In a lot of ways, you can map Alex Giannascoli’s story onto a broader story of music and art in the 2010s. Born outside Philadelphia in 1993, he started self-releasing albums online while still in high school, building a small but devoted cult that scrutinized his collage-like indie folk like it was scripture. His music got denser, more expressive, and more accomplished, he signed to venerated indie label Domino, and he worked with Frank Ocean, all—more or less—without leaving his bedroom. In other words, Giannascoli didn’t have to leave his dream-hive to find an audience; he brought his audience in, and on his terms, too. “Something I can never stress enough is I try and explain this stuff, but it never accurately reflects the process,” Giannascoli tells Apple Music, “because I’m not actually thinking that much when I’m doing it.” Recorded in the same building-block fashion as his previous albums (and with the same home studio setup), *House of Sugar* represents a new peak for Giannascoli—not just as a songwriter, but as a producer who can spin peculiar moods out of combinations that don’t make any immediate sense. It can be blissful (“Walk Away”), it can be ominous (“Sugar”), it can be grounded one minute (“Cow,” “Hope,” “Southern Sky”) and abstract the next (“Near,” “Project 2”)—a range that gives the overall experience the disjointed, saturated feeling of a half-remembered dream. Often, the prettier the music is, the bleaker the lives of the characters in the lyrics get, whether it’s the drug casualty of “Hope” or the gamblers of “SugarHouse,” who keep coming back to the tables no matter how often they lose—a contrast, Giannascoli says, that was inspired in part by the 2018 sci-fi film *Annihilation*. “From afar, everything looks bright and beautiful,” he says, “but the closer you get, the more violent it becomes.” Despite his rising profile, Giannascoli tries to remain intuitive, following inspiration whenever it shows up, keeping what he calls “that lens” on whenever possible. “I never say to myself, ‘This isn’t where I thought \[the music\] was going to go,’” he says. “Because usually I don’t have that thought in mind to begin with. And I never really end up getting surprised, because the music is unfolding before me as I make it.”
House of Sugar— Alex G’s ninth overall album and his third for Domino — emerges as his most meticulous, cohesive album yet: a statement of artistic purpose, showing off his ear for both persistent earworms and sonic adventurism.
Few songwriters have Bill Callahan’s eye for wry detail: “Like motel curtains, we never really met,” the singer-songwriter declares on “Angela,” using his weather-worn baritone. On his first studio album in five years—an unusually long gap for Callahan—one of the enduring voices in alternative music continues to pare back the extraneous in his sound. A noise musician and mighty mumbler when he broke through under the moniker of Smog in the early 1990s, Callahan now favors minimal indie-folk brushstrokes such as a guitar strum, a sighing pedal steel guitar, or simply barely audible room ambience. The 20 songs here insinuate themselves with bittersweet melodies and a conversational tone, and they’re a strong reminder of Callahan\'s dry sense of humor: “The panic room is now a nursery,” the recently married new father sings on “Son of the Sea.” But if he’s comparatively settled in life, Callahan still knows how to hit an unnerving note with a matter-of-fact ease.
The voice murmuring in our ear, with shaggy-dog and other kinds of stories, is an old friend we're so glad to hear again. Bill’s gentle, spacey take on folk and roots music is like no other; scraps of imagery, melody and instrumentation tumble suddenly together in moments of true human encounters.
