The Best Albums of 2025 (Part 4)

A ranking and review of the top 100!

Read about No. 100-76 here, No. 75-51 here, and No. 50-26 here!

#25: ONE OK ROCK, DETOX
ONE OK ROCK want people to make no mistake: they “want to scream like a banshee” (“NASTY”), they are “sick of rolling with the punches” (“Tropical Therapy”), and they are “losing faith in everyone” (“Puppets Can’t Control You”). In addition to being distraught, a recurring theme in DETOX is distrust of those in power. … ONE OK ROCK’s music remains a dependable outlet for pent-up angst, a call to be skeptical of authority, reassurance that it’s okay not to be okay, and an attempt to channel righteous anger into a united front for those who have less power. DETOX bluntly assesses the state of society without sacrificing empathy towards those who feel hopeless. Read more here!

#24: JO YURI, Episode 25
Episode 25 has some of JO YURI’s strongest lyricism to date. Some of the best lines are in “Farewell for now!”: “Letting go of a hand I held so tight / Could be love’s quietest kind of cry,” and “It’s clear in your eyes / I’m nowhere to be found.” Inventive metaphors fill the B-sides: “Growls and Purrs” likens her behavior to that of a pet’s, feeling too flustered to know what to do around a crush is compared to getting a “HICCUP,” and “Overkill” includes lines like “you pulled the rug / And you ripped my world at the seams.” Then there is “Going Under,” which compares several experiences at once to being underwater: consuming negative social media content that makes her want to just throw her phone in the ocean (“Blankly scrolling… All the noise that feels like it’s stabbing me / Drop it all in with a splash”), being in a toxic relationship (“a dangerous water game”), and getting by but just barely (“I regain some energy and start flailing again”). Episode 25 also shows growth in terms of JO YURI’s genre exploration, with a rock-influenced beginning and end and dollops of jazz and synth-pop between them. Her maturity takes yet another form with the message of the “Farewell for now!” music video, which is ultimately about valuing a relationship but being content that it has ended.

#23: IVE, IVE SECRET 
IVE SECRET speaks to this girl group’s organic maturity. They can still be counted on for polished pop bops, but these songs switch their priority order to put vulnerability over confidence (though both remain). Their tilt into a more confessional stance comes in intrinsically IVE forms, and they keep obvious pride in themselves while permitting themselves to expose that pride’s shakable nature. 

IVE SECRET has crowd-pleasing traits on its face, including a rainbow-hued music video and catchy hooks and repetition (“Girls, girls, girls,” they repeat in “Wild Bird;” “Get ya, get ya, got ya,” they taunt in “GOTCHA (Baddest Eros)”). But there is also much to admire beneath the surface, and each track is its own full-fledged character... Read more here! 

#22: JENNIE, Ruby
Knowing that JENNIE has drawn inspiration from a Shakespearean comedy called As You Like It and the “All the World’s a Stage” monologue opens up Ruby to a much bigger world of interpretations! Here is one of them, an application that has its limitations but speaks to Ruby’s success at getting the audience to see the many sides of JENNIE in unexpected lights… 

Regardless of which life phases listeners and viewers see in which parts of the Ruby era, JENNIE adds uniqueness to a basic “personal evolution”-themed debut album premise. Read more here!

#21: TenTwenty, Border=Border
With racing percussion and guitars, lightning-speed voices, and scattered cymbal crashes and sound effects topping each song off, TenTwenty put on quite a spectacle! But their “more is better” musical approach avoids coming across as contrived, thanks to their lyrical context. The foundational spiritual basis of Border=Border rests on two pillars. One is that all things are one; what goes around comes around. The other is that the impermanent, material things of this world are comparatively meaningless. … While staying surprisingly upbeat, TenTwenty apply Zen wisdom to their comparisons of abstract forces and contrasts of those with tangible things that, relatively speaking, do not matter. Read more here!

#20: Kwon Jin Ah, The Dreamest
With stunning balladry and R&B-leaning pop songs alike, Kwon Jin Ah communicates love’s complexities and contradictions. The Dreamest has several recurring themes: trying to postpone the unpacking of messy emotions for tomorrow, recognizing on some level that a relationship will never go back to the way it was, and feeling pulled in opposite directions at the same time. … Tying together the descriptions of clumsiness, youth, and paths unknown is the sense of being out of her depth. Kwon Jin Ah cannot make up her mind, wanting to be held close to the same person who she wants to never see again and identifying the source of her laughter and her tears as being the same… Read more here!

