Unique, strong, and sexy—that’s how Beyoncé wants you to feel while listening to *RENAISSANCE*. Crafted during the grips of the pandemic, her seventh solo album is a celebration of freedom and a complete immersion into house and dance that serves as the perfect sound bed for themes of liberation, release, self-assuredness, and unfiltered confidence across its 16 tracks. *RENAISSANCE* is playful and energetic in a way that captures that Friday-night, just-got-paid, anything-can-happen feeling, underscored by reiterated appeals to unyoke yourself from the weight of others’ expectations and revel in the totality of who you are. From the classic four-on-the-floor house moods of the Robin S.- and Big Freedia-sampling lead single “BREAK MY SOUL” to the Afro-tech of the Grace Jones- and Tems-assisted “MOVE” and the funky, rollerskating disco feeling of “CUFF IT,” this is a massive yet elegantly composed buffet of sound, richly packed with anthemic morsels that pull you in. There are soft moments here, too: “I know you can’t help but to be yourself around me,” she coos on “PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA,” the kind of warm, whispers-in-the-ear love song you’d expect to hear at a summer cookout—complete with an intricate interplay between vocals and guitar that gives Beyoncé a chance to showcase some incredible vocal dexterity. “CHURCH GIRL” fuses R&B, gospel, and hip-hop to tell a survivor’s story: “I\'m finally on the other side/I finally found the extra smiles/Swimming through the oceans of tears we cried.” An explicit celebration of Blackness, “COZY” is the mantra of a woman who has nothing to prove to anyone—“Comfortable in my skin/Cozy with who I am,” ” Beyoncé muses on the chorus. And on “PURE/HONEY,” Beyoncé immerses herself in ballroom culture, incorporating drag performance chants and a Kevin Aviance sample on the first half that give way to the disco-drenched second half, cementing the song as an immediate dance-floor favorite. It’s the perfect lead-in to the album closer “SUMMER RENAISSANCE,” which propels the dreamy escapist disco of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” even further into the future.
“I like to prepare myself and prepare the surroundings to work my music,” Bad Bunny tells Apple Music about his process. “But when I get a good idea that I want to work on in the future, I hold it until that moment.” After he blessed his fans with three projects in 2020, including the forward-thinking fusion effort *EL ÚLTIMO TOUR DEL MUNDO*, one could forgive the Latin superstar for taking some time to plan his next moves, musically or otherwise. Somewhere between living out his kayfabe dreams in the WWE and launching his acting career opposite the likes of Brad Pitt, El Conejo Malo found himself on the beach, sipping Moscow Mules and working on his most diverse full-length yet. And though its title and the cover’s emoting heart mascot might suggest a shift into sad-boy mode, *Un Verano Sin Ti* instead reveals a different conceptual aim as his ultimate summer playlist. “It\'s a good vibe,” he says. “I think it\'s the happiest album of my career.” Recorded in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, the album features several cuts in the same elevated reggaetón mode that largely defined *YHLQMDLG*. “Efecto” and “Un Ratito” present ideal perreo opportunities, as does the soon-to-be-ubiquitous Rauw Alejandro team-up “Party.” Yet, true to its sunny origins, *Un Verano Sin Ti* departs from this style for unexpected diversions into other Latin sounds, including the bossa nova blend “Yo No Soy Celoso” and the dembow hybrid “Tití Me Preguntó.” He embraces his Santo Domingo surroundings with “Después De La Playa,” an energizing mambo surprise. “We had a whole band of amazing musicians,” he says about making the track with performers who\'d typically play on the streets. “It\'s part of my culture. It\'s part of the Caribbean culture.” With further collaborations from familiars Chencho Corleone and Jhayco, as well as unanticipated picks Bomba Estéreo and The Marías, *Un Verano Sin Ti* embodies a wide range of Latin American talent, with Bad Bunny as its charismatic center.
