11 queer albums coming in 2025, from Lady Gaga to Miley Cyrus
Queer artists are coming through with an abundance of hotly-anticipated albums in 2025.
2024 offered a rich tapestry of music, with much of it led by queer-favourite pop girlies: From Charli XCX capturing the 2024 zeitgeist with Brat, Chappell Roan’s ascent to synth-pop stardom, and career-defining releases from Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift, the past 12 months will be tricky to top.
And yet, just a few days into 2025, and the roster of exciting queer albums is already filling up nicely. From Lady Gaga’s mysterious seventh album to the return of Madonna, there’s a lot to look forward to. Here are some of the biggest upcoming records to get excited about.
Ethel Cain, Perverts (8 January, out now)
It’s been a mammoth few years for Southern goth-rock idol and trans musician Ethel Cain following the release of American Teenager in 2022. The singer’s ethereal debut record received critical acclaim and garnered her a legion of devoted fans (and the nickname Mother Cain). Included among her groupies is former President Barack Obama who, perhaps surprisingly considering its staunch anti-nationalist and anti-war sentiment, included the record’s titular single on his best-of list at the end of 2022.
Yet 2025 looks set to be the musician’s most delightfully macabre yet. In November, she returned with “Punish”, a sullen seven-minute slurry about an exiled paedophile who maims himself as punishment for his sins. This, from her sophomore album entitled Perverts which dropped this week (8 January), paved the way for the arrival of 2025’s darkest and most satisfyingly disturbing release.
Lambrini Girls, Who Let The Dogs Out (10 January)
Brighton-based punk duo Lambrini Girls – aka Phoebe Lunny and bassist Lilly Macieira – begin the year with the release of their dazzlingly confronting debut album Who Let The Dogs Out, which has been some three years in the making. From the two musicians who gifted the queer community with their viral song “TERF Wars” in 2023, and later promised they would “scrap any TERF any day in person”, comes an album that puts all of its targets in a barrel, and shoots them dead with blistering one-liners.
“Big Dick Energy” is a rip-roaring takedown of male sofa feminists; “Company Culture” would be hilarious – “Michael, I don’t want to suck you off on my lunch break” – if it weren’t for the fact its reflection on workplace sexual harassment is too true to life; and as for “C*ntology 101”, well, Lambrini Girls sure know who their audience is.
Rebecca Black, Salvation (24 January)
Many a celebrity has their own rags to riches story, but the “reviled-internet-meme-turned-queer-cult-pop-star” pipeline is far less common. After breaking the internet for all the wrong reasons with her debut single “Friday” back in 2011, Rebecca Black has since contorted herself into the safer corners of the hyperpop world, teaming up with queer favourites including Slayyyter, Dorian Electra and Big Freedia.
While her 2023 debut record Let Her Burn saw her try on the costume of an established electro-pop star, her next project Salvation may see her become one. If last year’s jittering lead single “TRUST” is anything to go by, it’ll be ballsy with its intention at the very least.
Olly Alexander, Polari (7 February)
Last year marked something of a turning point for queer Brit Olly Alexander, as he edged further away from his identity as part of band Years & Years, the moniker with which he built his career and scored two chart-topping albums.
His new era, which sees him labelled as just Olly Alexander, entered troubled waters last May, with a limp scoreboard position at the Eurovision Song Contest amid one of its most controversial years to date. Yet he’s not let it disrupt his trajectory, as his new album Polari appears to brim with the fizzy pop his fans have come to expect. “Cupid’s Bow” and “Archangel” slot with ease into Alexander’s canon of airy odes to queer lust, while “Dizzy”, his underappreciated Eurovision single, pads the record out nicely.
Shygirl, Club Shy Room 2 (14 February)
2025 is beginning with an overwhelming sense of trepidation, with the world’s future seemingly in the hands of a bunch of egotistical tech bros and dangerous misogynists. What a marvel then to have Shygirl’s brand of bleary, hedonistic experimental-pop bangers to lead us away from the headlines, and into the smuttiest ravines of the club.
On Club Shy Room 2, the London-based DJ is talking about the things that matter in this age of existential dread: getting d*ck, eating p***y, and serving c**t.
