The Best 25 Albums of 2025

Waxx Lyrical
Dec 23
2 min read

THE BEST 25 ALBUMS OF 2025

We asked 127 people a deceptively simple question: what was your album of the year? Then we did the unglamorous part — we sat down and counted the results.

Yoou would indeed be impressed with the list of voters, BUT no name-dropping. No campaigning. No clout-chasing. Just music, weighed on its own merits and the way it actually lived in people’s lives.

The votes came from across the Waxx Lyrical universe and beyond: our club members and board, selected artists, managers, A&R folk, distributors, producers, tastemakers, and trusted ears scattered across the world. To ground it in reality, we weighted those voices alongside actual Waxx Lyrical sales — because records people buy and live with deserve a seat at the table too.

We kept the framework tight:

✔️ Anything released between January 1 and December 18 was eligible (sorry, Cameron Winter 😫)

✔️ Every written or spoken vote counted as one

✔️ Only one vote per person — no stacking the deck

✔️ Every Waxx Lyrical sale of an eligible release counted as one

✔️ We voted as well, but just once each

The Best 25 Albums of 2025

Then we tallied it all up. Slowly. Carefully. With receipts.

Full transparency:👉🏻 Our #1 album received 42 votes out of 127.

What follows isn’t a hype list or a victory lap. It’s a snapshot of a year in listening — the records that cut through the noise, stuck around, and earned their place when the dust finally settled.