2025 was supposed to be the underdog year for music. After the blockbuster pop landscape of 2024, everyone wondered who was even left to surprise us. Then summer rolled in and the media collectively panicked about the absence of a clear Song of the Summer, as if the industry had suddenly run out of ideas. But quietly, steadily, brilliantly, a wave of artists delivered records with real staying power—and Loverboy has spent the year obsessing over them.

Before we get into our top picks, a few honourable mentions are absolutely mandatory. Model/Actriz’s sophomore album Pirouette saw Cole and the crew get gayer, fiercer, and somehow even more unhinged—’I’m such a soprano’ is now fully part of our lexicon. Cole also popped up on one of the most criminally overlooked pop albums of the year: Miley Cyrus’ Something Beautiful. And Anna von Hausswolff’s Iconoclasts shattered our eardrums in the best way, cementing her as a must-see at Primavera 2026.

Our full list is below—underdog year or not, these albums more than delivered.

Juanjo Bona – Recardelino
We never expected a kid from Operación Triunfo, Spain’s answer to Fame Academy, to deliver something as heartfelt as Recardelino. Juanjo Bona, more famous during the show for his budding romance with Martín and their shenanigans in the bathroom, has thankfully swerved away from the easy, Troye-Sivan-lite gay-pop route. Instead, he offers an homage to the people who raised him and to the regional sounds of Aragón, with La Jota woven through the album like a family thread.

With Marcel Bagés shaping the production, the album feels both intimate and quietly ambitious, marrying tradition with a modern tenderness that never strains for effect. One of the most affecting moments comes on ‘Últimamente,’ where he dreams of his grandmother and longs to return home: ‘Quiero volver, donde están mis raíces / Donde está quien me vio crecer.’ If you don’t at least mist up a little, check your Wi-Fi—your emotions may not be loading. And of course, there’s ‘El Destello,’ his glowing duet with Martín—produced by Hidrogenesse—which became one of our most-played tracks of 2024.

The album was #1 on our Spotify Wrapped, as predicted. His 2025 shows brimmed with love and adoring girls; hopefully the gays will catch on in 2026. -MT

Emma-Jean Thackray – Weirdo
Back in March, UK all-round artiste Emma-Jean Thackray told Loverboy there should be no boundaries when making music: ‘You can do whatever the fuck you want!’ And the writer, arranger, singer, performer, mixer, producer does exactly that on Weirdo, her bold and beautiful 2025 album. It’s a record where jazz bleeds into grunge, rock’n’roll collides with layer upon layer of the most intricate and affecting vocals.

Weirdo is one of our albums of the year because it’s overflowing with detail—intricate vocal lines, arrangements that reveal new corners with every listen, and production rich enough to disappear inside. Beneath all that experimentation sits a core of raw feeling. The sudden loss of her partner left Thackray in an impossible place, and after months of living with that grief, she made the album that could help her process it. ‘I’m in a black hole of despair, only the beat can pull me out,’ she sings on ‘Black Hole,’ capturing pain and propulsion in the same breath.

Highlights? The joyful release of ‘Thank You For The Day’, the different melodies at the end of ‘Save Me,’ and don’t even get us started on the EJT remix of it. Oof. We’re weren’t expecting it to go awf like that. A Mercury Prize nomination feels right—but honestly, the bigger achievement(!!!!) is that it’s our second most-played album of the entire year. -MT

CMAT – Euro-Country
Never let it be said, Loverboy cannot admit being wrong. For the longest time we thought CMAT was simply a relentlessly touring diva — a charismatic, unhinged live act who could win over any festival crowd, even if the studio-recorded songs didn’t always land  when played at home. Then came her Primavera Sound set, a performance so sharp, funny, and musically dialled-in that it completely rewired our thinking. Euro Country isn’t just good — it’s the moment we realised CMAT not only has the songs, but the sheer talent to back up all that charisma.

The crazed psychedelic swirl of ‘Jamie Oliver Petrol Station,’ the TikTok-ready strut of ‘Take a Sexy Picture of Me,’ and the brat-esque energy of ‘Tree Six Foive’ showcase her charisma, Y2K energy, and chaotic glam in a way only she can pull off.

A Mercury Prize nomination feels right. And yes, we are flying to Denmark to catch her EU tour in 2026. See you in CPH, babes? -MT

Alison Goldfrapp – Flux
Alison Goldfrapp’s second solo album arrives with an electric, shimmering spark that places it among our albums of the year. When Loverboy initially described the record as ‘brasher,’ Goldfrapp recoiled, saying, ‘I don’t like to use that word but it’s more personal. Maybe that boldness is because of that. The songs are stronger.’ And honestly, she ain’t lying: the songwriting feels tighter, the hooks brighter, the confidence turned all the way up.