JAIME I wrote this record as a process of healing. Every song, I confront something within me or beyond me. Things that are hard or impossible to change, words and music to describe what I’m not good at conveying to those I love, or a name that hurts to be said: Jaime. I dedicated the title of this record to my sister who passed away as a teenager. She was a musician too. I did this so her name would no longer bring me memories of sadness and as a way to thank her for passing on to me everything she loved: music, art, creativity. But, the record is not about her. It’s about me. It’s not as veiled as work I have done before. I’m pretty candid about myself and who I am and what I believe. Which, is why I needed to do it on my own. I wrote and arranged a lot of these songs on my laptop using Logic. Shawn Everett helped me make them worthy of listening to and players like Nate Smith, Robert Glasper, Zac Cockrell, Lloyd Buchanan, Lavinia Meijer, Paul Horton, Rob Moose and Larry Goldings provided the musicianship that was needed to share them with you. Some songs on this record are years old that were just sitting on my laptop, forgotten, waiting to come to life. Some of them I wrote in a tiny green house in Topanga, CA during a heatwave. I was inspired by traveling across the United States. I saw many beautiful things and many heartbreaking things: poverty, loneliness, discouraged people, empty and poor towns. And of course the great swathes of natural, untouched lands. Huge pink mountains, seemingly endless lakes, soaring redwoods and yellow plains that stretch for thousands of acres. There were these long moments of silence in the car when I could sit and reflect. I wondered what it was I wanted for myself next. I suppose all I want is to help others feel a bit better about being. All I can offer are my own stories in hopes of not only being seen and understood, but also to learn to love my own self as if it were an act of resistance. Resisting that annoying voice that exists in all of our heads that says we aren’t good enough, talented enough, beautiful enough, thin enough, rich enough or successful enough. The voice that amplifies when we turn on our TVs or scroll on our phones. It’s empowering to me to see someone be unapologetically themselves when they don’t fit within those images. That’s what I want for myself next and that’s why I share with you, “Jaime”. Brittany Howard
We’re calling it: In the rock ’n’ roll history books, Gary Clark Jr. will have two eras: before *This Land* and after it. Just get a load of the fire and fury that opens the title track: “F\*\*k you, I’m America’s son/This is where I come from,” he snarls. Clark’s rage is partially directed at his racist neighbor in Austin, Texas, who can’t seem to accept Clark’s sprawling 50-acre ranch, as well as a few experiences from his childhood. “I had a few situations down there with some racism, and some Confederate flags, and people calling me out of their trucks, all that kind of stuff,” he told Beats 1 host Zane Lowe. “I had a beat that I laid down but didn\'t have any lyrics over it and it just came to me. I just went in there and fired off.” But it\'s also, more broadly, aimed at President Trump for fanning the flames of racism across the American South. He’s pissed off, and finally speaking out. *This Land*, which Clark produced himself, confronts these realities head-on, including stressful community divisions (“What About Us”), touring fatigue (“The Guitar Man”), and political activism (“Feed the Babies”). In an effort to find some common ground, he reminds us why we came to his music in the first place: its soulful, spontaneous spirit. The rallying *wooo*s and rip-roaring guitars on the standout “Gotta Get Into Something” recall Stiff Little Fingers as much as they do Chuck Berry. And like any rousing punk anthem, it’s its own form of protest song: a thunderous, gritty alarm that dares you to sit still.
Countless young artists have emulated iconic predecessors like Bob Dylan, but Kenyan-born singer-songwriter J.S. Ondara is a Dylan disciple who managed to recenter his idol’s influence by applying a 21st-century immigrant’s perspective to his debut album. In songs like the a cappella “Turkish Bandana,” the sinuously bluesy “American Dream,” and the prayerful “God Bless America,” Ondara earnestly interrogates how the nation’s promises of welcome and prosperity can exclude outsiders. During the latter tune, he fingerpicks an acoustic guitar and quietly appeals, “Will you let me in, or are you at capacity? Will you set me free, or are you holding on to history?” Ondara sings with softly accented clarity over the warm glow and rootsy rustle of his production, drawing on Dylan’s poetic mystique and idealism rather than his trickster tendencies.
A successful child actor turned indie-rock sweetheart with Rilo Kiley, a solo artist beloved by the famed and famous, Jenny Lewis would appear to have led a gilded life. But her truth—and there have been intimations both in song lyrics and occasionally in interviews—is of a far darker inheritance. “I come from working-class showbiz people who ended up in jail, on drugs, both, or worse,” Lewis tells Apple Music. “I grew up in a pretty crazy, unhealthy environment, but I somehow managed to survive.” The death of her mother in 2017 (with whom she had reconnected after a 20-year estrangement) and the end of her 12-year relationship with fellow singer-songwriter Johnathan Rice set the stage for Lewis’ fourth solo album, where she finally reconciles her public and private self. A bountiful pop record about sex, drugs, death, and regret, with references to everyone from Elliott Smith to Meryl Streep, *On the Line* is the Lewis aesthetic writ large: an autobiographical picaresque burnished by her dark sense of humor. Here, Lewis takes us through the album track by track. **“Heads Gonna Roll”** “I’m a big boxing