Like they did on their song list, Pitchfork ranked Cameron Winter's December 2024 solo album Heavy Metal and Geese's 2025 album album Getting Killed separately here, though neither made #1. Both made the top 25 though, as did Bad Bunny, Rosalía, Dijon, Smerz, Wednesday, Addison Rae, PinkPantheress, Nourished by Time, billy woods, Sudan Archives, Earl Sweatshirt, aya, Oklou, Amaarae, Alex G, Water From Your Eyes, Blood Orange, and more.
When I first started working as a music critic, I held nothing more sacred than a ranked albums list. The album felt like the idealized musical vehicle, a prime mechanism for the expression of true artistic vision and an opportunity to see that vision at scale. Songs there were always so many songs. Too many to really wrap your arms around and judge fairly, in my opinion. But albums were self-contained, easier to quantify and could be stacked up cleanly next to each other