Think “Birdy” and what likely springs to mind is the starkly emotive, folk-tinged stylings of her self-titled, best-selling debut album—a 2011 collection of cover songs—or perhaps the sophisticated baroque influences of her subsequent releases. *Portraits* marks a distinct departure from the singer-songwriter’s signature sound, forgoing tender midtempos in favor of surging choruses and electronic flourishes inspired by the 1980s. A cohort of pop-oriented songwriters and producers have been enlisted to aid in the navigation of this change in creative direction, including Anya Jones (Little Mix, Tom Grennan), Gabe Simon (Dua Lipa, Lana Del Rey), and production partners Dan Priddy and Mark Crew (Bastille, Rag’n’Bone Man). The result is a dynamic showcase of Birdy’s core strengths—expressive vocals, impassioned lyricism—streamlined to pack the soul-deep sentiments at the album’s core with the same punch as a traditional pop hit. Taking cues from alternative icons like Kate Bush and David Bowie, whose essence can be heard most keenly on sister songs “Ruins I” and “Ruins II,” and “I Wish I Was a Shooting Star,” *Portraits* strikes a confident balance between the mainstream and the avant garde. Gentle piano ballad “Your Arms” finds Birdy in typically reflective form, while the irresistibly effervescent opening track “Paradise Calling” and “Automatic” move the introspective star out of her head and galvanize the body into action. Even the heartbreak—so integral to Birdy’s musical identity—has an optimistic shimmer, hitting emotional rock bottom on “Tears Don’t Fall” and bouncing back rather than shattering on impact as the record throbs to an end. It feels like a natural progression, rendering a clear image of an intuitively experimental artist across the face of this sonic evolution. The ethereal mystique that made Birdy so compelling when she first emerged onto the scene as a shy 14-year-old is still worth keeping in mind. But *Portraits* is an invitation to think again.
When TOMORROW X TOGETHER, aka TXT, debuted in 2019, the five members were usually contextualized as BTS’s hoobaes, aka juniors. At the time, Yeonjun, Soobin, Beomgyu, Taehyun, and Huening Kai were the only other group at BTS’s agency Big Hit, and there was much expectation for what they would bring to the K-pop scene. While it’s unfair to compare any group to BTS’s culture-shifting legacy, TXT is finding impact in its own way, becoming the first K-pop group to headline Lollapalooza and landing a deal as Dior’s newest brand ambassadors. Where BTS has always led with their love for and appreciation of hip-hop, TXT skews alt-rock; *The Name Chapter: FREEFALL*, the third studio album from TXT, sees the group further refine their signature sound. TXT chose “Chasing That Feeling” as the album’s lead single. The New Wave bop explores a dedication to winning back a lost love in separate Korean- and English-language versions: “Didn’t know what I had, did I?/Left it all in the past/Hoping for twice in a lifetime/Is that too much to ask?” The synth-driven structure is slightly reminiscent of debut single “Crown,” though “Chasing That Feeling” is fittingly more mature in both sound and theme—and far more committed to the ’80s— and pairs well with the hypnotic dance-trance track “Deep Down.” It’s noteworthy that *The Name Chapter: FREEFALL*’s pre-release singles are English-language collaborations with global artists: the fun, fluffy Jonas Brothers collab “Do It Like That” and the funky “Back for More” with Brazilian singer-songwriter Anitta. If those singles are looking to bring more ears to TXT, pop ballad “Blue Spring” is on the other end of the outreach-aspiration spectrum. The song was written by TXT specifically for fandom MOA (“When we\'re high, when we\'re low/You\'re always by my side”) and was first performed by the group during their Act: Sweet Mirage world tour. It’s a sweet addition to this collection of songs that also nods at the near-constant touring of the group in this era. TXT indulges their love of rock most explicitly in “Growing Pain,” which blends soaring vocals with a few death-metal growls. But it’s “Skipping Stones” that is perhaps the most characteristically TXT track, bringing a distinctive discordant eeriness to the album. Together, the nine tracks on *The Name Chapter: FREEFALL* point towards an even brighter future, fully outside of BTS’s shadow.