fan, and I basically wanted to write a boxing ballad. There’s a line about ‘the nuns of Harlem\'—that’s for real. I met a priest backstage at a Dead & Company show in a cloud of pot smoke. He was a fan of my music, and we struck up a conversation and a correspondence. I’d just moved to New York at the time and was looking to do some service work. And so this priest hooked me up with the nuns in Harlem. I would go up there and get really stoned and hang out with theses nuns, who were the purest, most lovely people, and help them put together meal packages. The nuns of Harlem really helped me out.” **“Wasted Youth”** “For me, the thing that really brings this song, and the whole record, together is the people playing on it. \[Drummer\] Jim Keltner especially. He’s played on so many incredible records, he’s the heartbeat of rock and roll and you don’t even realize it. Jim and Don Was were there for so much of this record, and they were the ones that brought Ringo Starr into the sessions—playing with him was just surreal. Benmont Tench is someone I’d worked with before—he’s just so good at referencing things from the past but playing something that sounds modern and new at the same time. He created these sounds that were so melodic and weird, using the Hammond organ and a bunch of pedals. We call that ‘the fog’—Benmont adds the fog.” **“Red Bull & Hennessy”** “I was writing this song, almost predicting the breakup with my longtime partner, while he was in the room. I originally wanted to call it ‘Spark,’ ’cause when that spark goes out in a relationship it’s really hard to get it back.” **“Hollywood Lawn”** “I had this for years and recorded three or four different versions; I did a version with three female vocalists a cappella. Then I went to Jamaica with Savannah and Jimmy Buffett—I actually wrote some songs with Jimmy for the *Escape to Margaritaville* musical that didn’t get used. We didn’t use that version, but I really arranged the s\*\*\* out of it there, and some of the lyrics are about that experience.” **“Do Si Do”** “Wrote this for a friend who went off his psych meds abruptly, which is so dangerous—you have to taper off. I asked Beck to produce it for a reason: He gets in there and wants to add and change chords. And whatever he suggests is always right, of course. That’s a good thing to remember in life: Beck is always right.” “Dogwood” “This is my favorite song on the record. I wrote it on the piano even though I don’t think I’m a very good piano player. I probably should learn more, but I’m just using the instrument as a way to get the song out. This was a live vocal, too. When I’m playing and singing at the same time, I’m approaching the material more as a songwriter rather than a singer, and that changes the whole dynamic in a good way.” **“Party Clown”** “I’d have to describe this as a Faustian love song set at South by Southwest. There’s a line in there where I say, ‘Can you be my puzzle piece, baby?/When I cry like Meryl Streep?’ It’s funny, because Meryl actually did a song of mine, ‘Cold One,’ in *Ricki and the Flash*.” **“Little White Dove”** “Toward the end of the record, I would write songs at home and then visit my mom in the hospital when she was sick. I started this on bass, had the chord structure down, and wrote it at the pace it took to walk from the hospital elevator to the end of the hall. I was able to sing my mom the chorus before she passed.” **“Taffy”** “That one started out as a poem I’d written on an airplane, then it turned into a song. It’s a very specific account of a weekend spent in Wisconsin, and there are some deep Wisconsin references in there. I’m not interested in platitudes, either as a writer or especially as a listener. I want to hear details. That’s why I like hip-hop so much. All those details, names that I haven’t heard, words that have meanings that I don’t understand and have to look up later. I’m interested in those kinds of specifics. That’s also what I love about Bob Dylan songs, too—they’re very, very specific. You can paint an incredibly vivid picture or set a scene or really project a feeling that way.” **“On the Line”** “This is an important song for me. If you read the credits on this record, it says, ‘All songs by Jenny Lewis.’ Being in a band like Rilo Kiley was all about surrendering yourself to the group. And then working with Johnathan for so long, I might have lost a little bit of myself in being a collaborator. It’s nice to know I can create something that’s totally my own. I feel like this got me back to that place.” **“Rabbit Hole”** “The record was supposed to end with ‘On the Line’—the dial tone that closes the song was supposed to be the last thing you hear. But I needed to write ‘Rabbit Hole,’ almost as a mantra for myself: ‘I’m not gonna go/Down the rabbit hole with you.’ I figured the song would be for my next project, but I played it for Beck and he insisted that we put it on this record. It almost feels like a perfect postscript to this whole period of my life.”
Kelsey Waldon works in the country, folk, and bluegrass songwriting tradition of depicting rural life—but has zero interest in romanticizing or simplifying her subject matter. On her third full-length—and first for John Prine’s Oh Boy Records—the Nashville singer conjures the rustic places and resourceful people of her upbringing in all their complexity. “Kentucky, 1988” and “Black Patch” are tales of stubborn self-reliance—one autobiographical, the other historical. In the title track, “Anyhow,” and “Lived and Let Go,” she locates enlightenment in plainspoken country wisdom, and in “Sunday’s Children,” she draws a connection between many kinds of people dwelling at the social margins. The album’s sinewy, down-home, occasionally rocking folk-country arrangements revolve around the vinegary stoicism of Waldon’s singing and the plaintive potency of Brett Resnick’s steel guitar playing.
