The Ten Best Global Albums of the Year 2025
Looking back on the musical landscape of worldwide music that defied expectations. We explore ten notable albums that shaped the year in music.
Number Ten: The Percussionist Sarathy Korwar – There Already Is Beauty
An album consisting of a single, extended movement of repetitive drumming could sound like it isn't the most accessible listening experience. Yet, south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar turns this driving beat into a hypnotically captivating piece. Guiding an group of three drummers, Korwar creates a intricate percussive dialect across the record's ten sections. The album channels minimalist concepts from Steve Reich alongside traditional Indian musical phrasing, everything tethered in the reiteration of a ongoing, driving figure. As the album progresses, this refrain evokes the ceremonial rhythm of ceremonial music, pulling the listener further into Korwar's singular percussive realm.
Number Nine: The Lebanese Artist Yasmine Hamdan – I Forget, I Remember
Coming off an eight-year break, Lebanese singer-songwriter Yasmine Hamdan returns with a melancholy album of songs. It continues exploring the Arabic-language, dub-influenced aesthetic that established her as a fixture in the Arab alternative scene since the nineties. Hamdan's voice is gentle and thoughtful, singing delicate melodies over the string arrangements of a track like Hon and the rolling trip-hop groove of Vows. On livelier tracks such as Shadia and Abyss, she employs a trembling, longing vocal technique against north African synth lines and rattling electronic percussion. The musical backdrop is minimal and restrained, yet this simplicity provides the perfect setting for Hamdan's deeply felt lyricism to take center stage. This is a record truly deserving of the wait.
8. The Mexican Producer Debit – Desaceleradas
From Mexico producer Debit has a knack for eerie reworkings of archival audio. On her most recent project, Desaceleradas, she focuses on the 1990s variant of cumbia rebajada – a slowed, dub-inflected interpretation of the rhythmic Latin American musical style. Debit slows this sound even further, running its signature synths and off-beat rhythm through layers of distortion and noise to generate a novel, menacing groove. Sometimes ambient and discomfiting, Debit converts the joyous dancefloor sound of cumbia into a persistent, ethereal memory.
7. DJ K – Liberator Radio!
Sensory overload is the operative word for the music of Brazilian producer Kaique Vieira, AKA DJ K. Inventing his own genre of "bruxaria" (witchcraft), Vieira stacks a tumult of sirens, explosive bass tones and shouted lyrics on top of the classic Brazilian dance style of baile funk. This recreates the propulsive sound of favela street parties. On his new record, Radio Libertadora!, Vieira escalates the intensity, incorporating everything from driving techno rhythms to the sound of the Islamic call to prayer into his frantic bruxaria mix. The result is a notably hyperactive and overwhelmingly noisy forty-minute listening experience. Give in to the cacophony and Vieira's bold productions become strangely exhilarating.
Number Six: The Singer Mohinder Kaur Bhamra – Punjabi Disco
Religious vocalist Mohinder Kaur Bhamra's 1982 album of disco music and traditional Punjabi tunes is a rediscovered treasure. Recorded by her son, music producer Kuljit Bhamra, Punjabi Disco's ten tracks deliver an unusually compelling combination of the synthetic sound of 1980s synthesisers and programmed drums with her ornate classical Indian singing style. Electronic percussion mimics the wavelike tones of the tabla, while synthesiser melody parallels the traditional sound of the reed organ on tracks such as Pyar Mainu Kar. At other times, Latin-inflected grooves comes to the fore on Soniya Mukh Tera, and Nainan Da Pyar De Gaya features a driving walking disco bassline. It's a party blend created more than ten years before the global breakthrough of South Asian electronic music.
5. Enji – Resonance
From Mongolia singer Enji's soft new release, Sonor, builds upon her jazz-inflected sound to offer some of her broadest music yet. Stepping outside her training in traditional Mongolian "long song" singing, the record's eleven songs range from the soft jazz-pop melodies of slow-burning number Ulbar to the German-language narration lyrics and trilling guitar lines of Unadag Dugui. The album also includes a lively, funk-tinged cover of the 80s Mongolian pop hit Eejiinhee Hairaar. Featuring a live band rather than her standard setup of guitar and bass, Sonor's sound manages to stay intimate, pulling the listener into the gentle acoustics of her distinctive voice.
Number Four: Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – If There Is No Tomorrow
Inspired by the psychedelic tradition of Anatolian rock pioneered by groups such as Moğollar, German-Turkish singer Derya Yıldırım's latest work with her band Grup Şimşek merges the distinctive buzz of the amplified traditional lute with drifting Mellotron and classic soul melodies. It's a 1970s throwback sound rooted in Yıldırım's commanding high register and influenced by producer Leon Michels' analogue tape aesthetic. But, on Turkish standards such as the folk tune Hop Bico and 1960s song Ceylan, the group reaches lively new territory. They create smooth, slow-burning grooves and soaring vocals that lend a new, off-kilter interpretation to the Turkish psych sound.
3. Lido Pimienta – The Beauty
Gregorian chants, Czech harpsichord folksong and orchestral strings merge on Colombian singer Lido Pimienta's stunning fourth album. Orchestrating music for the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra, Pimienta and producer Owen Pallett traverse a vast range including the Gregorian chants of opener Overturn (Obertura de la Luz Eterna) to the dramatic interweaving lines of Aún Te Quiero and the rhythmic dembow rhythms of the woodwind-heavy El Dembow del Tiempo. It is Pim
