5 Seconds of Summer began work on their fifth album without even realizing it. After its predecessor, 2020’s *CALM*, came out just after the pandemic shut the world’s borders, the four-piece found themselves with an empty calendar for the first time since their 2014 debut LP catapulted them to global stardom. In November 2020 they decamped to Joshua Tree in Southern California for 10 days, simply to explore new song ideas, with guitarist Michael Clifford producing the sessions at Rancho V recording studio. It was there that album opener “COMPLETE MESS”—which meditates on the worthwhile chaos of a relationship—came to fruition, the band emboldened by the absence of pressure and outside voices. Those sessions inadvertently marked the beginning of what would become *5SOS5*, an album that draws more on radio-friendly pop (“Flatline”) and the mature songwriting of Coldplay (“Bleach”) than the pop-punk with which the band first made their name. Co-produced by Clifford (a first for the band) with songwriting contributions from Michael Pollack and longtime collaborator John Feldmann, *5SOS5* finds the quartet in a reflective mood: “Take My Hand” is about embracing change and the fear that comes with it; “Me Myself & I” reflects on pushing away good things in your life because you think you can do everything yourself. The uptempo “Best Friends” celebrates friendship with a fittingly sugarcoated earworm melody, while “Older” is a tender piano-based ballad featuring a duet between vocalist Luke Hemmings and his fiancée, Sierra Deaton. Equal parts widescreen, anthemic, introverted, and atmospheric, *5SOS5* is the sound of a band feeling increasingly comfortable in their own skin.
When the seven-member K-pop girl group Cherry Bullet debuted back in 2019, Haeyoon, Yuju, Bora, Jiwon, Remi, Chaerin, and May immediately charmed audiences with their cheery bubblegum pop and retro-futurist synth-pop sensibilities. *Cherry Wish*, their second EP (not to be confused with 2021’s *Cherry Rush*), is in that vein—a five-track, 17-minute snack. Opener “Love in Space” is full of big electro-drum fills, production that sounds like a song by The Weeknd enhanced with jet fuel—a shout-y single ripe for a video game like Dance Dance Revolution. What follows is a family-friendly mix of teen-pop charm: cowbells and ’60s girl-group shoo-wops on “Hiccups,” sugary-sweet vocal runs on “KKa KKA,” and the cheerleading chants of closer “My Boo.”
This product is a PRE-ORDER. Ships on or before October 21, 2022. Recorded in locations around the world over the pandemic era, SHUFFLEMANIA! offers up 10 gloriously ingenious new Robyn Hitchcock songs in just under 40 minutes - a “proper pop album” as nature intended. Songs like “Midnight Tram To Nowhere” and the optimistic, album-closing “One Day (It’s Being Scheduled)” are state-of-the-art Hitchcock, manifesting his signature wit, miraculous gift for melodic craftsmanship, and striking humanity in a world gone mad. A note from Robyn: Hello dear listener, I am thrilled to be unleashing my new record album SHUFFLEMANIA! on the world. What is SHUFFLEMANIA!? It’s surfing fate, trusting your intuition, and bullfighting with destiny. It’s embracing the random and dancing with it, even when it needs to clean its teeth. It’s probably the most consistent album I’ve made. It’s a party record, with a few solemn moments, as parties are wont to supply. Groove on, groovers! Love on ye, RH x Nashville, July 2022 TRACK LIST Side A: 1. The Shuffle Man 2. The Inner Life of Scorpio 3. The Feathery Serpent God 4. Midnight Tram to Nowhere 5. Socrates in Thin Air Side B 6. Noirer than Noir 7. The Man Who Loves the Rain 8. The Sir Tommy Shovel 9. The Raging Muse 10. One Day (It's Being Scheduled)
For much of 2020 and 2021, Sea Girls should have been enjoying the trappings of life on the road as an ascendant indie-rock band. They were scheduled to be touring a debut album, *Open Up Your Head*, that made the UK Top 5 in August 2020. But with the London four-piece grounded by the pandemic, singer/guitarist Henry Camamile instead retreated to his childhood home in Lincolnshire and began searching for who he was outside of music. “The songs \[I was writing\] were a lot about identity, what I think about life, who am I?” he tells Apple Music. “When I got into a band, I wanted to get away from home, to create my identity. But then, you’re sort of forced to remember what it’s like to be a child.” The songs that emerged explore love, belonging, imperfection, and past behaviors with robust self-awareness. While Camamile reached unshrinkingly into himself, the band added a complementary directness to their sound. “We didn’t want to embellish any of the songs too much,” he says. “The first album, we had a lot of fun in the studio. ‘Let’s put that on it. Let’s put this.’ And this was about being brutal. A lot of these songs, thematically, lyrically, cut a little bit harder. I’m not really singing about, I don’t know, rainbows and dragons. There was a total honesty to writing these songs and a lot of them came quite easily. ” Here, he talks through the album, track by track. **“Hometown”** “Having ‘Hometown’ as the first song is very fitting because that really is the DNA of the album. I was thinking that being homesick means you belong somewhere. I don’t really get homesick, but it’s just that idea. It means there is something and somewhere that is you—that true identity. I thought about being in the Midlands and the villages and towns around here, and it brought out a whole new album from that. I was thinking about who I am a little bit more deeply.” **“Sick”** “It’s just me saying it as it is. I can be a bit harsh on myself, but I also know I’m human. The whole point of doing music is just wanting to be human and wanting to be honest about being human. I don’t think I’m a bad person, but I’ve been careless, or I haven’t respected myself that much sometimes. Songs like ‘Sick’ are very self-critical. I’m asking for forgiveness from people around me and my parents. I was just young—that’s what I’m saying in that song. It felt good to say it. It was quite emotional recording it in the studio.” **“Lonely”** “The first verse was written with just me singing with the guitar. I wrote the second verse walking up the street in Brixton. Again, I knew what I wanted to say, and I knew what I felt. I was thinking back to sitting outside the local shop in my car in the summertime, playing The Prodigy and thinking about what could have been with someone from school.” **“Someone’s Daughter Someone’s Son”** “It’s about how after a relationship’s over, we start again. We just become someone’s daughter or someone’s son. It made me think about that basic boy that I had been in the past and what I am now that I’m not with my ex anymore. This song led through to songs like ‘Hometown.’ It embodies why I wanted to write this album—just to be honest and not be scared to write. As long as I’ve got a good heart, I can write a song that means something to me and write about things that really matter.” **“Sleeping With You”** “I was seeing this girl and I didn’t want to write a song to be mean—and it’s not mean—but I was still in love with someone else and it’s about the realities of that. It’s terrible, like, ‘Amazing as you are, I just can’t do this.’ Again, it wasn’t a hard song to write because I just said how I felt. I didn’t worry about too many lyrical acrobatics. You can pretend to be someone else in music, but you can also be incredibly truthful. And that’s always been what I’ve clung to. I think it’s way easier to be truthful.” **“Paracetamol Blues”** “Almost all the love songs in this album are about the breakdown of one relationship, which I thought I was homesick for. It’s about belonging somewhere. It’s belonging in a relationship, belonging in a place, and belonging to a culture or an identity. ‘Paracetamol Blues’ really ties into that. I’m imagining I’m going out with someone who was like me a few years ago, I’m in love with someone who behaves like me. I overheard someone quite close to me saying, ‘Whatever, he’s a wreckhead.’ Or ‘He’s a wasteman.’ It was a joke, but I was like, ‘I’m not a wasteman. I know I’m more than that.’ One of my ex-girlfriends friends from years ago said, ‘Let’s go for a drink,’ and I brought that scenario into it too. I just thought it was exciting.” **“Again Again”** “This song is about thinking that I just have to just get drunk and be wild or whatever. With the sound, we tried to push it, to elevate it, and have the whole thing bigger. It’s definitely inspired by \[Smashing Pumpkins’\] ‘Tonight, Tonight,’ with those strings on it. It’s got a really tight beat under it, which Jacknife \[Lee, coproducer\] elevated, because it was sounding a bit grand, and it doesn’t need to be grand. Jacknife kept that beat there so it feels like it’s got indie-band roots.” **“Lucky”** “My mum found some letters from my great-grandfather from when he was in the Second World War. There’s one from when he was in the Suez Canal and there’s one written just before he went over on D-Day, and it just hit me so much. He was talking about how he wanted to be at home. I just remember a line and it ended, ‘The guns sound terrible now. Kiss Cynthia and Ben for me.’ It hit me quite a lot and it still hits me now. I just thought, ‘Fuck, that’s not my life at all.’ I just thought I should write a song about how lucky I am and be grateful because I’m not grateful a lot in my music. I feel grateful for being in this band and I’m not going to be sad anymore. It’s optimistic.” **“Higher”** “Jacknife is famous for being brutal and making a song cut through. The first couple of songs we sent to him, he called me up and he said, ‘You just sent me a song called “Higher.” What’s it about?’ And I said, ‘If I find out my girlfriend’s cheated on me, I’ll just get high.’ And he was like, ‘Well, I couldn’t tell that from that chorus, so maybe you should say that. When \[your lyrics\] work is when you just say what you think. Be more direct.’ That informed the rest of the album. I think there was a lot of Cars influence on that song musically, which Jacknife brought to the table and made the whole thing bounce. And hopefully, that chorus makes a bit more sense now!” **“Cute Guys”** “I was definitely thinking, ‘Let’s put something in this album that people aren’t necessarily going to think is something Sea Girls would have on their album.’ Oddly, the guitar riff that goes throughout the verses and chorus is something I’d been playing around with for years. I never thought to write a melody over it. It’s pretty raw the way we recorded that song and the vocal. I was seeing a girl in LA and it’s about the breakdown of that relationship. In my head, it was an identity I was homesick for. There’s an American thread throughout the album because I have my head in that world with that girl, and it was fitting that Jacknife was working in Topanga Canyon, not far away.” **“Friends”** “It’s a song that Oli \[Khan, drummer\] wrote, pretty much. It’s about how if there’s anything that is your identity, it’s your friends, it’s the people you hang out with. I think, in a way, we’ve all been homesick for that \[during the pandemic\]—your crowd that can’t get together anymore. It’s feeling that one day we’re going to get together and make the most of it when we do. That was definitely a result of lockdown and everyone being apart and thinking about what’s important.” **“Watch Your Step”** “‘Watch Your Step’ was very popular with the other guys in the band and with a lot of people. ‘Again Again,’ I think, did a better job of what I’m trying to put across here. It works better with what I wanted to do lyrically for the main album. But there’s just something great in it and we thought it’s a good part of the story for a deluxe edition because it informed ‘Again Again.’” **“I Got You”** “I wanted to just write a love song. There’s no edge. There’s no story to it really, other than how I feel about when I really liked someone. It’s about the same girl that I wrote most of the album about. We’re on good terms actually, it’s quite nice. I know she appreciates the fact she’s got a lot written about her. But ‘I Got You’ is just about being in love. It was one of the phrases that we used between each other.”
