My Favorite 2025 Albums

A list of my favorite 2025 albums with little blurbs on why I love them

Alien Boy – You Wanna Fade? — Have you ever had the experience of stumbling across a song and upon finishing that first listen, been completely bowled over by the swell of emotions that the song evoked in you? That’s the way I felt when I stumbled across the single for Changes back in March. You Wanna Fade? creates a meloncholic soundscape of hazy guitars and quiet reflective vocals. To me, the lyrics seem to be ruminating on the introspective conflict between recogonizing a need for change and weighing this need against the costs of what would be lost in the metamorphsis. 2025 has been a year defined by reckoning with my depression, striving for change and wrestling with cognitive dissoance, as I’ve found thar old habits die hard and its so easy to backslide into what’s comfortable even if it’s killing you; You Wanna Fade? has been there for me through the highs and lows of 2025 like empathetic friend gently reminding you “I’ve been there too. It’ll be okay.” and for that I am truly a grateful fan
Yellowcard – Better Days — I’ve always considered myself a casual fan of Yellowcard, going all the way back to the first time I heard Ocean Avenue; the pop punk of the early aughts was the soundtrack of my youth and many a Yellowcard track peppered the playlists of my iPod. So when I heard Travis Barker of Blink-182 had been working with Yellowcard on a new album my interest was immediately peaked. Upon hearing the first single off Better Days in May, the album became my most anticipated album of the later half of 2025. With each new single that dropped over the summer my anticipation built and when the album finally dropped on October 10, 2025, it did not disappoint. Yellowcard’s music has always been great at expressing themes like love & loss, growth & change, and nostalgically reflecting on one’s youth and Better Days continues this tradition. This album’s blend of nostalgia and optimism felt like flipping through an old high school yearbook and reflecting on the journey that took you from then to now.
PUP – Who Will Look After The Dogs? — While discussing the track No Hope from their fifth album, PUP frontman Stefan Babcock said “I generally find a bleak worldview to be a dark, beautiful, comforting blanket. There is so much freedom in existential despair, because literally, nothing matters.” I really relate to that sentiment, as I tend to have a jaundiced worldview; I think its a byproduct of internalized trauma from growing up in a chaotic and at times abusive household. Stefan’s lyrics tend to resonate in my bones with their strange mixture of poetically illustrated pain and glib cynicism. Over the last 18 months I’ve been on journey of self-improvement that seen me combating my nihilistic tendencies because I used them to justify a lot of self destructive behaviors. Who Will Look After The Dogs? sees PUP trying to bring more levity and positivity into their music and the result is an album made up of a constructive track list sprinkled with fun, flippant lyrics that left me smiling.
Durry – This Movie Sucks — I would describe Durry’s sound as a smooth blend of the pop punk and garage rock sounds of the mid 2000s. This Movies Sucks’ songs are laced with allusions to the pop culture pillars of Austin and Taryn Durry’s raucous youth. The siblings have crafted lyrics for their sophomore outing that are upbeat and cheeky yet equally heartfelt. The duo have always brought an abundance of creativity to their music videos which consistently elicit smiles; each single for This Movie Sucks is supported by a music video in a sweded cinema style that is brimming with genre references and their clear love of movies. I got the pleasure of seeing Durry on their “Your Friends From the Real World Tour” and was really impressed with multimedia components using old televisions to create real time lyric videos. It was an impressive technical feat and made for a real atmosphere at the show. Really looking forward to seeing what Durry has in store for their fans going forward.
A Day to Remember – Big Ole Album Vol. 1 — I fell in love with A Day to Remember (ADTR) for their melodic approach to hardcore music in 2000’s. The way ADTR used clean vocals, heavy breakdowns and powerful lyrics has always resonated with me. Over the years they clearly moved from a hardcore band into one of the biggest easycore bands on the planet as their continue output was clearly just pop punk with breakdowns. Their sound made them rock radio mainstays and ADTR has spent the last 22 years reigning over easycore. Their last album You’re Welcome (2021) saw the band pursuing their most pop sound ever and felt like they were abdicating the crown for more worldly pursuits; the sentiment in the fanbase was frustration and disappointment with many worried that they had fallen off for good. Well I’m happy to report that Big Ole Album Vol. 1 shows that ADTR has the band returning to their kingdom and dusting the dirt off that crown. This album sees the band delivering a distinctly rock album; while some of the clean vocal sections display the pop tendencies of “You’re Welcome” they are balanced with some of the best breakdowns ADTR has delivered in years. It’s an album that has the fanbase saying “Welcome back!” to the band as we wait to see where they next outing takes us.
Grandson – Inertia — 2025 has been a really frustrating year as an empathic American who just wants peace and equality. We’ve seen the most vulnerable members of our communities targeted and scapegoated, the wealth disparity continuing to grow and all the while the titans of industry seek to replace human labor and ingenuity with machines without any forethought into how a society without a working class would collapse inwards. No other artist this decade has so consistently capture the angst and anger I feel about these societal declines like Grandson. His fiery brand or rap-rock harkens back to acts like Rage Against the Machine and System of a Down with it’s electric mixture of guitars and politically charged lyrics.
When speaking on the meaning behind the album title “Inertia”, Jordan Benjamin explains its an acrostic representing It’s Never Enough Rest, Tomorrow Is Approaching; in his interview with Lindsay Parker of Licorice Pizza Records he goes on to explain saying:

“… that approaching, that feeling of something is coming, whether it looks like an awakening, a consciousness, a pushing back against the way that America has become this shell corporation, whether it’s in response to the pillaging of Gaza, any of these issues that our generation is watching unfold. This feeling that something’s going to happen inevitably this thing cannot sustain forever this never-ending consumption and greed and whether that looks like a positive change or just the system collapsing as a snake eating its own tail and suffocating. Certainly, these are themes I explore in my music, and I think a lot of rock and roll historically has reflecting the times or some themes of rebellion… and for me it is inescapable that feeling that it’s important for me to write about this stuff.”

Grandson’s art continues to metabolize the woes and misfortunes and gives voice to the frustrations of a generation. It serves as a salve for my aching empathic heart.