2025 Marks Pop Music’s Gilded Age
Embracing craft alongside vulnerability in the 2020s, pop music reaches the apex of its powers in 2025 by reveling in its own glamorous facade.
Embracing craft alongside vulnerability in the 2020s, pop music reaches the apex of its powers in 2025 by reveling in its own glamorous facade.

The 25 best pop albums of 2025 radiate with unstoppable playlist power, much-needed sweet escapism, self-reflection, self-criticism, and killer melodies.

Justin Bieber’s new album, Swag, takes a cautious approach to pop, adding depth to the pop star’s familiar oeuvre while highlighting his newfound contentment.
Sziget, Europe’s biggest party and music festival, is back in full swing, with visitors from 103 countries and artists from 54 countries, but also some major structural changes.
Europe’s arguably biggest music festival, Sziget Festival, is even better than before the pandemic shutdown and shows no sign of toning its enormous ambition down. Why should it?
Justice is more likely to be remembered as another exhibit proving Justin Bieber is a pop music force rather than its conceptual rhetoric.
When our protagonist is calm and reflective in Justin Kuritzkes' Famous People, there's a sense of potential intelligence beneath the shiny surface.