With each new release, the K-pop boy band Stray Kids seem to ask, “What next?” The octet’s latest mini album is worlds away from the early sounds of the JYP Entertainment group’s debut. Their hard-as-hell K-hip-hop has made way for a broader musical palette, boasting Southern California pop-punk *na-na-na*s atop distorted guitars (Seungmin and I.N’s “Can’t Stop”), hyperpop-trap (“3RACHA,” courtesy of Bang Chan, Changbin, and Han), and sultry, gothy R&B (“TASTE” by Lee Know, Hyunjin, and Felix). At the end of *MAXIDENT* is a familiar coda: a Korean version of their summer 2022 Japanese single “CIRCUS” and its springy production and descending vocal melody.
With each new release, the K-pop boy band Stray Kids seem to ask, “What next?” The octet’s latest mini album is worlds away from the early sounds of the JYP Entertainment group’s debut. Their hard-as-hell K-hip-hop has made way for a broader musical palette, boasting Southern California pop-punk na-na-nas atop distorted guitars (Seungmin and I.N’s “Can’t Stop”), hyperpop-trap (“3RACHA,” courtesy of Bang Chan, Changbin, and Han), and sultry, gothy R&B (“TASTE” by Lee Know, Hyunjin, and Felix). At the end of MAXIDENT is a familiar coda: a Korean version of their summer 2022 Japanese single “CIRCUS” and its springy production and descending vocal melody.
There’s a deep sense of urgency throughout the Oils’ 13th album—for good reason. The central focus of *Resist* is the climate crisis, rising sea levels, and the exploitation of land and people—particularly First Nations communities—by the Australian government. The Aussie rock icons have always been deeply political, but it’s never felt more vital, anguished, or timely than here. The album has been a few years in the making, with some tracks written back in early 2019, before *The Makarrata Project*, a collaborative album released in October 2020. “So, when it came time to do the album with producer Warne Livesey, we could record them quickly, without fuss,” guitarist Jim Moginie tells Apple Music. “Twenty songs down in five eight-hour days over eight weeks, and our last sessions with our brother Bones,” he says, referring to the Oils’ late bassist, Bones Hillman, who passed away from cancer in November 2020. Below, Moginie, frontman Peter Garrett, and drummer Rob Hirst explain the stories and themes behind each song on this powerful, provocative album. **“Rising Seas”** Jim Moginie: “It’s a hypothetical reality, a glimpse into the future. The water levels have risen. The captains of industry and the rich have abandoned the ship for higher ground. The poorest countries will be the ones left at or below sea level. It’s already happening across the Pacific. Governments sacrifice lives and homes when they deliver policy for big polluters, whether they be mining companies, oil drilling, cotton farming in the desert, or destruction of rainforest ecosystems.” **“The Barka-Darling River”** Jim Moginie: “The entire Barka-Darling is either dammed or siphoned off for town water or irrigation, or diverted for the benefit of mankind in this driest of landscapes, but there’s a limit to what she’s left with downstream. When the fish-kills hit the news, we saw it for what it was—buck-passing and conflicting decisions made by state and federal governments that serve big cotton or other irrigators. When precious water can be bought and sold as a mere commodity, the environment and First Nations people get shafted.” Rob Hirst: “The storyline is based on one of Pete’s greatest challenges from when he was Minister for the Environment: the future of the much-exploited Murray-Darling Basin. The song’s gestation coincided with my artist daughter Gabriella’s ACMI exhibition *Darling Darling* in Melbourne. Her travels to Menindee and along the then-drought-ravaged Barka brought her into contact with artist Uncle Badger Bates and other strong custodians of this once mighty river system. Droughts, climate change, water-thirsty crops, water theft, political favors, water trading, and the arrival of giant, international companies have literally drained the life out of our great national treasure. The Barkandji, who rely on a clean, flowing river for their food, have suffered the most.” **“Tarkine”** Jim Moginie: “Tarkine is such an evocative word. It’s the name of an Aboriginal tribe in north-western Tasmania, high in sacred Aboriginal sites and unique cool-temperate rainforest species. Evelyn Finnerty’s violin part is an unsettled background akin to wind catching the mist of deep forest. Or a glimpse of Allana Beltran’s Weld Angel protest, the queen of the forest coming to life high in the trees to protect this threatened area with terrible anger. If we let governments and overseas interests roll the dice, a plastic snow cone containing the Tarkine forest could be all we have left.” **“At the Time of Writing”** Rob Hirst: “This one fell together quite easily and quickly. It illustrates the deliberate urgency of the song’s climate change theme. The verses are set in the present and reflect our current hopes: ‘We better get together/Our ocean moat protects us/A chance, we’ve only got one.’ The choruses are set in the future, looking back: ‘We were good as dead; we were fast asleep.’ The bridge reverses the narrative halfway through: People blame elected leaders for doing nothing and boasting about it—then those same leaders head for the hills when things go horribly wrong.” **“Nobody’s Child”** Jim Moginie: “A rocker with a riff that I had lying around for about ten years. I was waiting for Midnight Oil to reform and play it because I knew it wouldn’t sound right done any other way. Beauty, love, and compassion are central themes to our music and are in short supply in the world today. Pete supplied the verses and added the most incredible vocal on the demo I’d ever heard him sing, especially in the middle section, which made it onto the final record.” **“To the Ends of the Earth”** Jim Moginie: “‘Every creature drinks from the same cup’ sums this one up, where trees, animals, humans, fungi, or insects all share the same terrarium. As Greta Thunberg says, ‘Some people make it seem as if we’re not doing enough to stop the climate crisis. But that’s not true. Because to not do enough, you have to do something.’ And the truth is that we are basically not doing anything apart from ‘creative carbon accounting’ and creating loopholes. What some call ‘climate action’ is actually outsourcing and excluding consumption, setting vague distant targets, burning biomass instead of fossil fuels and excluding the emissions, offsetting, switching from one disastrous energy source to a slightly less disastrous one.” **“Reef”** Jim Moginie: “When we visited the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef in 2017, Dean from GBR Legacy memorably said, ‘It doesn’t belong to the government, it doesn’t belong to Clive Palmer, it belongs to the people,’ a sentence that stuck in my mind. In 2021, the Australian Government succeeded—with much lobbying and flying around the world in private jets—in taking this endangered and dying reef off the UNESCO endangered list to cover up its own lack of climate action. The song is a tongue-in-cheek look at the bizarre decision-making around the issue. But such a serious subject is no laughing matter. Our governments have often fallen over themselves in giving away our assets to overseas interests, here allowing the building of a coal port and associated dredging in a World Heritage site. A railway between Abbot Point and the mine was proposed. Indian-owned Adani, now rebranded as Bravus Mining & Resources, have a terrible track record in other countries, and here were caught pouring toxic sludge into adjoining wetlands in 2017 and 2019, among other breaches. ‘The sky is a mirror to self-interest and greed,’ indeed.” **“We Resist”** Jim Moginie: “The history of resistance should be taught at school. Without it, we wouldn’t have made the progress we have. The Freedom Ride and Rosa Parks turned the spotlight onto racial issues, which then changed. John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘War Is Over If You Want It’ campaign, hand in hand with the fallout of the Kent State shootings and worldwide mass demonstrations, ended the Vietnam War. Suffragettes marched for women’s rights and undertook hunger strikes, which both Gandhi in India and Irish Nationalists undertook to achieve self-sovereignty. These people were brave enough to ignore the conventional orthodoxy of the time and speak out, often risking their lives in the process. The irony is that successful protesters never worked alone—they were part of strategic, highly connected networks.” **“Lost at Sea”** Rob Hirst: “Australia has a shameful record when it comes to our treatment of refugees escaping wars we’ve been involved in—Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Sri Lanka. I wanted to personalize the issue: Imagine you’re in a leaking boat overloaded with sick, thirsty, desperate people seeking safety on the open ocean. Hope briefly appears, but you’re intercepted by an armed patrol boat and diverted to a hot, crowded prison camp on a remote, tropical island. Now, you’re in a kind of perpetual checkmate—you can’t return to your war-ravaged homeland where you’ll be tortured and/or killed, nor can you ever expect to escape confinement and lead a productive life in a new country. You and your family are the unfortunate victims of opportunistic, racist politicians and their unscrupulous media attack dogs, pursuing policies which are little different from the infamous White Australia policy of a century ago.” **“Undercover”** Peter Garrett: “A thrown-together flood of disparate images in a quick, drive-y song the Oils can get their teeth into, designed to pull us out of the great Aussie torpor. Autumn colors seen out the window, followed by others in the mind’s eye, like the queues of Uyghurs lined up outside Chinese re-education camps, backed up with slinky riffing and a heads-up chorus.” **“We Are Not Afraid”** Jim Moginie: “Fear as a form of psychological control determines the behavior of citizens. It can determine election results, it can take the form of fear of immigrants, new ideas, terrorists. Psychological warfare is as powerful as real warfare. I wrote the song in Spain on a flamenco guitar in 2017. I was surprised when the band chose to take it on. Pete added lyrics that turned it into a Midnight Oil song, especially the lines ‘The rights of those that follow and the living things that feed us/Are greater than the principles of those that lead us/We must be fearless, we must be fearless,’ which were improvised and added on the final day of recording. The song has a spooked-out atmosphere to evoke paranoia—just a nylon-string guitar with wobbly, stuttering echoes and remnants of electric guitars from the demo sitting behind it, and Julian Thompson from the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s beautiful cello part.” **“Last Frontier”** Peter Garrett: “I love being outside, and wide-open spaces in songs is where the listener’s imagination takes over. So, as befitting an album closer, ‘Last Frontier’ has a slow soundscape build, with a few clues to get you into the song’s narrative about an ‘everyman’ trying to make sense of their lives and, holding onto their agency, exercising control in the wild ride we all find ourselves in.”
NIKI’s follow-up to the 2020 concept album *MOONCHILD* illuminates her striking growth as a singer-songwriter. Combining new and reimagined material from her secondary school days, *Nicole* navigates the past in glimmering, emotion-soaked alt-pop. Songs like the folk-hued “Oceans & Engines” offer the artist a chance to share not just her longing, innocence and heartache but also a new-found wisdom. “Life can be quite cyclical at times,” she writes, “and that has become painfully obvious throughout the process of re-working these songs that are some years old now.”
“I’m too busy dancing to the drum in my head,” Lights sings on her fifth full-length album, a fitting declaration for an artist who’s always followed her muse wherever it leads, and who’s always taken her time to get her hybrid sound just right. *PEP* is the Ontario-bred singer’s first proper album in five years, and its epic opener, “Beside Myself,” is the sound of all that pent-up energy being released in a grand, wide-screen display. From there, Lights resumes her expertly executed tightrope walk between alt-rock and dance-pop, reconnecting with former collaborator Josh Dun of twenty one pilots for the future-funk of “In My Head” and fellow Canadian singer Kiesza for the club-thumping blues/trap mash-up of “Money in the Bag.” But, as ever, Lights’ radiant vocals—powered by equal doses of attitude and vulnerability—serve as the connective tissue between her genre-bounding adventures. And there’s no greater showcase for them than the aptly titled “Voices Carry,” which isn’t a cover of the ’Til Tuesday standard but belongs to a similar late-’80s milieu, yielding a heart-racing pop anthem that sounds like it’s beaming in from some parallel-universe John Hughes soundtrack.
