The musical releases of 2025 have begun. With various artists wasting no time dropping their projects, here’s some of the early contenders for best albums of 2025 so far:
“Balloonerism” by Mac Miller
This posthumous release of an album that was recorded in 2014, but never released, is serving as a shining example of how great music is timeless.
Frequent collaborators and friends Thundercat and SZA contributed their signature touches to some tracks. Miller’s typical carefree but intentional tone shines through in this project. His personal philosophies, feelings of uncertainty and struggles with addiction are important subject matter in songs such as “Shangri-La” and “Do You Have A Destination?”.
This unintentional alluding to his untimely death is a heart-wrenching and eye-opening look into his mind during this time in his life, with Pitchfork calling the project “a fully formed project that captures the rapper’s ability to make feel-good music from feelings that don’t necessarily feel good”.
“Eusexua” by FKA Twigs
FKA Twigs’ third studio album is best defined as an experience that you would understand better by simply listening to it.
“Eusexua” depicts a personal transformation, accompanied by a genre-bending nod to the techno music played at clubs and raves all over the world. The composition of the songs themselves can easily take you into a trance-like state, but the lyricism detailing her discovery of self and her sensuality will help you refocus. FKA Twigs continues to be one-of-one, remaining her beautifully eerie self, while softening up when she feels like it. Besides, who else would have North West rapping in Japanese on a track?
“Perverts” by Ethel Cain
Ethel Cain’s second self-produced LP “Perverts” explores themes such as repentance, hierarchies and shame, making it a solid follow-up of her debut album “Preacher’s Daughter”.
Cain’s knack for beautifully unraveling the insidious aspects of the American Christian faith reminds me of “Forgiven” by Alanis Morissette, a track in which the subject matter is the Catholic church’s indoctrination. Cain’s typically gothic and chilly textures are omnipresent in tracks like “Punish” and “Onanist”, with her triggering memories of my own religious upbringing and the hypocrisy I observed in the church – in the best way possible.
This is a great listen if you’re capable of sitting with some heavy feelings after.
“Hurry Up Tomorrow” by The Weeknd
“Hurry Up Tomorrow” feels like a gilded goodbye to the persona that The Weeknd has created and maintained over the past decade.
With the album’s initial rollout consisting of billboards stating “THE END IS NEAR” in bold letters and The Weeknd expressing desires to “kill” his pop persona, some metaphorical death is certainly afoot. He isn’t the 20-something with an unlimited drug intake tolerance that he once was. Songs such as “Without a Warning” and “Cry For Me” serve as a coming-to-terms of where his rise to superstar status and lifestyle choices have led him.
His affinity for hyper pop and high-tempo beats is still present, but the subject matter is different. My prediction is that The Weeknd is giving us a head’s up to let go of who he was and prepare for who he’s becoming.
