Critical anatomy of a musical year between real urgencies and planned declines.
2025 has exposed a now irreversible fracture: on the one hand artists capable of experimenting and having a new creative vision and on the other careers that live on income, trapped in the reflection of their own past. It wasn't a question of genres, but of posture. Whoever accepted the risk had an impact. The others simply took up space.
To take stock of the music played this year, we asked the WECB editorial staff to stop, listen again, discuss, disagree and finally take a position.
The result is not a ranking, but a map: a shared list (strictly in alphabetical order) of tops and flops that recounts a musical year crossed by sudden departures, problematic returns and rare, precious confirmations.
The numbers don't matter, nor the expectations. What counts are the works, the concerts, the artists who have been able to leave a mark – or who have sensationally missed the appointment with the present.
THE TOP
THE BEST ALBUMS
Bad Bunny – You have to take more photos
A record that uses memory as a political and emotional tool. Bad Bunny slows down, observes, reflects. Less immediate, more profound, surprisingly adult.
Dogs – Post-mortem
A sentimental autopsy of contemporary Italy. Contessa writes as if she no longer has to prove anything, and for this very reason she hits the mark.
RosalÃa – Lux
An album of subtraction and control. RosalÃa abandons excess and works on detail, on grazing light, on a pop art that becomes a high form of composition.
The Murder Capital – Blindness
Post-punk as a language that is still alive, urgent, physical. Blindness does not console, it does not mediate, it does not wink: it attacks.
Wet Leg – Moisturizer
Irony as a method, lightness only apparent. A record that demonstrates how you can be pop without being banal, intelligent without becoming cold.
THE BEST SINGLES
Andrea Laszlo De Simone – When
Suspended time, rarefied writing. A song that exists outside of the pop chronology.
Doechii – Nosebleeds
Rhythmic intelligence and fully formed identity. Doechii confirms himself as one of the most necessary voices of the present.
Nine Inch Nails – As Alive As You Need Me To Be (Tron: Ares OST)
Emotional, pulsating, futuristic industrial. Reznor and Ross transform the soundtrack into an existential statement.
Olivia Dean – Man I Need
Elegance without mannerisms. A song that grows slowly and remains, like a gentle wound.
RosalÃa – Relic
Minimal, sacral, carnal. A very pure fragment of his language.
THE BEST CONCERTS
The Dogs – Bologna
Essential, tense, emotionally surgical. A live show that allows no distractions.
Little Simz – Milan
Narrative power and absolute control of the scene. A lesson in presence.
Oasis – Everywhere
The return that seemed impossible: arrogant, loud, surprisingly vital.
TOP ARTISTS
Olivia Dean
Grace as a radical choice.
Princess Nokia
Free, unpredictable, off-axis by vocation.
Rosalia
Once again a step forward, without the need to shout it.
THE FLOPS
THE WORST ALBUMS
Arcade Fire – Pink Elephants
A record that doesn't seem to know why it exists. The epic rhetoric empties, the urgency evaporates. Only the outline of what they were remains.
Damiano David – Funny Little Fears
Lots of aesthetics, little writing. A project that confuses ambition with pose and depth with theatricality.
Richard Ashcroft – Lovin' You
A return without relevance. Ashcroft remains imprisoned in his own iconography without being able to question it.
Taylor Swift – The Life of a Showgirl
Hyper-produced, overwritten, self-referential. For the first time, personal narrative becomes self-satisfaction.
Tommaso Paradiso – Casa Paradiso
Comfort pop that trades habit for intimacy. No risk, no vision, just ordinary self-management.
THE WORST CONCERTS
Fedez – Assago
The character crushes the music. Concert without real tension.
Lazza – Milan
Glossy show, absent soul. Everything works, nothing vibrates.
Sfera Ebbasta & Shiva – Milan
Pure brand exercise, zero expressive urgency.
FLOP ARTISTS
Laura Pausini
The eternal return of the same, without friction.
Tiziano Ferro
Great voice, total absence of risk.
Thomas Paradise
Emotional immobility elevated to poetics.
