NME's Best Albums of 2024... So Far

Ariana Grande is used to being in the spotlight, but over time, she’s gotten savvy at playing it. The pop star’s seventh studio album *eternal sunshine*—a lightly conceptual riff on the head-spinning 2004 film starring Jim Carrey, of whom Grande has said she’s a lifelong fan—feels like a mind game itself, blurring the lines between real-life references and theatrical bits. It arrives in the middle of a whirlwind tabloid-packed stretch—Grande married, divorced, and scored a starring role in Hollywood’s big-screen adaptation of *Wicked*—and she knows fans have questions. What’s true? What’s real? Ari gives a lot of things on this album, but answers aren’t one of them, a cunning reminder of how little transparency celebrities actually owe us. In an interview with Zane Lowe, Grande leans into the project’s thematic murkiness. “true story,” she says, is “an untrue story based on all untrue events,” and when asked about her own experience with the Saturn return, an astrology milestone referenced in the album’s only interlude, she shrugs. “It was chill. Nothing changed. Pretty uneventful.” She says she finds freedom in art because “you can really pull from anywhere,” and she describes the film as another “lovely costume” to wear. Her answers have flickers of defiance that feel like power. Whoever said albums had to be tidy, or true? “It doesn’t have to be an everlasting love story,” she tells Lowe. “Love is complicated. Showcasing both sides of it is what I tried to \[do\].” If there’s one thing these tracks make clear, it’s that she’s still Ari on the mic—she’s still hitting those high highs (“eternal sunshine”); still finding release on the dance floor (“yes, and?”); still sifting gold out of ’90s R&B (“the boy is mine”), a sequel to the leaked 2023 track “fantasize.” Her favorite? “imperfect for you,” a tribute to the friends who make up her inner circle. “We’re so lucky to have loved ones who are accepting and real with us no matter what,” she says. “We live in a time where everything is boiled down, but that song demands room for nuance, humanness, and complexity.”

“Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?” Linda Martell cackles at the beginning of “SPAGHETTII.” Perhaps the name Linda Martell isn’t a household one, which only proves her point. She was the first Black woman to perform at the Grand Ole Opry, but her attempt to move from soul and R&B into the realm of country in the 1960s was met with racist resistance—everything from heckling to outright blackballing. Beyoncé knows the feeling, as she explained in an uncharacteristically vulnerable Instagram post revealing that her eighth studio album was inspired by a deep dive into the history of Black country music following an experience where she felt similarly unwelcome. *COWBOY CARTER* is a sprawling 80-minute tribute not only to those pioneering artists and their outlaw spirit, but to the very futility of reducing music to a single identifying word. Another key quote from that post: “This ain’t a country album. This is a Beyoncé album.” It’s more than a catchy slogan; anyone looking for mere honky-tonk cosplay is missing a much richer and more complex point. Listening in full to Act II of the presumed trilogy Bey began with 2022’s *RENAISSANCE*, it’s clear that the perennial overachiever hasn’t merely “gone country,” she’s interrogating what the word even means—and who merits the designation. On “AMERIICAN REQUIEM,” in a voice deep and earthy as Texas red dirt, the Houston native sings, “Used to say I spoke too country/And then the rejection came, said I wasn’t country enough.” She nods again, as she’s done before on songs like “Formation,” to her family ties to Alabama moonshiners and Louisiana Creoles. “If that ain’t country,” she wonders, “tell me what is.” With subtlety and swagger, she contextualizes country as an offshoot of the Black American musical canon, a storytelling mode springing from and evolving alongside gospel and blues. Over the wistful pedal steel and gospel organ of “16 CARRIAGES,” she tells you what it’s like to be a teenage workhorse who grows into an adult perfectionist obsessed with ideas of legacy, with a bit of family trauma buried among the riffs. On “YA YA,” Beyoncé expands the scope to rock ’n’ roll at its most red-blooded and fundamental, playing the parts of both Ike and Tina as she interpolates The Beach Boys and slips in a slick Playboi Carti reference, yowling: “My family lived and died in America/Good ol’ USA/Whole lotta red in that white and blue/History can’t be erased.” A Patsy Cline standard goes Jersey club mode on “SWEET ★ HONEY ★ BUCKIIN’,” with a verse from the similarly genre-flouting Shaboozey and a quick note regarding *RENAISSANCE*‘s Grammy fortunes: “AOTY I ain’t win/I ain’t stuntin’ ’bout them/Take that shit on the chin/Come back and fuck up the pen.” Who but Beyoncé could make a crash course in American music history feel like the party of the year? There’s the one-two punch of sorely needed summer slow-dance numbers: the Miley Cyrus duet “II MOST WANTED,” with its whispers of Fleetwood Mac, followed by “LEVII’S JEANS” with Post Malone, the “in those jeans” anthem filling the radio’s Ginuwine-shaped hole. *RENAISSANCE*’s euphorically nasty house bounce returns, albeit with more banjo, on “RIIVERDANCE,” where “II HANDS II HEAVEN” floats on clouds of ’90s electronica for an ode to alternately riding wild horses and 24-inch spinners on candy paint. (Houston, Texas, baby!) There are do-si-do ditties, murder ballads, daddy issues, whiskey kisses, hungover happy hours, cornbread and grits, Beatles covers, smoke breaks, and, on “DAUGHTER,” what may or may not be a wink in the direction of the artist who won AOTY instead. There’s also a Dolly-approved Beyoncification of “Jolene,” to whom the protagonist is neither saying please nor begging on the matter of taking her man. (“Your peace depends on how you move, Jolene,” Bey purrs, ice in her veins.) Is this a genre-bucking hoedown? A chess move? A reckoning? A requiem? If anyone can pull it off, it’s *COWBOY CARTER*, as country as it gets.