#19: WOOKI, ANTIBIRTH 
ANTIBIRTH constantly blurs the lines between antagonist and protagonist. … The chronological order of when he feels responsible and when he does not is complicated by the fact the album ends with “Prologue” and starts with “Epillogue,” the latter title acknowledging this story can be a tricky pill to swallow! Furthermore, the intro and outro mirror each other. Both are dark, haunting scene-setters that include the sound of a pen furiously scribbling on paper. Plus, the intro features the sound of a tape rewinding. One part of WOOKI’s narrative that is certain, though, is its climax: “Reborn.” ANTIBIRTH strikes a more melancholy note up until the opening seconds of “Reborn,” when a gunshot is swiftly followed by an ominous soundscape, then an EDM breakdown that transitions into the following faster, bolder, more electronic-focused tracks. ANTIBIRTH is not exactly a linear nor an inverted story, and its convolutions serve it well. Read more here!

#18: RIIZE, ODYSSEY
ODYSSEY’s strength and staying power come from its smoothness. The streamlined sound and “going on a journey” story undergo subtle enough lane shifts to keep the drive interesting without encountering any annoyingly rocky roads! The album is full of classic crowd-pleaser material for boy band fans, from R&B-style slow songs to hip-hop-oriented ones, and the energetic and sentimental halves are neatly split up by the “Passage” interlude. But the delights that differentiate ODYSSEY are in the details: the mid-song key changes, the ways tracks relate as pairs (going from “Ember to Solar” to “Fly Up,” for instance, and prefacing “Midnight Mirage” with the sound of a ticking clock in “Passage”), the meaningful addition and subtraction (for example, the pre-journey introduction is a simple synth 2-step song, making the post-journey outro sound even fuller by comparison)... Plus, the songs’ corresponding videos check off many boxes… Read more here! 

#17: LEE CHANHYUK, EROS
While enveloping listeners in a retro, synth-heavy haze, LEE CHANHYUK sings about spectacles in ways that convey something is off. The audience is put under a sonic spell along with him, experiencing a state of belief suspension without being cognizant of what that belief even was or is. He tells unsettling stories that provoke more questions than answers. “SINNY SINNY” is about a “Man who lived in Seoul city.” He claims that “We all knew the reason why” he left and that “Now all that’s left [of him] is to be forgotten.” He wonders where the “Shining Ground” is that he’s heard so many myths about - the “radiant world [that] may never come.” And in “TAIL,” he wonders if anyone else has memories of being treated like a lab rat: “We were trapped inside a vast world / Our wings, as big as houses, were severed / Do you remember too?” 

LEE CHANHYUK’s status as a reliable narrator remains questionable, and his recollections can be seen as resurfaced memories, figments of his imagination, pieces of tall tales he grew up hearing, or a combination of all three. The possibilities all stay likely, especially given the meta detours some of his stories take, like “Out of My Mind” (“Crowds are clapping / Assuming I’m dancing… the stage is falling apart”) and “TV Show” (“See me on [the] TV show… look at this foolish version of me”). Plus, the EROS highlight medley video resembles VHS-recorded TV specials. 

Overall, EROS is a strange and surreal era that is both beguiling and bizarre. Read more here!

#16: Hitsujibungaku, Don’t Laugh It Off 
With lyrics that pierce through a human core and an alternative, somewhat shoegaze-inspired sound, Hitsujibungaku prove to be as profound as they are proficient, with music encapsulating life’s most beautiful yet fragile sides and corners. Their insightful ways with words come in many categories and stress certain points through their repetition. … Seeking meaning, often feeling like that search is futile, normalizing struggling and feeling empty and inadequate… all of these themes could make for a doom-and-gloom album. But instead, Hitsujibungaku convey a quietly courageous spirit, daring to use and keep their voices. They characterize their words, and language in general, as sustenance. Language is what they spit out when nervous, bite down on when angry or in need of bravery, swallow when overwhelmed, and consume for energy… Read more here! 

#15: indigo la End, MOLTING AND DANCING
With a natural ease and catchy hooks, this band delivers perfectly-paced pop and rock that insightfully explore what goes unseen yet deeply felt. Like their sound, their words thrive in thematic gray areas and the topic of transitions. Rather than indicate a desire to find solutions or cling to a simpler time, there is a radical acceptance of living each moment simply as it is. … They equally embrace life’s good and bad times by not wasting the present trying to predict the future. As they put it in “Change Of Heart,” “There’s never a premonition / The next page could be torn / And you’ll never know it.” They do not necessarily find bliss in the present, but it sure beats looking for it anywhere else! 

MOLTING AND DANCING shines because of how it praises “dancing” through all “molting” phases instead of waiting for them to maybe subside. Read more here!

