A list of the most well-received records by fans and critiques alike of modern pop music
2025 has been the year pop releases busted out its shiniest boots and sashayed its way back into our playlists with no chill.
From glitter-bomb theatrics, dance anthem-ified heartbreak, and the occasional unhinged lyrical genius moment, the pop world has really been living its main character energy. From Taylor’s dramatic stage presence to Sabrina’s puppy-love sass, these are the pop releases that had us shrieking “add to playlist” quicker than our Wi-Fi could handle.
Let’s get into them, shall we?
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1. Taylor Swift
Track/Album: The Life of a Showgirl
Release date: October 3, 2025
Record label: Republic Records
Recording Studio: Electric Lady Studios, NYC
Taylor slips into sequined boots and plays her most theatrical era to date. The Life of a Showgirl is half autobiography, half Broadway show, and 100% Swiftian verse. With tinsel, drama, and a dash of Gatsby, it’s pop maximalism at its finest- the sort of album that makes you want your heartbreak to have better lighting.
2. Sabrina Carpenter
Track/Album: Man’s Best Friend
Release date: August 29, 2025
Record label: Island Records
Recording Studio: Electric Lady Studios, NYC
Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend is like taking a midnight walk through pop-town. It veers between disco-infused grooves, raw emotional outbursts, and cheeky showtunery. Hammering into the #1 spot with “Manchild,” she demonstrates that she can equally don vulnerability and attitude, sometimes within the same sentence. It’s bold, playful, confident.
3. Lady Gaga
Album: Mayhem
Release date: March 7, 2025
Label / Distribution: Streamline / Interscope Records
Recording studio/collaborators: Shangri-La (Malibu), Henson Recording Studios
Mother Monster releases Mayhem, and it delivers on its title. Industrial pop, punkier edges, and operatic singing meet in a sound riot that’s like Chromatica and Born This Way had a higher-glamour meltdown. Gaga’s anarchy never sounded so deliberate – or as iconic.
4. Bad Bunny
Album: Debí Tirar Más Fotos
Release date: January 5, 2025
Label / Distribution: Rimas Entertainment
Weeks into 2025, while the rest of the world was trying to wake up from its holiday haze, visionary Puerto Rican artist Roberto Peña released the boldest, most innovative statement of his life. Debí Tirar Más Fotos injects Bunny’s tight, familiar música urbana and Latin pop with salsa, bolero, plena, and other local noises of the past few decades – and his new direction caught eyes. The genre-bending wouldn’t mean much, however, if the tunes weren’t great.
5. Bon Iver
Album: SABLE, fABLE
Release date: April 11, 2025
Label / Distribution: Jagjaguwar
Recording studio/collaborators: April Base
As large and expansive as his music is, hibernation and solitude have always been a significant part of Justin Vernon (alias Bon Iver)’s artistic process.
His breakthrough record, 2007’s “For Emma, Forever Ago,” came after some weeks of solitude in a winter cabin deep in the woods of his home state of Wisconsin; “Sable, Fable,” his first full-length album in six years, is similarly the fruit of an introspective time, but also of his coming out of it.
Which ones are your favourites? Let us know! Until then, happy listening!
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