Sixteen years after “Potential Breakup Song,” the addictive pop-rock tune from sisters Aly & AJ’s breakout third album, *Insomniatic*, and a few additional sonic detours since then (’80s synth-pop on 2017’s *Ten Years* EP, folky alt-rock on 2021’s *a touch of the beat gets you up on your feet gets you out and then into the sun*) has led here: *With Love From*, a collection of sunshine-y, foot-tapping Americana. Their love of classic country hits hard in the opener, “Open to Something and That Something Is You,” with its intertwined vocals and slide guitar. There’s only one collaboration on the release: That’s Joy Oladokun on the optimistic ballad “Way of Nature Way of Grace”—her rich voice deepens the sisters’ sweet falsetto. Throughout, *With Love From* resonates like a road trip throughout the American West: wide, warm, breezy.
Sixteen years after "Potential Breakup Song," the addictive pop-rock tune from sisters Aly & AJ's breakout third album, Insomniatic, and a few additional sonic detours since then ('80s synth-pop on 2017's Ten Years EP, folky alt-rock on 2021's a touch of the beat gets you up on your feet gets you out and then into the sun) has led here: With Love From, a collection of sunshine-y, foot-tapping Americana. Their love of classic country hits hard in the opener, "Open to Something and That Something Is You," with its intertwined vocals and slide guitar. There's only one collaboration on the release: That's Joy Oladokun on the optimistic ballad "Way of Nature Way of Grace"-her rich voice deepens the sisters' sweet falsetto. Throughout, With Love From resonates like a road trip throughout the American West: wide, warm, breezy.
“It was very much on purpose to have the album not be a divorce or breakup album—it was more of a relationship album,” Kelly Clarkson tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe of *chemistry*, the belter and TV host’s 10th album and first non-holiday release since her marriage ended in 2020. Instead, Clarkson took a wide-screen look at love and its effects, with her strong voice leading the way. *chemistry* opens with “skip this part,” a sweeping ballad that shows off Clarkson’s voice—still as strong as it was when she became the inaugural American Idol more than two decades prior, but now tinged with the sort of wisdom that comes with going through it. But the strength of *chemistry* lies in how Clarkson refuses to fast-forward through any of the complex emotions that come with love. “It is a heavy topic,” she says. “I do like the idea of taking a quirky, pop, happy sound melodically, and then putting a dark lyric with it.” Those emotions are all there, and amplified by her singular voice, which has gotten so many listeners through parts of their own lives over the last 20-plus years; as heavy as the subject matter may feel, Clarkson makes a point to find lightness. “Love makes you do really incredible things and incredibly stupid things,” she says. “You have to find humor. Even the dark, deep, sad ones—I have to find humor. I have to have a little tinge of that.” You can find it in the giddy first-crush feelings of the effervescent “favorite kind of high” (which peaks with Clarkson soaring into her head voice); the irritable post-breakup emotions that are outlined in the sardonic, Steve Martin-assisted “i hate love”; and the wounded vulnerability of “lighthouse,” which uses the sea beacons as a metaphor for the moment when one realizes a relationship has become unmoored. With *chemistry*, Clarkson offers listeners a picture of her life as it is now, scars and all. It’s a stirring statement from one of pop’s most powerful voices that doesn’t flinch from the hard parts of life and love, instead looking at them head-on and creating something beautiful out of the tumult. “Hopefully, people connect and don’t feel isolated and alone,” she says. “That’s the worst part when you’re going through something—you can’t experience full-on what someone else is experiencing. And it’s very isolating.”