After a five-year wait, the world-conquering K-pop phenom PSY has finally unleashed his ninth studio album, featuring guest appearances by BTS’s SUGA, Sung Si Kyung, HEIZE, and more. Here the Seoul singer takes us through a selection of his favorite tracks on the album. **“That That” (prod. & feat. SUGA)** “We have a saying in the K-pop industry. If the song is meant to be a hit, it’s made in a jiff. It was a ‘jiff’ I haven’t experienced in a long time. I wrote my part and sent it to SUGA, and SUGA took it. Then I wrote my verse, and just like table tennis, we went back and forth with ease. Hitting it off, they call it, right? We really hit it off.” **“You Move Me” (feat. Sung Si Kyung)** “I can put this song in one word: PSY vibes. We had those vibes in ‘Paradise’ and ‘What Would Have Been?’, and I have a feeling that this new track will become something beyond those songs. Having Sung Si Kyung as the featured artist was definitely the game-changer. I talk about life through rap while Sung Si Kyung sings about it, and that package of emotion is like a great blockbuster movie.” **“Sleepless” (feat. HEIZE)** “It was one of those nights when you toss and turn. I asked myself who would really understand how that feels, and I could only think of HEIZE. We all have those days when you feel down without a particular reason. As the lyrics of this song were written during one of those days, I hope this will make those who are going through one more bearable. HEIZE had asked me how she should sing this song. It’s almost a sin to give direction to HEIZE with this kind of song. I simply told her to sing however she liked to. Recording sessions ended really quickly that day. It was another one of those sleepless nights.” **“Now” (feat. Hwa Sa)** “This song is based on ‘When the Rain Begins to Fall,’ sung by Jermaine Jackson and Pia Zadora in 1984. In 1987, a Korean band named Seoul Family did a remake of this song. I knew Hwa Sa, who was born in 1995, wouldn’t even know this song, but I could only think of her when I heard this song. If she hadn’t accepted, I wouldn’t have included this track on my album. It’s a song you should sing your soul out within your vocal range.” **“forEVER” (feat. TABLO)** “It took only four days to write, record, and edit this song. But it took three years to share it with the world. I thought it might take forever, like the title of it. There are parts that I got to relate to better after time. I want to thank TABLO for being so patient. I’m sorry and I love you, TABLO!”
Hi, I'm Cecily, and this is my first album. It's an emo album about being a sad bunny.
For his first post-Rush album project, guitar wizard Alex Lifeson has teamed up with bassist Andy Curran of veteran Canadian rockers Coney Hatch, producer Alfio Annibalini (Voivod/Sons of Otis), and beguiling young singer Maiah Wynne to form Envy of None. The group’s self-titled debut is a true collaborative effort featuring deep electronic textures, dreamy alt-rock, and a poignant tribute to Lifeson’s late, great friend and bandmate Neil Peart. Just don’t expect any of it to sound like Rush. “I was in Rush for 45 years, but I have a lot of other musical ideas,” Lifeson tells Apple Music. “Working with a different set of people who are great musicians and great songwriters was a rewarding experience. I was able to create the type of soundscapes and character in the guitar that was very non-guitarlike.” Below, Lifeson and Curran discuss each track. **“Never Said I Love You”** Alex Lifeson: “Even when this song was in a demo format, before it had vocals or anything, we felt it was a pretty darn hooky song. We were even jokingly calling it a ‘smash-hit bed track.’ We had a bit of confidence that it might actually get a lot of airplay one day. When Maiah got involved, I think Andy suggested the line ‘I never said I loved you,’ and she just ran with it. I ended up adding some acoustic guitars to the chorus to help make it really big and wide and singable.” **“Shadow”** Andy Curran: “This is probably the earliest Envy of None song that we all collaborated on. Certainly, it was the first time Alfi and I shared anything we were working on with Maiah. That might be the one that really resonated with Alex when he realized, as we did, how special Maiah is—and her grasp of melodies and lyrics and harmonies. She said the electronic vibe of the track reminded her of a video game.” **“Look Inside”** Lifeson: “When this first came around, we all struggled with it. The parts were interesting separately, but gluing it together seemed to be a little bit of a task. The difficulty is it’s a very slow tempo, and it’s in 3/4 time, so it has that swing to it. But we slowly figured it out. Andy’s bass is just so awesome and memorable and cool. Maiah’s vocal is dreamy, and the melody is reminiscent of something from the early Beatles era. I added the guitar that starts off the song—it sounds like a keyboard part, but it’s actually a guitar. It’s a real stoner lullaby. That’s what we call it, anyway.” **“Liar”** Curran: “I’m a big fan of industrial music—I love Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails. I came up with this groove and originally sent it to Dave Ogilvie from Skinny Puppy, who had a band called Jakalope and was looking for some songs. He loved it, but he told me the band had just broken up. So, I called Alfi and said we needed to do something with this. I had little seeds of the lyric and vocal idea, but Maiah ended up taking those ideas and writing lyrics about her experience of being on jury duty and listening to some woman lie through her teeth. It really works.” **“Spy House”** Lifeson: “This is one of the songs that I wrote some time ago. It was intended to be a little instrumental exercise, and it has the only solo on the record, so you can tell that it was something that I was working on before Envy of None got going. A lot of times, I come up with song titles by looking around the room and seeing a book or a movie or something, and that’s where this came from. Then Maiah wrote lyrics based on a character who’s very paranoid in a relationship and spying on her love interest.” **“Dog’s Life”** Curran: “This is one of the very last songs that we added. I had this sequenced bass idea that I sent along to everybody, and then Maiah sent over maybe 60 tracks of vocal ideas that poor Alex and Alfi had to sift through. Then I randomly reached out to Joe Vitale because he’s one of my favorite drummers. People might recognize his name from playing with Joe Walsh for years. He’s in his seventies now, but he plays like a 16-year-old on this. It’s one of my favorites