This 10 Greatest Worldwide Albums of the Year 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of international sounds that expanded horizons. Here is a countdown of ten exceptional albums that shaped the year in music.
Number Ten: Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of cyclical percussion might not seem the most approachable listening experience. However, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this persistent pulse into a unexpectedly magnetic album. Guiding an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar creates a intricate percussive vocabulary across the record's ten parts. The work channels the phasing techniques of Steve Reich alongside classical Indian rhythmic patterns, all anchored in the repetition of a continual, thrumming refrain. The longer one listens, this refrain evokes the ceremonial rhythm of ceremonial music, pulling the listener deeper into Korwar's unique percussive world.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
After an long absence, Arab singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a mournful collection of songs. The work builds upon the Arabic-language, dub-influenced aesthetic that made her a staple in the Arab alternative scene since the 1990s. Hamdan's vocal delivery is soft and ruminative, singing tender melodies atop the bowing strings of a track like Hon and the deep trip-hop groove of Vows. For more upbeat numbers such as Shadia and Abyss, she uses a wavering, yearning vocal technique against north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The production is sparse and restrained, yet this austerity offers the perfect setting for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to take center stage. It is well worth the long anticipation.
Number Eight: The Mexican Producer Debit – Slowed Down
From Mexico producer Debit excels at eerie reworkings of traditional music. On her new album, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 90s style of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected version of the rhythmic Latin American dance genre. Debit drags this sound down to a crawl, processing its characteristic synths and off-beat rhythm through veils of distortion and noise to create a new, sinister groove. Sometimes ambient and unsettling, Debit morphs the joyous dancefloor sound of cumbia into a lasting, spectral echo.
Number Seven: DJ K – Radio Libertadora!
Sensory overload is the operative word for the output of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Pioneering his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a cacophony of alarms, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the enduring Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This captures the propulsive sound of neighborhood block parties. On his second album, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira cranks up the energy, throwing in everything from four-on-the-floor techno beats to samples of the Islamic call to prayer into his chaotic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably hyperactive and overwhelmingly noisy 40-minute listening experience. Surrender to the assault and Vieira's bold productions become strangely freeing.
Number Six: Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Sikh devotional singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's record from 1982 of disco beats and traditional Punjabi tunes is a reissued treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks present an unusually engaging blend of the metallic sound of electronic keyboards and drum machines with her melismatic Indian classical vocal technique. Electronic percussion mirrors the undulating tones of the traditional drums, while synth lines replicates the traditional sound of the harmonium on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. Meanwhile, bossa nova rhythm comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a up-tempo funky bass rhythm. It's a club-ready hybrid delivered more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
5. The Mongolian Artist Enji – Sonor
Mongolian vocalist Enji's gentle fourth album, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to present some of her most diverse music to date. Departing from her background in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs veer from the gentle Norah Jones-esque melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a energetic, funk-tinged cover of the 1980s Mongolian classic Eejiinhee Hairaar. Utilizing a full backing band rather than her typical setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound is still personal, pulling the listener into the gentle acoustics of her singular voice.
4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – If There Is No Tomorrow
Drawing on the 1960s legacy of Anatolian rock established by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's third record with her band Grup Şimşek merges the metallic twang of the electrified saz with dreamy Mellotron and soulful tunes. It's a retro-70s aesthetic anchored in Yıldırım's strong high register and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape sound. Yet, on classic Turkish songs such as the nursery rhyme Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group reaches lively new territory. They craft sinuous, slow-burning grooves and lifting vocals that lend a new, off-kilter spin to the Turkish psych sound.
Number Three: The Colombian Artist Lido Pimienta – La Belleza
Sacred music, Czech harpsichord folksong and symphonic arrangements converge on Colombian-born singer Lido Pimienta's extraordinary fourth album. Orchestrating music for the sixty-member Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett journey through a vast range including the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the theatrical counterpoint melodies of Aún Te Quiero and the syncopated dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. Ultimately, it is Pim