In April 2023, Bill Ryder-Jones was playing the second of two acoustic shows in the compact theater space at East London’s Hoxton Hall. Halfway through, he asked the crowd of a couple of hundred if they had any requests. Song titles were volleyed back at him but no one bid for “Daniel,” despite it being one of his most popular songs. From 2016’s *West Kirby County Primary* album, it describes how Ryder-Jones and his family became unmoored by the loss of his older brother, aged just nine, during a family holiday in 1991. Tonight in that intimate room, it felt too invasive to ask for, perhaps, too searing a flame of grief and trauma to stand so close to. Nevertheless, Ryder-Jones played “Daniel” later in the show, his audience listening in damp-eyed stillness. As the song finished and applause erupted, Ryder-Jones gently raised his fist in salute and said thank you. Alongside the new songs he played that night, that moment offered a clue to where the former The Coral guitarist is on this fifth solo album, released nine months later. He’s still contending with difficult times and regrets, creating beautiful music in the gloaming, but he’s also pulling out moments of strength, gratitude, and hope. As a solo artist, Ryder-Jones has proved satisfyingly restless, ricocheting from orchestral instrumentals (2011’s *If…*) and wistful bedroom folk (*A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart*, 2013) to the unkempt alt-rock of *West Kirby…* and the glacially paced sorrow of 2018’s *Yawn*. He’s been softly dismissive of those final two, despite their excellence, stating that he’s always been striving to match *A Bad Wind…*. *Iechyd Da* achieves this and more by returning to that album’s delicacy and melody and decorating them with magnetic layers of sound—including children’s choirs, disco samples, and fellow Scouse singer-songwriter Michael Head reading from *Ulysses*. The songs were written in lockdown, a difficult period for anyone—not least those like Ryder-Jones who live with depression and anxiety. It was also a time in his life when a relatively new relationship grew and then withered, and a prescribed course of Valium slipped into dependency. So there’s understandable vulnerability and self-doubt here. “While I’m too much, I’ll never be enough for you, I know,” he concedes on opener “I Know That It’s Like This (Baby).” Despair reaches its depths on lead single “This Can’t Go On.” Its blend of disoriented fragility and night-sky expanse recalls Mercury Rev’s *Deserter’s Songs* as Ryder-Jones walks his coastal town of West Kirby after dark, listening to Echo & The Bunnymen and yearning for something more, something different, something everyday—kids, companionship, a driving license. In these intimate songs, it’s the little things—biographical details, nuggets of sound—that pull you in. “I keep the good times closer than the bad/Running your baths before *American Dad*,” he tells a departed lover on “Christinha.” A sample of Brazilian tropicália pioneer Gal Costa’s “Baby” floats through “I Know That It’s Like This (Baby)” like a ghost from better times. And it’s flooring to hear Ryder-Jones’ brittle whisper crumble to a sigh at the final syllable of “Oh, how I loved you” on “A Bad Wind Blows in My Heart Pt. 3.” The ambivalence of “There’s something great about life/But there’s something not quite right” (“It’s Today Again”) doesn’t suggest a man who’s found his peace but there’s also stoic acceptance of some things passed. “’Cause I don’t think I could’ve given any more/A sun just sank into some sea” he tells that absent lover on “Christinha.” One of the most difficult memories revisited is on “Thankfully for Anthony,” which recalls the day a bad dose of tranquilizers unfastened Ryder-Jones to the point that the song opens with “I’m thinking this might just be it/I’ve waited a lifetime for this.” Anthony is the friend who drives him to hospital to get checked out, and here in his oldest pal’s car—in his *care*—clarity and purpose arrives. “I felt loved/I’m still lost/But I know love/And I know loss/But I chose love,” sings Ryder-Jones amid a heart-bursting orchestral swell. When the music fades out, you can hear a faint voice from the studio say, “Thought that was pretty good,” before the album ends with “Nos Da.” Named after the Welsh for “goodnight,” it’s 90 seconds of soothing piano and strings—a soft landing, a gently raised salute.

Billie Eilish has always delighted in subverting expectations, but *HIT ME HARD AND SOFT* still, somehow, lands like a meteor. “This is the most ‘me’ thing I’ve ever made,” she tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “And purely me—not a character.” An especially wide-ranging and transportive project, even for her, it’s brimming with the guts and theatricality of an artist who has the world at her feet—and knows it. In a tight 45 minutes, Eilish does as she promises and hits listeners with a mix of scorching send-ups, trance excursions, and a stomping tribute to queer pleasure, alongside more soft-edged cuts like teary breakup ballads and jaunts into lounge-y jazz. But the project never feels zigzaggy thanks to, well, the Billie Eilish of it all: her glassy vocals, her knowing lyrics, her unique ability to make softness sound so huge. *HIT ME* is Eilish’s third album and, like the two previous ones, was recorded with her brother and longtime creative partner FINNEAS. In conceptualizing it, the award-winning songwriting duo were intent on creating the sort of album that makes listeners feel like they’ve been dropped into an alternate universe. As it happens, this universe has several of the same hallmarks as the one she famously drew up on her history-making debut, 2019’s *WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?*. In many ways, this project feels more like that album’s sequel than 2021’s jazzy *Happier Than Ever*, which Eilish has said was recorded during a confusing, depressive pandemic haze. In the three years since, she has tried to return to herself—to go outside, hang out with friends, and talk more openly about sex and identity, all things that make her feel authentic and, for lack of a better word, normal. “As much as *Happier Than Ever* was coming from this place of, like, \'We\'re so good. This sounds so good,\' it was also not knowing at all who I was,’” she tells Apple Music. FINNEAS agrees, calling it their “identity crisis album.” But *HIT ME HARD AND SOFT* is, she says, the reverse. “The whole time we were making it, we were like, \'I don\'t know if I\'m making anything good, this might be terrible…’ But now I\'m like, \'Yeah, but I\'m comfortable in who I am now.\' I feel like I know who I am now.” As a songwriter, Eilish is still in touch with her vulnerabilities, but at 22, with a garage full of Grammys and Oscars, they aren’t as heavy. These days it’s heartache, not her own insecurities, that keeps her up at night, and the songs are juicier for it. “LUNCH,” a racy, bass-heavy banger that can’t help but hog the spotlight, finds Eilish crushing so hard on a woman that she compares the hook-up to a meal. “I’ve said it all before, but I’ll say it again/I’m interested in more than just being your friend,” she sings. The lyrics are so much more than lewd flirtations. They’re also a way of stepping back into the spotlight—older, wiser, more fully herself. Read below as Eilish and FINNEAS share the inside story behind a few standout songs. **“LUNCH”** BILLIE: “One of the verses was written after a conversation I had with a friend and they were telling me about this complete animal magnetism they were feeling. And I was like, ‘Ooh, I\'m going to pretend to be them for a second and just write...and I’m gonna throw some jokes in there.’ We took ourselves a little too seriously on *Happier Than Ever*. When you start to embrace cringe, you\'re so much happier. You have so much more fun.” **“BIRDS OF A FEATHER”** BILLIE: “This song has that ending where I just keep going—it’s the highest I\'ve ever belted in my life. I was alone in the dark, thinking, ‘You know what? I\'m going to try something.’ And I literally just kept going higher and higher. This is a girl who could not belt until I was literally 18. I couldn\'t physically do it. So I\'m so proud of that. I remember coming home and being like, ‘Mom! Listen!’” **“WILDFLOWER”** BILLIE: “To me, \[the message here is\] I\'m not asking for reassurance. I am 100% confident that you love me. That\'s not the problem. The problem is this thing that I can\'t shake. It’s a girl code song. It\'s about breaking girl code, which is one of the most challenging places. And it isn’t about cheating. It isn’t about anything even bad. It was just something I couldn’t get out of my head. And in some ways, this song helped me understand what I was feeling, like, ‘Oh, maybe this is actually affecting me more than I thought.’ I love this song for so many reasons. It\'s so tortured and overthinky.” **“THE GREATEST”** BILLIE: “To us, this is the heart of the album. It completes the whole thing. Making it was sort of a turning point. Everything went pretty well after that. It kind of woke us back up.” FINNEAS: “When you realize you\'re willing to go somewhere that someone else isn\'t, it\'s so devastating. And everybody has been in some dynamic in their life or their relationship like that. When you realize that you\'d sacrifice and wear yourself out and compromise all these things, but the person you\'re in love with won’t make those sacrifices, or isn’t in that area? To me, that\'s what that song is about. It\'s like, you don\'t even want to know how lonely this is.” **“L’AMOUR DE MA VIE”** FINNEAS: “The album is all about Billie. It\'s not a narrative album about a fictional character. But we have always loved songs within songs within songs. Here, you\'ve just listened to Billie sound so heartbroken in ‘THE GREATEST,’ and then she sings this song that\'s like the antibody to that. It’s like, ‘You know what? Fuck you anyway.’ And then she goes to the club.” **“BLUE”** “The first quarter of ‘BLUE’ is a song Finneas and I made when I was 14 called ‘True Blue.’ We played it at little clubs before I had anything out, and never \[released it\] because we aged out of it. Years went by. Then, for a time, the second album was going to include one additional song called ‘Born Blue.’ It was totally different, and it didn’t make the cut. We never thought about it again. Then, in 2022, I was doing my laundry and found out ‘True Blue’ had been leaked. At first I was like ‘Oh god, they fucking stole my shit again,’ but then I couldn\'t stop listening. I went on YouTube and typed ‘Billie Eilish True Blue’ to find all the rips of it, because I didn\'t even have the original. Then it hit us, like, ‘Ooh, you know what\'d be cool? What if we took both of these old songs, resurrected them, and made them into one?’ The string motif is the melody from the bridge of ‘THE GREATEST,’ which is also in ‘SKINNY,’ which starts the album. So it also ends the album.”

