From Mavis Staples to the Kronos Quartet—these are our music critic’s favorite works from this year. The Lebanese Civil War. Corporate agri-capitalism. Tips for surviving a nasty divorce. Violence, ...

Bad Bunny started the year off right with DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, one of his best albums to date. Since then, there has been a wealth of exciting new music, from anxiously awaited comebacks like Bon ...

Pop critic Ann Powers shares a handful the albums on NPR Music's list of the best of the year, including the one album that nearly the entire team agreed on. What were your favorite albums this year?

It’s been a good year for jazz, diverse in every way—styles, influences, tastes, and demographics too. I didn’t aim the list to turn out this way, but four of the albums’ leaders are women, and five ...

So this is the future? Judging by mainstream music in 2025, humankind is not in a particularly creative place. The year’s main storylines included the rise of AI slop and cartoon K-pop. A number of ...

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 ...