Let‘s start with that speech. In September 2022, as Taylor Swift accepted Songwriter-Artist of the Decade honors at the Nashville Songwriter Awards, the headline was that Swift had unveiled an admittedly “dorky” system she’d developed for organizing her own songs. Quill Pen, Fountain Pen, Glitter Gel Pen: three categories of lyrics, three imagined tools with which she wrote them, one pretty ingenious way to invite obsessive fans to lovingly obsess all the more. And yet, perhaps the real takeaway was the manner in which she spoke about her craft that night, some 20 years after writing her first song at the age of 12. “I love doing this thing we are fortunate enough to call a job,” she said to a room of her peers. “Writing songs is my life’s work and my hobby and my never-ending thrill. A song can defy logic or time. A good song transports you to your truest feelings and translates those feelings for you. A good song stays with you even when people or feelings don’t.” On *Midnights*, her tenth LP and fourth in as many years—*if* you don’t count the two she’s just rerecorded and buttressed with dozens of additional tracks—Swift sounds like she’s really enjoying her work, playing with language like kids do with gum, thrilling to the texture of every turn of phrase, the charge in every melody and satisfying rhyme. Alongside longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, she’s set out here to tell “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout \[her\] life,” as she phrased it in a message to Apple Music subscribers. It’s a concept that naturally calls for a nocturnal palette: slower tempos, hushed atmosphere, negative space like night sky. The sound is fully modern (synths you’d want to eat or sleep in, low end that sits comfortably on your chest), while the aesthetic (soft focus, wood paneling, tracklist on the cover) is decidedly mid-century, much like the *Mad Men*-inspired title of its brooding opener, “Lavender Haze”—a song about finding refuge in the glow of intimacy. “Talk your talk and go viral,” she sings, in reference to the maelstrom of outside interest in her six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn. “I just want this love spiral.” (A big shout to Antonoff for those spongy backup vocals, btw.) In large part, *Midnights* is a record of interiors, Swift letting us glimpse the chaos inside her head (“Anti-Hero,” wall-to-wall zingers) and the stillness of her relationship (“Sweet Nothing,” co-written by Alwyn under his William Bowery pseudonym). For “Snow on the Beach,” she teams up with Lana Del Rey—an artist whose instinct for mood and theatrical framing seems to have influenced Swift’s recent catalog—recalling the magic of an impossible night over a backdrop of pizzicato violin, sleigh bells, and dreamy Mellotron, like the earliest hours of Christmas morning. “I’ve never seen someone lit from within,” Swift sings. “Blurring out my periphery.” But then there’s “Bejeweled,” a late, *1989*-like highlight on which she announces to an unappreciative partner, a few seconds in: “And by the way, I’m going out tonight.” And then out Swift goes, striding through the center of the song like she would the room: “I can still make the whole place shimmer,” she sings, relishing that last word. “And when I meet the band, they ask, ‘Do you have a man?’/I could still say, ‘I don’t remember.’” There are traces of melancholy layered in (see: “sapphire tears on my face”), but the song feels like a triumph, the sort of unabashed, extroverted fun that would have probably seemed out of place in the lockdown indie of 2020’s *folklore* and *evermore*. But here, side by side with songs and scenes of such writerly indulgence, it’s right at home—more proof that the terms “singer-songwriter” and “universal pop star” aren’t mutually exclusive ideas. “What’s a girl gonna do?” Swift asks at its climax. “A diamond’s gotta shine.”
Midnights is the tenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released on October 21, 2022, via Republic Records. Announced at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, the album marks Swift's first body of new work since her 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore.
When Kendrick Lamar popped up on two tracks from Baby Keem’s *The Melodic Blue* (“range brothers” and “family ties”), it felt like one of hip-hop’s prophets had descended a mountain to deliver scripture. His verses were stellar, to be sure, but it also just felt like way too much time had passed since we’d heard his voice. He’d helmed 2018’s *Black Panther* compilation/soundtrack, but his last proper release was 2017’s *DAMN.* That kind of scarcity in hip-hop can only serve to deify an artist as beloved as Lamar. But if the Compton MC is broadcasting anything across his fifth proper album *Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers*, it’s that he’s only human. The project is split into two parts, each comprising nine songs, all of which serve to illuminate Lamar’s continually evolving worldview. Central to Lamar’s thesis is accountability. The MC has painstakingly itemized his shortcomings, assessing his relationships with money (“United in Grief”), white women (“Worldwide Steppers”), his father (“Father Time”), the limits of his loyalty (“Rich Spirit”), love in the context of heteronormative relationships (“We Cry Together,” “Purple Hearts”), motivation (“Count Me Out”), responsibility (“Crown”), gender (“Auntie Diaries”), and generational trauma (“Mother I Sober”). It’s a dense and heavy listen. But just as sure as Kendrick Lamar is human like the rest of us, he’s also a Pulitzer Prize winner, one of the most thoughtful MCs alive, and someone whose honesty across *Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers* could help us understand why any of us are the way we are.