#14: RADWIMPS, Anew 
RADWIMPS expand on the themes in“Tamamono” by applying a cynical gaze to their societal assessments, constantly changing their contemplations’ formats (the cadences, the lengths, the sounds…), and all the while maintaining a specific worldview that makes each song a RADWIMPS one. Their spectrum of frustration fluctuates from downright nihilism to healthy skepticism, as they try to make meaning out of a seemingly meaningless life while knowing that, like the outcomes of their song-making sessions, the results will vary!

They start with “Meidai,” in which they argue that the world has gone mad, is full of fakery, lacks compassion, and does not extend as much grace as it used to. … They scoff at self-proclaimed “life pros” that think they know how to optimize something as unpredictable as life, question why formal education has not prepared them for so many “real-world” challenges, and lament how endless the search for fulfillment feels. Two summative lyrics of their frustrations: “The plaintiff seats overflow, while the defendant’s bench is left empty,” and “Someday, both hatred and love will vanish just the same.” They wonder what good it does to be there for someone when, first of all, in this day and age, that person might not be inclined to return the favor, and second of all, good-faith and bad-faith efforts both end the same. Why choose the moral path that requires more emotional effort and investment when the easier and less-moral path leads to the same ultimate ending of non-existence?! 

On some songs, they seem to find meaning in that temporariness… Read more here! 

#13: Haezee, UNLOCKED 
UNLOCKED assesses how one loses and regains autonomy through light-related symbolism that gradually progresses. … She sings about reengaging with a toxic relationship countless times, but she acknowledges that the number of times she reconnects with her inner light can also be countless. The desire to try again and again, whether in terms of making a relationship work or finding her true self, is the epitome of this album’s spirit. A related core theme is the lack of a clear endpoint to her efforts; the answers to her questions about the nature of love and the meaning of life always remain at least somewhat unknowable. Therefore, UNLOCKED never fully closes the lid on its state of wondering mixed with wandering, as Haezee questions how loyalty is proven (“PROVE”), prays that no one asks for cut-and-dry answers about her life (“LOVING YOU MAKES NO SENSE,” “PICK A SIDE”), throws herself into mutually lustful but also mutually destructive encounters (“TWO BROKEN SOULS,” “LOCK IT IN”), and sometimes makes an effort to go easy on herself (“IT’S OK TO FEEL BLUE”). All the while, she uses ballads and the rich textures of 90’s and early-aughts hip-hop and R&B well, making certain arrangements feel as timeless as her existential questions. Read more here!

#12: Yerin Baek, Flash and Core 
Flash and Core takes as much time as Yerin Baek needs to present a comprehensive, unflinching assessment of a toxic relationship and its impacts. Each song is treated like an artifact worth holding and observing gingerly; she wants to leave no stone unturned and no feeling unpacked when it comes to who stole her autonomy and how she regained it. … Flash and Core is the ultimate revenge album, because it uses a toxic person’s tools against that person. It is a body of work about how an ex treated Yerin Baek like a body of work, something to be used more than loved. She does the same to her ex now, making the ex her subject. In eloquent and sometimes enigmatic ways, she eventually finds herself in contexts outside of that subject. Read more here!

#11: Xdinary Heroes, Beautiful Mind
Beautiful Mind is a stellar addition to the band’s discography. From glitches to the uses of reverb to sound effects including alarms and a ticking clock, the songs match their ambitious and layered contexts with experimental choices and attention to detail. Each song is one-of-a-kind and defiant in sound and lyrics alike. 

The tracklist order is also excellent. They start with “FIGHT ME,” and like their action-packed music videos, it is climactic from the get-go! They close with another rousing one, “BBB (Bitter But Better),” which celebrates having “the real thing,” a fitting nod to the reality-making that their music explores.

The best percussion is in “Diamond” and best guitar-playing is in “George the Lobster,” but if one could only listen to one song from Beautiful Mind, it would need to be… Read more here!

#10: Xdinary Heroes, LXVE to DEATH
As previously unpacked in this essay, this band willingly walks the fine line between life and death, with songs and videos that laugh in danger’s face despite sometimes getting weak-kneed before it. Propulsive music and emotionally charged words give each song the essence of a live wire, a tightrope that triggers waves of destruction if it frays too much. The hot-to-the-touch volatility comes with some elementary-school rhetoric (for example, they analogize their romance-related woes to “Ring Around the Rosies” and “Tug of War”) and adolescent rage (“I’ll gladly burn to love you,” they declare in “FiRE (My Sweet Misery)”), so while the band shows matured musicality, their sound still has an uncontainable format befitting youthful angst. Read more here! 