Michael Kiwanuka never seemed the type to self-title an album. He certainly wasn’t expected to double down on such apparent self-assurance by commissioning a kingly portrait of himself as the cover art. After all, this is the singer-songwriter who was invited to join Kanye West’s *Yeezus* sessions but eventually snuck wordlessly out, suffering impostor syndrome. That sense of self-doubt shadowed him even before his 2012 debut *Home Again* collected a Mercury Prize nomination. “It’s an irrational thought, but I’ve always had it,” he tells Apple Music. “It keeps you on your toes, but it was also frustrating me. I was like, ‘I just want to be able to do this without worrying so much and just be confident in who I am as an artist.’” Notions of identity also got him thinking about how performers create personas—onstage or on social media—that obscure their true selves, inspiring him to call his third album *KIWANUKA* in an act of what he calls “anti-alter-ego.” “It’s almost a statement to myself,” he says. “I want to be able to say, ‘This is me, rain or shine.’ People might like it, people might not, it’s OK. At least people know who I am.” Kiwanuka was already known as a gifted singer and songwriter, but *KIWANUKA* reveals new standards of invention and ambition. With Danger Mouse and UK producer Inflo behind the boards—as they were on *Love & Hate* in 2016—these songs push his barrel-aged blend of soul and folk further into psychedelia, fuzz rock, and chamber pop. Here, he takes us through that journey song by song. **You Ain’t the Problem** “‘You Ain’t the Problem’ is a celebration, me loving humans. We forget how amazing we are. Social media’s part of this—all these filters hiding things that we think people won\'t like, things we think don\'t quite fit in. You start thinking this stuff about you is wrong and that you’ve got a problem being whatever you are and who you were born to be. I wanted to write a song saying, ‘You’re not the problem. You just have to continue being *you* more, go deeper within yourself.’ That’s where the magic comes—as opposed to cutting things away and trying to erode what really makes you.” **Rolling** “‘Rolling with the times, don’t be late.’ Everything’s about being an artist for me, I guess. I was trying to find my place still, but you can do things to make sure that you fit in or are keeping up with everything that’s happening—whether it’s posting stuff online or keeping up with the coolest records, knowing the right things. Or it could just be you’re in your mid-thirties, you haven’t got married or had kids yet, and people are like, ‘What?’ ‘Rolling with the times’ is like, go at your own pace. In my head, there was early Stooges records and French records like Serge Gainsbourg with the fuzz sounds. I wanted to make a song that sounded kind of crazy like that.” **I’ve Been Dazed** “Eddie Hazel from Funkadelic is my favorite guitar player. This has anthemic chords because he would always have really beautiful anthemic chords in the songs that he wrote. It just came out almost hymn-like. Lyrically, because it has this melancholy feel to it, I was singing about waking up from the nightmare of following someone else’s path or putting yourself down, low self-esteem—the things ‘You Ain\'t the Problem’ is defying. The feeling is, ‘Man, I\'ve been in this kind of nightmare, I just want to get out of it, I’m ready to go.’” **Piano Joint (This Kind of Love) \[Intro\]** “As a teenager, I’d just escape \[into some albums\], like I could teleport away from life and into that person’s world. I really wanted to have that feel with this record. It would be so vivid, there was no chance to get out of it, no gap in the songs—make it feel like one long piece. Some songs just flow into each other, but some needed interludes as passageways. This intro came when I was playing some bass and \[Inflo\] was playing some piano and I started singing my idea of a Marvin Gaye soul tune—a deep, dark, melancholic cut from one of his ’70s records. Then Danger Mouse had the idea, ‘Why don’t you pitch some of it down so it sounds different?’” **Piano Joint (This Kind of Love)** “I used to always love melancholy songs; the sadder it is, the happier I’d be afterwards. This was my moment to really exercise that part of me. Originally, it was going to be a piano ballad, and then I was like, ‘Why don’t we try playing some drums?’ Inflo’s a really good drummer, so I went in and played bass with him, and it sounded really good. I was thinking of that ’70s Gil Scott-Heron East Coast soul. Then we worked with this amazing string arranger, Rosie Danvers, who did almost all the strings on the last album. I said to her, ‘It’s my favorite song, just do something super beautiful.’ She just killed it.” **Another Human Being** “We were doing all the interludes and Danger Mouse had found loads of samples. This was a news report \[about the ’60s US civil rights sit-in protests\]. I remember thinking, ‘This sounds amazing, it goes into “Living in Denial” perfectly—it just changes that song.’ And, yeah, again, I’m ’70s-obsessed, but the ’60s and ’70s were so pivotal for young American black men and women, and it just gave a gravitas to the record. It goes to identity and something that resonates with me and my name and who I am. It gives me loads of confidence to continue to be myself.” **Living in Denial** “This is how me, Inflo, and Danger Mouse sound when we’re completely ourselves and properly linked together. No arguments, just let it happen, don’t think about it. I was trying to be a soul group—thinking of The Delfonics, The Isley Brothers, The Temptations, The Chambers Brothers. Again, the lyrics are that thing of seeking acceptance: You don’t need to seek it, just accept yourself and then whoever wants to hang with you will.” **Hero (Intro)** “‘Hero’ was the last song we completed. Once it started to sound good, I was sitting there with my acoustic, playing. We’d done the ‘Piano Joint’ intro and I was like, ‘Oh, we should pitch down this number as well and make it something that we really wouldn’t do with a straight rock ’n’ roll song.’” **Hero** “‘Hero’ was the hardest to come up with lyrics for. We had the music and melody for, like, two years. Any time I tried to touch it, I hated it—I couldn’t come up with anything. Then I was reading about Fred Hampton from the Black Panthers and I started thinking about all these people that get killed—or, like Hendrix, die an accidental death—who have so much to give or do so much in such a small time. I also love the thing where all these legends, Bowie and Bob Dylan, were creating larger-than-life personas that we were obsessed with. You didn’t really know who they were. That really made me sad, because I don’t disagree with it, but I know that’s not me. So, ‘Am I a hero?’ was also asking, ‘If I do that stuff, will I become this big artist that everyone respects?’—that ‘I’m not enough’ thing.” **Hard to Say Goodbye** “This is my love of Isaac Hayes and big orchestrations, lush strings, people like David Axelrod. Flo actually brought in this sample from a Nat King Cole song, just one chord, and we pitched it around, and then we replayed it with a 20-piece string orchestra packed into the studio. We had a double-bass cello, the whole works, and this really good piano player Kadeem \[Clarke\] who plays with Little Simz, and our friend Nathan \[Allen\] playing drums. That was pretty fun.” **Final Days** “At first, I didn’t know where this would fit on the record, like, ‘Man, this is cool, I just don’t *love*it.’ I wrote some lyrics and thought, ‘This is better, but it’s missing something.’ It always felt like space to me, so I said to Kennie \[Takahashi\], the engineer, ‘Are there any samples you can find of people in space?’ We found these astronauts about to crash, which is kind of dark, but it gave it this emotion it was missing. It gave me goosebumps. Later, we found out that it was a fake, some guys messing around in Italy in the ’60s for an art project or something.” **Interlude (Loving the People)** “‘Final Days’ was sounding amazing, but it needed to go somewhere else at the end. I had this melody on the Wurlitzer, and originally it was an instrumental bit that comes in for the end of ‘Final Days’ so that it ends somewhere completely different, like the spaceship’s landing at its destination. But I was like, ‘Let’s stretch it out. Let’s do more.’ Danger Mouse found this \[US congressman and civil rights leader\] John Lewis sample, and it sounded beautiful and moving over these chords, so we put it here.” **Solid Ground** “When everything gets stripped away—all the strings, all the sounds, all the interludes—I’m still just a dude that sits and plays a song on a guitar or piano. I felt like the album needed a glimpse of that. Rosie did a beautiful arrangement and then I finished it off—everyone was out somewhere, so I just played all the instruments, apart from drums and things like that. So, ‘Solid Ground’ is my little piece that I had from another place. Lyrically, it’s about finding the place where you feel comfortable.” **Light** “I just thought ‘Light’ was a nice dreamy piece to end the record with—a bit of light at the end of this massive journey. You end on this peaceful note, something positive. For me, light describes loads of things that are good—whether it’s obvious things like the light at the end of the tunnel or just a light feeling in my heart. The idea that the day’s coming—such a peaceful, exciting thing. We’re just always looking for it.” *All Apple Music subscribers using the latest version of Apple Music on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV can listen to thousands of Dolby Atmos Music tracks using any headphones. When listening with compatible Apple or Beats headphones, Dolby Atmos Music will play back automatically when available for a song. For other headphones, go to Settings > Music > Audio and set the Dolby Atmos switch to “Always On.” You can also hear Dolby Atmos Music using the built-in speakers on compatible iPhones, iPads, MacBook Pros, and HomePods, or by connecting your Apple TV 4K to a compatible TV or AV receiver. Android is coming soon. AirPods, AirPods Pro, AirPods Max, BeatsX, Beats Solo3, Beats Studio3, Powerbeats3, Beats Flex, Powerbeats Pro, and Beats Solo Pro Works with iPhone 7 or later with the latest version of iOS; 12.9-inch iPad Pro (3rd generation or later), 11-inch iPad Pro, iPad (6th generation or later), iPad Air (3rd generation), and iPad mini (5th generation) with the latest version of iPadOS; and MacBook (2018 model and later).*
