RULES:
I. Had to be released on streaming in the U.S. in 2025 (buying more albums in 2026!)
II. Had to sound good to me (be aware, I have niche tastes!)
III. Wasn’t just something I liked one particular single from (see the Top 10 Singles list for such cases!)
Honorable Mentions
- Fooled by the Rush of Growing Up – Kidburn (nobody soundtracks sunsets like this guy!)
- Coloura – Coloura (I gotta start a playlist of song titles that reference Pete Wentz)
- Closer to the Sun – Said the Sky (“You can cry in the storm or you can dance in the rain”)
- So Much for Second Chances – SoSo (if Eiffel 65 went emo??)
- Love on the Edge of Desire – The Lightning Kids (makes me want to go on a night drive)
10) This Never Happened – The Frst
The feature: often a transparent label move to boost profits by uniting two big names, and yet also an opportunity for smaller performers to rev their engine with gas from established peers. Thus enabled, The Frst may not be as standalone as their name suggests, but as their “About” page once clarified: “You’re The Frst… We’re your soundtrack.” And the duo play that role ably, rolling with rockers like Sleeping With Sirens (rap-meets-mope “Bruce Lee”), Eagles of Death Metal (“Murderabilia,” Josh Homme still in fine form), and The Dangerous Summer (“Torpedo”). Meanwhile, “Pop Punk Song” is my hypothetical wrestling entrance fanfare. Consider me glad this album did, in fact, happen!
9) The Last Laugh – VOILÀ
VOILÀ topped this list in 2024, so if they’re lower in the ranking this time around, it’s nothing personal—just the shockwave of discovery fading into familiarity. Still, that familiarity is as one of my favorite bands, a debonair pair who mix cabaret aesthetics with witty wordplay and a gothic fixation on death and heartbreak. For this year’s bifurcated LP, the stage is unveiled with a slow-boil title track before launching into a screaming stream of odes to drinking alone (“after (h)ours”; “Unhappy Hour”), internet addiction (“Digital Zombies”), and the one that either got away or can’t fast enough (“Wish You Hell” and “VOGUE,” respectively). There’s tenderness too, though, from the homebody seduction of “Better Off” to the tearjerking vows of “LIFEBLOOD”… and I don’t have TikTok, but if I did, I think I’ve got some winning moves for “FMK!” Fellow magicians got a show indeed this year, and I’m ready for as many more acts as Messrs. Eisner and Ross have waiting in the wings.
8) Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party – Hayley Williams
For some, it’ll be the moment when the girl once rumored to have apologized for saying “God” in a song now calls out Americans whitewashing Christ. For others, it’ll be out of the gates, with the clamorous bravado of “Ice in my OJ.” Maybe, if you’ve got the right sense of humor, it’s “Discovery Channel,” interpolating exactly the Bloodhound Gang line you think it does. To everyone who experiences Ego Death, however (everyone who can belt out “That’s What You Get” at their own karaoke bar, at least), a realization will come: oh, Hayley Williams is an artist. As if there was any doubt, but in striking out on her own during COVID, Williams introduced a sound evocative of Paramore yet undeniably more personal, diverse, and perverse. Over an hour and change, the singer-songwriter vents about racists, antidepressants, and bad flings, but also looking toward a brighter future (“Love Me Better”; “I Won’t Quit on You”). With as vibrant as her hair and advocacy have always been, I’ve no doubt she’ll get there!
7) Vaxis III: The Father of Make Believe – Coheed & Cambria
The “Vaxis” cycle is where I went from being Coheed-curious to an unabashed C&C fan, if only because they eased up on the suites and threw in some more hooks. With part tres of the prospective pentalogy, little has changed sonically or narratively since A Window of the Waking Mind and Unheavenly Creatures—it’s metal, it’s theatrical, it’s nerdy, and I’m still not sure what’s going on without finishing the bonus novella. Notice how there was no complaint in there! “Goodbye, Sunshine” pours one out for a late companion with fitting vigor, “Someone Who Can” backgrounded more than one self-pep-talk this year, and I just about swerved off the road (complimentary) when I heard absolute firestorm “Blind Side Sonny” segue into the breakbeats of “Play the Poet.” I’ve seen them in concert twice, and Claudio willing, I’ll see them twice more for the next acts of this interstellar adventure.
6) Going, Going, Gone – Knox
I’m not above unabashedly happy tunes, and yet I can’t deny that—thanks to Spotify’s deluge of content (canceling that subscription, promise)—I judge thumbnails at first glance. Look at this chump tossing paper airplanes, I might’ve thought; he will never be ballin’. Chalk me taking a chance on Knox up to wild curiosity—after Bilmuri rocked my world, I went scrolling though colleagues and wondered what a clean-cut kid was doing with that hog-man. Turns out, something mellower yet equally up my alley! “You Happened” scorns an ex with darkly comic specificity, “Pick Your Poison” bops all around a chance encounter over underage drinks, and “Not The 1975” parodies its namesake for a self-deprecating anthem. I’ve no doubt the performer has a diligent crew at the studio, but all the same, the result is mononym-worthy music.
