Waits’ gritty Rain Dogs depicted a dark vision of New York’s underbelly, and was shaped by its ‘junkyard orchestra’ of ...

When Tom Catmull was starting out in the Missoula music scene back in the 1990s, it wasn’t necessarily easier to be a musician performing original songs. The Texas native even recalls being told it’d ...

Our staff's favorite albums from the year that was. Is pop now officially an albums-driven genre? The year 2025 made a strong argument for the answer being “yes.” Acclaimed sets from rising stars like ...

The music world refused to stand still in 2025. This wasn’t a year for playing it safe. Across the globe and all over the stylistic map, music kept mutating in the weirdest, wildest ways. The artists ...

Rosalía made an album invoking the saints, Lily Allen took us on a tragicomic trip through her domestic hell, Lady Gaga found the sweet spot between artpop and arena-ready funk, and Bad Bunny was just ...

Earlier this year, my colleague and bud Kelefa Sanneh suggested that music critics, as a lot, have gone soft—becoming submissive, overly agreeable, and, in some cases, nearly servile. He’s right, of ...

The Korean pop outsider Effie and the Brooklyn indie-rock band Geese top our critics’ lists this year. By Jon Caramanica and Lindsay Zoladz Jon Caramanica Musicians know how to make music, and they ...

This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. Piling on, stripping down, looking back, pushing ahead: Musicians found all sorts of uses for the album form this ...

Stream this list on Apple Music and Spotify. See The FADER's 50 best songs of 2025. In a chronically online, AI-slop-embedded hellscape, Don’t Tap the Glass is Tyler, the Creator’s surprise social ...

I joined Paste in 2023 and, in my tenure as editor, this year’s AOTY list is my favorite by far. The publication has been doling out these rankings since 2002, affixing an “Album of the Year” ribbon ...

Clarice Jensen, In holiday clothing, out of the great darkness They said Sgt. Pepper's was a perfect album. Here's another one — and it's arguably more ambitious. That Rosalía sings in 13 languages ...

The best albums of 2025 spanned seismic rage rap, intricate guitar music, protest folk, spacey dream pop, and laptop twee. A virtuoso of experimental electronic music re-emerged, a Brooklyn band ...