When David Berman disbanded Silver Jews in 2009, the world stood to lose one of the best writers in indie rock, a guy who catalogued the magic and misery of everyday life with wit, heart, and the ragged glory of the occupationally down-and-out. After a 10-year break professedly spent reading books and arguing with people on Reddit, Berman enlisted members of the Brooklyn band Woods to back him on *Purple Mountains*. Berman’s pain had never been laid quite so bare, nor had it ever sounded quite so urgent. “I spent a decade playing chicken with oblivion,” he sings on the swaggering “That’s Just the Way I Feel.” “Day to day, I’m neck and neck with giving in.” And “Margaritas at the Mall” turns an ordinary happy hour into a jeremiad about the cold comforts of capitalism in a godless world. That the music—country-tinged indie rock—was as polished and competent as it was only highlighted Berman’s intensity: less a rock singer than a street preacher, someone who needed to avail himself of his visions stat. But even at his most desperate, he remained achingly funny, turning statements of existential loneliness into the kind of bumper sticker Zen that made him seem like an ordinary guy no matter how highfalutin he could get. “Well, if no one’s fond of fuckin’ me, maybe no one’s fuckin’ fond of me,” he sings on the album-closing “Maybe I’m the Only One for Me,” sounding not all that far off from the George Strait one-twos he reportedly loved. Above all, though, his writing is beautiful, attuned to detail in ways that make ordinary scenarios shimmer with quiet magic. Just listen to “Snow Is Falling in Manhattan,” which turns a quiet night in a big city into an allegory of finding solace in the weather of what comes to us. Shortly after the release of *Purple Mountains*, Berman died, at the age of 52, a tragic end to what felt like a triumphant return. “The dead know what they\'re doing when they leave this world behind,” he sings on “Nights That Won’t Happen.” “When the here and the hereafter momentarily align.”
David Berman comes in from the cold after ten long years. His new musical expression is a meltdown unparalleled in modern memory. He warns us that his findings might be candid, but as long as his punishment comes in such bite-sized delights of all-American jukebox fare, we'll hike the Purple Mountains with pleasure forever.
Over her four-decade career, Reba McEntire has made an indelible mark on country music. From being discovered at an Oklahoma rodeo—she sang the national anthem and caught the ear of actor-musician Red Steagall, who then signed her to Mercury Records—to her stints as a sitcom star and the go-to host of the Academy of Country Music Awards, she’s become one of the best-selling musicians of all time. No doubt she had some of this history in mind when recording *Stronger Than the Truth*, her 33rd (!) studio album—a back-to-roots affair that blends together honky-tonk, western swing, and other classic country sounds, presented with the same emotion that’s defined her biggest hits. “I wanted to make the kind of music that I had grown up performing, having fun with, dancing to,” Reba tells Apple Music. “It coulda been a triple album, we had so many great songs.” Reba walks us through every track to explain how each was created. **“Swing All Night Long with You”** “Sidney Cox wrote this song. The man I’m dating right now, Skeeter Lasuzzo, his wife passed away five years ago, and she was best friends with Sidney Cox\'s mother-in-law, so Sidney\'s mother-in-law sent this song to Skeeter and said, \'I don\'t know if Reba would be interested in this.\' I fell in love with it immediately. You never know where a song is going to come from.” **“Stronger Than the Truth”** “\'Stronger Than the Truth\' was written by Hannah Blaylock and Autumn McEntire. Autumn happens to be my brother\'s oldest daughter, and she\'s been writing for a while, and performing a little bit, and I heard this song several years ago when they\'d first written it. I kept it in my computer, and when I told Autumn it was going to be the title of the album, she was just thrilled to pieces.” **“Storm in a Shot Glass”** “It’s just a powerhouse song; it was so much fun to perform in the studio. I think we got it on the first take. The band had a blast with it. It’s just a fun, sassy song.” **“Tammy Wynette Kind of Pain”** “Of course it’s \[co-written by\] Brandy Clark. I\'m a huge fan of hers. It’s the ultimate country song on this album—you can\'t get any sadder than singin’ a Tammy Wynette song. It\'s definitely women\'s turn to come to the forefront. And what they\'re bringing to the public right now is very heartfelt. We\'ve been on a trend of feel-good music, but I think it needs to go back to a deeper emotional status, and I think that\'s what these ladies are bringing to the fans right now.” **“Cactus in a Coffee Can”** “I asked Buddy Cannon, my producer, \'Have you ever heard of a song called “Cactus in a Coffee Can”?\' I sent it to him, and he said, \'I produced that for my daughter Melonie 10 years ago, and nothing ever happened to it.\' And I said, \'I love it, let\'s do it.