Just a brief little post today to wrap up the end of my 2025-related posts! I’ve already looked at the things I read and watched in 2025, so now I’m going to share some of my favourite things I listened to!
Check out my other 2025 wrap up posts too!
Like with my top 5 dramas post, all of this music was released in 2025 itself. I’ll start by looking at some of my Spotify wrapped pages, and then I’ve split my favourites into my top 5 albums (where the album as a whole is great) and my top 5 songs, which might include singles or even individual songs off an album that didn’t make my albums list! I hope you enjoy!
This year my top genres were K-Pop, Dizi, C-Pop, J-Pop and Pop… which is not particularly descriptive, actually, since a lot of the time, Korean music gets tagged as “K-Pop” and all Chinese music as “C-Pop” regardless of sound! If you look at my top 5 albums, for example, 4/5 are actually K-Rock! (A lot of my top songs are admittedly more poppy – not that that’s a bad thing, I love a good catchy melody as much as the next person!) I think it’s also very clear from this that Xdinary Heroes were my top artist for the year…
I also listened to quite a lot of classic Chinese music (or modern music in the style of).
(If you don’t know what a dizi is, it’s a traditional type of Chinese flute – you can see a video of someone playing it below!)
Top 3 Albums of 2025
In no particular order, these are my top 5 albums of 2025 with links to some of my favourite songs from each!
Tip: On the Spotify embeds here you can fast forward to hear clips of each of the songs on the album!
Winter Heptagon – GOT7
GOT7 is probably my favourite K-Pop group even though they don’t release music very recently now and are more active as solo artists. They did have a massive comeback at the beginning of 2025, though, with a new album and a 4-hour long concert which I luckily got to watch online, although I couldn’t be there in person.
The title song (song with a music video) for this album was Python, which has a great opening but is much less laidback than most of the rest of the album. The songs I probably listen to most on the album are Tidal Wave and Out the Door. I also really like Remember, Darling, and Her. In general, just a fabulous album.
Beautiful Mind – Xdinary Heroes
Xdinary Heroes is a South Korean rock band. They released two new albums this year, but this one was my favourite.
The title track, Beautiful Mind, is excellent with a mix of Queen and My Chemical Romance vibes. Other favourites include George the Lobster and one of the more pop-rock songs on the album, Supernatural. None of the songs are a skip though!
WE: Dream Chaser – ONEWE
ONEWE is also a South Korean rock band! You’ll probably notice I tend to prefer the full albums of rock groups, whilst a lot of the individual songs are from other genres that I might like less consistently.
Like Xdinary Heroes, ONEWE released two albums this year, but this is my favourite of the two. It’s a really good, long album – 11 songs with only 2 under 3 minutes!
My favourite song from it is Alice, which is on the harder side of the album as they included a lot of softer songs in this album. Among the softer songs, Indelible is especially beautiful – especially in the live version.
空山梵音 (Kong Shan Fan Yin – “Chant from a Tranquil Mountain”) – Yu Zhong, Lin Hai, Jia Peng Fang
This is one of the new albums of music inspired by classical Chinese music and instruments that I’ve been enjoying this year. I would describe it as Lofi meets ancient China.
My favourite songs from this one are:
岁月温柔 (Time is Gentle)
温暖的回声 (Warm Echoes)
阡白红尘 (Clamour of the Mortal World)
Now that I’ve talked about my favourite albums of the year, I’m going to share some of my favourite songs (again, in no particular order).
And we’re done!
If you’re looking for any of these songs on Spotify, check out the playlist I made for this post below.
What was your favourite song or album of 2025? Let me know so I can check it out!
Keira x
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