#9: PoLin, Fragments of Becoming
From the hooting-and-hollering-filled romp that is “Let Me Move On” to the devastating “Shattered Bliss” (which uses gospel influences to amplify its sense of biblical emotional proportions), this album is dramatic, delightful, and everything in between. The soundscapes might be full, but the lyrics are often succinct. PoLin has a knack for cutting to the emotional core, with insightful yet short statements that leave listeners deep in thought: “Living restlessly for the sake of mourning” (“Perfectly Loss”), “years are like thieves” (“Honey”), “Happiness and grievances are [both] souvenirs” (“Close Yet Apart”), “Fate is an appointment” (“How Are You”)... The best examples of so few words speaking so many volumes are in “Fragments of Becoming,” including “I took the risk of crying” and “There is nothing more comforting than repairing.” The last song circles back to that sentiment, celebrating how all of life’s beautiful messes that are addressed in the songs before it have led to seeing the world anew, with “Miracle Eyes.”

#8: David Tao, STUPID POP SONGS 
STUPID POP SONGS is a love letter to music when it does what it is meant to do: move, entertain, and provide soundtracks for not days but lifetimes. The album travels through time, tapping influences from seventies folk-rock (“From Dust to Dust”), to the electric piano style popular in 80’s and 90’s R&B (“Forever Penny”), to modern hip-hop (the style in which he covers Teresa Teng’s “A Thousand Words”). While the songs will entertain those of all ages and musical preferences, the album is a personal milestone. It is a creative rebirth for David Tao, being his first new album in over a decade, and a set of self-assigned challenges. For example, he tasked himself with making a song in a parallel set of major-key and minor-key melodies (“Always Here”), and he self-composed each Chinese instrument in a song for the first time (“Forever Penny”). Another shoutout-worthy track: “Moonchild,” a sparkling 80’s homage. Read more here!

#7: GoodBand, Epiphany
No detail gets overlooked in GoodBand’s music. Songs with fragile lead vocals (like “The Last Straw” and “The Very Last Time”) sound so unquestionably on the cusp of a breakdown that one cannot help but get emotionally invested, and songs with soaring and strong vocals (like “Buried (Full Band ver.)”) make their stance feel immovable (in the case of “Buried (Full Band ver.),” that stance is “I don’t insist on anything anymore / Let go of countless desires”). The instrumentals also stir visceral reactions. The strings sound like they are building slowly but surely towards a “Eureka!” moment in “We Used to Sing Together,” and the melodrama in “Sorry Mom” and “Fake It and Make It” remind listeners that this band has a humorous side, too. Each instrumental and vocal arrangement is emotionally effective, and the balancing act is done very well between funny and forlorn moments.

Another variable that makes Epiphany excellent is its deft point-of-view shifts… Read more here! 

#6: YUTA, PERSONA 
Go-to exclamations throughout PERSONA are along the lines of “Make some noise!,” “Break it down!,” “Now or never!,” and “Exceed the limit!” The commands to live solely according to one’s own standards are relentless instead of roundabout. This keeps more attention on the music than the words, which is fortunate, because YUTA has an ear for detail. He knows just what to add to give each song an extra pop: a vocal growl that has a “just getting started,” warm-up quality to it in “New World;” reverberations in “Two Of Us” and “Get Out Of My Mind” that give mid-song transitions an extra jolt; dramatic pauses in “KNOCK KNOCK” and “When I’m Not Around” that leave listeners in suspense… He even makes a statement through what he omits! Most of the songs end abruptly, but “If We Lose It All Tonight” ends with five seconds of silence, suiting the topic. The “quiet verses and loud choruses” contrast further heightens a push-and-pull tension. The most artful finishing touches, though, are in “Possiboo-hoo.” It earns its sense of triumph over time, as both he and the guitars wail more and more aggressively. 

Although many of the lyrics in PERSONA do not require reading between the lines, there are some worth stopping to note… Read more here!

#5: Stray Kids, KARMA
KARMA is a classic Stray Kids release in infinite ways! It is written and composed entirely by subunit 3RACHA, it follows the group’s typical approach of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, and it is as spirited and self-congratulatory as it gets. 

Stray Kids’ seismic sound starts and ends the album, because after the fan song “0801” seems like a soft landing, listeners are reinvigorated with two more renditions of “CEREMONY”! Stray Kids’ party never stops; it just has an occasional pause for a moment of gratitude towards those who support them. It adds likeability and understanding to their lyrics about starting from the bottom - which, as usual, take on comical forms, like comparing their skyrocketing success to a toaster in “CEREMONY”!

