Pop critic Ann Powers shares a handful the albums on NPR Music's list of the best of the year, including the one album that nearly the entire team agreed on. What were your favorite albums this year?

The music world refused to stand still in 2025. This wasn’t a year for playing it safe. Across the globe and all over the stylistic map, music kept mutating in the weirdest, wildest ways. The artists ...

Earlier this year, my colleague and bud Kelefa Sanneh suggested that music critics, as a lot, have gone soft—becoming submissive, overly agreeable, and, in some cases, nearly servile. He’s right, of ...