And who the fuck is Madeline?
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2025.
#8 : DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS - Bad Bunny
With the absolute integrity that has become his trademark, Bad Bunny shone his inestimable spotlight back on his roots in Puerto Rico for his sixth album, singing of sacrifice, colonial oppression and the importance of preserving tradition. He’s an incredible conduit, synthesising the past – salsa, bolero, perreo – with the present, bringing local artists including RaiNao and Lorén Aldarondo along for the ride. As if it needed stressing, Debí … also underscored his own legacy, and his incredible range: heartbroken that life must one day end on Baile Inolvidable; lovelorn in the rave on Perfumito Nuevo; seemingly cast in moonlight on the heavy Bokete.
The eighteenth album we've heard and when we met this as a new entry back in January, I generously declared there to be nothing wrong with it, but I was mystified by its success. And, having revisited it, I can assure you that view has not changed in the slightest - part of me feels that my unfamiliarity with the language and style means I'm not recognising musical genius when I hear it, but I'm also slightly suspicious that maybe, you know, it's just bang average.
This debuted at a relatively high #13 and spent a very successful eight weeks on the chart. The Wikipedia entry tells us it's his sixth album and the title means "I should have taken more photos" which is a cool title. It also tells me, somewhat confusingly, that Bad Bunny explores stop-motion animation on this album - I've absolutely no idea what that's on about. Critically, it was very well received and commercially, it got to #1 in Belgium, Spain and Switzerland and #2 in the US. Which just goes to show how much I know about anything.
#7 : West End Girl - Lily Allen
Lily Allen’s divorce album is so lurid in its apparent disclosures (she has said she employed some poetic licence) that it felt as though there was a risk of the carcass being tossed aside once the tabloids had picked it clean for gossip. But the quality of the songwriting and silvery electronic production, as well as the tangibility of Allen’s hurt and her ability to mint viral bits in “who the fuck is Madeleine” and Nonmonogamummy, gave West End Girl not just staying power but a place in the pantheon of great breakup albums. Standout Pussy Palace turned the grottiest of reveals into a kind of cosmic reverie that seems to suggest the elemental rearrangement of life as she knew it; the guttingly powerful Relapse, about the sober musician’s fear of losing her grip after her relationship breakdown, highlighted the temptation of oblivion in numbed-out vocoder. It lands light as icing sugar but lingers deadly as toothache.
Number nineteen we've met and it's safe to say this is quite the album - do I need to ask if you're Team Allen or Team Harbour? I enjoyed this when I met it and also when I revisited it - it has decent lyrics which tell a story and flow nicely as an album, with a decent amount of musical variety throughout. Yes, it might not all be true (and she's admitted this), but it's not like Dave can complain that <X> isn't true because it will just get everyone thinking the rest of it is.
It had eight weeks in the chart this year and managed the very unusual trick of debuting at #4 and going up to #2 in its second week - no-one does that these days! Wikipedia has a decent amount on the album (190 milliPeppers) and tells us it's her fifth album, whilst being very careful from a legal standpoint telling us it "reflects on the undoing of Allen's marriage to actor David Harbour, how she processed his ALLEGED acts of infidelity". Most of the rest of the entry delved into the story behind the tracks - it's only really of interest if you've listened to the album, but there's nothing particularly exciting there.
Critically, it was very well reviewed but NME get it right for me with "there's a lot of grief and misery across West End Girl, but it never sounds depressing" - it also made quite a few year-end lists. Commercially, it did pretty well globally getting to #4 in Ireland, #6 in Australia and #93 in the US - it's also interesting that it's not yet available in physical format so the performance is doubly impressive.
#6 : Fancy That - PinkPantheress
True to her form for writing the shortest songs in the biz, in just 20 minutes and 34 seconds, PinkPantheress vaults from weed highs to romantic lows, obsessive crushes to gripping paranoia, seduction to confrontation. (“The status cheque is due / So do I still belong to you?” from Nice to Know You, is a classic bluff call.) The music of Fancy That is just as much of a slip’n’slide through British club culture at its most playful and dazzling, from jungle to UKG and the big-tent joys of Underworld, Basement Jaxx and even the hyper-cheesy Just Jack, samples she deploys expertly, and all threaded together by her pointedly sugary voice. It’s a breathless ride, and PinkPantheress’s best case yet for her micro melodramas: why dither when you can pack this much into so little?
And we're up to twenty we've already heard - when I met this I said it was done well enough but partly that's because, given its length, there wasn't enough of anything to be annoying. Unfortunately, when revisiting it, I listened to the deluxe version which is 90 minutes long and that was just far too much. So just stick with the original version, OK?
This managed four weeks in the charts, with it having peaked at #3 in its debut week. The Wikipedia entry is surprisingly long given the length of the album and really not worth the effort of reading. Critically, it was surprisingly well received (it's fine, but really not any more than that) and commercially it did better than I expected globally, getting to #12 in Australia and #72 in the US.
Given I found Bad Bunny very average and PinkPantheress not really an album at all, it's probably not a huge surprise that Lily takes the round - but actually it's a very well put together album with decent lyrics and music which merits careful listening and REALLY doesn't hold back. Also, given that we had albums that got to #4 and #2 in this round, it's somewhat of a surprise that we hadn't written any of them up.
And with that, we've made it to the top five so we'll take a couple of days off (sorry, but I have other plans) - we'll be back on the 27th for slightly more careful listens of the remaining albums (depending upon how much I think they deserve).
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