Miranda Lambert hits the road on *Palomino*, her eighth solo album and the follow-up to her 2019 Grammy-winning LP *Wildcard*. Across 15 tracks, Lambert treks all over the United States, spinning colorful yarns of a rambling life out on the road. “We go to 36 different locations in this record and meet all kinds of characters that we made up,” Lambert tells Apple Music. “Or it might have been characters we have all met in our travels, put into these songs. I\'ve never written with that much purpose.” Lambert sets the freewheeling tone with opener “Actin’ Up,” a swampy ode to bad behavior. Tracks like “Scenes” and “Tourist” are some of Lambert’s most image-rich material yet, while “Music City Queen”—a collaboration with pioneering New Wavers The B-52’s—is easily one of her most fun. Some songs, like standout “Geraldene,” previously appeared in demo form on Lambert’s critically acclaimed *The Marfa Tapes*, a 2021 collaborative LP with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall, and take on new life thanks to thoughtful production from Lambert, Randall, and frequent collaborator Luke Dick. Below, Lambert shares insight into a handful of tracks on *Palomino*. **“Geraldene”** “She\'s everyone. I feel like we\'ve all known one or been one at one point or the other. I just had that title because I was watching *Heartworn Highways* like a million times, and in that movie, Townes’ dog is named Geraldine. And Geraldine\'s this German shepherd, and I was like, ‘That\'s a cool name.’” **“Country Money”** “Aaron Raitiere pulls me in on a write one day. He\'s like, ‘Hey, come write with me and Mikey Reaves.’ I had never written with him before, and I was like, ‘Okay, cool, that\'d be different,’ and we wrote ‘Country Money.’ It fit right into the vibe of this road trip we were taking. So it all just happened easily, which makes me a little nervous because I\'m like, ‘Okay, when\'s the other shoe going to drop?’” **“Carousel”** “That is a real feeling. We joined the circus in one way or another, and we\'re so lucky to be part of it. I mean, I\'m like, ‘If I ever lived before, I think I was either best friends with Calamity Jane or riding an elephant somewhere.’ Truly, that\'s what I was doing, because this is as close as I could get to those two things, what I do for a living. I miss so many weddings and funerals and baby showers and important moments of people that are important to me, and of my own, just because I\'m rolling. But I think ‘Carousel’ puts this romantic spin on it where it\'s like, ‘It\'s okay. There\'s this whole other life that can happen, too.’”
“I literally don’t take breaks,” ROSALÍA tells Apple Music. “I feel like, to work at a certain level, to get a certain result, you really need to sacrifice.” Judging by *MOTOMAMI*, her long-anticipated follow-up to 2018’s award-winning and critically acclaimed *EL MAL QUERER*, the mononymous Spanish singer clearly put in the work. “I almost feel like I disappear because I needed to,” she says of maintaining her process in the face of increased popularity and attention. “I needed to focus and put all my energy and get to the center to create.” At the same time, she found herself drawing energy from bustling locales like Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, all of which she credits with influencing the new album. Beyond any particular source of inspiration that may have driven the creation of *MOTOMAMI*, ROSALÍA’s come-up has been nothing short of inspiring. Her transition from critically acclaimed flamenco upstart to internationally renowned star—marked by creative collaborations with global tastemakers like Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, and Oneohtrix Point Never, to name a few—has prompted an artistic metamorphosis. Her ability to navigate and dominate such a wide array of musical styles only raised expectations for her third full-length, but she resisted the idea of rushing things. “I didn’t want to make an album just because now it’s time to make an album,” she says, citing that several months were spent on mixing and visuals alone. “I don’t work like that.” Some three years after *EL MAL QUERER*, ROSALÍA’s return feels even more revolutionary than that radical breakout release. From the noisy-yet-referential leftfield reggaetón of “SAOKO” to the austere and *Yeezus*-reminiscent thump of “CHICKEN TERIYAKI,” *MOTOMAMI* makes the artist’s femme-forward modus operandi all the more clear. The point of view presented is sharp and political, but also permissive of playfulness and wit, a humanizing mix that makes the album her most personal yet. “I was like, I really want to find a way to allow my sense of humor to be present,” she says. “It’s almost like you try to do, like, a self-portrait of a moment of who you are, how you feel, the way you think.\" Things get deeper and more unexpected with the devilish-yet-austere electronic punk funk of the title track and the feverish “BIZCOCHITO.” But there are even more twists and turns within, like “HENTAI,” a bilingual torch song that charms and enraptures before giving way to machine-gun percussion. Add to that “LA FAMA,” her mystifying team-up with The Weeknd that fuses tropical Latin rhythms with avant-garde minimalism, and you end up with one of the most unique artistic statements of the decade so far.