One of the toughest things to do as an artist is a feat of transfiguration whereby a songwriter changes the individual into the universal. It’s a rare accomplishment, and even rarer for an artist as young as Reneé Rapp to do it. “I write a lot from specificity,” she tells Apple Music. “So many of these songs have to come from real things that are happening in my life. Friendships end, relationships end. Sometimes you just have to sit with your feelings.” The 23-year old actor and musician blazed through Charlotte, North Carolina’s thriving theater scene before taking on the roles of Regina George in the *Mean Girls* musical, both on Broadway and in the upcoming movie adaptation, and Leighton on the HBO Max series *The Sex Lives of College Girls*. Through all that success, Rapp also somehow found the time to develop into a preternaturally talented songwriter. On her full-length debut *Snow Angel*, she fuses the raw catharsis of Olivia Rodrigo with the scenic storytelling of Maggie Rogers, bouncing back and forth between stadium-ready hooks (“Talk Too Much,” “The Wedding Song”) and intimate, slinky crooning (“I Wish,” “Willow”). Rapp enlisted her longtime collaborator, the Grammy-nominated producer Alexander 23, to work on *Snow Angel*, and you can sense his guiding hand throughout the record, helping Rapp channel and focus her emotions—heartbreak, anxiety, venom, and hope in equal measures—into personal stories that also feel like they’re for everyone. Below, she tells the stories behind those stories on *Snow Angel*. **“Talk Too Much”** “I have a lot of stress dreams, and one night I had a dream that I killed my girlfriend. I was so stressed out and I was so confused. The relationship was very new, and I got really overwhelmed. I ended up confessing and asked her how she felt. They were like, ‘What is wrong with you?!’ Then I just decided to write ‘Talk Too Much’ because I don\'t think I should have told them that, but also I did tell you this. It’s about the spiraling of being in a new relationship and wondering if it\'s good or bad.” **“I Hate Boston”** “This song comes from two different places. It started because I was in a session with some of my friends and I was talking about this show I played in Boston. The fans were just so awesome and it was a great gig by all accounts, but I was sick and I felt like shit. I also wore these faux leather pants and big boots and a fuzzy sweater, and the venue was so hot and I was suffocating. It was awful. The other side was that I wanted to use Boston as an alias because the word sings beautifully. The lyrics are about a city that an ex tainted for me, and I wanted to make sure that it felt really close to the hyper-specific situations that I went through in this relationship. Boston was sort of a cover-up.” **“Poison Poison”** “This is probably the most sarcastic, cynical song that I have on this record. I had a friendship with another girl that ended really horribly. I think as a woman and as women, it sucks when we get in a fight with another woman. We don\'t want to be a girl that takes down another girl. I wanted to write a song about it because I cared about this person so much and we were such good friends and I felt really betrayed. I wanted to deal with my feelings in a way that was comedic and sarcastic and kind of coped with it in a different way than how I actually felt about it, which was extremely hurt and betrayed and really confused and very sad.” **“Gemini Moon”** “This song is so fucking funny because actually I\'m a Pisces moon. But I wrote \'Gemini Moon\' because I had a really tough breakup a couple years ago which started as us taking a break—this in-between thing where you\'re feeling two states at once. I walked outside after this happened and I looked up and, of course, it\'s a full fucking moon. That shit always happens to me on a full moon. I always have full moons on my birthdays, and it sucked. Then I wondered if the moon is in Gemini right now. And through tears, I looked it up, and sure enough, it was Gemini moon. Then I was in the studio one day and fresh into a new relationship and I was experiencing being in love with someone again after having that fallout. I hadn\'t felt that intensely for someone in a long time, and I was really scared. I was criticizing every little thing I did. So I was like, wow, I wonder if it\'s a Gemini moon right now. I looked it up and it was a Gemini moon, and I was like, are you fucking kidding? It was almost exactly two years apart.” **“Snow Angel”** “I went through a really shitty experience in early 2022. I was extremely sad, and I was involved with the wrong people. I had recounted the situation so many times to friends over and over again. It was something that I think I had just stored in a place that I was never really going to process it the way that other people did. Then one day I was sitting with Alexander and he was like, ‘We really should write that snow song.’ And everybody else on my team was like, ‘We\'re so happy. Oh my god, this is the code for this album, we\'ve cracked it.’ In my brain I\'m like, ‘Well, this was one of the worst experiences in my life, so glad that it could turn into something like this.’” **“So What Now”** “I was seeing this person and we had a really quick in-and-out kind of thing. It was just so intense and I was so mad. So after the situation had subsided, I was like, ‘Are you going to ever speak to me again? Am I supposed to speak to you?’ ‘So What Now’ is just the culmination of this overarching thought of ‘you\'re treating me like shit’ but also ‘I\'m not mad at you, but what are we supposed to do?’” **“The Wedding Song”** “I was living in New Jersey for work for a few months when I wrote this. I was in a relationship at one point with someone who I thought I was going to marry, and that was the first time that had ever happened to me. And I thought that it would be so just gut-wrenching to be like, ‘I wrote you a wedding song because I thought I was going to be with you forever and I never played it for you, and now you\'re never going to hear it because we don\'t speak anymore.’ It\'s meant to be this really soul-sucking kind of song that\'s so happy and beautiful in the chorus, then it\'s just so sad in the verses because it\'s like, ‘Well, this is what I would\'ve said had you stuck around, but you decided to not and that\'s just now something that I have to deal with.’” **“Pretty Girls”** “I think ‘Pretty Girls’ is the universal gay-girl experience, in my opinion. Ever since I became more publicly out, so many straight girls are like, ‘I couldn\'t be with a girl, but wow, if I did...’ So it\'s just the gay-girl experience of all these straight girls being like, ‘I am either a closeted gay in a way that I don\'t understand or I\'m just kind of using you as a little prop.’ And that sucks any way you slice it. But in a really sick and twisted way, it’s kind of flattering. I love to be hit on. I\'m so sorry, but I do.” **“Tummy Hurts”** “This was the last song we wrote that ended up making the album. It started because I wrote down in my notes one day the sentence ‘My tummy hurts, he\'s in love with her.’ It wasn\'t really about any specific situation, which is usually where I write from. I love this almost childlike way of saying I have a stomach ache and then this really adult feeling of someone is in love with somebody else. I liked how it felt and I liked how it was worded. And it all came from there.” **“I Wish”** “I wrote this when I was living in New Jersey. I was writing with some of my friends and they had come up with a different kind of concept for the chorus and some of the lyrics. They said, ‘Oh, this is like writing a song to your childhood self.’ But for me, it\'s reading in a different way. It was more about how I remember my first taste of mortality when I realized my parents were going to die when I was 10. I remember not being able to sleep for such a long time because I was like, holy shit, my parents are not invincible. I was just so shocked by it and I was so confused. I was young and it was really jarring and I struggled with it for a long time. I think I still do. And so I just wanted to make \'I Wish\' this sort of love letter to the idea that I wish I didn\'t know about the concept of death.” **“Willow”** “‘Willow’ is two things. Frank Ocean is my favorite songwriter of all time. I didn\'t feel like I had any songs on my project that took any lyrical inspiration from him and his projects, and I really wanted there to be. I also loved willow trees as a kid. As I got older, I also thought there was something so interesting about it being called a weeping willow. I felt like I kind of had a lot of similar qualities to this tree, which sounds crazy, but I just always felt that way. I ended up framing it as my little self sitting under a willow tree talking to my current self. It was me personifying the tree as my younger self, which sounds kind of crazy, but it\'s one of my favorite songs on the whole album.” **“23”** “I think it’s the first song that Alexander and I did together. I was having full birthday panic the day before I turned 23. I was like, ‘Wow, it\'s my birthday, but I feel like all my friends hate me and I feel extremely alone.’ I thought that these feelings would be gone by now, but here I am, a young adult about to be in my Jordan year, and I still feel like shit. It’s a birthday blues kind of song. Then the outro is this hopeful message that I don\'t feel that same way when I\'m 24 next year. So the kind of annual terror that comes around your birthday, it\'s like wishing that away.”
True to its title, Holly Lapsley Fletcher’s third album as Låpsley details a range of nuanced emotional experiences from her mid-twenties. “Hotel Corridors” shares the intimidating sensation of having too many pathways to choose from in life, while “Dial Two Seven” touches on the English singer’s time spent in lockdown while visiting South Africa in early 2020. Working with a cast of producers including Joe Brown, Jessy Lanza, Paul White, and Greg Abrahams, Fletcher sings with tender vulnerability over understated electronic backdrops. An intimate portrait of fleeting domestic unease, “War and Peace” applies mellow sax licks and later harsher punctuations to reflect the interpersonal drama described in the song. Despite her increasingly subtle vocal work, Fletcher can still capture relatable feelings with undisguised directness. Celebrating the heady benefits of romance, she sings on “Paradise”: “I don’t need to think twice/Oh, this love is paradise.”
