The Bad Penny (beta)

The Bad Penny is rolling out its favorite albums of 2025 in five installments this year, with the first and second batches having already dropped. While the other three will plop down imminently, we’re smashing the self-indulgence and monotony by inviting some of our favorite industry folks to share their own top 10s with us and, by extension, you.

To warn off any complaints about corruption, misdealing or the coveted line in the sand between journalists and press folks, we laid down a strict ground rule: PR reps were not allowed to include any of their clients, past or present, on their lists.

We’re delighted by the picks that the participants received, as they run the genre gamut and include many albums of which The Bad Penny wasn’t even aware. Especially striking is that, among the combined 160 titles chosen by the … let’s dust off the old calculator here … 16 contributors, a tiny fraction appear on more than one list: Pixel Grip, Deafheaven, Clipse and Primitive Man. And each of those titles are only listed twice.

Thanks oodles to Tim Anderl of Sweet Cheetah PR, Caroline Borolla of Clarion Call Media, Brendan Bourke of The Syn, Dave Clifford of US/THEM Group, George Corona III of Terrorbird Media, Bruno Dorella and Stefania Pedretti of OvO, Brandon Gallagher of Trace Amount, Eddie Gobbo of Something Is Waiting, Austin Griswold of Secret Service Publicity, McKeever and Gosteffects of Heavy Halo, Curran Reynolds of Body Stuff (and The Chain), Michel Rowland of UTM Music Group, Justin Sinkovich of Solid Brass Records, Dan Volohov of Discipline PR, James Woodard of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy and Will Yarbrough of Season of Mist – not only for taking the time and care to craft such thoughtful top 10s and share them, but helping this website triple its UVs this year over last – and provide critical support to yours truly over the course of a 28-year career as a music journalist, rock critic and soon-to-be-lobotomized AI automaton.

Without further ado, here are the lists of the top 10 albums released in 2025 that some of The Bad Penny‘s favorite publicists and musicians graciously shared with us.