Harry Styles’ third solo album, *Harry’s House*, is the product of a chain reaction. Had the pandemic not thrown his world into a tailspin in early 2020, he would’ve continued to tour behind *Fine Line*, his critically adored sophomore album, and played its songs hundreds of times for sold-out crowds around the world. A return to the studio was planned, of course, but when COVID-19 canceled those plans too, Styles faced an empty calendar for the first time in a decade. The singer opted to use this free time carefully, taking a solo road trip through Italy and visiting with family and friends for rare long, drawn-out stretches. It was an important moment of reevaluation. “You miss so many birthdays,” he told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “And eventually it\'s just assumed you\'re unable to be at stuff. Finally I was like, ‘I want to balance my life out a bit. Working isn’t who I am, it\'s something I do. I want to be able to put that down.’” His upbeat, lightly electronic third LP riffs on the concept of home, viewing it less as a geographical location and more as a state of mind—his mind. “Imagine it’s a day in my house, a day in my mind,” he said. “What do I go through? I’m playing fun music. I’m playing sad music. I have doubts. I’m feeling stuff.” Because of the pandemic, Styles recorded the songs with a small handful of longtime friends and close collaborators who gathered in a single room to drink wine, write, and play. That intimacy is reflected in the songs, which are conversational and casually confessional, as if he’s thinking out loud. Blending vintage folk rock with flickers of disco and a generally more relaxed sensibility, they illustrate a turning point in Styles’ career as he transitions even further towards career singer-songwriter. “For a while it was, how do I play that game of remaining exciting?” he says. “But I finally had a moment where I felt like, ‘Okay, I’m not the young thing, so I would like to really think about who I want to be as a musician.’” Read on for the inside story behind a handful of standout selections from *Harry’s House*. **“Music for a Sushi Restaurant”** “After *Fine Line*, I had an idea of how I thought the next album would open. But there\'s something about ‘Sushi’ that felt like, ‘Nah, *that\'s* how I want to start.’ It becomes really obvious what the first song should be based on what you play for people when they’re like, ‘Oh, can I hear a bit of the music?’ It\'s like, how do you want to set the tone?” **“Daylight”** “We were like, ‘We have to find a way to stay awake and finish this, because if we all go to bed, then this won’t turn out the way it would if we finished tonight.’ So we powered through, finished it, and went down to the beach as the sun was coming up and it was like, ‘Okay. Yeah.’ It felt correct that we\'d finished it in that place. Life, and songs in particular, are so much about moments. In surfing, for example, sometimes you don\'t get the wave and sometimes the wave comes and you haven\'t practiced. But every now and again, the wave comes and you’re ready, you\'ve practiced enough that you can ride it. Sometimes when the songs write themselves like that, it feels like, ‘Okay, there\'s a reason why sometimes I sit out there, falling off the board a bunch. It\'s for this moment.” **“As It Was”** “‘As It Was,’ to me, is bittersweet. It’s devastating. It\'s a death march. It’s about metamorphosis and a perspective change, which are not necessarily things you have time with. People aren’t like, ‘Oh, we\'ll give you a couple more days with this moment and let you say goodbye to your former self,’ or whatever. No. Everyone is changing, and by the time you realize what’s happened, \[the moment\] is already gone. During the pandemic, I think we all at some point realized that it would never be the same as it was before. It was so obvious that it wouldn’t. You can\'t go backwards—we can’t as a society and I can’t in my personal life. But you learn so much in those moments because you’re forced to face things head-on, whether they’re your least favorite things about the world or your least favorite things about yourself, or all of it.” **“Matilda”** “I had an experience with someone where, in getting to know them better, they revealed some stuff to me that was very much like, ‘Oh, that\'s not normal, like I think you should maybe get some help or something.’ This song was inspired by that experience and person, who I kind of disguised as Matilda from the Roald Dahl book. I played it to a couple of friends and all of them cried. So I was like, ‘Okay, I think this is something to pay attention to.’ It\'s a weird one, because with something like this, it\'s like, ‘I want to give you something, I want to support you in some way, but it\'s not necessarily my place to make it about me because it\'s not my experience.’ Sometimes it\'s just about listening. I hope that\'s what I did here. If nothing else, it just says, ‘I was listening to you.’” **“Boyfriends”** “‘Boyfriends’ was written right at the end of *Fine Line*. I\'d finished the album and there was an extra week where I wrote ‘Adore You,’ ‘Lights Up,’ and ‘Treat People With Kindness.’ At the end of the session for ‘Lights Up,’ we started writing ‘Boyfriends,’ and it felt like, ‘Okay, there\'s a version of this story where we get this song ready for this album.’ But something about it just felt like, no, it’ll have its time, let\'s not rush it. We did so many versions of it. Vocal. Acoustic. Electric guitar. Harmonies on everything, and then we took them out for chunks and put them back in for chunks. You try not to get ahead of yourself when you write a song, but there was something about this one where I felt like, ‘Okay, when I\'m 50, if I\'m playing a show, maybe there\'s someone who heard me for the first time when they were 15 and this is probably the song they came to see.’ Because I\'m learning so much by singing it. It’s my way of saying, ‘I’m hearing you.’ It’s both acknowledging my own behavior and looking at behavior I\'ve witnessed. I grew up with a sister, so I watched her date people, and I watched friends date people, and people don\'t treat each other very nicely sometimes.” **“Cinema”** “I think I just wanted to make something that felt really fun, honestly. I was on a treadmill going, ‘Do-do-do-do-do-do.’ I tend to do so much writing in the studio, but with this one, I did a little bit here and then I went home and added a little bit there, and then kind of left it, and then went into the studio to put it all together. That was a theme across the whole album, actually: We used to book a studio and be like, ‘Okay, we\'ve got it for two months, grind it out.’ But some days you just don\'t want to be there, and eventually you\'ve been in the studio so long, the only thing you can write about is nothing because you haven\'t done anything. So with this album, we’d work for a couple of weeks and then everyone would go off and live their lives.” **“Love of My Life”** “‘Love of My Life’ was the most terrifying song because it\'s so bare. It\'s so sparse. It’s also very much in the spirit of what *Harry\'s House* is about: I wanted to make an acoustic EP, all in my house, and make it really intimate. It’s named after \[the Japanese pop pioneer Haruomi\] Hosono, who had an album in the \'70s called *Hosono House*. I immediately started thinking about what *Harry’s House* might look like. It took time for me to realize that the house wasn\'t a geographical location, it was an internal thing. When I applied that concept to the songs we were making here, everything took on new meaning. Imagine it\'s a day in my house or a day in my mind. What do I go through? I\'m playing fun music. I\'m playing sad music. I\'m playing this, I\'m playing that. I have doubts. I’m feeling stuff. And it’s all mine. This is my favorite album at the moment. I love it so much. And because of the circumstances, it was made very intimately; everything was played by a small number of people and made in a room. To me, it\'s everything. It\'s everything I\'ve wanted to make.”