“This album is actually an album of questioning. There\'s a lot of introspection, and within that, I\'m answering questions that I\'ve never had the space or capacity to ask,” Brittany Howard tells Apple Music about *What Now*, the Alabama Shakes singer-guitarist’s second solo album. “I was always so busy, I was always running around, I was on tour, I was preparing this, preparing that. This time I told myself when I would go in there and make songs in my little demo room, ‘No one\'s ever going to hear this,’ and it was very freeing.” Of course, people would end up hearing those songs, but that mindset helped Howard write from a brave new perspective. She dives into her personal history and guiding philosophy in a vulnerable way, like she did on 2019’s *Jaime*, but this time, the instrumental choices are bolder and more unexpected than ever before. “Power to Undo” is a folk-rock tune that showcases the album’s central theme. “You have the power to undo everything that I want/But I won\'t let you,” she sings. Once that’s revealed, the song descends into an acid-funk freakout, built around scratchy guitars and ramshackle drums. “‘Power to Undo’ is actually about freedoms,” she says. “A lot of people can experience this feeling of ‘I know I shouldn\'t do that. I know I need to keep moving in this direction.’ It\'s just about this thing chasing you down, and you\'re like, ‘No, you\'re not going to get me, I\'m not going to change directions.’” Elsewhere, on “Prove It to You,” Howard cues up gauzy synths and a dance-floor drum groove that’s made for an after-hours. It’s the furthest from the rootsy rock Howard rose to fame with, but the creative risks of *What Now* suggest an artist more interested in following a muse than replicating past successes. “I am always expanding and evolving and trying new things,” Howard says. “That\'s the most fun about being a creative person—trying things that challenge you and you don\'t know anything about.”

It’s no surprise that “PARTYGIRL” is the name Charli xcx adopted for the DJ nights she put on in support of *BRAT*. It’s kind of her brand anyway, but on her sixth studio album, the British pop star is reveling in the trashy, sugary glitz of the club. *BRAT* is a record that brings to life the pleasure of colorful, sticky dance floors and too-sweet alcopops lingering in the back of your mouth, fizzing with volatility, possibility, and strutting vanity (“I’ll always be the one,” she sneers deliciously on the A. G. Cook- and Cirkut-produced opening track “360”). Of course, Charli xcx—real name Charlotte Aitchison—has frequently taken pleasure in delivering both self-adoring bangers and poignant self-reflection. Take her 2022 pop-girl yet often personal concept album *CRASH*, which was preceded by the diaristic approach of her excellent lockdown album *how i’m feeling now*. But here, there’s something especially tantalizing in her directness over the intoxicating fumes of hedonism. Yes, she’s having a raucous time with her cool internet It-girl friends, but a night out also means the introspection that might come to you in the midst of a party, or the insurmountable dread of the morning after. On “So I,” for example, she misses her friend and fellow musician, the brilliant SOPHIE, and lyrically nods to the late artist’s 2017 track “It’s Okay to Cry.” Charli xcx has always been shaped and inspired by SOPHIE, and you can hear the influence of her pioneering sounds in many of the vocals and textures throughout *BRAT*. Elsewhere, she’s trying to figure out if she’s connecting with a new female friend through love or jealousy on the sharp, almost Uffie-esque “Girl, so confusing,” on which Aitchison boldly skewers the inanity of “girl’s girl” feminism. She worries she’s embarrassed herself at a party on “I might say something stupid,” wishes she wasn’t so concerned about image and fame on “Rewind,” and even wonders quite candidly about whether she wants kids on the sweet sparseness of “I think about it all the time.” In short, this is big, swaggering party music, but always with an undercurrent of honesty and heart. For too long, Charli xcx has been framed as some kind of fringe underground artist, in spite of being signed to a major label and delivering a consistent run of albums and singles in the years leading up to this record. In her *BRAT* era, whether she’s exuberant and self-obsessed or sad and introspective, Charli xcx reminds us that she’s in her own lane, thriving. Or, as she puts it on “Von dutch,” “Cult classic, but I still pop.”

Whether singing in Spanish or in English, Kali Uchis continually proves herself to be a versatile performer. Following 2020’s *Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios)* and its hit single “telepatía,” the Colombian American singer eventually boasted that she had two more albums, one in each language, more or less at the ready, the first being 2023’s soulful *Red Moon in Venus* and the next being *ORQUÍDEAS*. With lyrics primarily (though not exclusively) in Spanish, she delivers an exquisite pop-wise R&B set here, one replete with clubby highs and balladic depth. The dance floor is well served with cuts like “Me Pongo Loca” and “Pensamientos Intrusivos,” her ethereal vocals elevating them further. The collaborations reflect her journey as well as her status, as she links with superstar KAROL G on the polished perreo throwback “Labios Mordidos” and música mexicana sensation Peso Pluma for the romantic duet “Igual Que Un Ángel.” On “Muñekita,” she bridges her two worlds with the aid of Dominican dynamo El Alfa and City Girls rapper JT, who combine to produce an irresistible dembow moment.