on the record.” **“Kabul Blues”** Lifeson: “This is another song from the ‘Spy House’ era, and it was originally an instrumental. It was an exercise in trying to create a bluesy song that had an Eastern influence or character to it, but at the same time, it was like an acid trip—if you can imagine those three things together. Then I put all these weird effects and spacey sounds in the background, Andy redid the bass and Maiah wrote great lyrics for it—very evocative. She did a very sensual vocal treatment for the song. Then I edited the guitar, so it moves around her vocal. It’s definitely one of my favorites.” **“Old Strings”** Lifeson: “This is where Maiah and I really cemented our relationship. She was very, very inspiring for my guitar playing and my guitar arrangements on this record, but this song is the perfect example. It’s one of her songs, and it was originally double-time. It had a real rootsy feel, almost bluegrass. So, I worked for two days putting guitars, banjo, and mandolin on it. In the meantime, Alf and Andy were stripping the song down to its most essential melodic parts, with a half-time feel. When I heard their version, I was ready to delete everything I did. So, we did it that way. It\'s a beautifully constructed song, and lyrically it’s beautiful. Very profound, in my opinion.” **“Dumb”** Curran: “This is a little bit of a guilty pleasure for me. The bass is fairly relentless and syncopated, and it very much has an ’80s dance feel. It’s maybe something that you would hear in a club in Berlin, with some tight clothing on—so it’s quite foreign to the rest of the songs. I originally tried to sell the band on having it stay that way throughout the song, but Alex suggested I add another part, which is now the intro. Maiah wrote some very personal lyrics, and the guitars Alex added might be my favorite guitar moments on the album, even though they don’t sound like guitars at all.” **“Enemy”** Lifeson: “Maiah’s performance is so amazing on this. It melts me every time I hear it. I have goose bumps right now, as I’m saying this. There is so much menace in the way she delivers her vocals. The song has this almost *Twilight Zone*-ish riff, and all these quirky elements come together to create an uncomfortable listening experience. When the chorus comes in with the heavy guitars, it’s really intense. And that whole ‘put a flower in your gun’ line is just something else. **“Western Sunset”** Lifeson: “This is difficult to talk about because I wrote the song around the time we heard of Neil’s illness. We all spent time with him, and one day I was on his patio, watching the sunset. It was a very serene, calm moment in the middle of this terrible news, and it struck me that with the sun setting and bringing closure to the day, it became this poignant moment we were sharing. As a closer for the album, it also gives you a chance to catch your breath and digest everything you just listened to. I immediately think of Neil when I hear the song, and it actually makes me feel good. That kind of thing is an important part of recovering from the loss of someone that you love so much.”
“Wake up, world,” a voice kick-starts K-pop boy band ATEEZ’s ninth EP. “Are you there?” A *Matrix*-esque techno-punk synth arrangement explodes into a post-rock arena moment that could make Bring Me the Horizon envious. It’s total pop-rock cinema, delivered in just one minute and some change. And it’s just the intro, “PROPAGANDA.” Across *The World EP.1 : MOVEMENT*, ATEEZ find a new edge: “Cyberpunk” is studied in Euro-techno-pop and Nine Inch Nails in equal measure. If they ever open a K-pop club in Berlin, this should be its theme. “Guerrilla” is a retro-futuristic fight song for tough guys who love multi-part harmonies, pulled straight from Y2K and bolstered with 2K22 maximalist production. It’s world-building with intention, ahead of its time, and, ideally, just another new beginning for the group.
While on stage at the 2019 Headies ceremony, Rema declared himself “the future” after winning in the Next Rated category of the Nigerian awards show. Whether those words were prophetic or just an audacious estimation of self, the Benin-born musician has delivered on his promise ever since. As a standout talent, Rema has been a critical factor in pushing Afropop into a genre-fluid, futurist epoch that produces a vibrant mosaic of the music—encompassing influences from the hyper-frenzy of trap, reggaetón’s melodic undertone, and the immersive sonics of Bollywood scores. All of these influences come to a head on the singer’s debut LP, *Rave & Roses*, a 16-song set on which he details love, addiction, and fate with pointed clarity. “I swear this album has different moods, different stories,” Rema tells Apple Music. “Just the recording process had different reasons that carried me to the studio, moments that just came out of the blue, but with the same goal. I didn’t have a solid written plan, so I literally approached this album with no fear or pressure. Every project will have different meanings to me, aside from the story they tell—but this one is a sound-sealer, and it’s that bridge to bring the fans closer to Rema.” Without sacrificing the romantic impulse that inspires much of *Rave & Roses*, Rema vocalizes his belief in predestination and examines societal dynamics with contributions from an eclectic cast that includes American singer 6LACK, British rapper AJ Tracey, and French vocalist Yseult. Read on as Rema (Divine Ikubor) guides us through *Rave & Roses*, one track at a time. **“Divine”** “‘Divine’ is all about how I was born; it’s about my birth process. It shows the trials and the stress and the worries and the pain my mom had to go through in giving birth to me. Even before she was pregnant with me, she was going through battles, and I came at a very weird time in her and my dad’s life. I spent over 10 months in the womb, but I never caused any pain. She was just worried about if the child was alive because I wasn’t making any movements. Until she fell very ill and went to the hospital, and the doctor just decided to give her enough confidence to give it a little push. And she gave it a little push. It was the easiest birth she ever had. My dad told her to name me, and she called me Divine. I tried my best to squeeze all that detail into the first verse, but the best part of the song shows how far that very divine boy has come—as well as talking my shit. I’ve been fighting battles way before I was born, and I deserve everything I’ve got.” **“Hold Me” \[Rema & 6LACK\]** “‘Hold Me’ is literally a mature sense of love. I’m talking about a