\' Oh, and by the way, Melonie and Buddy are singing harmony on it.” **“Your Heart”** “It’s a such a different song for the album, with the hollow-body acoustic guitar and that Spanish feel. I love minor chords in a song.” **“The Clown”** “I\'d had \'The Clown\' for several years also, just waiting for the right time to record it. The video for this, you\'re in that restaurant with this woman when the guy says, \'Hey, I don\'t love you anymore.\' She\'s looking for help from the waiter and he says, \'Well, is there anything else you need tonight?\' It’s such a wonderful song.” **“No U in Oklahoma”** “Donna McSpadden is a good friend of mine from Chelsea, Oklahoma. Her husband, Clem McSpadden, was the one that let me sing the national anthem in the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City in 1974, which got me discovered. So Donna tells me one day, \'Reba, I got a great title for ya: “There’s No U in Oklahoma and That\'s OK with Me.”\' And I said, \'Oh my gosh, Donna! That\'s hysterical!\' So, we were on vacation together with Ronnie \[Dunn\], and he started playing around with it. The three of us kind of pieced it together at different times, but it worked out.” **“The Bar\'s Getting Lower”** “This is a song that you\'re either going to love or hate if you\'re a woman. You can relate to it, you\'re dreading that time, if it\'s going to happen to ya. But, oh my god, what a country song! I absolutely love this one!” **“In His Mind”** “\'In His Mind\' was an idea that I had that I sent to Liz Hengber and Tommy Lee James. Tommy Lee used to be in the band with me—he was guitar player and harmony singer—and Liz is a great writer. It’s just one of those sad songs. Life is going on, and he\'s oblivious to it. He\'s thinking that his ex is coming back to him, and she never will.” **“Freedom”** “You can take this song different ways. At first I thought it was a patriotic song, but it is the freedom of being alone, freedom from being mistreated in other relationships. And this woman singing has found a new love, a new relationship—\'lovin\' you feels like freedom.\' The record label came in and listened to it and was just thrilled to pieces.” **“You Never Gave Up on Me”** “I was going to put it on my gospel album \[2017’s *Sing It Now: Songs of Faith & Hope*\]. It didn\'t make that album, so when I was going through my computer listening to the songs that I had been holding, keeping, hoarding…I found it. I think the intent of the song was about God, but then when I wanted it for this album, I said, \'Who is the one person who has never given up on me?\' And that\'s Momma. So this song I sang with Momma. I could only sing it one time. And I said, \'Buddy, do I need to do it again?\' He said, \'No, no, no! You got a lot a heart and motion in there. That\'s perfect!\'”
On her fifth proper full-length album, Sharon Van Etten pushes beyond vocals-and-guitar indie rock and dives headlong into spooky maximalism. With production help from John Congleton (St. Vincent), she layers haunting drones with heavy, percussive textures, giving songs like “Comeback Kid” and “Seventeen” explosive urgency. Drawing from Nick Cave, Lucinda Williams, and fellow New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen, *Remind Me Tomorrow* is full of electrifying anthems, with Van Etten voicing confessions of reckless, lost, and sentimental characters. The album challenges the popular image of Van Etten as *just* a singer-songwriter and illuminates her significant talent as composer and producer, as an artist making records that feel like a world of their own.
In the 1980s, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson came together to record as The Highwaymen, one of the most successful supergroups in country music history. Now, like the Pistol Annies before them, four of the genre’s most powerful women—Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby, and Amanda Shires—grab the torch. Their name is more than a play on words: “\[The men\] were able to stand shoulder to shoulder with each other as equals,” Brandi Carlile tells Apple Music’s Brooke Reese. “This is a difficult time for women to do that because there are so few spaces for us on country radio, and in the industry in general, so we thought, ‘Why can’t we form a straight line? A shoulder-to-shoulder women’s country group?’” Their eponymous debut album puts female stories front and center—mothers, daughters, witches, lesbians, cowgirls, and more—in a celebration of American women who refuse to choose between success and family, power and love. “Making bank/Shaking hands/Driving 80/Trying to get home just to feed the baby,” they sing on lead single “Redesigning Women,” a toast to ambitious ladies “breaking every Jell-O mold.” But underneath those winking lyrics and warm, absorbing harmonies is a serious message aimed directly at Nashville’s old guard: *Hear us*. “I want to get in the door, and I want our band to get played on country radio,” Shires says. “And once we get in the door, I want to hold it open.” The songs here are daringly vulnerable (“Old Soul”), tough (“Don’t Call Me,\" “Loose Change”), and, at their core, unifying. The album standout “Crowded Table” calls for a more inclusive world: “If we want a garden/We’re gonna have to sow the seeds,” they sing in unison. “Plant a little happiness/Let the roots run deep.”
