Amazing albums turning 25 in 2025

There’s little doubt time seems to be moving faster and faster, whether that’s due to global warming, some kind of flux capacitor or the fact that Donald Trump seems to constantly be President we aren’t sure, but one thing is for certain - 25 years has gone by in the blink of an eye.

Yes, it’s a quarter of a century since the year 2000, when there was no such thing as a camera phone, you didn’t have to take your shoes off at Heathrow and Manchester United were by far the best football team in the UK, rather than an unmitigated shambles.

In terms of music it was certainly a vintage year, with some big bands returning to form, solo acts emerging from nowhere to take over the world and entirely new genres being invented.

Check out these 15 brilliant long players turning 25 in 2025...

1. Coldplay – Parachutes

It’s tough to look at the band Coldplay is now, all half-time Superbowl shows, fancy light-up bracelets and questionable K-Pop collaborations and remember where they started - but where they started was this. A beautifully understated collection of heartfelt love songs about offering to keep someone safe (hence the title) that was sent into the stratosphere by the inclusion of the generational ‘Yellow’, which in turn made Chris Martin a worldwide megastar.

The TikTok generation has since discovered the comforting quality of songs like ‘Sparks’ (over a billion Spotify streams) but the opening salvo of ‘Don’t Panic’, ‘Shiver’ and ‘Spies’ clearly show how accomplished Coldplay were as musicians on their debut in 2000, and what an wonderful songwriter Martin was even then.

2. Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP

Although Eminem had already released two albums by this point and was very well known thanks to the ‘Slim Shady LP’ it was this one that catapulted the Detroit rapper to the kind of fame few ever attain. Singles like the bounce-along ego trip ‘The Real Slim Shady’ and ‘The Way I am’ were ubiquitous, but it was the genius of the Dido-backed celebrity stalker tale ‘Stan’ that really made the record a must-purchase, even for those who weren’t previously hip hop fans.

The Marshall Mathers LP ended up going twelve-times platinum and was named album of the year by rock bible Rolling Stone. It also sparked a succession of Dr Dre-produced albums that conquered the rap scene for the next three or four years.

3. Radiohead – Kid A

How do you possibly follow an album like OK Computer? That was the conundrum facing Radiohead in 2000, although commercial success wasn’t exactly high on their agenda and musically they had long since invented their own rulebook. What they emerged with in October of that year after three years away was an atmospheric, electronic masterpiece. Even 25 years on, the first chords of opener 'Everything in its right place' are used on an almost weekly basis by TV and movie makers.

With the one exception of ‘How to disappear completely’, you won’t find anything like ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ or ‘Karma Police’ on Kid A. What you will find are rolling basslines, scattered, fragmented beats, snatches of strings, discordant trumpets and ambient synths that come together to sound like nothing made before it or since. Has it ever been bettered? Well yes, but only once they released the staggering In Rainbows seven years later.

4. Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory

The USA at the start of the century was without doubt the era of slightly cringey Nu Metal. Rap-rock and backwards red caps and standing on the hoods of big cars and chains on baggy jeans were the order of the day across the MTV channels that back then still played music videos. Honestly, it was quite grim. Then, emerging from the dirge of bands like Limp Bizkit and Bloodhound Gang came a far less frat-bro focused sound in the shape of Linkin Park.

Their debut was a masterful mix of instantly memorable hooks, colossal guitar riffs, record scratches and the pleading scream of the late Chester Bennington, interspersed with quickfire rap verses from Mike Shinoda. Set against the puerile themes of what came before, Hybrid Theory struck a chord with young people across the world, their lyrics dealing with drug abuse and isolation. It went on to become the biggest selling album of the decade.

5. Outkast – Stankonia

If you turned on the radio or walked into a shop in the UK toward the end of 2000 there was a very fair chance that the song you’d be greeted with was ‘Ms Jackson’ by Outkast. The summery second track released from the duo’s album Stankonia swept across Europe and picked up a grammy for best rap song the following year.

Stankonia itself was also a grammy winner for best rap album and still stands up as one of the greatest of all time. From the drum and bass assault of B.O.B to the Prince-tinged 'I’ll call before I come', Andre 3000 and Big Boi married gospel, Hendrix, Doo Wop and Public Enemy to devastating effect.

6. Doves – Lost Souls

Manchester in the late 1990s was not a pleasant place at all. The excitement of Britpop and Oasis had long died down, Tony Blair had proved not to be the messiah and everyone was hungover in the rain. Doves took that depressing background and the ashes of their studio which had not long burned down and wove it into the tapestry of Lost Souls, an album full of distorted, minor key songs that were shot through with a reserved sense of romance. It was a post-night out, 2am smoke-filled living room delight.

Narrowly missing out on the then important Mercury Music Prize to another album on our list, it was tail-ended by the heartbreaking, towering anthem 'The Cedar Room' - one of the very finest songs of the 2000s.

