Sheldon Pierce, how are you holding up?

I'm doing all right, Robin.

We're almost done.

Yeah.

We're almost done.

We're getting near the end of Empire Music's month-long celebration of the songs and albums and artists of 2025.

That's what I was talking about. Is that what you were thinking of when I said, are you...

I think the stress level and year-end workload kind of overlap for the both of us. It's like a mad dash to the end. But, you know, one of the benefits is we get to listen to a lot of great music. I just love show business, man. Man, it's just the best. It is really the best. It's all songs considered. I'm Robin Hilton. I'm here with NPR Music Editor Sheldon Pierce. If you haven't checked them out yet, we've got a whole bunch of lists online and we've talked a good bit about them on the show with all of our picks for the best songs and albums, the most defining moments of the past year. But on this episode, we're going to share the albums that listeners picked. As the year's best, we put up a

poll a few weeks ago for people to vote for their favorite albums, and the results are in.

Yes, drum roll, please. We're going to count down the top 10 most mentioned albums,

but if you look online, you'll find a longer list of the top 50 albums that listeners picked.

Sheldon, were you surprised at all when you saw these results?

There were some surprises to me.

And also the order was interesting.

I think once you get to the top three, I figured the top three was going to be what it was.

But outside of that, there was an interesting sort of mix-up of things.

Yeah, I'm kind of with you.

I would say, though, even with the top three, I think it could still have gone any number of ways.

There was at least one surprise there, and we'll get to it.

But let's talk about the album that came in at number 10.

Bonavere and the album Sable Fable.

If only I could wait.

...