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AARP’s 12 Favorite Albums of 2025 (So Far)
Music critic Edna Gundersen shares her picks for the year’s best records
AARP (Courtesy Warner Records; Courtesy Interscope Capitol; Courtesy Beautiful Day Media; Courtesy Big Feat PR; Courtesy The Press House)
The music industry tends to jam the summer with blockbuster tours, and the fall with superstar albums. But that doesn’t mean spring is the calendar’s dead zone. The year has already delivered a host of quality albums by musicians over 50. And the best of them defy expectations, explore fresh ground and unearth treasures.
Neil Young’s newest “lost” album revives 10 tracks recorded in 1977. Ringo Starr takes a second swing at country 55 years after releasing Beaucoups of Blues. Elton John, Bryan Ferry and Galactic are revitalized in bold collaborations. And The Waterboys turn a Dennis Hopper fixation into an engrossing concept album.
Here are AARP’s 12 favorite albums released so far in 2025.
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Neil Young’s “Oceanside Countryside” is a heavily acoustic exploration of Americana.
Courtesy Warner Records
Neil Young: Oceanside Countryside
This never-before-released 1977 album, the latest in Neil Young’s Analog Original Series, is a spellbinding 10-track diptych. Half of it (the “Oceanside” part) comprises haunting solo acoustic songs recorded in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Malibu, California, including a bleak, bare version of “Sail Away” and a mournful “Lost in Space.” The other half, the "Countryside" material, was recorded with a band mostly in Nashville, and ranges from such twangy, fiddle-kissed delights as “Dance, Dance, Dance” to the unnerving saga “The Old Homestead.” Many of the 10 cuts surfaced on later albums, but it’s a joy to hear Young, 79, bring them to life in such pure, unadorned form.
Craig Finn’s “Always Been” bridges his earlier folk efforts to reach a more rocking place.
Courtesy Big Hassle
Craig Finn: Always Been
The Hold Steady singer Craig Finn, 53, collaborated with Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs on his sixth solo album, an invigorating, shimmering musical novella. Finn moves away from flinty folk to a brighter, fanciful rock cocktail of beats, guitars and synthesizers. And instead of his familiar vignettes, we get “Clayton,” an epic narrative about a former reverend who has fallen from grace, battled demons and struggled for sobriety. He finds threads of hope but is no dreamer. On “Fletcher’s,” Finn settles for survival: “We’ll never win this war, but maybe we can wait it out.”
Movie star Dennis Hopper is the creative muse for The Waterboys’ latest album.
Courtesy The Press House
The Waterboys: Life, Death and Dennis Hopper
Long intrigued by the life and art of late actor Dennis Hopper, Waterboys singer/songwriter Mike Scott, 66, has channeled his hero worship into a 25-track concept album that is eclectic, irreverent and humorous while managing to canonize its subject. Scott chronologically traces Hopper’s life with charm and gusto through a broad range of genre mash-ups. And every guest turn is a keeper. Steve Earle, 70, embodies Hopper as a young man eager to escape on “Kansas.” Fiona Apple serves up “Letter from an Unknown Girlfriend,” a gripping piano ballad that grapples with domestic abuse. And 75-year-old Bruce Springsteen growls a spoken-word segment in the tense, propulsive “Ten Years Gone,” about Hopper’s lost decade after 1971’s flop The Last Movie.
Irma Thomas and Galactic cook up a New Orleans funk and soul gumbo on “Audience with the Queen.”
Courtesy Big Hassle
Galactic and Irma Thomas: Audience with the Queen
Two beloved New Orleans institutions, funk band Galactic and soul queen Irma Thomas, link up on a rousing, hefty album that leans into the city’s roots while embracing contemporary sounds and messages. At 84, Thomas still sings with power, vibrancy and conviction through eight brisk, deep-grooved originals and a robust interpretation of the Nancy Wilson hit “How Glad I Am.” Galactic’s taut musicianship, tailor-made compositions and ease with funk, rock, pop and blues lay an immaculate foundation for the revered gospel singer’s soulful belting. Both are lifted in the exchange — and so is the listener.
Bootsy Collins: Album of the Year #1 Funkateer
The bass player with the bedazzled shades who joined James Brown’s band as a teen and co-wrote Parliament’s “Tear the Roof Off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk)” is serious about having a good time on his 23rd studio album. To ensure a party vibe, Bootsy Collins, 73, invited guests including Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg, 53, Ice Cube, 55, Kurupt, Daz Dillinger and Musiq Soulchild. A riot of contradictions, Funkateer toggles from tight to messy, lively to stodgy, clever to flat. But the fun and the funk percolate nonstop, and Collins throws in enough laughs, nostalgia and irresistible Bootzilla spirit to keep the party hopping.
Country comes to Liverpool on Ringo Starr’s “Look Up.”