7. Queens of the Stone Age – Rated R

Coming out of the blocks as most QOTSA albums do with an absolute stormer, in this case the “let’s just name different drugs” ear-attack ‘Feel good hit of the summer’, Rated R saw Josh Homme take over lead vocals for the first time and Nick Olivieri on bass. It makes this list because it stands as a precursor of just how good a band they would become; the rock songwriting skills shown on single ‘Lost art of keeping a secret’ are a hint at the astonishing ‘Songs for the Deaf’ LP that would follow two years later.

Pretty much every song on Rated R is devoted to the pursuit of hedonism in some form or another, which lets face it should always be encouraged. But possibly only if you’re in a successful band and don’t have to go to work the next day.

8. Badly Drawn Boy – The Hour of the Bewilderbeast

The album that did win the aforementioned Mercury Music Prize in the year 2000 was this one; the debut from Bolton musician Damon Gough that ironically featured members of Doves on several tracks. An hour of British folk pop picked out on acoustic guitar and piano by a diminutive, bearded man in a beanie, it seemed to be an album that everyone in the country had on CD at the time.

Musically it was chilled and melodic, at times a reminder of Nick Drake, and it featured some real highs, notably ‘Once around the block’, gorgeous opener ‘The Shining’ and the toe-tapping ‘Disillusion’.

9. Primal Scream – Xtrmntr

So anti-everything-at-the-time is this album that you can almost hear Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie angrily turning off a delicate Travis song on the radio in utter disgust before scribbling out the lyrics to ‘Kill all Hippies’. Pre-empting what was about to happen to the world a year later, the LP’s cover showed military jets being prepped for take off and the music itself was an aural assault: angry, full on and unrelenting.

The Scottish band’s last album for Creation records, Xtrmntr harnesses the legendary Kevin Shield’s love of outright noise and pairs it with some monstrous beats from the likes of The Chemical Brothers and some superbly dirty basslines from Stone Roses recruit Mani.

10. U2 – All that you can’t leave behind

The year 2000 saw Oasis return to release ‘Standing on the shoulder of Giants’ to very mixed feedback after three years away, but U2 showed how to properly do a rock comeback by pairing up with Joshua Tree producers Daniel Lenois and Brian Eno and releasing this album: a collection of instantly iconic tunes that seemed to soundtrack most if not all adverts and goal of the month compilations that year.

‘Beautiful Day’, ‘Elevation’, ‘Walk on’, ‘Stuck in a moment’ - they’re all on here as Bono set aside trying to tell the public how selfish they were and got back to what he does best: sitting down with The Edge to craft enormous songs with stadium-filling choruses.

11. D’Angelo’s – Voodoo

Voodoo has more in common with Kid A than anything else on this list. It’s an album made by a creator at the top of their game that’s steeped in paranoia and a powerful amalgamation of myriad styles and textures. It’s also a big departure, Radiohead-style, from the album preceding it. D’Angelo’s debut Brown Sugar grooved to a standard song structure - for Voodoo, this is dropped in favour of a more loose, funk-driven style. While Untitled (How Does It Feel) was the record that catapulted D’Angelo from pop star to pin-up, thanks to a music video featuring him in the buff, it’’s the J Dilla inspired Left & Right and Devil’s Pie that pushes this one close to What’s Goin’ On territory.

12. PJ Harvey – Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea

Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea didn’t land with rave reviews on release (Pitchfork gave it 5.5, bafflingly) but 25 years on it still stands up as one of PJ Harvey’s best. It’s a record that oozes immediacy and one that embraces both New York life and sound, albeit from the view of someone who grew up on the Dorset coast. There’s songs of isolation, freedom, nocturnal activities… all the delights and dalliances city living has to offer. Add in Thom Yorke’s occasional guest vocals and some clattering guitars and this is a stellar rock record.

13. Asian Dub Foundation – Community Music

There’s anarchy in the melee when it comes to Community Music, the startling melting pot of sounds that makes up the third album from Asian Dub Foundation. A mix of breakbeats, dancehall and jungle bumps up against rock guitars and sitar melodies throughout, all punctuated with Deeder Zaman’s sped-up snarl. This is a protest album, a call to arms - ragga against the machine and then some. Off the back of the album, ADF found themselves performing on Glastonbury's Pyramid stage. It also marked the end of Zaman in the group but what a way to go out.

14. The Avalanches – Since I Left You

DJ Shadow’s cut-and-paste hip-hop masterpiece Endtroducing has spawned a number of imitators but the best of the lot has to be The Avalanches and their playful debut Since I Left You.

This sample-laden gem is a fun, crate-digging delight. While singles Since I Left You and Frontier Psychiatry gave them much-deserved chart success, it’s the likes of Avalanche Rock that really make this one fly.

15. Jurassic 5 – Quality Control

Jurassic 5’s debut J5 was awash with catchy songs but felt disjointed (to be fair, it was an EP with added songs). Quality Control did exactly as its title states, offering a more cohesive hip-hop record, packed with tracks that bridge the gap between the sun-drenched beats of Tribe Called Quest and the darker rhythms of the Wu-tang Clan. This is a sound of a group moving from the (concrete) schoolyard to the street with an album that still resonates today.

Additional text: Marc Chacksfield

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