*III* got its title not only from being The Lumineers’ third studio album, but also because it tells the three-chapter tale of the ill-fated Sparks family: matriarch Gloria, her son Jimmy, and her grandson Junior—three generations facing the ruination of addiction. The Sparks are a fictional family, but their stories come from a real place: Vocalist Wesley Schultz and percussionist Jeremiah Fraites crafted the characters from their own experiences of trying to save their loved ones from addiction. Schultz’s anguished vocals contrast a twinkling piano on “Donna,” the story of a mother who supplements the emptiness of her domestic life with alcohol. Foreboding drums guide her deeper into her destruction on “Life in the City.” For anyone hoping for an encore of the band’s balmy sound from their early days, you’ll find a sonic match with “Gloria,” but tread lightly—the song moves at such a blithe pace that the words “Gloria, there’s easier ways to die” come as a shock to the ears. “Jimmy Sparks” is a piano-driven tale of a man who copes with his depression through violence, alcohol, and gambling. The effects of Junior’s father’s disarray are apparent on “It Wasn’t Easy to Be Happy for You,” a song that plays as a breakup letter from someone who couldn’t handle the weight of mental illness anymore. “Is she dead? Is she fine?/Every day, every night,” Schultz whispers on “Leader of the Landslide,” a reminder of the album’s dismal origins.
“It was baby steps—we didn’t say, hey, we’re going to make an album or go on tour,” The Raconteurs co-frontman Jack White explains to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “We just thought, let’s get together and record a couple of songs and see how that goes.” The time felt right for White and Brendan Benson to reconnect following a series of jam sessions with drummer Patrick Keeler, something they hadn’t done in over a decade due to their commitments to other projects. During that time, White pursued his solo career and formed The Dead Weather with Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence, all while running Third Man Records; Benson launched his own record label and released 2012’s *What Kind of World* and 2013’s *You Were Right*. Though their third album touches on the power-pop stomp of *Broken Boy Soldiers* and the country-folk of *Consolers of the Lonely*, the band now seems to have one mission in mind: Play some good ol’ fashioned classic rock that pays homage to their musical roots. White and Benson are both based in Nashville now, but their native Michigan is never far from their hearts. “Well, I’m Detroit born and raised/But these days, I’m living with another,” White and Benson harmonize on the single “Bored and Razed.” The guitars nod to pioneering Michigan bands like Grand Funk Railroad and The Amboy Dukes, while the scuzzy, frantic Stooges-like garage rock of “Don’t Bother Me” features White, unsurprisingly, imploring you to put down your damn phone. But *Help Us Stranger* is not just strut and swagger: From reflective folk rock (“Only Child”) and piano balladry (“Shine the Light on Me”) to heartbreaking blues (“Now That You’re Gone”), White and Benson keep it fresh with their engaging, mood-shifting songwriting. They sound like they’re genuinely having fun, happy that they’re still together after all these years. “We played a show in London with The Strokes, and what struck me was, \'Ah, it’s so great to see any band have the original members they started with even three years later, let alone 15, 20 years later,\'” says White. “Everyone’s for the same goal of trying to make some sort of music happen that didn’t exist before. But the proof is, those same people are in the room together.”
Yola’s sound conjures a moment in the late \'60s when country, R&B, gospel, pop, rock, and the lighter side of psychedelia mixed together so freely—and so seamlessly—one remembered they all came from the same distinctly American well. Produced by The Black Keys\' Dan Auerbach, *Walk Through Fire* is expectedly long on style: “Faraway Look” is Dusty Springfield refracted through Phil Spector; “Walk Through Fire” is a slow folk thump so studiously offhand that Auerbach keeps the count-off in the mix; “Lonely the Night” captures the pop-lite poise of Petula Clark, and “Love All Night (Work All Day)” the catharsis of Rod Stewart. Really, though, it’s a testament to Yola’s writing and voice—smoky and deep but never smothering—that the album manages to cohere as the sound of a single artist.