South London songwriter Lola Young’s 2024 album *This Wasn’t Meant for You Anyway* has a misleading title. The genre-bending rising star crafts soaring choruses that unite people speaking different languages, and blends styles from disparate genres. Lola Young is for the people—unless you’re her ex. *That’s* who this album wasn’t made for. Take “Messy,” one of the project’s early singles. The bassline and drum groove interlock to create a solid backbeat while Young dips into a half-rapped flow and shuts down excuses from a former lover. She spits, “I get what you\'re saying/I just really don\'t want to hear it right now/Can you shut up for like once in your life?/Listen to me.” It’s a song that’s emblematic of the album’s approach to hypocrisy. Throughout *This Wasn’t Meant for You Anyway*, Lola Young comes correct at anyone trying to do her dirty, giving it right back without a second of hesitation.

On the strength of two excellent EPs—*Waves* (2021) and 2022’s *Banshee*—NewDad quickly became one of Ireland’s fastest rising acts, earning the four-piece big-gig support slots with Inhaler and Paolo Nutini in 2022. The gauzy textures of those two releases also fastened the “shoegaze” and “dream pop” tags to the Galway-formed band composed of Julie Dawson (vocals/guitar), Cara Joshi (bass), Fiachra Parslow (drums), and Sean O’Dowd (guitar). However, their own vision was always for something more divergent, something more muscular and dynamic—something they’ve forged on a debut album that adds cleaner, steelier edges to their sound while exploring their love of grunge, alt-rock, and electronic music. “It was really rock music that got us all into wanting to play in a band,” Dawson tells Apple Music. “We never really imagined that we’d make a rock record, but that’s what this ended up being. I guess deep down it was always what we wanted to do but we didn’t really have the tools to do it. When we started off, we were still figuring out our sound and then, when we started playing songs live, it was way heavier and we wanted to translate that into the recordings. When we got that guitar sound on ‘Sickly Sweet,’ we were like, ‘Nothing we’ve ever recorded sounded like that. Holy shit, that is what we want!’” The album was recorded with trusted band producer Chris Ryan at Rockfield Studios in Wales. Here, NewDad felt galvanized by the fresh air and the studio’s history—which includes incubating records by Queen, The Stone Roses, Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, Pixies, and Iggy Pop—while a downtime diet of zombie movies might, says Dawson, have added to the album’s sense of menace. As much as the sound of *MADRA*— Irish for “dog”—represents an evolution for NewDad, the lyrics are more concerned with stasis and repetition, particularly in our everyday relationships and behaviors. “It’s those things you can’t escape, or repeating unhealthy patterns,” says Dawson. “It was initially just a working title. It was probably because when we were like, ‘Oh, what will we name it?’ we saw a dog walk past the window or something. But the image of a dog following you does line up nicely with the music. It’s definitely a lot about the relationship between you and whoever—family, friends, partners.” Let Dawson explain further with her track-by-track guide. **“Angel”** “It was during lockdown and it was definitely like I was having a dry spell when it came to writing. \[TV series *Euphoria*\] is so lovely to look at and the plot lines are so crazy that it got my brain going. That whole dynamic between \[show characters\] Rue and Jules—feeling like a burden in a relationship—is something that so many people go through if you have bad mental health. It was one of those moments where I was like, ‘Oh yeah, OK. I have an idea of something I want to write about now.’ That bassline is just such a good hook. It’s just a really strong opening. We’ve always been very bass-led, and it’s a familiar sound, so it’s a nice way to open.” **“Sickly Sweet”** “‘Sickly Sweet’ is that whole thing of repeating unhealthy patterns, maybe going back to something or someone, even though you know that it’s bad news. The line that sums it up the best is: ‘But I’m reliant on the nonsense.’ It’s like when you do things out of pure boredom and it’s completely stupid, but it’s just something you do. I love this one because it feels like a lot of ’90s records that I would’ve listened to. \[We were aiming for\] a Breeders-y kind of thing. That raw vocal is something that we don’t do that often, but was definitely necessary.” **“Where I Go”** “This was a really old one. I had never imagined it being on the album, to be honest. But a lot of other people and the rest the band were like, ‘It really does sound great,’ after we recorded it in Rockfield. I was very against it for a while but when the mix started sounding really cool, I was like, ‘OK, I’m comfortable with this.’ It’s an important song on the album because so much of it is like, ‘Meh, I hate myself,’ and this is like, ‘No, actually, fuck you to anyone who actually made me feel like shit.’ It’s a good moment, a good release of anger.” **“Change My Mind”** “‘Change My Mind,’ again, it’s that unhealthy pattern where you’re not really trying to be better and then that repeats \[something\] bad, whatever it is. The initial inspiration, sonically, was \[2020 single\] ‘Blue.’ We were like, ‘We need to do something that’s kind of like “Blue” because everyone loves “Blue” so much.’ And funnily enough, it is a similar theme, that kind of, ‘I’m bringing my partner down.’ I think it’s a nice, poppy moment on there.” **“In My Head”** “\[May 2023’s single version\] was recorded in Church Studios \[in London\] and we loved how it sounded, so we wanted to put it out, but then we actually ended up doing the album in Rockfield, so we did an album version of it. I love both.” **“Nosebleed”** “This was one that I wrote with Justin Parker \[cowriter of Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’\]. It’s someone having a hold on you, a toxic relationship. It could be between friends, family, whatever. It’s that wanting to stay with that comfort even though it’s not necessarily good. But ‘Nosebleed’ was initially really high and really fast, and it was a really poppy song. I didn’t see it being on the album, but then we were doing preproduction with Chris Ryan and he was like, ‘I love this song so much. I really want to give it a go in Rockfield.’ And we were like, ‘OK, whatever. Let’s try slowing it down and making it lower,’ and then it clicked instantly. It was just like honey, just like a mushy, warm sound. I absolutely love it now.” **“Let Go”** “‘Let Go’ is way more about the instrumental and I guess I didn’t think that the vocal needed to be overly complicated, so there’s not a whole lot going on lyrically. I like that kind of swirling. It feels like you’re really stuck in something in that song. This and ‘White Ribbons’ are my two favorites on the album. I just love the chorus and the bridge and the guitars are so snarly. It’s sick.” **“Dream of Me”** “We wrote this in a session with a guy called Rob Brinkmann. I think we just had the chords. We brought it to Rob and he’s really excellent at structuring songs. The reference was actually ‘Waking Up in Vegas,’ the Katy Perry song. I guess it’s a lighter moment in the album because lyrically, as well, I’m not really saying anything profound. It’s just like, ‘Oh, when you like someone and they don’t really care about you,’ that’s it.” **“Nightmares”** “‘Nightmares’ was another song that I did with Justin and it was such a fun one to do because I went in with chords initially and we were layering it up. Then, when we had those little guitar harmonics, we were actually, ‘Just them by themselves sounds so sick.’ It was reminding me of Massive Attack and I thought that was a cool way to roll with it. So I love the electronic sounds in that song. ‘Nightmares,’ again, is that feeling of not wanting to like someone because you know it won’t work.” **“White Ribbons”** “It was very therapeutic to write and it feels like a more hopeful track on the album. We put our bodies through so much shit and they always fix us, and this is basically just a thank you \[for that\]. I actually don’t even know where it came from—one day I had that guitar line and vocals, and it’s a pretty line. I love the stripped-back moment and all the weird vocoder stuff.” **“Madra”** “‘Madra’ is really old now. It was a chord progression I was playing when we were in the studio in Belfast during *Banshee*. Once we got back from recording, we made the demo pretty quickly. We were sitting on that one for a while and we all loved it so much. The outro just felt so strong. It felt like such a cool ending, like a final scene. And all the bass licks and stuff, they’re just so sick. I feel like it sums up everything that is said in the album—about the highs and the lows and the repeating patterns.”

