So it’s that time of year again when I get to re-listen to all my favourite albums to decide on a top 5.
I almost feel like this should be called “Best international albums of 2025” or “Best non-Australian albums” as we’ll also be counting down our top 5 Aussie releases too in the next few days. This isn’t to say some of those releases couldn’t have made this list, a couple were very serious contenders, but I decided the best way to truly spotlight Australian music was to give it its own space. So here’s all the non-Australian albums I loved this year!!
Best albums of 2025, according to me, in no particular order, here goes…
Florence + The Machine – Everybody Scream
Everybody Scream burrowed its way into my soul. I laughed and I cried to this album (it’s not the only one on the list I cried to). Florence Welch’s powerful delivery meant I felt her entire emotional journey from her anger, to self-despair to courage as she progresses through the tracks on this album. Buckle in particular is a track that stayed with me since I first heard it thanks to the clever word play and also the relaying of a situation that almost every woman has been in at some point in her life. You want to shake her and scream ‘get out of there’, but you understand why she doesn’t and a small part of you wants to sit down on the floor and scream with her. I think this album is possibly her finest work yet.
Listen to Everybody Scream here.
Read my full review here.
Annika Bennett – Triple Shooting Star
Probably a surprise to no one that Triple Shooting Star made the list. I also decided to get all the albums I cried to out of the way early and this vulnerable, folk-inspired album definitely changed something in me. I’ve thought a lot about why over the past couple of months, knowing it would make this list. In a similar way to the Florence album, I deeply identified with it. It brought back feelings of a break-up with an ex that I thought were long past, but Annika’s vulnerability deconstructs these in a way I never did (and I wasn’t always the one on the ‘right’ side of the stories either). It’s excellent songwriting that leverages its simplicity to really push the raw emotional feelings. Everyone should listen to this album.
Listen to Triple Shooting Star here.
Read my full review here.
Hayley Williams – Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party
In another surprise to no one, I love Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. For anyone not keeping up, I’ve solidly been crushing on Hayley Williams for almost 20 years at this point and seeing her unfettered joy in releasing this solo album means everything!
Little side story before I talk about the album: I actually saw Hayley Williams out and about in my hometown when she was playing there and I literally didn’t even register that it was her, I was just like “She’s pretty”. Anyway, I smiled. She smiled. Our eyes met. A couple of days later I realised it was her. And that’s my wholesome Hayley Williams story.
But anyway, post Paramore Hayley Williams is something else! I loved the self-exploration, the clever little samples and witty energy on this album – even her method of delivery. Everything about it screamed “I’m free” and her finally getting to make music in the way she’s always wanted gave us this beautiful album of stories, of struggles we wish she didn’t have to have, but also of strength and resilience.
Listen to Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party here.
Read my full review here.
Pulp – More
It was such a joy for one of my favourite bands of all time to release new music this year after a 20 year gap. I was so apprehensive I would hate it, but Pulp’s More, beautifully produced by James Ford, was a fabulous release. It retained enough of the Jarvis Cocker swagger and Pulp’s distinctive Brit-pop sound but modernised this for a 2020’s landscape. Cocker’s irreverent story telling remained, but the characters and the lifestyle moved with him. Particularly poignant is Grown Ups which for me was looking at Disco 2000 through the opposite end of the telescope. A sort of “how did we end up here” look on what live is really like once we’re all fully grown.
Listen to More here.
Read my full review here.
Queens of The Stone Age – Alive in the Catacombs
So this one is technically an EP, but I don’t care. Alive in the Catacombs is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever listened to. Creative reimaginings of some of their finest tracks, recorded live at the Catacombs in Paris with a skeleton set of instruments (literally, at times). Josh Homme was significantly unwell when this was recorded – there’s images of him lying down on the stacks of bones and shortly after he was rushed back to USA and hospitalised- but they’d spent so long in the planning of this special release that they didn’t want to miss their chance to record in the Catacombs.
There’s something in that suffering that undoubtedly added to the magic of this release. It’s ethereal, haunting. It took the experimental way that Queens of The Stone Age work to the extreme and it paid off wonderfully. For example, Paper Machete was a track I could take or leave before, but the version on this EP I could listen to for the rest of my life. It’s another record that deeply moved me this year.
Listen to Alive in the Catacombs here.
Read my full review here.
What were your favourite albums of 2025? Let me know in the comments.