2025 In Review: Day 1 – Introduction and Best Album Art

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By Jung Bae | January 2, 2026

2025 In Review

1. Introduction + Best Album Art
2. The Awards (January 28)
3. The Honorable Mentions (January 29)
4. Other Recognition (January 30)
5. Concluding Remarks (January 31)

Kpop Demon Hunters was the story of 2025, headlining a flurry of works and collaborations that showcased K-pop’s globalized reach. Meanwhile, the cream of the crop in R&B, hip-hop and electronic music took on a teched-up, maximalist sheen; the shining moments in pop and folk music went unplugged and acoustic; and the rookie artist class went off with some of the year’s most innovative work across genres. All this and more appear in Hellokpop’s 2025 In Review, the 15th edition of our annual Year In Review series.

Series Structure

We are experimenting with a compressed format this year; instead of the series being broken up into 16 parts posted over two weeks, most of the content will be posted on January 28th and 29th. The former will feature the usual “award” listings for both our general categories (Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Artist of the Year, Rookie Artist of the Year) and genre categories (R&B and Soul, Rock and Alternative, Rap and Hip-hop, Dance and Electronic, Pop and Ballad, Folk and Country, Jazz, Crossover and World, and Collaborative Work). Honorable Mentions for each of the genre categories will be posted on January 29th. The series still concludes with a post on whimsical, made-up “awards” that recognize the year in other ways, and a final post with a roundup of other publications’ picks.
The coverage period is December to November: works released between December 1, 2023 and November 30, 2024 are eligible to be included in the series.
In order to recognize as many works as possible, the Song of the Year, Album of the Year, and respective runner-ups will not be double-counted as winners in the genre categories. Indeed, they will not be named in the genre categories at all. (For example: in 2024 we named Danpyunsun and the Moments Ensemble’s Hail to the Music as our Album of the Year, which meant that this album was not reiterated in the Best Rock Album category.)
The coverage period is December to November: works released between December 1, 2024 and November 30, 2025 are eligible to be included in the series.

Best Album Art

As has become tradition, we do a little prelude by recognizing 100 notable pieces of album art from the year. We pick these across a flexible set of criteria: some of them are aesthetically pleasing, others are evocative or meaningful, and still others are just striking.

They also serve as a prelude to what’s to come: many of the albums and singles represented below will also show up in the “award” categories in the main series.

The gallery is organized by alphabetical order of artist name. Images courtesy of Bugs Music.

All album art from Bugs Music.

Read our past series: