Political Pandora

Pandora's Vinyl: Here's the thing about Virgin: it hits different. Not in the uber calculated way where pop stars pretend to be vulnerable for TikTok moments, but in that rare, slightly uncomfortable way where you feel like you've stumbled into someone's actual therapy session and they're too busy having breakthroughs to kick you out, for better or worse. 

From subversive thrillers to gothic-pop odysseys, Pandora’s entertainment staff weighs in on the films and albums that have defined 2025 so far. Here are our mid-year favourites, spotlighting the boldest, strangest and most unforgettable works of the year.

Pandora's Vinyl: The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, Chappell Roan's debut album, is more a glitter coded celebration of queer selfhood and euphoria, an exorcism of small-town restrictions than it is a compilation of songs.

Pandora's Vinyl: Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer is a revelation, a sonic coming-out party that arrived in 2018 like a technicolour bomb detonating across the landscape of pop music. In the pantheon of iconic queer albums, it stands as perhaps the most unflinchingly joyous celebration of pansexual identity as Monáe crafts a precise, personal, and devastating tale of intimacy.

Pandora's Vinyl: Boygenius’ The Record is a triumphant convergence of three singular voices.

Pandora's Vinyl: Sufjan Stevens’ Javelin is an elegy, a confession, and a fragile bridge between despair and redemption.

Pandora's Vinyl: Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal is an album that bites hard and refuses to let go. A sprawling, genre-bending testament to survival and self-affirmation, the project is both a love letter to her Florida roots and a raw chronicle of her battles with fame, sobriety, and the relentless churn of the music industry.

Pandora's Vinyl: Lorde’s Pure Heroine is a quiet revolution, a minimalist manifesto that reshaped the contours of pop music.

Pandora's Vinyl: Tame Impala’s The Slow Rush is a kaleidoscopic meditation on time and its relentless passage.

Pandora's Vinyl: Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine is a reckoning and a reclamation.

Pandora's Vinyl: My First Car is an underrated funk/soul EP released in 2013. It is one of the earlier recordings by Vulfpeck.

Pandora's Vinyl: Lady Gaga’s latest offering is Mayhem in every sense of the word.

Pandora's Vinyl: Mac Miller's Circles is a poignant and bittersweet swan song, a final testament to an artist tragically lost in his prime.

Pandora's Vinyl: 2024 may have been the year of Brat Summer but it is also the year of Charm Winter.

Pandora's Vinyl: With her second studio album, Caroline Polacheck has tapped into something existential and elemental.

Billie Eilish's Hit Me Hard and Soft is a sonically lush journey through the labyrinth of love, identity, and self-discovery.

To understand the depth of SOPHIE's loss, one must look back at her extraordinary life and career as a groundbreaking pop innovator.

Short ‘n Sweet delivers exactly what it promises, cute bops & California surf rock, with Sabrina’s humour wrapped in unskippable choruses.