Rosalia's LUX is the music critics' album of the year for 2025
With almost 100 publications, blogs and magazines’ end-of-year lists now in, Rosalía's LUX has taken the top slot as the critics' choice in the aggregated top 50 - while Taylor Swift's The Life of A Showgirl has failed to rank at all.
From 99 sources aggregated by albumoftheyear.org, the fourth studio album by the 33-year-old Catalan songwriter and producer placed at number one in ten lists at the time of writing, and was ranked in the top ten on a further 19.
The albumoftheyear.org chart awards points based on position in end-of-year lists. 10 points are awarded for a number one placement in a ranked list, 8 for a number two, an 6 for a number three. Ranking within a top ten is worth 5 points, within a top 25 gets 3 points, and any other placement results in a single point. Unranked lists also win 5, 3, or 1 points depending on their length.
With 365 points as of 22 December, LUX has close competition from Geese's Getting Killed which actually tops more end of year lists (11) and scores 338 points. Bad Bunny's DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS trails behind in third place with 178 points.
Three artists in the top 10 – by Wednesday, FKA Twigs and clips – have only been number one in a single published end-of-year list so far. The full list currently looks like this:
1. LUX by Rosalía (365 points, number 1 on 10 lists)
2. Getting Killed by Geese (338 points, number 1 on 11 lists)
3. DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS by Bad Bunny (178 points, number 1 on 5 lists)
4. Bleeds by Wednesday (175 points, number 1 on 1 list)
5. EUSEXUA by FKA Twigs (174 points, number 1 on 1 list)
6. choke enough by Oklou (158 points, number 1 on 3 lists)
7. Let God Sort Em Out by clipse (155 points, number 1 on 1 list)
8. EURO-COUNTRY by CMAT (148 points, number one on 2 lists)
9. Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party by Hayley Williams (146 points, number 1 on 3 lists)
10. Baby by Dijon (146 points, number one on 1 list)
One of the year’s best selling records fared the worst in the list with the record-smashing The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor Swift only scraping together 20 points and failing to chart in the top 50 list.
The aggregated list is compiled from sources including CLASH, The Quietus, Loud & Quiet, The Guardian, Bandcamp Daily, The FADER and Coup De Main as well as BEST FIT. You can read the full ranked list of 50 albums over on albumoftheyear.org.
Elsewhere online, Metacritic – who aggregate critic's scores from individual reviews on selected publications across the year – have Bad Bunny at the top of their-end-of-year list with Rosalía coming at at second place and Geese at number 12.
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