instead of shunning them. He does so through theatrical flourishes, like haunting sounds in “Same Story” and “VILLAIN,” and surprisingly upbeat rhythms, like in “DISEASE.” ... The Crane uses his foibles to justify, to avoid change, and to keep himself entertained, turning a self-defeating “story” into a witty and, indeed, very “different narrative”! Read more here!

#37: SUNMI, HEART MAID 
Like how SUNMI played both the dominant and subordinate characters in STRANGER, in HEART MAID, she is both someone being possessed and someone doing the possessing. … Obscuring the lines between characters further are the “CYNICAL” lyrics, which make it sound like SUNMI is the ghost who does the taunting and stalking, despite the music video showing her “assigned Reaper” doing those things to her.

Regardless of the nature of SUNMI’s presences, likening them to a ghost’s proves to be effective at addressing yet another version of SUNMI: the celebrity. A long list of lyrics that can be interpreted as coming from the mind of a ghost can also be interpreted as coming from the mind of a celebrity, as both crave “normal” human interactions and endure a sense of “real world” detachment… Read more here!

#36: KEY, HUNTER
When it comes to honing a signature style and giving the audience something new, KEY strikes a smart balance. He continues to excel in a world of retro sounds and vintage horror aesthetics, but this time, the campiness is dialed down and replaced with something more sincerely sinister. Across an intoxicating array of spliced-and-diced synth experiments, KEY addresses the monsters within each human and questions what feeds their impulses. The videos and songs are both cautionary and pessimistic, casting dark forces as the winners if nothing about society changes. As there seems to be a deficit of interest in curbing AI’s worst impulses, HUNTER feels eerily relevant. Read more here!

#35: ILLIT, bomb
This era solidifies ILLIT’s lovable brand of vintage-meets-modern whimsy, with hook-oriented songs, cute and innocent lyrics, and arts-and-crafts aesthetics (with crayon drawings in a teaser video and the “little monster” video text appearing as embroidered artwork). They also prove to have cross-cultural appeal: “Billyeoon Goyangi (Do the Dance)” gets its name from a Korean expression about feeling like an out-of-place cat, and they compare themselves to that cat while singing about crush-related jitters in French and over a French house instrumental. Besides the cat analogy, ILLIT use cute and childlike descriptions involving colors, a carnival, and “little monsters.” Examples of the first two include comparing crushing to the “pink thrill” of a theme park visit, pulling a “pink lever” that triggers feeling “jellyous” (slang for “jealous”), and envisioning a nighttime picnic with a “Purple sky” that is a “blueberry dream” in “bamsopoong.” As for “little monsters,” those take the form of gummy bears in the “little monster” video, and the group sings about “gobbling up” those stand-ins for their doubts and fears! Read more here!

#34: BIBI, EVE: ROMANCE
While many specifics are up to interpretation, this is the overall storyline of EVE: ROMANCE and its corresponding videos: Government-appointed mad scientists resurrect a man named Luca and a woman named Eve from the dead. Eve, played by BIBI, is now called “Eve-1.” It is notable that she is not described as a new Eve; she is not called “Eve-2.” If she were, that would imply that the first Eve differs from this one. The government does not want the old and new Eves to be their own women; they want a carbon copy of the money-making pop star who they were able to tout on a global platform prior to her death. The songs and music videos are about Eve-1 and Luca rediscovering and revisiting memories of their past lives, falling in love in the process.

Here is one theory as to which songs and videos are narrated by Eve and which are narrated by Eve-1… Read more here!

#33: ATEEZ, GOLDEN HOUR : Part.3 ‘In Your Fantasy Edition’ 
This excellent album expansion leans heavy into a Justin Timberlake-esque sound with “In Your Fantasy,” and each solo number is its own colorful character. They offer a little bit of everything: something harmonized and groovy (YUNHO’s “Slide to me”), bold and triumphant (YEOSANG’s “Legacy”), sensual and vocally unexpected (SEONGHWA’s “Skin”), boastful and cheeky (HONGJOONG’s “NO1”), frisky and risky (SAN’s “Creep”), condescending and commanding (MINGI’s “ROAR”), and committed and confessional (WOOYOUNG’s “Sagittarius”). They end with JONGHO’s guitar-starring ballad, “To be your light,” which repeats the group’s promise to “make it happen.” Vague yet confident-sounding, it perfectly caps off a collection of tracks that speak to how the sky is ATEEZ’s limit and how they are fully aware of that! Read more here! 

