Features, interviews, and commentary about popular culture related topics, including music, film, TV, books, games, and more.
The best albums of 2025 challenged orthodoxies, created new genres, and spanned a vast range of musical styles and traditions, while looking forward.
Like life itself in these times the visceral, the absurd, and the morbid all take their rightful place in our eclectic compilation of Best Films 2025.
Our Best Books of 2025 draws from inventive authors and scrappy publishers. Has there ever been a better time to be a reader than these tumultuous times?
The Best DVDs of 2025 are the works of serious auteurs whose films will stick in your brain like haunting melodies – or shards of glass.
Brazilian pop thrived because artists recombined local textures with pop to paint a picture of how the country is rewriting its relationship to identity.
In these challenging times, the best soul and R&B albums walked tall and carried a big stick, while also being a much-needed balm and source of warmth.
The best hip-hop albums celebrate classic styles with new approaches, blend rap with electronic, jazz, and soul, and push the boundaries of genre.
The celebrated writer, actor, director, and activist Rob Reiner had a broad appeal and a political conscience, making his untimely passing all the more tragic.
The year’s best folk albums transcend genre boundaries, yet each entry remains firmly grounded in the folk ethos of connection and storytelling.
This year’s best electronic albums span the widest range of styles of any genre, ranging from melodic electro and warm house to the experimental outer reaches.
Dead Kennedys’ Frankenchrist is a full-scale assault on Reagan’s America–the hypocrisy, seedy undercurrent beneath the slogans, and institutional racism.
The 25 best pop albums of 2025 radiate with unstoppable playlist power, much-needed sweet escapism, self-reflection, self-criticism, and killer melodies.
