BBC’s poll of polls crowns Rosalía and PinkPantheress as 2025’s top albums and singles

BBC News has published the year's most influential music lists in a year-end “poll of polls” that crowns Rosalía's Lux as 2025's top album and PinkPantheress' Illegal as the leading single. The exercise blends more than 30 end-of-year lists from major outlets to produce a single super-ranking of the year's albums and songs, drawing from publications that include NME, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, The Guardian, Billboard and many others. In all, critics named more than 200 records, but the year’s biggest sellers did not dominate.

The initiative also notes the uneven distribution of attention across artists. Taylor Swift’s The Life Of A Showgirl received only a handful of nominations, while Alex Warren’s Ordinary appeared in just one list. The method assigns points to each ranking position (20 for first, 19 for second, and so on), and the margins in this year’s results illustrate how closely critics followed the year.

The top 10 albums of 2025, as compiled from the year-end lists, were No. 10 Addison Rae – Addison; No. 9 Lily Allen – West End Girl; No. 8 Pulp – More; No. 7 Dijon – Baby; No. 6 FKA Twigs – Eusexua; No. 5 CMAT – Euro-Country; No. 4 Oklou – Choke; No. 3 Bad Bunny – Debí Tirar Más Fotos; No. 2 Geese – Getting Killed; No. 1 Rosalía – Lux. The spread between first and second place was 52 points, underscoring how closely critics tracked the year. Lux is described as a monumental work that blends classical, flamenco and avant-pop across a multilingual spectrum.

Geese’s Getting Killed sits at No. 2, a savage and unpredictable record that patches together influences from Radiohead, the Strokes, Captain Beefheart and the Velvet Underground. No. 4 on the list, Oklou’s Choke, is an intimate, largely drumless album built on hypnotic loops. No. 3 Bad Bunny’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos blends plena, salsa and bomba with the pulse of reggaeton, a lively love letter to Puerto Rican roots wrapped in contemporary pop. No. 5 CMAT’s Euro-Country moves through social anxiety and late-stage capitalism with sharp storytelling and humor. No. 6 FKA Twigs’s Eusexua leans into abstract, futuristic club textures with melodic hooks. No. 7 Dijon’s Baby channels harmony-rich R&B and the emotional life of fatherhood. No. 8 Pulp’s More returns with the vitality of their mid-90s peak but with a late-career perspective. No. 9 Lily Allen’s West End Girl is a candid, piercing portrait of a fractured marriage. No. 10 Addison Rae closes the list with a trio of collaborators crafting a space-age pop sound.

The No. 1 album tally sits alongside a No. 1 singles tally dominated by PinkPantheress. The top 10 singles were No. 10 Wednesday – Elderberry Wine; No. 9 Kehlani – Folded; No. 8 Addison Rae – Headphones On; No. 7 Amaarae – SMO; No. 6 Bad Bunny – Baile Inolvidable; No. 5 Huntr/x – Golden; No. 4 Chappell Roan – The Subway; No. 3 Lady Gaga – Abracadabra; No. 2 Olivia Dean – Man I Need; No. 1 PinkPantheress – Illegal. Critics describe Illegal as a fresh, dance-floor-ready take on modern romance, a standout in a year of broadly varied pop.

The methodology behind the rankings relies on aggregating scores from more than 30 outlets, including Albumism, Billboard, BuzzFeed, Clash, Complex, Consequence of Sound, Dazed, Daily Mail, Dork, Double J, Entertainment Weekly, Exclaim!, The Fader, Flood, The Forty Five, Gorilla vs Bear, The Guardian, Independent, LA Times, Les Inrocks, Line of Best Fit, MOJO, Mondo Sonoro, NME, New York Times, Paste Magazine, Pitchfork, Pop Matters, Rolling Stone, The Skinny, Slant, Stereogum, The Telegraph, Time Magazine, Time Out, The Times, Uncut and Vulture. Points are allotted by position, with the No. 1 pick earning 20 points, the No. 2 pick 19 points, and so on. The closest year-end tally BBC News has produced, the organizers say, underlines a year in which critics rewarded risk-taking and cross-genre experimentation over sheer commercial heft.

The results also reflect a cultural moment in which listeners gravitated toward records that felt both adventurous and emotionally direct. Across genres and regions, critics highlighted artists who blend languages, traditional forms and contemporary production, suggesting 2025 was defined as much by experimentation as by any one blockbuster release. The BBC’s year-end tally drew on a global conversation about what music meant in 2025 and how artists connected with listeners through bold ideas and personal storytelling.