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I bought 59 albums in 2025, way off of last year’s pace, which was admittedly kind of insane. Here’s the list, and then I’ll talk specifically about a few of them. This isn’t a “best of” list by any means, just some albums I find interesting.

And yes, “bought” is the right word, as I generally don’t stream music. I played around with Spotify for a bit this year and then cancelled it when they started showing ads for ICE, and I currently have a Tidal account that I’m not really using.

Let’s start with the band of the year, an award that isn’t even meaningful enough to be rendered in capital letters and which I spent no time thinking about prior to writing this sentence:

In the absence of a new Pearl Jam album this year (and I got one last year, so I can’t complain) a new Counting Crows album is about the best thing I could have asked for– and I not only got that, I got a tour, which I had tickets to. I saw two concerts this year, both in the same venue in Indianapolis; Weird Al was the other one. The Crows have still absolutely got it. There are other bands from my era that are still making music and touring, but … not all of them should be, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

I’m only picking Problematic because the cover has his face on it, but Norman Sann was absolutely my big discovery in hiphop this year. Dude is phenomenally talented and he’s also a huge geek without really letting it take over his music– like, he’ll drop a reference to Baraka from Mortal Kombat into the middle of a verse, but Nerd Rap is a genre all to itself and this, I think, is not that. I picked up five full-length albums by this guy this year and I very much am impatiently anticipating more.

(Goes and looks, discovers a sixth album came out in September!)

So make that an even 60 for the year, then.

The Sinners soundtrack sparked a sudden and fairly intense interest in streaming Irish rage music, which has cooled a bit, but I’d never really listened to the Dropkick Murphys before this year and I should have started before now. For the People, their latest release, and The Warrior’s Code from 2005 got the most plays. I’ll pick up the rest of their catalog sooner or later but haven’t done it just yet.

I think this is the second time Olivia Rodrigo has shown up on one of these things. I still have issues with how the adults around her handled her first album, but she’s an adult now and she dropped a live album on us late in the year. Live pop isn’t completely my thing– I will never get completely used to the idea of singing over your own voice as a backup track– but there’s a ton of energy in this recording and Robert Smith randomly showing up for a couple of duets in front of a very young crowd who appears to have no idea who the hell he is is a nice touch.

Finally, I just picked up the deluxe edition of Mad Season’s Above last week, and it’s long enough that I haven’t even listened to the whole thing yet, but it’s a Goddamned crime that I had never heard of this album until recently. Do you know who Mad Season is? They released one album– this one– in 1995. They’re a supergroup: Layne Staley from Alice In Chains, Mike McCready from Pearl Jam, Barrett Martin from Screaming Trees on drums, and John Baker Saunders from The Walkabouts. The album is fifteen meaty tracks (the shortest is 4:11, and two are over seven minutes) and one of the very few concerts they did. I’m just now starting to listen to the concert. It’s a remarkable fucking project and I’m pissed that I didn’t completely internalize it in 1995 when I should have.

What did you listen to this year?

I purchased– and yes, “purchased” is the right word– 72 albums in 2023. I am an Old, and I have never taken to streaming, and so I’m still paying for all this stuff, and the fact that I got handed $200 in Apple gift cards partway through the year definitely didn’t hurt. Obviously not all of that is 2023 music, and as usual, I’m going to talk about stuff that was new to me this year.

The usual caveat whenever I’m talking about music: I have no idea how to write coherently about music, and never have, and furthermore I still cannot understand other people when they write about music. I have seen a ton of “Best New Releases of 2023” types of lists in the last few weeks, and purchased some music based on them, and … I just don’t get it. I’m pretty convinced that you could take the actual review parts of this article, randomly swap the artist and albums’ names, and republish it, and no one would notice. So this isn’t a list of reviews, it’s not a Best Of, and it’s sure as hell not in any kind of order other than maybe reverse chronological order of when I bought them. These are just albums that I enjoyed in 2023. Maybe you’ll like them too.

And I can hear you already, going “Wait, Luther, there’s no way you didn’t have Diamonds and Pearls already!” And you’re correct! I bought it on release day when I was in high school. What came out this year is the Super Deluxe Edition of Diamonds and Pearls, by Prince and the New Power Generation, which, for all my love of Prince’s entire career, will always be my favorite iteration of him.

The physical version of this motherfucker is seven disks long. There are live versions and alternate takes and an entire concert and demos and remasters and I’m going to stop typing now because you’ve already clicked away to go spend money.

I discovered Ren in 2023; Freckled Angels is a 2016 release but Sick Boi came out this year. Sick Boi is absolutely a rap album; Freckled Angels is something else and I’m not even going to try to describe it. Ren is Irish and monumentally talented and even if you’re not generally into hiphop you might want to look into him. Good shit.

I think it might actually be illegal to write anything about music in 2023 without mentioning Guts, by Olivia Rodrigo, and, well … yeah, it deserves it. I am really proud of myself for never unleashing my feelings about Sour in this space; Rodrigo has been underage for most of her career and picking on an actual child for musical choices that most likely were made mostly by other people who didn’t have her best interests in mind (no goddammit I’m not gonna do it) is not a move I want to make. But Guts is a more mature and multidimensional piece of work in every imaginable way, and bad idea right? is a fucking banger and I no longer feel like she should be taken away from her parents. All good. We’re fine.

2023 is also the year Paramore finally clicked for me, and after spending weeks mainlining This is Why every time I got into my car I went back and picked up most of the rest of their backlist. I mean, Christ, the name of their album is half of the line this is why I don’t leave the house; it’s like it was written for me.

You may have seen Queen Omega freestyling her ass off over a Dr. Dre beat on TikTok; I did, over and over and over again, until I cracked and spent money. I don’t listen to a ton of reggae nowadays, and I listen to even less reggae that doesn’t have anyone named Marley involved with it, but Freedom Legacy was a great dip back into the genre, and I feel like I might explore what modern, hip-hop influenced reggae is doing more next year. This is a hell of a collection, though, and I’m glad I grabbed it up.

Six? Six sounds good. Here’s the rest of the list: