Worst Albums of 2025
For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) - Japanese Breakfast
If I had a nickel for every recent pop album that uses Virginia Woolf’s Orlando as a metaphor for the tumultuous relationship between art and artist, I’d have two nickels. One of them would be shiny and freshly minted, the other would be the drab and worn For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women). From the overly self-aware title to the excessive, yet still sleepy, arrangements, Japanese Breakfast’s newest reminds me of Father John Misty’s similarly baffling flop Chloe and the New 20th Century. After hitting the sweet spot of vibrant energy, pop chops, and sorrow on Jubilee, Sad Women rolls over and hits snooze. Instead of focusing on Orlando’s sci-fi trappings, its gender fluidity, or the witty prose, Japanese Breakfast took all the empty luxury from the first half of the novel and stuffed it into her music.
Forever is a Feeling - Lucy Dacus
It’s been wild to see Lucy Dacus go from the most interesting of the Boygenius extended universe to the blandest in one album cycle. On Forever is a Feeling, her usually warm, radiant voice sounds vague, opaque, like she delivered most of her lines on melatonin. It’s a disappointment to see someone who made the vibrant and earthshaking “Night Shift” go into the "beige" section of Sherwin-Williams and say “I’ll take one of everything.”
Was Happiness Too Boring for You - Underbrook
I’m just going to read off a few facts about Underbrook.
“The artist born Chris Comstock, known to millions of fans as Marshmello, has a long history with pop-punk as both a fan of the genre and through his ‘Mello collabs with A Day to Remember and Yungblud.”
“Josh Strock, who’s written and produced for artists including Motionless In White, Fever 333 and Machine Gun Kelly, is on guitar alongside fellow guitarist Danny Couture, a writer and producer for acts including Bring Me the Horizon, 24kGoldn and Marshmello, and the group’s third guitarist Jake Torrey, who has written and produced for Linkin Park, Twenty One Pilots and Yungblud.”
The last paragraph was from Underbrook’s press release and it misspelled “Marshmallow.”
They are a pop punk band with three guitarists.
NEVER ENOUGH - Turnstile
Baltimore hardcore outfit Turnstile saw the sneering reaction to their last album from the true believers and said “you think that’s selling out? Hold my Michelob Ultra.” Their dynamic, excellent breakout Glow On was a perfect fusion of moshpit churning energy and pop hooks. NEVER ENOUGH is the sound of a band saying yes to Taco Bell money. The massive production, meant to elevate the drum fills to arena rafters, only accentuates how hollow NEVER ENOUGH feels. Vocalist Brendan Yates formerly used his non-barking voice for the occasional chorus, now his paper-thin singing is plastered across the album over guitars that sound less like they were made for Guitar Hero, and more like they were made in Guitar Hero. Bring back shame to punk.
Dead Channel Sky - clipping.
I was always afraid this day would come: Daveed Diggs has finally spent too much time with Lin Manuel Miranda, while his bandmates - usually two of the sharpest, most experimental producers in rap - seem content to lounge in pastiche. None of the jagged, flashbang sounds of their past, just half-baked retreads of acid house tunes and Egyptian Lover synths. And that, unfortunately, seems to let Diggs dig into all of his cheesiest proclivities. Diggs is constantly mugging to camera with punchlines that would make LMM salivate by their sheer try-hardness.
Shine - Tobias Jesso Jr.
So we're just releasing our demo collections and calling them albums now?
When Tobias Jesso Jr. broke through in 2015 with Goon, an album whose title he at this point might regret, the critical wave of adulation seemed odd, given all the negativity in the music press I'd read in the late aughts/early 2010s about Billy Joel, a more than ghostly presence on Jesso's debut. This now blessedly paywalled takedown of the Piano Man spoke for many more critics who found him passe, a guy who, sure, created The Stranger, but could never outrun "We Didn't Start the Fire." So to hear a whiny-voiced piano man of a similar if not exactly same type get lauded by the likes of Pitchfork was confusing to say the least, and little about Goon in the light of the present day holds up as particularly sterling stuff. "Can't Stop Thinking About You" might as well be a Cold Spring Harbor B-side.
Since that time, Jesso's star rose not on the hype around his first LP but for his bustling schedule as a songwriter-for-hire, culminating in his winning the first ever Grammy Award for Songwriter of the Year (Non-Classical). The piano man tendencies of Goon paid off in his collaborative efforts, especially those with Adele; the powerful emotion of "When We Were Young" hits like the classics he evokes but doesn't transcend in his own work. Jesso's songwriting Rolodex continues to expand in 2025, which makes the unassuming drop of Shine all the more surprising.
It's not long into Shine that one is left going, "So that's it, then?" Each track, centering on Jesso's voice and piano, feels like an early take rather than a fully developed song. Even at its best, like on the pulsating chords of "Black Magic," the music never coheres into a complete song that seems like its fullest expression. That's not to say that Shine needed a full band to actualize itself, though one could imagine Bruce Springsteen selling "Black Magic" (especially the line "Loving you is like customer service") with booming drums and searing electric guitar leads. But it is to say that this barely-LP (not even 30 minutes long) strikes me as something better saved to be elaborated by another musician. - Brice
Sable, Fable - Bon Iver
A few years ago, Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig discovered weed, became a dad, realized he loved the Grateful Dead, and promptly released the worst album of his career, 2019’s glop-rock opus Father of the Bride. Bon Iver mastermind Justin Vernon was already a stoner and a jam band enthusiast, so making Sable Fable was just a formality after he had a kid. Sable Fable is the same wretched folk/pop/soul non-genre that’s dominated Spotify playlists and Adult Contemporary radio for over a decade now. Even the most uneven Bon Iver records before this were at least good for some outside of the box experimentation, thanks to Vernon’s admirable restlessness. But on an album as sterilely produced as Justin Timberlake’s Man of the Woods only a few cringe-inspiring lyrical choices (“Keep the sad shit off the phone/ And get your fine ass on the road!” kill me) grab attention. This is car commercial music, though I’d assume Kia would demand something with a bit more drive.
People Watching - Sam Fender
Sam Fender is to Bruce Springsteen as Greta Van Fleet is to Led Zeppelin. I’d rather listen to a full album of Jeremy Allen White covers.
Skeletá - Ghost
At some point in the last decade, Ghost realized that scene kids with back patches had less disposable income than musical theater dorks, and heelturned into AOR glop. There’s something blasphemous about Voivod-ass album art met by Styx with corpse paint .
I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven - The Callous Daoboys
It’s remarkable how the modern wave of piss metal (Code Orange, Sleep Token, Loathe) has stuck firm to completely misunderstanding their influences, plucking out the worst tendencies of their genres. And The Callous Daoboys’ newest, I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven, is a monument to poor choices. These Atlanta-based dipshits replace musical talent with obnoxiousness, believing that was what made These Arms Are Snakes or Botch good, while their breakdowns hit with all of the force of a wet fart. Carson "Big Animal" Pace (christ) is this era’s most grating frontman, combing white-guy-failing-to-cover-Frank-Ocean-at-karaoke clean vocals and screams suggest he just stubbed his toe. How the fuck am I nostalgic for Coal Chamber now?