Like many artists, Kelsea Ballerini took stock of her life during the pandemic, both personally and professionally. Having released her third album, *kelsea*, in mid-March 2020 and unable to tour in support of the LP, it felt like a natural time to reflect on her career thus far and dream of the next chapter. During this quiet period, her fourth album, *SUBJECT TO CHANGE*, began taking shape, its title a nod to Ballerini’s newfound acceptance of the impermanence and unpredictability inherent to life. “The theme was change and evolution and growing up, and a lot of contrast within that and juxtaposition within that,” Ballerini tells Apple Music. “And I loved the idea that we’ve all been really challenged by change the last several years, and by change that’s really out of our control, that’s kept us at home and all of that stuff. And so, I loved the idea of that being such a relatable, universal topic.” *SUBJECT TO CHANGE* opens with its title track, an uptempo anthem that celebrates being open to growth and possibility. “IF YOU GO DOWN (I’M GOIN’ DOWN TOO)” takes cues from The Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl” and Taylor Swift’s HAIM collaboration “no body, no crime,” with Ballerini promising a friend that she has her back if shit hits the fan: “If it all blows up and we end up on the news/If you go down, I’m goin’ down too.” Another standout is “YOU’RE DRUNK, GO HOME,” a collaboration with Kelly Clarkson and Carly Pearce that makes good use of the trio’s combined talents, with a healthy dose of soul from Clarkson and Pearce putting her alto to good use in telling off a stubborn suitor. Here, Ballerini talks through a few of the album’s key tracks. **“SUBJECT TO CHANGE”** “I’ve always been really scared of change because it’s been something that has influenced my life in ways that I don’t always love or that I’m not always ready for. And I liked the idea of making a record, and especially starting a record, with a song that says, ‘But what if we take the power away from change?’ And whether it’s bad change or good change, it’s meant to happen for me in my life and where I’m supposed to get to. And when you take the power away from it and the fear of change away from it, and you just open your arms up to it, you start living.” **“IF YOU GO DOWN (I’M GOIN’ DOWN TOO)”** “One of the things that I’ve really realized in the last few years is how important female friendship is. ‘IF YOU GO DOWN’ is the last song we wrote for the record. And I was sitting around with Shane \[McAnally\] and Julian \[Bunetta\], and we had already cut most of the songs, so we called it the Hail Mary day. We’re like, ‘Just in case there’s anything else in the tank.’ I also wanted there to be what ‘hole in the bottle’ brought to my last record. It was this performance element where I got to be silly, and I got to just play a little bit more. So, with ‘IF YOU GO DOWN,’ I was like, ‘I want there to be this witty *Thelma & Louise* anthem where, when people come to my show with their girl gang, they can scream it with each other, and I can honor my friends, and I can also have a tinge of, ‘Oh, she listens to the *Crime Junkie* \[podcast\].’” **“YOU’RE DRUNK, GO HOME” (feat. Kelly Clarkson & Carly Pearce)** “I loved the idea of having not one but two different voices that have power and wit and sass. And I was looking at my friendships because I love collaborating with friends, and my first call was Carly. Without even hearing it, she said yes because we just go so far back, and we just have so much respect for each other. We’re ‘sweatpants friends’—that’s how I categorize it now. And then, I texted Kelly Clarkson the song, and she did vocals that night. We were just talking about women friendship in the industry. I’m offline friends with these two women, and they both inspire me so much in different ways and also in similar ways. And now I get to have this moment with them, and I just feel so proud to be able to be a part of that.” **“DOIN’ MY BEST”** “‘DOIN’ MY BEST’ is a celebration of taking ownership of cringe, because I think when you’re just like, ‘These are the things in my life that you’ve seen that are chaotic, and I understand they’re chaotic. Trust me, I’m experiencing it. It’s more chaotic than you’ll ever know, but here it is, and I’m truly just doing my best.’ I think just taking ownership of that and just going, ‘I’m a human, here it is’—there’s something that was so freeing writing that song.” **“MARILYN”** “‘MARILYN’ is the first song I wrote for this album. I wrote it in the summer of 2020, during the unraveling of all of our lives, of just taking the inventory, stepping back, being in the stillness. And to me, \[Marilyn Monroe\] is such a metaphor for—I can only speak for myself, but I feel like a very universal thought for us of just going like, ‘Man, we are conditioned, and we get met with a more celebratory response when we present beautifully.’ And there is always so much more going on. To me, she is just that metaphor, and it’s kind of the bigger sister to ‘homecoming queen?’. I wrote the song by myself.”