Other clever and humorous details that make KARMA a classic Stray Kids release: making instruments out of all kinds of noises (tongue-clucking in “BLEEP,” sirens and smooches in “CEREMONY,” cartoonish sound effects mixed with sporting event sounds in “Half-Time”...), self-references (“I feel like I’m the universe” brings to mind the song “MEGAVERSE;” “I was born to take off” in “BLEEP” brings to mind the call to “TAKE OFF!” in “ASTRONAUT”...), and acknowledgements of being globally well-known (they count in Spanish in “Half Time,” and they named a song “CREED” because it translates to a word in Japanese (“Shinjō”) that is similar to the word for “Heart” (“Shinzou”))! 

#4: SEVENTEEN, HAPPY BURSTDAY
In addition to songs that scream “That’s so SEVENTEEN!,” HAPPY BURSTDAY lets each individual show off what they contribute to the group. Each member has a solo song and uses it to demonstrate a unique approach and skillset, while also showing how they can work well in different combinations. … HAPPY BURSTDAY carries on the traditions of past SEVENTEEN eras, but it is so much more than a SEVENTEEN tribute. This era’s songs and videos alike emphasize how SEVENTEEN’s storytelling implodes the format of storytelling itself. There is not solely a first-person, second-person, or third-person messenger. There are no chapters or a specific climax; a plot twist could occur anytime, anywhere. There is no cut-and-dry genre categorization. And it rhymes with previous installments while never repeating them; its themes are dependable, while the ways of communicating those themes stay impossible to predict… Read more here!

#3: YEONJUN, NO LABELS: PART 01 
YEONJUN has done something truly remarkable: make a compelling body of work with a concept that is the lack of one! 

The listening experience matches the mini-movie’s effect on audiences. Listeners are just along for the ride, a ride that sounds aimless as much as it sounds purposeful; a ride that slows down and speeds up on a whim; a ride that features funk, rock, electronica, hip-hop, and pop that come and go with neither preface nor send-off. The track list aids this effect, with the beginning song in the mini-movie being the final song on the album and vice versa. Yet another attribute that aids this effect is how unclear YEONJUN’s level of control over the sound is. For example, the instrumental slows down when he wants it to in “Coma,” but his calls to “Speed it up” and “Slow it down” in “Do It” are ignored. His volume modulation also has reliability that comes and goes in phases, and his music equipment routinely sounds like it is whirring down for the last time before gaining a second wind, then a third, then a fourth… YEONJUN himself runs the gamut regarding how full of life he seems, belting out songs like “Talk to You” alongside screaming guitars but sounding lethargic and disinterested during parts of “Do It” and “Coma.” Two more ways that YEONJUN does things undefinably: makes terminology related to song formatting obsolete (for example, what sounds like an interlude might actually be a bridge, or what seems like the climax might also be an outro) and puts himself in both secondary and primary roles (since the ways he sounds like he is interrupting himself, volleying parts of a lyric back and forth as if talking to someone else, make him the main act and his backup hype person). Read more here!

#2: Jolin Tsai, aka JOLIN, Pleasure 
Jolin Tsai remains as boundary-pushing as ever, refusing to compromise a creative vision that encompasses philosophy, literature, and social commentary (particularly pertaining to women’s roles and materialism). She sums up her mantra best in the title track: “All taboos are off.”

She begins her latest dive down through “Layers” of consciousness with, naturally, a layered song, one that is at times slow and cinematic and at times faster and club-ready. The trip-hop/electro-pop mix pulls listeners in, and “The Divine Comedy: Purgatorio” is a haunting choral number that sucks them in deeper. The rest of the album unfolds in the same multifaceted manner, with operatic threads woven into and out of R&B leanings and JOLIN’s dance-pop roots. 

While the overarching motif involves the Seven Deadly Sins, the source material that inspired these songs ranges widely… Read more here! 

#1: TXT, The Star Chapter: TOGETHER
It would be reductive to say TXT’s story is one that uses fantasy elements to tell relatable tales. They do something more profound and complex. They use fictional storytelling not just to relate to people, but to challenge them and ask themselves where their notions of “fictional” come from in the first place. They tell people where to find life’s answers - what is “real,” what “magic” can become part of their lives, how things are “named” - by getting them to look at things with fresh eyes. … By showing what “real life” is not, they teach what it is.

The ultimate reason why TXT’s world-building stands above and beyond other artists’ is because TXT do something trickier than channeling emotions into visuals and sounds. They channel emotions into visuals and sounds without watering the emotions down in the slightest; they tackle not just easily-named emotions, but emotions at the most intuitive and visceral levels. Read the full deep dive that puts The Star Chapter: TOGETHER in the context of TXT’s entire discography here!

Stay tuned for the rest of the “Best of 2025” series!

View the Substack version of this piece here!