2025's Best Singer-Songwriter Albums

Every year, it feels like we need singer/songwriters more, and as we’re increasingly confronted by the grim specter of machine-created art of all kinds, that held true in 2025. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of artists willing and able to spelunk deep inside themselves and then frame their findings in poignant, powerful ways. Once in a while, a few of them even break through to whatever constitutes the mainstream in this post-monoculture era. But if you’ve read this far, you aren’t here to find out more about them; this is the place for spotlighting the singing songsmiths who turned out intense, innovative, or otherwise arresting albums over the last year. Dig in, and if something resonates, don’t stop at streaming—see a show, buy a download or a physical album, to support the cause of keeping music not just human but personal.

Jerry David De Cicca – Cardiac Country

Texas-via-Ohio troubadour Jerry David De Cicca’s lyrics mix storytelling and straight-up poetry as his deep, unhurried tones drop one bon mot after another into his Americana-tinged tunes. With pedal steel guitar legend B.J. Cole by his side, he evokes dusty desert vistas as well as atmospheres entirely more ethereal, often at the same time.

Tyler Childers – Snipe Hunter

Alt-country maverick Tyler Childers may well have packed just as much quirk, sass, and surprise into his songwriting on previous albums as he does here. But putting Rick Rubin in the producer’s chair never did anybody any harm. And Rubin helps to push Childers’ compelling eccentricities straight across the plate with extra impact and intensity, rocking things up a touch in the bargain.

Roger Street Friedman – Long Shadows

The simultaneously organic and immaculate production on Long Shadows molds Roger Street Friedman’s fulsome blend of folk, rock, country, and blues into endlessly appealing shapes. And while you’re busy wondering whether he’s Long Island’s Jackson Browne or its Lyle Lovett, he lobs 10 literate but unpretentious tales loaded with smarts, humor, and passion into your lap.

Peter Holsapple – The Face of 68

In more than 50 years of recording, this is only Peter Holsapple’s third solo album, but it’s not like the guy hasn’t been busy. Between co-fronting power-pop heroes The dB’s and roots rockers The Continental Drifters, backing up R.E.M. and Hootie & The Blowfish, and duetting with fellow dB Chris Stamey, there’s only been time for so much solo action. But The Face of 68 seems informed by much of Holsapple’s rich past, loaded with generous dollops of wicked wit, indelible hooks, and rocking-but-rootsy riffs. The ultimate record-geek anthem “That Kind of Guy” shows that he knows his audience (and himself) well.

Hope Dunbar – Happily Ever Elsewhere

Hope Dunbar puts the “American” into “Americana” in the best possible way. With songs that drill deeply down into the tribulations of everybody from Darryl Strawberry to an anonymous domestic couple, Happily Ever Elsewhere homes in on the perennial rising and falling of American dreams, and how they get redefined along the way. But with a vocal delivery this fluid and compelling, you might take a few trips through the album before you even begin to absorb the lyrics.

Brian D’Addario – Till the Morning

For his first solo album (though he still receives a nimble assist from his brother and bandmate Michael), The Lemon Twigs’ eldest member piles on plenty of the flavors that fans have come to expect: late ‘60s/early ‘70s-sounding psych pop, folk rock, etc. But Brian pulls back a bit on the band’s customary power pop quotient, concentrating more on ballads and, perhaps most compellingly, tapping into a Mike Nesmith/Gram Parsons cosmic country rock vibe on a couple of tracks.

Jack Grace Band – All the Above

Jack Grace came out of the New York country scene, but over time, his music has expanded beyond genre boundaries into something singular and sinuous yet still roots-conscious. Whether he’s coming off like a character from a Tom Waits song, a Harry Dean Stanton-esque postmodern film noir figure, or a back porch songpoet, he’s got an easygoing charm that makes you want to tag along wherever he roams.

Hirons – Future Perfect

On her debut release, Jenny Hirons harnesses the power of electronics to build offbeat-but-accessible art-pop songs, with splashes of synth pop, vintage New Wave, and DIY bedroom pop. Through it all, a classic kind of tunefulness seeps through that would surely speak just as loudly regardless of the arrangements. In other words, there’s a real-deal writer at work here.

Wendy Beckerman – Wendy Beckerman

There are some singer/songwriters who give voice to life’s vexations in a way that allows the angst-ridden to relate. Far fewer are the ones whose work offers us a route out of it all, or at the very least a rarefied respite. Wendy Beckerman’s work falls into the latter camp. Don’t be fooled by the self-titled album; she’s a veteran artiste, and every bit of her experience comes through in her fetchingly concise, deceptively understated tunes.

Nick Frater – Oh Contraire!

It’s tough to make a genre as fiercely codified and well-worn as power pop sound fresh, but somehow, British tune jockey Nick Frater pulls it off. One moment, he’s making the world safe for Armed Forces-era Elvis C.-styled rave-ups, the next he may be summoning the necessary sonic sorcery to invoke the spirit of Badfinger. But whichever way Frater leans, dangerously sharp hooks tumble freely from his sleeves. Let them rip into you—it’ll feel good.

David Garland – The Spark

Imagine an alternate universe. Not one that differs drastically from our own, but one where everything varies from what we know just enough to catch your attention, where each step you take brings a small surprise, and the rules of the game rarely operate in quite the way you’re expecting. If such a dimension exists, David Garland is surely its premier songsmith, but from the vantage point of our own plane of existence, The Spark seamlessly slips sophisticated avant-gardisms into approachable song forms with craft, humor, and humanity.

Richard Julian – Hit & Run

With the head of a first-class wise ass and the heart of a true believer, New York City songwriter Richard Julian made sure his first album in 13 years was worth the wait. Accompanied by a gang of his hometown’s top-tier jazz and R&B musicians, Julian conjures up a world where lovers of well-schooled sharpshooters like Mose Allison, Randy Newman, Donald Fagen, and Paul Simon can discover that there’s still something special out there just waiting for them to tumble into it.

Louis Philippe & The Night Mail – The Road to the Sea

Boasting a surfeit of suaveness without sacrificing an ounce of impact, French troubadour Louis Philippe belongs to a hyper-melodic artistic lineage that runs through the gilded likes of Brian Wilson and Prefab Sprout. He’s been plying his trade since the ‘80s, working with such sophisticates as The High Llamas, Martin Newell, and Young Marble Giants’ Stuart Moxham along the way, but when his own elegant musical shapeshifting comes to the fore, the air begins to vibrate in an unusual way.

Pete Mancini – American Equator

Emotion-mining alt country, gut-punching heartland rock, hooky-as-hell power pop, and reflective folk-rock balladry are all part of Pete Mancini’s proprietary recipe, and his special sauce has never sounded as masterfully mixed as it does on American Equator. Whether he’s telling small-scale stories or conducting widescreen sociopolitical inventories, he’s consistently assured, impassioned, and engaging.

Lane Steinberg – Mr. Lane

Ever since emerging as the frontman for critical darlings The Wind in the ‘80s, Lane Steinberg has been making most of the competition seem like underachievers by comparison. As a solo act, Steinberg’s one of those intimidating types who can do it all, turning out his multi-instrumentalist masterworks like they come as easily to him as breathing. Mr. Lane is no exception, with the maestro dipping expertly into slow-burning rock tunes, cinematic orchestral pop, loping funk-rock, ‘60s-style chamber pop, and whatever else whets his whistle.