Variety's music writers pick 2025's best songs, from Lily Allen, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Dean, Dijon, Hayley Williams, Taylor Swift and more.

Looking back at the year in music, it was very much a “Golden” age. But, demon hunting aside, did it also count as golden ...

From Clipse to Metro Boomin and Cardi B, the year was full of memorable rap songs that expanded and experimented with the ...

The first solo album in three years from the New York rapper (and his first release since his twin 2023 stunners, the Kenny Segal collab Maps, which landed on our 2023 year-end list, and Armand Hammer ...

In fact, the songs that were huge in 2024 were still sucking up all the atmosphere. Those that did muscle through tended to be in the vein of Alex Warren’s “ Ordinary ,” a title that describes the ...

As we approach the halfway mark of 2025, among the things we have yet to find out are how many weeks Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem” will spend at No. 1, when Lana Del Rey’s supposed country album ...

From tear-jerkers to mic-drops, NPR's music critics share the 2025 lyrics that made them laugh, cry and hit replay.

Perhaps a wise prophet named Addison Rae sums it up best: “So I put my headphones on / Listen to my favorite song.” And, boy, ...

The biggest music story of 2025 remains, as it has for many years, the very fact of how music is discovered, as streaming monoliths and social-media algorithms continually overtake what we hear and ...