On third album ‘Cautionary Tales of Youth’, atop teary synths, Låpsley is untethered - the record’s electronic sound mimics the reckless placelessness that surrounds the emotions of a break-up. Debut ‘Long Way Home’ and follow-up ‘Through Water’ saw self-assertion through moody experimental music, but this time she embraces cooler, bigger, brighter, more cohesive pop sensibilities, and never loses her invaluable intention. A willingness to enjoy rediscovery means there’s little time to collapse into grief, and in hotels, high rises and planes she breaks - then regenerates - her devotion to love (“I just want a love that makes me levitate”). ‘32 Floors’ is an infectious UK garage-inspired earworm about jumping headfirst into a new relationship. ‘Smoke and Fire’ is mournful yet wistful, indebted to a vast choiry bridge and bleeping synths reminiscent of Lorde’s teen crises on ‘Pure Heroine’. Meanwhile, the arid, euphoric ‘Hotel Corridors’ exposes the loneliness of the in-between over reverberating, tugging synths. There are whispers of similarity to her queer contemporaries, too, from Shura (’Pandora’s Box’) to Years & Years (’Nightingale’), that make this break-up record much more exciting than its conveyor belt competition.
In an episode of Apple Music’s Time Crisis ahead of the May 2023 release of *Walk Around the Moon*, Dave Matthews said two of his biggest influences were Talking Heads and Kate Bush. Not the names you might immediately expect, but ones that make a poetic kind of sense. Like Bush or David Byrne, Matthews is an artist whose style seems obvious from a distance but almost impossible to trace or imitate when you get up close. Grateful Dead? “None,” he says. Van Morrison? “Absolutely.” But 10 albums and 30 years in and there’s still no better comparison than themselves. Started in 2020 and featuring new keyboardist Buddy Strong, the songs on *Moon* can still summon the dreaminess of childhood with the grain and melancholy of middle age (“The Ocean and the Butterfly”) and make simple, sentimental folk ripple with just enough uncertainty to sound mysterious (“Something to Tell My Baby”). And where other adult-contemporary-adjacent acts tend to round their edges in the name of a smoother and more palliative experience, the angst and, frankly, horniness of DMB’s rock songs have always made them pricklier than they first appear (“After Everything,” “The Only Thing”). Aging gracefully, sure—but more importantly, with honesty.
After winning an Oscar (for scoring Pixar’s *Soul*) and five Grammys (four for his triumphant 2021 album, *WE ARE*), and leaving behind his day job as the bandleader on *The Late Show With Stephen Colbert*, Jon Batiste was itching to find a new frequency. And so, he tuned in, turned on, and went to Shangri-La, literally: the Malibu compound that legendary producer Rick Rubin lent him to record *World Music Radio*. “Shangri-La felt like the first stop of what this journey should be,” the singer and multi-instrumentalist tells Apple Music of the genre-bending 21-track collection, a bold but seamless tapestry that features guests ranging from Lana Del Rey and his fellow New Orleans native Lil Wayne to rising K-pop stars NewJeans and sax god Kenny G. It’s all overseen by a cosmic disc jockey of Batiste’s own creation called Billy Bob Bo Bob, a character he describes as “this DJ-storyteller griot who has traveled around the universe to search for what he calls ‘the vibe’”—a spiritual wavelength. “It’s a vibrational frequency of time and space coming together to create bliss and inspiration and purpose,” Batiste says. “And those who know how to tap into that signal, it transports them to this region of the universe that no scientist has been able to detect or find the origin of.” Here, the artist provides the creative inspirations behind the album’s many sonic highlights—some interstellar, others much closer to home. **“Raindance” (feat. Native Soul)** “It’s trap, it’s reggae, and it has an orchestral influence mixed with indigenous Native American chants. I went to the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota and found an incredible group of artists who are Native, and they showed me their traditions of drumming and singing and all of these incredible ideas about life and spirituality that are just a part of their generation’s long-sacred rituals and traditions.” **“Be Who You Are” (feat. JID, NewJeans & Camilo)** “One of the things that Billy Bob does is he takes moments that are happening in the present and, just as a DJ would, he may blend in an interpolation or a nod to a song that is on wax from the past. He’ll even sometimes bend time and space and take a performance that’s happened in the future. This song exemplifies that to a T, where you have echoes of ‘Pass the Dutchie,’ you have this K-pop section, then you have Camilo from Colombia coming in on the horns, and JID is rapping, and then I have my verse and *I’m* rapping. It’s a mission statement—I wouldn’t call it the deepest, but it’s the most banner track of what *World Music Radio* is all about.” **“Worship”** “We wanted to create an experience that brought