“I have to write about how I feel,” Rachel Chinouriri tells Apple Music. “If I don’t feel it or can’t relate to it, I can’t write about it.” Since breaking out in 2022 with viral track “So My Darling,” the South London singer-songwriter has done just that, penning bittersweet indie bops and devastating ballads that have been fueled, most often, by stories of heartache. You’ll find plenty of that on this debut album, but Chinouriri also goes deeper, with songs about self-contempt, loss, grief, and feeling like you don’t belong right when you’re supposed to be killing it (see “The Hills,” her cathartic exhale about a five-week songwriting trip to LA, which left her feeling lonely, under pressure, and creatively stumped). For Chinouriri, *What a Devastating Turn of Events* was shaped by “the journey of being in your early twenties. You finally leave home and then you are kind of becoming an adult, but you don’t really feel like an adult,” she says. “You’re still looking at the grown-ups to give you advice, but you are the grown-up. It is a weird journey of trying to discover yourself. Being able to feel and then turn it into song—it’s a privilege to have that as a gift.” But *What a Devastating Turn of Events* also feels rooted in much more than just a bumpy life transition, and Chinouriri’s lyricism is laced with far more wisdom than most people can apply to those chaotic early-twenties years. Either way, the singer-songwriter wanted her debut to capture what it’s like to be shattered by a sudden event. And so, the record opens with sharp-witted, mostly upbeat indie-pop moments (plus some “wonky” bits, as Chinouriri puts it), before the crushing title track—written after the singer-songwriter’s cousin tragically took her own life—shifts this album, and its creator, on its axis. What follows are some of Chinouriri’s most raw, arresting songs yet. “When death happens, it does turn your entire world upside down,” she says. “It might not even be death, it might just be something that happens. And sometimes you don’t realize how much you have until something major happens. Then you realize, ‘Damn, I’ve wasted so much time bothering about stuff that doesn’t matter.’ Turning points can either make or break people.” This album ends on Chinouriri’s own turning point: “Pocket,” a sweet song about new, better love that Chinouriri promised she’d give to the person who finally allowed her to feel it, followed by her acoustic version of “So My Darling,” the song that started this wild ride in the first place. Here, Chinouriri takes us through her debut, track by track. **“Garden of Eden”** “I wrote this after my big LA trip feeling like, ‘This \[the UK\] is home for me.’ I’m just adamant I want a house in the countryside. Where I grew up in Croydon isn’t that, but it was quiet, and I would always hear birds and see fields and grass. We were in a room \[in a studio in the UK countryside, where Chinouriri went after LA\] and would always have the recording on, and the birds were that loud. I was like, ‘Let’s just maybe make it a soundscape where you’re just falling into this situation.’ It’s setting the scene.” **“The Hills”** “We’ve left the Garden of Eden now and I’m like, ‘Right, I don’t belong here.’ The music video shows \[me\], a Black woman, walking across some flags, and people have said, ‘Oh, she’s talking about how she doesn’t belong in the UK,’ but I’m actually talking about how much I *do* belong. It’s almost seeing those street parties where they’ve got all the flags and being like, ‘I’m as English as you guys, so I belong here and I’ll be staying here whether you like it or not.’ The song is definitely a headbanging, screaming moment—it has a bit of an American-boy-band-in-a-basement, kids-in-a-garage vibe. It felt like a relief to have something after a trip where we didn’t have much, especially after five weeks.” **“Never Need Me”** “After I wrote this, I didn’t even send it to the label. A few days later, I was at a festival and my manager came to me and said, ‘Why didn’t you send us this song? Oli \[Bayston, one of the song’s co-writers\] sent it to us.’ I said, ‘I don’t like it, I think it’s a terrible song.’ I think it was because of its meaning. And in the session, I was just so angry and annoyed and in such an agitated mood. I felt uninspired. But later, I said, ‘If I can do it however I want, I’ll finish the song.’ So I went to \[songwriter\] Glen Roberts and changed all the production—I was thinking Kings of Leon and heavy guitars.” **“My Everything”** “This song is about giving your all to everyone. My project before this album, *Four° in Winter*, was very experimental and wonky. I knew I was hitting some pop territories with this album, but I think there are still wonky elements to me. I really love Ladysmith Black Mambazo and how they use their voice almost as the instruments. I just liked being in the studio and coming up with weird sounds with my voice. I don’t even want to know how many vocal tracks are on that—but it was a lot! I don’t know if people will like it, but I wanted to show all the different parts of who I am.” **“All I Ever Asked”** “Again, I didn’t want it on the album. But now I realize this song is important and a way people discovered me \[it was a single in 2022\]. I think I’m actually quite a dark person because I’m a Scorpio. Whether you believe in star signs or not, I’ve always gravitated towards dark lyrics to a point where I don’t think sad lyrics really hit me anymore. But there’s also a degree of making light of situations. Because as much as \[what inspired this song\] is sad, it’s also like, ‘You’ll live. He was an asshole. There are plenty more people you can meet in this world.’ There’s light that can come to those situations.” **“It Is What It Is”** “When I was doing \[the speak-singing here\], I was like, ‘Maybe I’m going to sound a bit like a loser.’ I’m not really rapping, I’m talking, and then obviously I have this English accent. I don’t want to say I have a boring voice, but when I’m speaking, I think I sound quite monotone. But what I’m saying is, ‘You are a fucking arsehole.’ This one’s for my girls and boys who have definitely felt this multiple times. Mae Muller is on this track. She is that person who will be like, ‘Absolutely not.’ I’ll go out and look at someone slightly questionable and be like, ‘I fancy him.’ She’ll go to the bathroom and be like, ‘Rachel, love you so much. No, no, you’re not doing that.’ And I’ll be like, ‘OK.’” **“Dumb Bitch Juice”** “This was very much Amy Winehouse-inspired—I know it’s not Amy Winehouse at all, but she had this ability to sing in quite a free and melodic way, but you can hear every single thing she says. When I wrote this, I was like, ‘I’m here to insult today.’ Not just insulting someone else—insulting myself too. Because sometimes men are terrible, but there’s also a degree of ‘You have allowed someone to treat you like that.’ Of course I’ve been heartbroken by an absolute idiot because I’m drinking dumb bitch juice!” **“What a Devastating Turn of Events”** “All my siblings were born in Africa, I’m the only one who was born in the UK. There’s a set of relatives who know I exist, but I’ve not met most of them—I have no clue who they are, but my siblings grew up with them. And when she \[Chinouriri’s cousin, the subject of this song\] died, my siblings were devastated. I was sad about someone I didn’t know. I constantly thought about it and wondered how it had happened. I had gone through something similar; being able to write about it has been kind of helpful for me to understand my own situation and stuff that I’ve gone through. Sonically, I never thought we needed a big chorus. It’s a different verse and different chorus every single time. Then there’s just this kind of chanting thing—I think that’s maybe where my African influence is coming, the marching and the pace of the drum and everyone singing as a group. We all sat in the studio with a mic and just screamed, ‘What a devastating turn of events.’ I think there’s a degree of sorrow that comes along, kind of trudging through this very sad story. This is a very important one.” **“My Blood”** “I wanted a song where there’s not necessarily continuation, but which speaks about things which people might do as a cry for help. You should always watch when things like that happen to people. I went through a phase where I was pulling out my own hair—it was a stress thing. It started making me think about when I was younger and there was self-harm things. It was visualizing looking in a mirror and being like, ‘Why am I doing this to myself?’ But it’s also these invisible wounds. The strings here add so much to the song—the cinematic-ness of it is definitely influenced by Daughter. I wanted to get people to feel. It sounds very sad from top to bottom, but I hope people listen to it and think, ‘Wow.’” **“Robbed”** “There was a baby in our family who passed away, and I felt like I was robbed of them. I was a bit more poetic in this song, but it’s almost considering people I’d not met that had such a massive effect on me. You can be robbed of time sometimes, with people or family. When stuff like that happens, the people around you are always like, ‘It’ll be OK. I’m sorry that happened.’ And actually, sometimes it’s OK to just be like, ‘That was fucking shit. That was horrible and this is unfair.’ That was the kind of emotion I wanted to translate in these songs.” **“Cold Call”** “I was really inspired by Coldplay’s ‘Politik.’ It’s just mind-blowing. I’m quite obsessed with Coldplay and I asked my team to show them the song. I know that they liked it—it meant a lot. They are my inspiration for a lot of things. I think it feels like a universal song. It’s kind of like, ‘I’ve had enough of this now, I’m not doing that anymore.’” **“I Hate Myself”** “I like how this ends with me reflecting on the positive. I’ve felt some very negative things, which I’ve been lucky enough to stop in their tracks. I mean, ‘a victim of your mind’ is one of the lyrics here. I wrote this with \[producer and songwriter\] Jonah Summerfield and he was like, ‘Oh, this is pretty deep.’ But sometimes when you put your thoughts on paper, you can read it back and think, ‘That was ridiculous.’ I looked back at this and thought, ‘That was a really stupid thing for me to even put myself through.’ You have to learn to love yourself—and hope that as a society we can really unlearn the treatment of people for being different sizes. Being able to write music has been a combination of me unlearning and learning so much about myself. And I think I can see how my self-esteem really skyrocketed the song in many ways.” **“Pocket”** “When I wrote this, I’d gone through all my phases of being like, ‘Men are trash, men are toxic.’ Then I was kind of like, ‘Well that’s just BS. I was just choosing terrible men. And there are actually nice ones if you allow yourself to be loved. So I’m going to write a song about how I would like to be loved.’ I thought, ‘When I find someone, I’m going to give them this song.’ And when I started dating my boyfriend, I said, ‘There’s this song I have.’” **“So My Darling (Acoustic)”** “The song is like six years old, so it’s a nostalgic way to end the album. You’ve gone through this journey of \[mostly\] new songs, and then you get thrown back into one that everyone knows. I wanted the whole album to sound and feel nostalgic for being a Black Brit, so to end on something nostalgic for the fans was really important. I think the whole album is very nostalgic of maybe my home life, but for the fans, it’s nostalgic for them.”

As the leader of Korean superstar group BTS, rapper-producer RM (aka Kim Nam-joon) is not always free to follow his musical curiosities or to explore deeply personal experiences. When he writes, records, and performs within BTS, he is doing it as part of a larger group, and the sacrifices that come with that are made in favor of something more collective. But RM has much to say as an artist outside of his BTS persona, and in the first 11 years of the group’s career, he has found the space to say it, releasing his own solo material in the form of two mixtapes (2015’s *RM* and 2018’s *mono.*), a 2022 solo album debut (*Indigo*), and now *Right Place, Wrong Person*. While *Indigo* was a vulnerable reflection back on RM’s twenties, *Right Place, Wrong Person* is somehow even more raw in its sounds and sentiments. The 11-track album is a diary-like study of healing wounds (“I just hope you remember me/The best grave in your cemetery”) and hard-won liberations (“I like my broken self/Bitch, that\'s the shit”) delivered in eddies of spoken-word verse, husky vocals, and RM’s signature lyrical rap. Pre-release track “Come back to me” acted as a disclaimer of what was to come. A slow-burn exhale of a song, the six-minute track about RM’s desire to understand his suffering (“You are my pain, divine, divine”) is an antithesis to the two-and-a-half-minute, hook-focused tracks that dominate so much of modern music. RM is similarly experimental in the hypnotic mood-setter “Right People, Wrong Place” and “ㅠㅠ,” a 74-second musing seemingly about the fans who come to his shows: “Do you stay inside or go off to life?/I\'m so grateful for everyone\'s time/Hope you all had such wonderful night.” As with *Indigo*, RM finds room to collaborate on *Right Place, Wrong Person*. French American jazz duo DOMi & JD BECK produce the percussive-driven “?,” while American singer-songwriter Moses Sumney features heavily on the groovy “Around the world in a day.” British rapper Little Simz contributes two verses to the jazzy “Domodachi,” which bounces between English, Korean, and Japanese to ask listener-friends to let loose: “Just ignite this bonfire/Friends gather around me one by one.” The uptempo “Groin” sees the leader of BTS breaking out of some of the boxes fame has put him in, working to accept the moments he has “fucked it up”: “I only represent myself/Let’s say what we have to say before we get sick and die.” “LOST!” is similarly energetic and blithe in its celebration of life’s confusions, positioning RM’s disorientation not as something to be feared but embraced: “I\'m goddamn lost/I never been to club before/I hit the club/I never felt so free before.” Here and elsewhere on the album, the eponymous “wrong person” doesn’t seem to be another individual, but rather a description of self. But with this music-making, the hope of something “right” seems to be on the horizon—if not here yet, then coming: “Time flies, he’s 14 and he’s already 30/And I look up in the sky, I see silver cloud/Yo, hurry.”