girl that is not really all about the show, because it’s quite rare in this generation. She’s not about a guy buying her dinner or buying her drinks or getting her gifts. She is just looking for someone to love and respect her, mostly. And it’s just me being that famous guy and observing someone who is quite rare in my generation. Even if I’m famous and all, she doesn’t care about that. She just wants to hold me down and be that real one for me. So, the title represents feeling safe with this woman. That’s what every guy looks for: those quiet moments where you feel safe in this crazy world. I did this song with 6LACK and it’s a masterpiece.” **“Dirty”** “‘Dirty’ is all about good love—the special times two people can share. I would say it’s a \[2021 single\] ‘Soundgasm’-type feel. I’d say it’s the next level of the ‘Hold Me’ narrative; that’s how it advances. Also, the last line from that song is mostly directed towards the pleasure of having someone you love. **“Calm Down”** “With ‘Calm Down,’ I was with some people from the Mavin Academy, and we were just vibing and chilling. We went into one of the studios where we saw \[Andre\] Vibez. Vibez saw that our energy was up, and we just wanted to freestyle on beats. The next day, I recorded and brought up my experience where I met a girl at a party. I was trying to get her attention and we could only go halfway in the party, but it advanced and we just locked in and loved up.” **“Soundgasm”** “I made this song on February 14, 2021—Valentine’s Day. And that was a special day, but even if it’s a holiday, I still work. I was at a hotel, actually. London and I just linked up for this.” **“Time N Affection” \[Rema & Chris Brown\]** “‘Time N Affection’ is about the time you put into someone you love and how much you give into it. It’s one thing to love and spend money and ball and whatever, but when it loses that main interest, it’s not love anymore. It’s lost. Putting in your time, no matter how busy you are, and putting in your interest proves how much you love someone, and that’s what the song is all about. Chris Brown did his part and that made it a special record. Very graced to have his vocals on my album.” **“Jo”** “‘Jo’ is just a happy record. In the studio, I was in a very light vibe with that record. ‘Jo’ is the Yoruba word for ‘dance.’ The song is just a happy jam that covers the whole ‘roses’ aspect of the album, attached to love.” **“Mara”** “‘Mara’ is all about the addiction and madness that comes with love. It’s being obsessed. It’s the next level. According to the arrangement of the songs on the album—from ‘Hold Me’ to ‘Dirty’ to ‘Mara’ and ‘Love’—the love waxes stronger from track to track.” **“Love”** “It’s really a loved-up album. It’s hype and it’s love. Two great mediums, two great frequencies to tap into, to seal the Rema brand a hundred percent. ‘Love’ is all about love and what it can inspire—and the addiction that comes with love. This is my definition of love. It’s not, ‘I’m in love with you.’ It’s not, ‘Love this or love that.’ It’s just love. It’s my own definition of love and how I embrace my own love life.” **“Addicted”** “‘Addicted’ speaks about a girl who’s addicted to the lifestyle. Addicted to drugs, fame, partying, whatever comes with the fake life, the clout or journey. Everyone is allowed to have fun, but there should be a balance. I know this girl who actually crossed the limit and had an overdose of this lifestyle. In this record, I deemed it not right at all, because being at the \[career\] height I am, I know that I can have this life to the fullest, but I still have my laidback time to create a balance. So, this song is literally me telling this girl, ‘Yo, you could have a balance to it. Don’t get carried away by it.’” **“Are You There?”** “‘Are You There?’ is a wake-up call. We go crazy about the government and \[yet\] slowly we have accepted their bullshit and we just tend to ignore and only talk when it affects us. We are still complaining about the things our parents complained about. In this song, I complain about certain issues that we face, and the ways I air out my feelings about certain issues in the country. Many things are happening at the same time, and while people are dying, some people are in the club. So, I decided not to care anymore. I just can’t be here focusing on the negativity of the country. Don’t ask me any questions when I’m outside the country and I’m balling.” **“FYN” \[Rema & AJ Tracey\]** “‘FYN’ is about this young kid from Benin working his way up, three years back-to-back, and being in this position that I always knew to be the ‘fresh young n\*\*\*\*a’ young position from back in the days. When I used to see my big bosses back then, that’s how I labeled them—I’d call them ‘fresh young n\*\*\*\*s.’ When I knew I was in that place and when I knew that my bank account was looking good, when I knew that I had worked my way to that status, I felt the need to talk my shit a little bit. With every level that I \[reach\], I always make sure that I get the matching beats, something that matches the feel and the level at which I want to talk my shit. AJ Tracey killed his verse. His voice was perfect for the beat, and his flow was perfect for the lyricism.” **“Oroma Baby”** “‘Oroma Baby’ is a jam. It’s just a dance record that still covers the term ‘love’ and how it is attached to the ‘Roses’ side of the album.” **“Carry”** “‘Carry’ is practically the same idea that I used in my record ‘Lady.’ It’s just pouring praises on the body of an African woman, and on what she’s all about, inside out.” **“Wine” \[Rema & Yseult\]** “‘Wine’ is a love record, partly English, partly French. We were trying to bring the French people to connect with this vibe as well. Yseult and I had a huge connection with this record. \[*Rave & Roses* co-producer\] London made sure that collab happened; I actually did the song halfway, and then I forgot about it. Then, London did his thing and came back with vocals, and I was like, ‘Who’s this?’ And he was like, ‘Yo, this is Yseult.’ I\'m glad he brought her world into my world.” **“Runaway”** “‘Runaway’ was inspired by my experiences back in the days before fame. We live in a society where boys are hustling, and a guy would just take your babe and stuff like that. I had back-to-back anxiety and a little insecurity about holding such a beautiful girl down, because I was broke and not in the position where I wanted myself to be. So, ‘Runaway’ is literally me telling her that I’m not sure our love could thrive here. It’s just me telling her to run away with me and create our own definition of love.”go here.
