The 20 Best Albums of the Half-Decade Ranked: 2020-2025

Most of the greatest albums from the primary half of the 2020s have related origin tales.

There are two fundamental plot traces you may see repeatedly on this checklist, the most typical of which is the COVID pandemic, which looms giant over a majority of those data. Similar to the remainder of the world, most of our most well-known musicians spent massive chunks of two years locked down, unable to tour or simply collaborate with their bandmates.

The recording and / or launch of many of those albums have been delayed or altered by this worldwide well being disaster. AC/DC’s Energy Up sat completed on a shelf for over two years. “You begin questioning, is it going to see the sunshine of day this 12 months?,” engineer Mike Fraser confessed.

Learn Extra: The 20 Finest Songs of 2020-2025 Ranked

Maybe extra importantly, the isolation and losses attributable to the pandemic could be heard everywhere in the lyrics in lots of of those albums. Bonnie Raitt’s 2022 launch Simply Like That… discovered her grappling with the lack of mates, notably fellow singer-songwriter John Prine, who died after battling COVID in 2020.

Many of those albums additionally mark triumphant returns from an exceedingly absences. Songs of a Misplaced World was the primary new album launched by the Remedy in 16 years, which appears spectacular till you be taught that Hackney Diamonds was the Rolling Stones’ first assortment of all-new materials in 18 years.

Even that was solely ok for silver, as 21 years handed between Peter Gabriel’s Up and 2023’s I/O. Tears for Fears and Black Crowes followers additionally would have been in a position to give delivery to and lift a youngster within the time it took these bands to launch their newest albums. Fortunately, in all of those circumstances, the lengthy waits have been greater than pretty rewarded.

As ranked by the UCR workers, listed here are the 20 Finest Rock Albums of the Half Decade: 2020-2025.