Almost six years after releasing her breakout single, 2018’s “Mr Rebel,” Nigerian superstar Tems delivers her debut LP, *Born in the Wild*. Of course, that interim has been characterized by a trajectory that’s trended upward at almost every turn. From her acclaimed 2020 debut EP *For Broken Ears* to global megahit collaborations with Wizkid (and later Justin Bieber) on “Essence” and Drake on “Fountains” to 2021’s sophomore EP, *If Orange Was a Place*, to appearances on 2022’s *Black Panther: Wakanda Forever* soundtrack (including songwriting credits for Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up”) and Beyoncé’s *RENAISSANCE* and a Grammy win for Future and Drake’s “Wait for U” in 2023—the alté-R&B star has experienced an almost exponential rise. That kind of journey is part of what makes *Born in the Wild* all the more captivating. Over 18 tracks, Tems cracks open her journal through those career highs, and reveals how the person behind them grappled with it all. “I had to step back a bit, to check in with myself,” Tems (Temilade Openiyi) tells Apple Music, “and also just find healing from all the trauma and everything I experienced before ‘Tems.’ I think I had to unlearn a lot of things. This album is just a new way of me expressing myself, while still centering who I am in it.” Here, she works through moments of feeling like an impostor, of rebuilding her self-confidence, of learning the ins and outs of relationships, and of learning to trust herself. Don’t read that as insecure, however—this is the journal of someone who’s done the work, and who’s fully ready to embrace the next chapter. It’s all brought to life through Tems’ usual brand of honest, mature storytelling—and here, as ever, the centerpiece remains a distinctive voice that simultaneously balances multiple layers of raw, delicate emotion and a natural, unforced ease. That reflective songwriting shows a sonic maturity that’s unrestricted by genre: She traverses from R&B (“Burning”) to fusions of Afrobeats and amapiano (“Get It Right”), balanced with celebrations of culture and heritage, like her reimagined version of Seyi Sodimu’s 1997 hit, the breezy “Love Me JeJe.” Below, Tems talks through these and more key tracks from *Born in the Wild*. **“Born in the Wild”** “‘Born in the Wild’ is a story of transformation from a cocoon to a butterfly. It speaks on surviving a mental wilderness that comes with life, and coming to a place where one can thrive. It\'s about accepting oneself, and embodying the woman I was born to be. It shows the different dimensions of who Tems is, and her journey from a cub to a lioness.” **“Burning”** “‘Burning’ is about the feelings I felt when I first started getting popular as Tems. I didn\'t really understand what was happening, and everything was happening so fast. And it\'s about me looking back on that time and realizing that we are all going through something. We all have our internal battles. We all have the things that we struggle with, our triggers. And ‘Burning’ is really about understanding that I have my triggers too, and now I know that I\'m not alone. And there\'s many people that have felt the way I do about not wanting to be seen, not really being used to attention, and people trying to take advantage of you in many different ways.” **“Love Me JeJe”** “‘Love Me JeJe’ is a sweet, happy song about finding unconditional love. The joy of finding a love that doesn\'t run out and not settling for anything else. Just basking in the sun, basking in that unconditional type of love.” **“Get It Right” (feat. Asake)** “This is just about a conversation between two people and one is saying, ‘I know you\'re scared, but if you do me right, I always got your back, because that\'s who I am.’ And it\'s just about two people feeling each other and wanting to explore more.” **“Unfortunate”** “‘Unfortunate’ is about realizing that the person that you put your trust in isn\'t worth your time. And also being thankful that the person showed themselves early, and the person disappointed you. And it\'s basically finding the good in the bad. This was a disappointment, but it is actually great that it was, because it means that I\'m winning, and I\'m going to overcome this, and I don\'t need to be with you anymore. It is a blessing that I\'m not obligated by any means to stay with you, and it\'s a blessing that I\'m not with you.” **“Forever”** “Forever is about the aftermath of a breakup, when the guy comes circling back, and it\'s coming from a place of healing, it\'s coming from a place of ‘I’ve moved on already, but it\'s interesting to see you scramble because I\'m moving on. It\'s the desperation for me from you. I love that you are so desperate to get me back you\'re always checking for me, stalking me, checking for what I\'m doing, and it\'s really intriguing and fascinating to see.’” **“Free Fall” (feat. J. Cole)** “This is about, after you fell in love with someone, they fell in love too. It was great until you realize that you both were new to it, and they didn\'t really know what to do in the relationship. It\'s about knowing, ‘If I stay, I\'m going to be drained,’ and knowing your limits and setting your boundaries. It\'s basically reflecting on all of that. Reflecting on the fact that I had to go, because if I didn\'t go, it would have been detrimental.” **“Me & U”** “‘Me & U’ is about reconnecting with God. It\'s a new conversation. It\'s about reconnecting with your inner child and the truth. It\'s about now being honest with yourself about who you are, and about having faith that everything is going to be okay, as long as you believe.” **“You in My Face”** “‘You in My Face’ is a conversation with the inner me, the inner child, and it\'s about finding peace within, and also hoping that I don\'t get lost again.”

“I\'ve always wanted to be a pop star, but beyond that, I wanted to be an African pop star,” Tyla tells Apple Music. “The roots of my sound are in amapiano music, in South African and African music.” Though the megaviral 2023 single “Water” may have put the South African singer-songwriter on the proverbial map—first as a social media sensation, then as the highest-charting African female soloist ever on Billboard’s Hot 100, earning her the inaugural Grammy Award for Best African Music Performance—she’s been carefully plotting her path to the top for years. “Since I started experimenting with amapiano, I just feel like it\'s really helped me get to this point where I created something that is fresh and new, but still familiar and comes from home,” she says. “It\'s a sound of Africa, and it\'s something that I couldn\'t be more proud about.” She weaves through a blend of pop, R&B, amapiano, and Afrobeats (“pop-piano sounds cute,” she admits) across *TYLA*, a coming-of-age chronicle through love, heartbreak, and self-discovery. “I’m speaking about the things that I\'ve gone through while creating the album—basically three years in the making,” she explains. “I was becoming a woman. So it was a lot of growing that happened, and me realizing my worth, and realizing how I want to be treated—and how basically, I\'m that girl, and people need to know I\'m that girl.” While the project was brought to life with the help of global producers including Sammy Soso, Mocha, Believve, Rayo, and Sir Nolan, Tyla made sure they all had a taste of her homeland. “\[It was important\] to bring some to South Africa,” she explains, “so when we get in the studio, they have context. Some people that try amapiano sound so watered down, it\'s cringey. So even though I am mixing it with pop and R&B, I didn\'t want it to sound watered down. Music is our everything in Africa. The way we speak, the way we dance, literally, our dance moves—they come so naturally. It\'s just in us. It’s our essence.” Below, Tyla talks us through her debut album. **“Intro” (Tyla & Kelvin Momo)** “I wanted to start off my album with something that was truly South African, something that showed people the root of where I started, before ‘Water,’ before all of these mixtures. I secretly recorded a voice note when I was in a session with Kelvin Momo. I loved hearing the people in the session, speaking, hearing the language, the accents. It was so raw and real. Kelvin Momo is my favorite amapiano producer—his music and his sound is my heart.” **“Safer”** “The message of the song is something that I feel like a lot of people could relate to. And the energy of the song I feel like is a strong intro to open an album.” **“Water”** “‘Water’ surpassed all expectations. I could\'ve never expected all of these accolades—a Grammy, the Billboard Hot 100, people all over the world dancing and pouring water down their back. From the time I finished recording the song, it was all that I was listening to. It was also like a step away from what I was used to, because I \[had been\] *very* PG. And with this one, I was more grown up and I was experimenting more. And even though I don\'t enjoy vulgar music, I feel like we were able to make the song speak about what it speaks about, but in a way that\'s friendly.” **“Truth or Dare”** “This was the song where I was playing more house-y with it. It’s me calling out people, being like, ‘Hey, *now* you care.’ I\'m not that type of person, but these are feelings that I felt around the time where I\'m like, ‘Where did this person come from? Out of nowhere, you want to now talk to me?’ and I literally hate it. I\'m sure a lot of people have felt that.” **“No.1” (feat. Tems)** “Tems and I had been wanting to make a song for long now. We ended up making it work, and Tems\' voice alone is so amazing, so unique. The song is for everyone, but when I had it in mind, it was really for the girls—me and Tems, girl power, African girls—and we were just really pushing that message of ‘I\'m leaving. I don\'t need anybody. If this is not serving me anymore, I’m gone, and I\'m going to be okay.’ Always put yourself before anything.” **“Breathe Me”** “It\'s a song that\'s so emotional and so real. It\'s just about love, of how strong love is, and how you don\'t even need anything else. I don\'t need anything else. You don\'t need anything else—just me, and you; just breathe me and we\'ll be fine.” **“Butterflies”** “With ‘Butterflies,’ I was in a session with \[producer and songwriter Ari PenSmith\] and he was playing me some stuff that he\'s worked on, and I was like, \'Cool, cool, cool.\' And then he played this, and I fell in love with it. It sat so perfectly with my voice. I connected with the song instantly, and it was too specific to what I was going through to not do anything with it.” **“On and On”** “This was \[an initial\] version of my sound, before ‘Water’ and everything. I made this with Corey Marlon Lindsay-Keay in South Africa. We were supposed to go out, and we didn\'t end up going out, so I was dressed up in a whole outfit in the studio session, and he was producing. I love the song so much because it\'s so nostalgic but new. I love that it feels like old-school R&B. I love that it has hints of Aaliyah\'s influence, but it\'s new, and fresh, and African—all things that are Tyla. The messaging is not so serious—it’s literally about not wanting a party to end.” **“Jump” (Tyla, Gunna & Skillibeng)** “‘Jump’ is a very different vibe. I really just wanted to tell people who I am, and I had to show my confidence through the song. And the opening line, with Skilli being like, \'Original girl, you want a replica? No.\' There\'s no replica. That intro was already perfect, and it segues to that line of me saying, \'They\'ve never had a pretty girl from Joburg/They see me now and that\'s what they prefer.\' That line is just—it’s too iconic for me, and I\'m just so excited to hear all the girls sing it, all the Joburg girls sing it, all the girls from home. And having Gunna on it, I really feel like it took me into that world further, making it even more raw and cool.” **“ART”** “When I\'m with someone that treats me so good, treats me well, treats me like art, treats me like a princess, I will be there for them. I will be their art piece. We also played with that wording where it can be ‘art piece,’ but also your peace and your comfort. As a woman, that\'s how I want to be treated, and that\'s how I would treat you if you treat me that way. It’s about being treasured.” **“On My Body” (Tyla & Becky G)** “This was such a fun one because it’s in my world, but also I played a bit with the Latin vibes. The feature came so organically—I was in studio, and she was in a session next door. She loved it, and she recorded a verse, and I absolutely died. I died. I just love her touch, and how it just broadened the audience, because now it\'s just bringing everybody into this experience. It\'s a melting pot with all these genres, and I love that I was able to expand it even further.” **“Priorities”** “This song was probably the most difficult to share, because it\'s really letting people into my heart and mind, and how I feel I\'ve been with myself. I feel like people would resonate with it, and it speaks about what a lot of people feel and may not express. \[The idea of having spread yourself too thin\] is something that\'s so raw and real, that not even just women, men, everybody feels.” **“To Last”** “I love this song with all my heart. I was in the Vaal with LuuDadeejay, and I literally finished this song in five minutes. It was based off an experience that my friend was going through at the time. About a year prior, I wrote the lines ‘You never gave us a chance, it\'s like you never wanted to last.’ And that note just came to mind, and the song just flowed out of me. I ended up going through something that made me feel that way. It was like I told the future, which is not good—but I fell in love with the song again. It’s so South African: It’s amapiano, it\'s house-y, it\'s our sound.” **“Water (Remix)” (Tyla & Travis Scott)** “Travis reached out—he loved ‘Water,’ and around the time, I was like, \'I don\'t want a remix, I\'m cool.\' But Travis Scott was so unexpected that I wanted to do it so bad, and he absolutely killed it. He added some South African shout-outs in his verse, and I just knew that people from home were going to love it—he acknowledged us, and he mentioned \[the South African telephone country code\] +27 and all those things. And I also love that he brought a different energy to the song. Everyone knows ‘Water’ to be that summer banger, and now Travis made it still the summer banger, but also more gritty. Putting him on an African-sounding song was just the perfect collab.”

When artists experience the kind of career-defining breakthrough that Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield enjoyed with 2020’s *Saint Cloud*, they’re typically faced with a difficult choice: lean further into the sound that landed you there, or risk disappointing your newfound audience by setting off into new territory. On *Tigers Blood*, the Kansas City-based singer-songwriter chooses the former, with a set of country-indebted indie rock that reaches the same, often dizzying heights as its predecessor. But that doesn’t mean its songs came from the same emotional source. “When I made *Saint Cloud*, I\'d just gotten sober and I was just this raw nerve—I was burgeoning with anxiety,” she tells Apple Music. “And on this record, it sounds so boring, but I really feel like I was searching for normal. I think I\'ve really settled into my thirties.” Working again with longtime producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Snail Mail, Hurray for the Riff Raff), Crutchfield enlisted the help of rising guitar hero MJ Lenderman, with whom she duets on the quietly romantic lead single (and future classic) “Right Back to It.” Originally written for Wynonna Judd—a recent collaborator—“365” finds Crutchfield falling into a song of forgiveness, her voice suspended in air, arching over the soft, heart-like thump of an acoustic guitar. Just as simple but no less moving: the Southern rock of “Ice Cold,” in which Crutchfield seeks equilibrium and Lenderman transcendence, via solo. In the absence of inner tumult, Crutchfield says she had to learn that the songs will still come. “I really do feel like I\'ve reached this point where I have a comfort knowing that they will show up,” she says. “When it\'s time, they\'ll show up and they\'ll show up fast. And if they\'re not showing up, then it\'s just not time yet.”