#32: TWICE, TEN: The Story Goes On
The lightheartedness of TWICE’s early years is still there; it has just widened the forms it takes to focus more on each individual’s contributions to that essence. Similarly, no TWICE member compromises her individual musical instincts to align with the group’s identity for her solo track on TEN: The Story Goes On. NAYEON has a rapper’s confidence when she says she’s “yours to lose” in “MEEEEEE.” SANA’s song is also flirty, but in a cutesier and more “lalala”-laden way! JIHYO conveys a comparable confidence, but with a more R&B sensibility. DAHYUN adds her own cunning and classical-music-derived characteristics to a confident statement with “CHESS.” TZUYU lets her high pitch dazzle in “DIVE IN.” CHAEYOUNG’s UK garage song “IN MY ROOM” sounds like an outtake from her debut solo album. JEONGYEON’s country jam is a delightful surprise! Lastly, MINA and MOMO demand attention with songs that are made for unforgettable dance routines. Different songs align in different ways - attitude-wise, lyrically, or sonically - while standing apart, reiterating how naturally TWICE make a great team. Read more here!

#31: SCANDAL, LOVE, SPARK, JOY! 
LOVE, SPARK, JOY! takes a creative approach to addressing attempts to find meaning where there is none. The rock songs portray the SCANDAL members as “strays” with neither “dreams” nor “worries worth talking about.” In “Terra Boy,” they simply toast “to the darkness.” In “Doukashiterutte” (“There’s Something Wrong”), they lament a “dark and sickly” world that feels even emptier since a specific person left it, as lively horns add a touch of humor to the pity party. With a staggered instrumental, “Soundly” reinforces the busyness that keeps them from “[making] sense of the past.” And “Oh, Pretty Woman,” with its in-character vocals and punchy percussion, memorably denies that polished people can be as happy as they look: “I don’t believe you… Are you lonely just like me?” What could easily have been a one-note, down-in-the-dumps EP is instead one with a visceral sense of yearning, perfectly punctuated by every cymbal crash and electronic guitar wail. SCANDAL’s ear for detail gives each song a unique color and demonstrates how to balance thematic consistency with variety.

#30: PURPLE KISS, OUR NOW 
PURPLE KISS’s final album closes the loop on their bewitching, years-long narrative, in which they have played witches and turned uninspired topics into whimsical source material. They sing about putting a curse on an ex in “Unhappily Ever After,” pulling crushes under their irresistible spell in songs like “memeM” and “Zombie,” and becoming the witch archetype that haters might try to smear them as in “Sweet Juice” (the telling line from a video that summarizes OUR NOW’s songs: “Trapped under the world’s gaze, we became the witches they imagined”). Beyond fictional applications, their pure talent has enabled them to continuously turn ordinary ingredients into extraordinary musical magic! The two brand-new songs on this album (which primarily consists of new English versions of older songs) are great examples. The self-explanatory “WANT U BACK” gives each PURPLE KISS member a chance to show off distinct vocal colors, and “Unhappily Ever After” perfectly times its string-backed moments and beat drops to enhance the most in-character moments. Read more about OUR NOW here and the pre-repackaged version here!

#29: BABYMETAL, METAL FORTH 
These J-rock icons’ presence is as explosive as ever! Each song fires on all cylinders, always staying rage-ready, rave-ready, or, most often, a dizzying mix of the two! BABYMETAL add their classic “Kawaii” signatures to an expansive slate of collaborations, and they further personalize the range of songs with references to Japanese culture, like creatures from folklore in “Kon! Kon!” and chants commonly made at traditional festivals in “METAL!!” METAL FORTH is a fast-paced flight around the world that goes everywhere from North America (with collaborations with Texas-based prog-rockers Polyphia, the U.S.-based soloist Poppy, the Canadian metalcore group Spiritbox…) to Germany (with the “electronicore” trio Electric Callboy) to New Delhi (with metal band Bloodywood). They hold their own just as well on feature-less tracks. “KxAxWxAxIxI” tells a full story with instruments alone, making the cute-meets-cursed descriptions just an amusing bonus (“Hiding the fight with a stuffed toy / Biting with pain, the sweet ploy;” “Ribbon sways, breaking the dark / With a sweet trap, I make my mark”)! “Algorism” proves this group is great at using their voices to both generate new suspense and build off of its pre-existing presence. Lastly, “White Flame ー白炎ー” ends with the sound of everything all at once, leaving in the ultimate blaze of glory!