Montell Fish is easily one of the more fascinating artists making faith-based music today, with the young singer-songwriter finding vulnerable, often beautiful ways of expressing the intersections between human relationships and connection to a higher power. On *JAMIE*, which follows 2019’s *Bedroom Lofi*, Fish turns his attention toward the idea of loss and healing, crafting layered, sometimes raw narratives that evoke universal experiences like heartbreak and longing—while still leaving room for alternate interpretations. “The whole album is about the process of grief,” Fish tells Apple Music. “There are several stages of grief, and the first one is denial and isolation. This whole project was rooted in those two states.” Fish recorded the entire project in his bedroom, a process that lends itself well to his stripped-down guitar work and his dynamic voice, which recalls Frank Ocean and Bon Iver. Here, Fish shares insights into several of *JAMIE*’s key tracks. **“Jamie”** “‘Jamie’ was like throwing you into the world \[of the album\], since the whole album is about the first process of grief. I felt those last words, ‘Jamie, the best thing that happened to me,’ represented that denial well.” **“Fall in Love with You.”** “I didn\'t expect that one to be as big as it was. I mean, with a lot of the tracks, I just made them in my bedroom—that one probably took 10 minutes to write, if that. It was something that came to my mind. But what I thought was really cool—because I was studying the art of contradiction and contrast—is the music of the track and even the hook sounds very lovely, like you\'re falling in love very slow, but the verse feels like it\'s a breakup. Most people, I don\'t think, really notice that, because they use it for couples’ videos and stuff like that. But it\'s actually a really sad song.” **“And i’d go a thousand miles”** “‘thousand miles’ is me finally messing around and trying a little guitar solo. The guitar has become my favorite instrument over the years. This track, as well as the whole album, has this stripped nature, which I always thought felt lonely and like the isolation part of the process of grief.” **“Destroy Myself Just for You”** “Throughout the whole writing of the album, I had this fear that I was going to die either as soon as I finished the album or at some point in the process. I don\'t know why. It was just an illogical fear. I don\'t have it as much anymore, but I just kept having that, so I put it in the music because I just wanted to get it out of me, get what was in my head out of me. But again, it has this very beautiful analogy of suffering for the sake of love, suffering and allowing yourself to be destroyed, which can be very unhealthy in the human way. But then when you look at God, it\'s like he suffered for us on the cross. Towards the outro of the track is the beginning of the birth of this character I’ve developed called Charlotte. He screams a lot and sings very passionately. You can hear his high falsettos towards the end.” **“I Can’t Love You This Much”** “‘I Can’t Love You This Much’ is me accepting that I can’t let go. The first words are ‘After all these years still I want you here.’ It doesn’t even feel like a song to me, just like I’m whining over the whole track. But that’s the best part to me.”
“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. For the deluxe *MOTOMAMI +*, ROSALÍA expands on the original with an additional eight tracks. Among these are the liberating summer jam “DESPECHÁ,” a live version of “LA FAMA” (sans The Weeknd) from Barcelona’s Palau Sant Jordi, and a “Thank Yu :)” voice note from the artist herself. Also of note, reggaetón veteran Chencho Corleone hops on a remix of “CANDY” that further elevates the album favorite.
When you’ve been a member of one of the biggest boy bands in music history, navigating a solo career that is both authentic and individual to you can be a disorienting experience. Not so for Louis Tomlinson, who course-corrected his initial post-1D EDM-influenced pop towards the indie, Britpop, and stadium rock lanes he feels most comfortable in, with the release of his debut album, *Walls*, in 2020. On his follow-up effort, *Faith in the Future*, Tomlinson anchors himself more firmly in this identity. Lyrically, he is in much the same headspace as he was on his debut album, ruminating on love and romance—the grounding feeling of returning to his hometown and the importance of looking out for each other in hard times. As the album title suggests, however, Tomlinson’s outlook is more optimistic and forward-focused this time around. He’s more concerned with the road ahead than sorting through the baggage he might be carrying with him along the way. Having spent much of the first half of 2022 on tour, it’s perhaps no surprise that this record sources inspiration from the energy of a live show, pulling from influences like DMA’S on the galloping sing-along “Face the Music,” while soaring lead single “Bigger Than Me” and the thumping momentum of “Out of My System” aspire to world stages and huge crowds. Elsewhere, “Written All Over Your Face” calls to mind early Arctic Monkeys—showcasing a lyrical wit and sleek, suave guitar riffs that guarantee the song will be a crowd-pleaser. A solid home base gives Tomlinson the confidence to venture into places he was conspicuous in before. *Faith in the Future* carries over very few return collaborators from his debut, with Tomlinson drafting in the talents of Fred Ball, James Vincent McMorrow, and Theo Hutchcraft of synth-pop duo Hurts, among others, to assist on writing and production. Tomlinson experiments with a more electronic sound—to greater effect this time round—on songs such as “All This Time” and “She Is Beauty We Are World Class,” which stands out as one of the record’s most intriguing moments. His drive to build on his foundations is commendable, and a promising indicator of his future as a songwriter.
