The Most Overrated Albums of 2025
The albums that made us go "huh?" this year, from a lifeless rap sequel to a certain spectacularly hyped indie rock record.
Welcome to the latest installment of Five Albums, the weekly feature for paid Hearing Things subscribers in which we discuss a handful of new records catching our attention. As music journalists, the question we get most often from friends is how to stay on top of what’s happening now. This is our attempt to provide a practical answer.
The year is almost over. We've already celebrated the music we loved the most over five separate posts, one from each of our founders. Now it's time to talk about the stuff we just didn't get—albums everyone else seemed to love that left us underwhelmed, disappointed, or straight-up baffled. In some cases, the people who actually liked this uninspiring stuff were our own colleagues—you'll even find a couple of records that also appeared on one contributor or another's best-of-the-year list. Hearing Things is a collective of five individuals, and we'll never pretend we don't passionately disagree from time to time. Let's get into it.
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