Like most people on this embattled earth, Maggie Rogers spent the better part of 2020 in isolation—in her case, in Maine, where *Surrender* took shape. “I started this record there,” she tells Apple Music. “And I was really drawn to big drums and distorted guitar, because I missed music that made me feel something physically. I missed the physicality of being at a festival”: a big feeling, she says—a little overwhelming, a little cold, a little drunk. The noise was a symbol of chaos, but also of liberation. “Like, in all the craziness in the world, being able to play with something like that,” she says, “it was as if it could make my body let go of the tension I was feeling.” So think of the album’s title as a possibility, or even a goal: that even at her most commanding—the electro-pop of “Shatter,” the country swagger of “Begging for Rain” and barroom folk of “I’ve Got a Friend”—Rogers can explore what it means to relinquish control without sacrificing the polish and muscle that makes her music pop. “When we’re cheek to cheek, I feel it in my teeth,” she sings on “Want Want”: an arthouse on paper, a blockbuster in sound. When Rogers started the album, she was so burned out from touring she could barely talk. “I hadn’t been to a grocery store in four years,” she says. “I was ready to bite. And this record is the bite. But when I listen back, there’s so much joy. I think that’s the thing that surprised me more than anything—that *that* was the place I escaped to, and it was the thing that became the way I survived it, or the way I worked through it. This idea of joy as a form of rebellion, as something that can be radical and contagious and connective and angry.” “Are you ready to start?” she sings on “Anywhere With You.” And then she repeats herself, a little louder each time.
Tove Lo’s fifth studio album is also her first as an independent artist. Full of surprising collaborations, intimate confessions, and sexy, sparkly, ’80s-inspired synths, it marks a new era of creativity and experimentation for the Swedish singer-songwriter who is known as club pop’s rebellious and raunchy cool girl. Lo spent three years writing these songs in Los Angeles and Torekov, Sweden—a small fishing village where she spent summers growing up. That extended timeline gave her space to explore new soundscapes and musical ideas. “I had time to push myself and go to new places,” she tells Apple Music. “I had time for the details. I had time to be myself.” The album reflects a time of transition for the singer—she and her husband eloped to Vegas during the pandemic. Around the same time, she invited a few of her friends to move into her new home in LA, forming what she described as a collective. “It’s been wild, *fun*,” she says. “But there have been moments where I’m like, ‘Where is this going? Who am I? What are we doing?’” *Dirt Femme* explores these questions with sincerity (“Grapefruit,” “No One Dies From Love”), but makes it clear that Lo has no plans to hang up her party-girl crown anytime soon (“Pineapple Slice,” “Attention Whore”). She wrote each song with a certain character in mind: a “horny huntress,” scorned girlfriend, or intense, intimidating Scorpio (see: the album art). “The point is that we all contain multitudes,” she says, “and each of these women is me.” **“No One Dies From Love”** “When lockdown hit, I was already worn out from an intense, emotionally draining year. My go-to collaborator, Ludvig, was, too. We were both in the middle of little existential crises and spent a few weeks in Malibu trying to write some songs. ‘No One Dies From Love’ was the only thing that came out of those sessions. We mostly cried and drank and walked on the beach, talking about those all-consuming relationships where you feel like your whole existence revolves around a single person, and like there won\'t be anything left of you if they leave. Obviously, it’s not true. Time heals most wounds. But it doesn’t feel like that at the time.” **“Suburbia”** “My husband and I both had fairly traditional childhoods, and I’ve always \[sensed\] a certain amount of confusion around my lifestyle—friends and family wondering when we’ll stop partying and settle down. In 2020, we eloped in Las Vegas, and the reaction was pretty uniform, like, ‘Oh, thank god, you did something normal! So when are you having kids?’ People seem to have this idea about how our life is supposed to look, and if that idea doesn’t appeal to you, it makes your head spin. You’re like, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’ We made a beat that sounded sad and upbeat at the same time, and it reminded me of the Stepford Wives—that eerie feeling you get in suburbia that everyone is hiding something.” **“2 Die 4”** “My friend Oscar Görres and I were talking about the reemergence of Y2K trends—in music, films, photography, fashion—and it makes us feel old. But sometimes it’s interesting to look at things from a new angle—trance music, for example. When I was a kid, I hated it. I was like, ‘There\'s no vocals, I don’t get this.’ Now I\'m like, ‘How did I ever miss out on all this sick synthy shit?’ So this song kind of channels that era. It’s a slower tempo, but it’s nostalgic to me.” **“True Romance”** “I haven\'t ever really released a ballad before. My songs always have a beat or full production. In opera, they tell the story all the way through and it just builds and builds and builds. So I went into this song with that essence. I wanted it to be about a destructive relationship. The movie *True Romance* popped into my head, and I decided to watch it and then write a storyline into the lyrics. It took me three days to write the lyrics, but I recorded the vocals in one take. We kept it because it just felt raw and powerful.” **“Grapefruit”** “Up until now, I’ve never really been up front about the fact that I had a severe eating disorder when I was a teenager. I did a movie in Sweden, and had to lose some weight for it—nothing extreme, maybe four or five kilos, but I had to lose it in two weeks. I went on a diet for the first time in 10 years and it triggered so many memories—the obsession, the anxiety, being hungry all the time. All these memories flooded back and I was like, ‘Can I do this without falling back into old patterns?’ In the end, I did it and it was fine. To me, it felt like validation that I’d healed. So I started writing about that. When I played this song for my friends, they were like, ‘I never would\'ve known. You\'re so much about body positivity.’ And my response is: ‘Yes, because I went through that.’” **“Cute & Cruel”** “This is my sunset song. It\'s about accepting what love does to you as a human being. I wrote this with Elvira, who is one of my favorite producers in Sweden. She and I really click. There\'s an emotional sweetness to it, a tenderness. This folksy, cinematic sound was new for me, so I wanted to bring in one more voice, preferably someone from that scene. First Aid Kit really elevated the song because they’re so at home in this world. It’s a really unexpected, powerful one.” **“Call On Me”** “I made this song with SG Lewis, who is a close friend. He\'s an emotional party person just like me. He actually wrote this song and then sent it to me, which isn’t something I do very often; it’s hard for me to find a way to make it mine. But I loved this song, so we agreed that I’d play with the lyrics. Initially, I rewrote them to make them more deep and complex, but it actually felt like that took away from the energy of the song. We decided to just let it be what it is, which is a big, fun dance anthem that all my gays are going to love.” **“Attention Whore”** “I wrote this track at four in the morning after having a silly drunk argument with my husband. I don’t even remember what it was about. He was probably just being his great self, but sometimes when I\'m drunk I just decide to get mad like an idiot. You know when you’re just feeling jealous and sassy and maybe a little bitchy? That’s the essence of this song. I\'d just seen Channel Tres live at a festival and was floored by his performance—it was sexy and cool and full of attitude. I knew he’d be perfect for this track.” **“Pineapple Slice”** “SG Lewis and I wrote this song together from scratch, and he kept pushing me to make the lyrics dirtier. Finally I was like, ‘Okay, fine, let me show you what I can do.’ I just went for it. In pop, you\'re supposed to insinuate. You\'re never supposed to say things outright. So it was fun to break the rules and really *go* there.” **“I’m to Blame”** “I wrote this song with Ali Payami, who told me he wanted to make something ‘Oasis-inspired with hip-hop drums.’ I was like, ‘That sounds out of my lane, but let\'s do it.’ Growing up, I listened to a ton of rock and indie rock, and those days came right back to me when we got in the studio. With the help of his guitar and instrumentals, I found a lyrical and melodic place that I hadn\'t gone to yet for this album. It\'s more poetic and nuanced, whereas I’m usually pretty blunt. And the vocals sound less perfect, more alive. It\'s really special to me.” **“Kick in the Head”** “This was one of the first songs I wrote when I was feeling inspired again. I’m singing about being unmotivated, not knowing what to say, how I need someone to shake me, feelings creative people experience when everything feels...flat. But things turned around when Tim, my roommate and one of my producers, brought me this beat. It had a funky bassline that reminded me of Fatboy Slim, and I thought it was so cool and interesting. Even a little experimental. It stands out in the best way and I love having it on this album because I think it helps show my range as an artist.” **“How Long”** “This was definitely written with *Euphoria* in mind. The ominous beat, the darkness, the slow, hypnotic energy...even when we hadn’t written lyrics yet, there was just so much anger in the track. It felt like revenge. I was working on the lyrics for a few days with a songwriter, and had a dream about my husband cheating on me. I\'m the kind of person who will wake up and be mad about something like that. I’ll pretend I\'m not, but I am. I\'m playing out the scenario in my head like, ‘If he did this, what would I do? How would I handle it?’ I’d go through every worst-case scenario. So I wrote about that. He knows I’m like this and will get nervous, like, ‘Babe, you know I didn’t actually cheat on you, right?’ And I just sit there like, ‘I know. I think.’”