Lady Gaga, Untitled (February TBC)
Lady Gaga has said an awful lot about her upcoming, as-yet nameless seventh studio album, describing it as both an out-and-out pop record, and as having “so many different genres, so many different styles” that it’s almost “corrupt”.
And yet, despite the hype, there is still so much left unknown about ‘LG7’, particularly considering it’s slated to arrive within the next seven weeks. There’s no title, specific release date, artwork, nor a second single to follow October’s grisly and grunting goth-pop banger “Disease”. But because it’s Gaga – pop’s most enigmatic multi-hyphenate – we’re not worried. If anything, the mystique simply ramps up the excitement.
Sasami, Blood on the Silver Screen (7 March)
With her third studio album Blood on the Silver Screen, US singer-songwriter Sasami is following paint-by-numbers stadium pop-rock in the very best way possible.
The first single “Honeycrash” pairs Sasami’s cotton-soft vocals with cascading electric guitars, while follow-up “Slugger” goes in hard with biting lyricism that wouldn’t be amiss on an early Alanis Morissette record (“Whoever said it’s better to have loved and to lost than to not have loved at all, should just shut up forever,” goes the pre-chorus).
It’s a fairly big jump from the distorted coffee shop indie of her self-titled, 2019 debut, but she carries it with conviction, and we imagine fans old and new won’t be left disappointed.
Miley Cyrus, Something Beautiful (TBC)
While Miley Cyrus’s last era awarded her the biggest hit of her near 20 year career with “Flowers”, plus her first ever Grammy Awards, the album from which it came – Endless Summer Vacation – was more lukewarm than heatwave, despite its title and sun-kissed cover. It makes sense then that Cyrus is leaning into bigger, bolder concepts for Something Beautiful, the preliminary title for her upcoming ninth studio album.
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar at the end of last year, she revealed that the record will be visual-first, with pop culture iconography “driving the sound”. Those visual inspirations include Thierry Mugler’s 1995 couture show, cinema, and Pink Floyd’s The Wall, “but with a better wardrobe and more glamorous”. Mother Miley is coming.
Kesha, Untitled (TBC)
With the release of 2023’s unavoidably doleful album Gag Order, Kesha fulfilled her contract with RCA Records and Dr Luke’s off-shoot Kemosabe Records, and was finally able to put the most tumultuous decade of her life behind her.
As an emblem of her newfound freedom, she careered back into the spotlight with a crash last summer, dropping her frenetic polka-pop single “JOYRIDE” on 4 July, Independence Day. It was as balls-to-the-wall a return as any pop fan could hope for; the song of the summer that launched a thousand memes. “Keep it kinky, but I come first,” she squeaks on the chorus, harking back to the licentious mantras of her early work. “Beep-beep, b*tch, I’m outside. Get in, loser, for the joyride.” She’s back in full throttle, speeding towards the release of a new album.
Cardi B, Untitled (TBC)
Unbelievably, 2025 marks seven years since Cardi B made money moves with the release of her bawdy, triumphant debut Invasion of Privacy, which bagged her a Grammy Award and cemented her place in the hip-hop hall of fame. The bisexual star has been teasing its follow-up for some years now, never quite leaving the public consciousness, be it for the music – “WAP” remains one of the most talked about cultural moments of the decade – or for other, more contentious reasons.
In November, Cardi confirmed that her sophomore record would definitely be dropping this year, meaning she’ll be running 2025 like cardio soon enough.
Madonna, Untitled (TBC)
It’s been almost six years since the release of Madonna’s most recent studio album, Madame X, the longest period of time between records in her 40-plus-year career. That’s not to say she’s not been busy; between her global, legacy-defining Celebration Tour, and continued attempts to create a biopic about her life, Madonna is a woman with places to be. Thankfully, one of those places is the studio: she’s recently confirmed there’s new music coming in 2025.
She’ll be harking back to one of the most irrefutably queer records in her back catalogue, Confessions on a Dancefloor, working with “Hung Up” hitmaker Stuart Price. He’s since worked with British pop royalty including Dua Lipa, Rina Sawayama and Jessie Ware, so we can safely say 2025 will see Madge back on the frontlines of the pop battlefield.
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