21 April 2025
Here's how it works: The Recent Releases chart brings together critical reaction to new albums from more than 50 sources worldwide. It's updated daily. Albums qualify with 5 reviews, and drop out after 6 weeks into the longer timespan charts.
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Ninth studio album and first in over seven years from the R&B artist featuring guest appearances from 21 Savage, Burna Boy, H.E.R., Jung Kook of BTS, Latto, Pheelz, The-Dream and Summer Walker
6.1
Usher’s ninth album is another impressive display of his endless charm and vocal chops. Thirty years into his career, the R&B icon still knows how to keep it light and throw a great party Read Review
The album hits its stride with a sequence of slow jams demonstrating that Usher is at the top of his game as a singer, still much more than a mere entertainer Read Review
The star’s sprawling, twenty-song LP is nostalgic and familiar as Usher leans into the past without making it feel stale Read Review
Lyrical foreplay isn’t exactly the singer’s strong suit on this throwback album full of percussive panting Read Review
‘COMING HOME’ competently portrays love as part Afrodisiac, part pulse-racing chase, part languorous and lived-in sensation Read Review
The album feels less driven by creative ingenuity or an aesthetic vision than by sheer showmanship Read Review
Vintage effects in the singer’s first album in eight years underline the degree to which he has been left behind Read Review
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Julien Baker & Torres Send A Prayer My Way
If there is one country album you listen to this year it needs to be Send A Prayer My Way. Julien Baker and TORRES are at the top of their game here Spill Magazine
The album is pleasant in every way you could want it to be, but it’s also a few truck stops short of their best and most memorable work Beats Per Minute
Tunde Adebimpe Thee Black Boltz
Music, love, and the desire to create have the power to stun these wild distractions, and these abstractions can often provide comfort, self-knowledge, and clarity Northern Transmissions
Beirut A Study Of Losses
Beirut’s lengthy, meandering album involves a conceptual project by a Swedish circus, a German novel and an inventory of vanished things Spectrum Culture
Mumford & Sons Rushmere
RUSHMERE is enough to get fans in seats and have them eager to hear what’s next. For anyone else, Mumford & Sons’ fifth album is an easy skip Spectrum Culture
The TV On The Radio frontman’s highly accomplished, elegantly performed, wonderfully sung debut solo album is the work of a master craftsman musicOMH
The Boygenius star and singer-songwriter Torres find the perfect vehicle for their pained and defiant storytelling The Observer
The TV on the Radio frontman’s sharp pop instincts kick in on a multifaceted synth-punk-funk set born out of deep personal loss The Observer
Given Adebimpe's legacy with TV on the Radio and his lengthy break from music, expectations for his debut album were high, but Thee Black Boltz' passionate, imaginative songs more than meet them All Music
As they reclaim the sounds of their roots on Send a Prayer My Way, Baker and Torres bring out the best in each others' music All Music
A Study Of Losses is ultimately a pleasant (if sometimes monotonous) release. Print edition only Record Collector
A further example of his fluency in the ancient, internationally shared languages of wonder and imagining. Print edition only Uncut
What might be his [Zac Condon's] most beautiful record to date, particularly the instrumental numbers. Print edition only Mojo
For Zach Condon to write music for a troupe of acrobats might seem a little too on the nose, given his roots. But the results are the most effortless and surprising Beirut album in ages Pitchfork
As a whole, only one of the 18 tracks here crosses the four-minute mark, so A Study of Losses' hour-long playing time seems to go by quickly, and its unceasing sweetness and longing linger after Condon is "Left to be/A sea of tranquility" ("Mare Tranquillitatis") to close a lovely theater project All Music
Since we've been around, that is. So, the highest-rated albums from the past twelve years or so. Rankings are calculated to two decimal places.
Kendrick Lamar To Pimp A Butterfly
Fiona Apple Fetch The Bolt Cutters
Spiritbox Tsunami Sea
Kendrick Lamar Damn.
D'Angelo And The Vanguard Black Messiah
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Ghosteen
Self Esteem Prioritise Pleasure
Bob Dylan Rough and Rowdy Ways
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Skeleton Tree
Frank Ocean Channel Orange