There’s something fundamentally wrong about year-end lists. Not because music isn’t worth celebrating, but because trying to pin down twelve months of listening into a tidy hierarchy of numbers is, at best, an exercise in personal mythology and, at worst, a meaningless ritual we repeat out of habit. Albums don’t exist to be ranked, art doesn’t ask to be quantified, and the emotional weight of a record rarely has anything to do with its position on a list.
And yet, despite all of this (or maybe because of it) I keep coming back to them.
If I’ve been deeply skeptical for years about the usefulness and meaning of compiling those infamous year-end rankings, I’m even more so this time around about the point of publishing them in the second half of February. We’re all already focused on the future (and thankfully so, since we usually spend far too much time staring back with our wide, nostalgic eyes), and in the first month and a half of 2026, a dozen or so albums have already been released that, I’m willing to bet, will end up in my year-end top 100 (which, perhaps, will be published in March 2027, assuming I ever find the courage to embark on a Herculean and ultimately futile undertaking like this one).
So, what’s the point? Well, I’ve done it now, and as usual I’m happy to share this list of my favorite albums of the past year with anyone willing to read it. This is, of course (though it’s always best to specify it every time), a list based purely on my own tastes and sensibilities, and it makes no claim to represent the best of what was released in the past year.
It also doesn’t include many albums that, while I truly appreciate them, I simply haven’t gotten around to exploring in depth, or that, while magnificent, arrived at the wrong time for me. I could easily make a separate list of at least fifty albums that fall into this category.
So take it for what it is: a list written with heart and passion, gathering some of the 2025 releases that sparked my passion and found their way into my heart. And, as always, if you end up discovering even a single album you missed (and, please, let me know), then all the time I’ve spent putting this together won’t have been wasted.
Happy listening, wherever you are.
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Indie Sunset in Rome 