Courtesy Beautiful Day Media
Ringo Starr: Look Up
This isn’t Ringo Starr’s first rodeo. The former Beatles drummer flirted with country in such songs as 1965’s “Act Naturally” and 1968’s “Don’t Pass Me By” and released his first country-steeped album, Beaucoups of Blues, in 1970. His cowboy muse returns with Look Up, produced by 77-year-old T Bone Burnett and spotlighting such hot acts as Alison Krauss, 53, Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Larkin Poe and the band Lucius. Not that Starr needs a little help from his friends. The drummer, 84, shines on upbeat, positive Burnett-penned songs befitting Starr’s worldview and sings with a warm, earnest yearning in a plaintive voice tinged with sorrow. It’s a voice better suited for country than rock, and Starr seems perfectly at home.
Suzanne Vega’s “Flying With Angels” takes wing on stories of struggle.
Courtesy Sacks & Co.
Suzanne Vega: Flying With Angels
The folk-pop singer/songwriter, best known for “Tom’s Diner” and “Luka,” wrote on Instagram that this first album of new songs since 2016 “takes place in an atmosphere of struggle. Struggle to survive, to speak, to dominate, to win, to escape, to help someone else, or just live.” On “Chambermaid,” a restructuring of Bob Dylan’s “I Want You,” Vega imagines herself as the song’s charwoman who has “seen where his hallowed head is laid” and cleans crumbs from his typewriter. Elsewhere, Vega, 65, pays homage to Lucinda Williams, 72, bemoans the devastating losses in Ukraine and urges citizens to fight injustice. While hardly a sunny subject, “Rats” injects levity and punk verve in an alarming account of rodents on the rise in New York City.
Bryan Ferry and Amelia Barratt’s “Loose Talk” dials up an atmospheric narrative.
Courtesy High Rise PR
Bryan Ferry & Amelia Barratt: Loose Talk
In recent years, Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry, 79, has been combing his archives in search of viable building blocks to repurpose in fresh projects. Loose Talk incorporates old demos, chunks of unused melodies, rhythm tracks and synthesizers and some new instrumentation. The resulting atmospheric art-rock soundscape has a beguiling, if sometimes bewildering, appeal. Ferry’s faint, incoherent croon is layered over some tracks, while spoken-word performance artist Amelia Barratt contributes striking slo-mo poems. Ferry’s intriguing detour may not seduce every Roxy Music fan, but it is unquestionably original and enjoyably eccentric.
Elton John & Brandi Carlile: Who Believes in Angels?
This delightful collab had a couple of warm-ups. Elton John, 78, contributed to Brandi Carlile’s 2009 song “Caroline,” and she shared vocals on “Simple Things” from his 2021 album The Lockdown Sessions. The Rocket Man and his younger kindred spirit dovetail nicely on these 10 tracks, which includes Oscar-nominated duet “Never Too Late,” the theme from the same-named Disney documentary about John. The pair’s sturdy voices especially distinguish the title track, raucous “Little Richard’s Bible” and ambitious opener “The Rose of Laura Nyro.” Angels ends with “When This Old World Is Done With Me,” John’s spare, emotional, piano-driven rumination on mortality.
On “Strike Up the Band,” Little Feat’s funky, familiar sound fits like an old pair of shoes.
Courtesy Big Feat PR
Little Feat: Strike Up the Band
Despite decades of upheaval, deaths and personnel changes, Little Feat has lost little of its vigor, chops or ingenuity since its 1971 self-titled debut. Pianist Bill Payne, 76, is the sole remaining founder. Percussionist Sam Clayton, 79, and bassist Kenny Gradney, 75, have been in place since joining the core 1972 lineup. A year after Sam’s Place, a Grammy-nominated set of blues standards, and 13 years since Rooster Rag, its last batch of originals, the eclectic swamp-rock collective is back with the intoxicating Strike Up the Band. The music chugs and thumps with Feat’s classic confluence of country, soul, blues and funk. Standouts include the Cajun-kissed “Dance a Little,” fierce, horn-driven “Midnight Flight” and hilarious “Too High to Cut My Hair.”
“Arcadia” is Alison Krauss & Union Station’s first new album in 14 years.
Courtesy Shore Fire
Alison Krauss & Union Station: Arcadia
Fans have waited since 2011’s Paper Airplane for a new Alison Krauss & Union Station album, and Arcadia does not disappoint. While Dan Tyminski’s exit dealt a blow, the potent, emotional vocals of replacement Russell Moore of IIIrd Tyme Out jibe nicely with exquisite songbird Krauss, 53. Her pure, angelic soprano, the gorgeous melodies, the engaging tales of heartbreak and the band’s deft musicianship add up to a phenomenal Americana song cycle that’s warmly classic yet unabashedly modern.
“Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation” is the latest stop on Edwyn Collins’ long comeback.
Courtesy AED Records
Edwyn Collins: Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation
The former singer for Scottish indie pop band Orange Juice, Edwyn Collins, 65, found global fame with his 1994 solo hit “A Girl Like You.” His career hit a wall in 2005, when he suffered two cerebral hemorrhages that led to aphasia and a long recovery. Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation, his 10th studio album and first since 2019’s Badbea, brims with wisdom, verve and candor. The songs, steeped in Northern soul and full of references to Collins’ homeland, range from banging rockers (“The Heart Is a Foolish Little Thing”) to reflective ballads (the countrified “Knowledge”) and a winsome folk song (“The Bridge Hotel”). Collins speaks from the heart and lifts the soul.
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