‘Reverberotic’ is an instant standout—sleek, cheeky and just the right amount of kink. ‘Sound & Light’, inspired by her journey to see the mythical Northern Lights, offers a dreamy, glowing contrast, unfolding like a synth-powered postcard from another world.

Reuniting with Richard X and bringing Stefan Storm into the mix shapes an album that’s synthy, energetic, and full of pop fizz. Personal, bold, and irresistibly fun, it’s Alison Goldfrapp at her glittering best. -MT

SVSTO – Crisis
Even if she might roll her eyes at praise from a ‘guiri’ publication, the reality is simple: we’ve played the absolute hell out of SVSTO’s Crisis this year. Its crunchy, industrial-leaning techno production hits with the force of a strobe light in a basement club, all sharp edges and sweaty euphoria. But what truly elevates it are SVSTO’s razor-witted one-liners—half battle cry, half inside joke—delivered with the charisma of someone who knows exactly how to command a dancefloor. Part of her charm is the world she brings with her: the flash of red hair, the outfits straight out of Humana and the energy of someone knocking back shots at Madam Jasmine before stepping up to the decks.

Going solo after her work as one half of electro-pop disruptors Las Bistecs, the Catalan writer-producer arrives fully formed on Crisis: bold, funny, and unafraid to get messy. And she’s proven it isn’t just a studio victory. Her live sets this year—including a riotous performance at La Mercè where she turned grand Plaça Catalunya into a pop-up rave —have shown she can translate all that chaos and catharsis directly to the stage. -MT

Sextile – yes, please
Sextile’s yes, please hits with a rave-ready resistance with the duo telling Loverboy earlier this year, ‘We literally do everything ourselves. We are punk as funk.’ And you hear that DIY fierceness in every corner of this record.

‘Women Respond to Bass’ feels like a manifesto delivered through sub-frequencies. ‘Freak Eye’ is snarling, ecstatic, and driven by their unofficial third band member—the cowbell. Brady yelling, ‘Yeah, the pressure to finally get my shit together / Yeah, people say I should be more like Trent Reznor,’ capturing the album’s humour, honesty, and bite in one breath. Our fave has been ‘Resist’: Melissa singing about abortion rights over a bassline so heavy it’s kicking down doors.

‘I do find the UK a very hard place to live and I wonder, why did so much good music come out of this difficult-ass place?’ Ne’er a truer word spoken, Mel. Sextile love a bit of Prodigy, Weatherall, Happy Mondays, Eno and yes, please fuses all of that into something raw, urgent, and unique. Bravo. -MT

Lily Allen – West End Girl
Lily Allen’s West End Girl feels like the kind of return nobody expected but everyone quietly hoped for. Seeing her not only back at the peak of her powers in 2025, but surpassing every expectation—and now performing on SNL for the first time in twenty years—has made me unexpectedly proud. When her debut landed in 2006, I’d just started out in journalism, and one of my first interviews was with this MySpace up-and-comer who refused to sugar-coat anything. Back then it was, ‘Well, it’s about guys with small dicks’ Now it’s the brilliantly caustic: “Sex toys, butt plugs, lube inside… hundreds of Trojans, you’re so fucking broken.” Same Lily, sharper pen.

If 2024 belonged to Charli XCX and brat, then 2025 surely belonged to the other dark-haired, loudmouthed London girl who worships Mike Skinner. With a 2026 West End Girl tour ahead—and rumours of a stage adaptation—this era feels like it’s only just warming up. -MT

Tom Aspaul — Cabin Fever
Tom Aspaul’s Cabin Fever is the rare pop album that begins in absolute chaos and ends in shimmering clarity. When Loverboy spoke with him earlier this year, he recounted a somewhat mythic Midsommar trip that inspired it—an accidental overdose of LSD in Sweden that left him hallucinating, vomiting, and at one point telling a stranger, ‘I don’t know who I am.’ Out of that mayhem came a flood of revelation: grief for his grandmother, queer identity, relationships, mortality. ‘We talked about everything,’ he told us. ‘Adolescence, coming out, gender identity, relationships. It got very deep.’

And yet Cabin Fever is not dark; it glows. Built on a ’70s Angels’ playlist of Barbra, Olivia Newton-John, and ABBA, the album has a soft-focus glamour even as it chooses to wrestle with psychic debris. There is a sense of psychedelia even in the production which is perhaps influenced by the hallucination where ‘Liza Minnelli was putting on a show just for us.’ So do the consistent dance elements, likely informed by his moonlighting side gig; as Aspaul joked, ‘If it weren’t for go-go dancing, the album wouldn’t sound as good.’

The emotional centerpiece is ‘That Girl,’ born from watching a boat of glowing Swedish women drift past: aspirational, effortless, everything he and his friend on vacation, two queer men in their late 30s, suddenly longed to be. ‘Gay people are naturally observers,’ he said, and Cabin Fever turns that observation into a pop pilgrimage: ecstatic, terrified, grateful, and always moving toward the light. -GA

Wendy James — The Shape of History
Few artists embody self-invention like Wendy James. From Transvision Vamp’s sexy punk-pop provocation to collaborations with post-punk luminaries like Elvis Costello and Lenny Kaye, she has written her own narrative at every turn. Her tenth album is where that narrative becomes the subject. ‘Whoever I am… it’s been self-created,’ she told Loverboy, and The Shape of History makes that unmistakably true.

The record opens with the gorgeous ‘Sweet Like Love,’ which Wendy described as her ‘Gershwin overture.’ It unfolds as an excitingly cinematic sweep that expands her palette into warm major-7ths, glowing harmonies, and a breezy mid-1970s California shimmer. That openness reaches its emotional peak on ‘Everything Is Magic,’ one of the most delicate and striking songs she has ever written, a flash of vulnerability from an artist once synonymous with declarations like ‘Baby, I Don’t Care.’ Another standout, ‘Freedomsville,’ channels her Blade Runner era futurism, linking the sequenced spark of early Transvision Vamp to something modern, analogue, and muscular.

What is most compelling is how consciously she reflects on her vast and varied catalogue. Rather than slipping into nostalgia, Wendy approaches her history with clarity, a purposeful summing-up of the lessons, detours, and battles that shaped her. Lines like ‘It’s going to be fun from now on’ land not as optimism but as hard-won truth: the perspective of an artist who weathered the major-label machine, survived the drop, and rebuilt her career entirely on her own terms. – GA

Suede — Antidepressants
Suede have never been a band you simply listen to. They are a band you feel. At their best, they tap into a kind of beautiful listlessness, a sense of disaffection we might normally associate with youth, except Suede are not a young band and Antidepressants proves that, ten albums in, the voltage is still there. When I saw them in Chicago in 2022 on the Autofiction tour, the room felt like a riot. Brett did not pause for breath. The immediacy of those songs brought back everything I first felt hearing their debut or Dog Man Star in college, staring at photos of this beautiful, androgynous figure. There is a mythology around Brett. My ex once told me he saw him thrown through a glass window in Glasgow. Watching recent performances online, where he scrapes microphones across amplifiers like cheese, I am reminded that Suede have always been defined by a kind of dangerous grace, and that they still have it.

On Antidepressants, their post-punk instincts sharpen further. Produced again by Ed Buller, the album draws from Magazine, Joy Division, and Siouxsie, but the result is unmistakably Suede. Richard Oakes’s riffs grind and lunge, the rhythm section stomps, and Brett Anderson sings with the cracked glamour of someone who refuses to age into quiet acceptance. The band sound energized. The opener, ‘Disintegrate,’ invites us into decay. Other tracks circle mortality, anxiety, toxic desire, and the numbed-out culture of self-medication. ‘June Rain,’ a bleak vignette of a damaged mind, ends with the character stepping into traffic. It is harrowing and strangely beautiful. – GA

ONE TO WATCH
Charli XCX — Wuthering Heights
Charli XCX is my favorite modern pop star because she is the rare pop artist who never moves with the culture; she moves the culture forward. Her new era, beginning with ‘House,’ the collaboration with John Cale for Wuthering Heights, feels like the start of another seismic shift. When she and Cale spoke about making something ‘elegant and brutal,’ it sounded almost theoretical grotesque; things that cross the boundary between beautiful and ugly.  Then you hear ‘House’ or ‘Chains of Love’ and realize how radical that idea is in a moment when AI can manufacture perfect, frictionless pop and so many pop artists flatten themselves into anonymous sex objects. Elegant and brutal is the opposite of that. It is intention. It is authorship. It is risk!

What makes this collaboration smart is that Charli understands the Velvet Underground not as an aesthetic but as a blueprint for disruption. VU subverted the entire machinery of rock music by refusing to behave like it. They remade the landscape. Charli does the same for pop. She pushes form until it becomes something unrecognisable and then somehow makes it feel inevitable. That is why younger artists, producers, and even platforms take their cues from her. She changes the way music sounds, but more importantly, she changes the way we consume it.

If the Velvet Underground invented the idea that a band with no chart position could influence every band that followed, Charli XCX is the pop star rewriting what influence looks like now. She is elegant and brutal. She is the future in real time. And she is only getting started. -GA

Reviews by Michael Turnbull and George Alley