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.

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 ...

Rosalía made an album invoking the saints, Lily Allen took us on a tragicomic trip through her domestic hell, Lady Gaga found the sweet spot between artpop and arena-ready funk, and Bad Bunny was just ...

This year in country music was all about artists discovering ways to innovate old forms and traditions. In some cases, like Eric Church’s Evangeline vs. the Machine and Carter Faith’s stunning debut ...

We love those classic Christmas recordings. And we cherish the chance to hear Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Streisand, the Beach Boys, Darlene Love and other greats sing these standards each ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

If there's one question that professional music lovers hear most often, it's some variation on: "Heard any good albums lately?" We always have, of course, but when it came time to highlight the cream ...

8 new Christmas albums for holiday parties, praise, and playlists. It’s time—time to banish the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack from my house with an updated playlist of Christmas music. Each year, as I ...

As classic rock finds new ways to expand in the 21st century, the artists whose careers stretch back half a century or more continue to grow, too. As the list below of the Top 20 Rock Albums of 2025 ...