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 ...

We’re at the end of yet another year where commentators and fans speculated on the health of the rap world. In October, it was reported that, for the first time in 35 years, there were no rap songs in ...

This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here. Piling on, stripping down, looking back, pushing ahead: Musicians found all sorts of uses for the album form this ...

The Korean pop outsider Effie and the Brooklyn indie-rock band Geese top our critics’ lists this year. By Jon Caramanica and Lindsay Zoladz Jon Caramanica Musicians know how to make music, and they ...

One band absolutely dominated the hardcore conversation this year, and they did it by working way, way harder than anyone else. Affable Boston bruisers Haywire spent 2025 playing sweaty, cathartic, ...

I joined Paste in 2023 and, in my tenure as editor, this year’s AOTY list is my favorite by far. The publication has been doling out these rankings since 2002, affixing an “Album of the Year” ribbon ...

Here's the main thing you need to know about our ranked list of the 15 best diamond-selling hard rock and metal albums: They're all damn good. Are you surprised? History is littered with platinum ...

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 ...

The best albums of 2025 spanned seismic rage rap, intricate guitar music, protest folk, spacey dream pop, and laptop twee. A virtuoso of experimental electronic music re-emerged, a Brooklyn band ...

If 1994 was among the greatest years in rock and roll history, then 1995 should undoubtedly take the mantle for rap music. The decade welcomed the emergence and canonizations of alt-metal, ambient, ...

Performances in N.Y.C. Advertisement Supported by A holiday album that cuts through seasonal glut, a late collaboration by Jim McNeely and Helmut Lachenmann’s string quartets are among the highlights.