5) Sweet and Sad – Mayday Parade
Mayday Parade: you know ‘em, you love ‘em, you have five of their shirts and want a huge umbrella largely to imitate their old album covers (that last part was written while looking into a mirror). It’s tough to admit we can now say “three cheers for twenty years,” but the love’s still there—in smug Knuckle Puck collab “Who’s Laughing Now,” in half-full-hearted adieu “Pretty Good to Feel Something,” in requisite Calvin & Hobbes quote “I Must Obey the Inscrutable Exhortations of My Soul.” Elsewhere, “I Miss the 90s” plays misdirection with its nostalgic label, while “It’s Not All Bad” enters the canon of certified MP bangers, infusing their signature melodrama with 80s synth for a toast to—honoring one of their rawest cuts—“the good that became of that crash.” This spot’s a little crowded, but until I hear a release date for the prophesied threequel, I’m treating these as an S-tier double album.
4) YESTERDAY FOREVER! – Jack the Underdog
Watching the edgy rock star archetype evolve over generations can be fascinating. Whereas all-purpose rage and casual homophobia may once have been the play (Hollywood Undead really just climbed onto the charts in ‘08 with some of those lyrics, huh), contemporary bad boys are more likely to get loud and proud about not just queerness but also mental health. Exhibit J: Jack the Underdog, who blessed my collection with this effervescent sophomore effort (and a sugarcoated nightcore version) when I least expected it! “I’M HAPPY (JUST IN CASE)” taps the UFO fixation of fellow Tom DeLonge fans for a rush of stoner optimism, “LIL ME” acerbically wallows in dreams dashed by people “who give me head—aches,” and “LIVE LAUGH LOBOTOMY” raises a two-minute-fifty-three-second middle finger to… well, can you take a number? At last count, this guy covered “Wood” and didn’t change a word. Taylor Swift isn’t on the list this year (wonder why), but with any luck, Mr. Underdog will be again.
3) A Collection of Greetings – Haunted Mouths
We have music for every season, or so it often seems. Cheery melodies for a spring in one’s step, that coveted “song of the summer,” autumnal indie, and then about four months of Christmas jingles (nights, rainy or not, synthwave’s got you covered). But what about when it’s just kinda… spooky? Chilly, misty, not a lot of people on the street? Enter Haunted Mouths, the side project from Sleeping With Sirens frontman/roving guest vocalist Kellin Quinn, and A Collection of Greetings. “Further Til We Disappear” sets the mood, eerie tones quivering over passages about rabbit holes, pumpkin tarts, and crashing waves, and what follows are soundscapes at home in bleak January (where I first listened) or pre-Halloween October alike. It comes across as traditional yet bold, meek yet forceful, and cold yet comforting. This is music for equinoxes, where day and night are symmetrical but there’s not as much to celebrate, and it’s all just a bit gray out. Glad to finally have something to stroll to in such weather!
2) Meet Me at the Record Store – The Summer Set
Some of my favorite bands got that way because of how well they blow up a projection of my heaviest emotions, like shadow puppets lit to towering proportions: Mayday Parade’s chin-up wistfulness, the operatic angst of My Chemical Romance, A Day to Remember and their easycore screeds against conformity. If I had to pick the group that best captures how I’ve actually felt on my most trying days, though, it’d be The Summer Set. “About a Girl” crystalized the unrequited what-ifs of undergrad, and “Legendary” dominated countless twentysomething daydreams, but it was when the inspiring “Figure Me Out” led—after a mutual creative hiatus—to the callback of “Back Together” that I knew. Now, with MMATRS, the quartet have zeroed in with GeoGuessr precision on my feels… and not a moment too soon! “For the First Time” revels in realizing it’s never too late to come alive, “34” is a bittersweet celebration of nearing middle age, and leave it to these guys to riff on that myth about where a certain shoe name came from with “ADIDAS.” For TSS, life has always been one big party, for better or worse. I used to not really like parties, but I think I’m ready to let myself enjoy one.
1) Everyone’s a Star! – 5 Seconds of Summer
Look, I’m just as surprised as you are. With as tiring as “fake geek girls” discourse was at the time, I defended a rising 5 Seconds of Summer against “fake punk boy” allegations—but there’s no denying that “She Looks So Perfect,” with its product-placement chorus and lullaby-adjacent verses, was a corny first impression deserving of the One Direction comparisons. I got down with a few tracks from their eponymous debut and its successor, but that was kinda it. Until.
Everyone’s a Star! marks a total reinvention, if not breaking new ground then at least breaking away from the Top 40 ambitions of old and toward something darker, sexier, yet still eminently catchy. As titles like “NOT OK” and lines like “can you feel my heart” indicate, these gentleman have enjoyed some emo in their time, but this is no mere sad-boy cash-in; there’s notes of Bring Me the Horizon, but also the soft-spoken rambles of Gorillaz, The 1975-like wails (sorry, Knox!), The Weeknd’s electric lasciviousness, and on and on, with room to spare for serenades like the anguished “I’m Scared I’ll Never Sleep Again.” It’s minor-key one minute, club-ready the next, and—as the deluxe edition and one unexpectedly funny track acknowledge—evolved indeed. In studying their most gracefully aged genre forefathers, 5SOS have arrived at my ideal merger of pop and the hard stuff. It’s not a guilty pleasure; honestly, I think I’m ready to retire that phrase. It’s just a pleasure—to dance to, croon to, love to, and everything in-between. As said stars, let’s keep those good vibes going into 2026 and beyond!
Notes&Sketches 