#28: hannah bahng, The Misunderstood EP
Although The Misunderstood EP holds its own, it is more commendable when treating it as a sequel to The Abysmal EP. … Both The Abysmal EP and The Misunderstood EP are about an uneven give-and-take relationship. hannah bahng puts forth more than her fair share of emotional effort, but instead of moving on to someone who can reciprocate better, she is compelled to stay with toxic lovers. A magnetic pull drags her into rough metaphorical waters, and part of her seeks to ride a tide for a change, rather than be carried away by one again. She addresses this in both the Misunderstood song “raison d'être” (“Like the tides coming in to heal my mind”) and the Abysmal EP song “perfect blues” (“Swimming metaphorically / Drowning in gravity / Diving for a piece of me”).

In the Abysmal EP’s “hannah interlude,” she simply says, “I’m terrified.” In Misunderstood’s “RIBS (interlude),” she follows up a song about being left like a cracked shell on a shelf with a statement about deserving better: “I don’t want to talk to you / I’m hungry and I’m overused / I don’t even like the view / ‘Cause I’m halfway up from you.” As the title suggests, while hannah is still metaphorically putting her entire body and soul into a relationship, she is at least aware now of that relationship’s risks. Read more here! 

#27: CHAEYOUNG, LIL FANTASY vol.1 
CHAEYOUNG’s songs are like entries from a glitter-covered diary. Two songs about insecurities are called “SHADOW PUPPETS” and (bonus track) “Lonely doll Waltz.” “BF” references “dolls piling up” in her room as she hesitates to leave it. “GIRL” seems to allude to music box figurines (“Why do we live spinning around and crashing into each other?”) and a rag doll (“Why are you being dragged here and there?”). And “DOWNPOUR” also expresses being treated like a toy: “Kick me when I’m down… I won’t make a sound;” “Now I play this game without you.” CHAEYOUNG projects her feelings about fame onto more than just toys. In “RIBBONS,” she describes hiding her anxiety and questioning the motives of the people attaching themselves to her: “I pull up in lace, customize… Friends turn to fog, I analyze…” And she questions who will really stay to “hold [her] down on dark days” in “BAND-AID.” Reaching for childlike analogies to convey her present-day fears and concerns speaks to the child that still exists within many people, and while CHAEYOUNG’s inner child gets a voice in these songs, present-day CHAEYOUNG gets to be seen in the corresponding music videos, set in her customized “Wonderland.” Read more here!

#26: TWICE, THIS IS FOR 
THIS IS FOR is another contribution to TWICE’s organic evolution. The sound is very much pop, but lyrics pertaining to puppy love and new beginnings are replaced with ones about more mature romances and more complicated life experiences. At the same time, they still sound bubbly! “FOUR” starts by asking, “Are you ready for the ride?,” and “THIS IS FOR” includes giggling and laser noises! Plus, “DAT AHH DAT OOH” has the same attitude as their debut single, “Like Ooh-Ahh;” both songs tout the group’s “It” factor!

These songs broadly fall into three main categories. One is songs that are flirtatious and playfully evasive, about keeping their “OPTIONS” open (“I’m not bought and I’m not chosen… I’m picky when I choose”), toying with someone (“I’d put you on a chain,” they decide in “PEACH GELATO”!), enjoying the fact they’ve gotten someone flustered (“BATTITUDE”), and urging a crush to make a move (“better start talking,” they sing in “HI HELLO”). A second category are songs about sisterhood, including “THIS IS FOR” (“This is for all my ladies who don’t get hyped enough”) and “RIGHT HAND GIRL” (“Don’t be messing up your eyeliner / For somebody who’s a part-timer”). The third category is where TWICE’s maturity is most evident: songs that are serious and contemplative. These include songs about a toxic relationship (“LET LOVE GO” and “TALK”), one that admits to loneliness on the road (“G.O.A.T.”), and a more frank assessment of struggling post-breakup than a younger TWICE would offer (“All the roads lead right back to you / I’m seeing all the signs, but I ignore the truth / And end up on Heartbreak Avenue,” they sing in “HEARTBREAK AVENUE”). 

Stay tuned for the rest of the countdown!

View the Substack version of this piece here!