you to a sense of real perspective and appreciation of your own humanity and the collective of humanity. When you hear these lyrics over and over again as the chords swell, and the synthesizers are crafted in this way that feels like samba-slash-Swedish House Mafia, something about both of those sounds together is catharsis. It creates a release in people when you’re collected in a community, whether it’s at a festival or at a game at a stadium.” **“My Heart” (feat. Rita Payés)** “Rita is a trombonist and singer from Catalonia, an unsigned artist in her early twenties who’s been playing and composing her own music. I was lucky enough to discover her online, and when we connected to write this song, I wanted to sing in the Catalonian dialect of Spanish to bring a certain feeling to the piece. It was already going to be an intimate and beautiful composition, but when we decided to put it in her native language, it really channeled something. Languages just have this ability to speak to art in different ways.” **“Clair de Lune” (feat. Kenny G)** “Kenny G is probably still the most acclaimed, or at least the most commercially successful, instrumental artist of all time. And on *World Music Radio*, we have several different languages and several different kinds of vocalists, but I was thinking, ‘Who is an instrumentalist who has reached cultures around the world in a really profound way?’ I’d put Kenny G on the top five of that list. And it’s crazy because he’s got so many people who hate him! But just getting to know him through this process, you see that it’s not a gimmick for him. And when you listen to him here, he plays in a way that he doesn’t play on any of his other records. He really stretches, you know? And I loved hearing him do that.” **“Butterfly”** “I really am proud of this one, of how transcending of any genre or any sort of classification it is. There’s a lot of textures and sonics and a very maximalist approach in a lot of the music here, but this is transcendent and simple. You can sing it as a nursery rhyme. You can sing it as a lullaby. You sing it as a ballad. I’ve heard kids sing it when we did a workshop at a school; it just has some timeless quality to it. But it’s a personal song for me, in my life as well, that was part of the inspiration—my wife \[journalist Suleika Jaouad, who recently survived a second bout with leukemia\] and particularly our relationship.” **“Uneasy” (feat. Lil Wayne)** “Wayne! That is \[area code\] 504 representing. You know, the 17th Ward where he hails from, I partially grew up there. He’s a little older than me, but we were in that neighborhood three minutes apart from each other, probably around the same time. And together with the ‘17th Ward Prelude,’ which leads into ‘Uneasy,’ this is definitely the most New Orleans segment of the record.” **“CALL NOW (504-305-8269)” (feat. Michael Batiste)** “Who do you get when you call? You get Billy Bob Bo Bob, the real number. And sometimes you get Jon Batiste.” **“MOVEMENT 18’ (Heroes)”** “When you let the subconscious mind, the nonlinear mind, be heard through the frequency of the radio station, what would it sound like? Those are my thoughts coming up and my ruminations on things some of my musical heroes have said to me. You got Wayne Shorter in there. You got Alvin Batiste and Quincy Jones and Duke Ellington. The Wayne sound that you hear is him actually playing with me, and it’s layered on top of the piano that I’m playing on the track.” **“Master Power”** “There’s a few radical choices in here with the sampling. If you study different calls to prayer, you’ll hear sounds from the Muslim traditions of prayer, and then also a Jewish cantor singing as well. Then there’s these biblical references in the lyrics, and it’s just very much a real amalgam of different forms of folk-slash-spiritual music. You dig?” **“Goodbye, Billy Bob”**/**“White Space”** “‘Goodbye, Billy Bob’ is what you’ll hear when a disc jockey on the radio is signing off, and ‘White Space’ is this last-call moment, this sort of lifting into the clouds and beyond, which is where Billy Bob is going. He’s leaving this experience that he’s curated through vibrations that he’s gathered from the planet Earth. He’s floating away.” **“Wherever You Are”** “If ‘Goodbye, Billy Bob’ is the end of the movie and ‘White Space’ is the last scene, then ‘Wherever You Are’ is when the credits roll. You have this emotional moment as you process all that just happened. You take it in, and you listen, and you hear the spacecraft taking off. ‘Is the mothership going up into orbit?’ Then you’re going on to whatever the next destination is.” **“Life Lesson” (feat. Lana Del Rey)** “Lana was in the process of finishing her album, and I was starting mine. She had come by to hang at Shangri-La, and we didn’t really have a plan of creating, but when we played each other some of our music, it was decided that I would help her to finish her record. So, that was the same time that we did ‘Candy Necklace.’ ‘Life Lesson’ wasn’t even intended to be on this album, but it felt as the movie took shape, this was the perfect bonus, the spiritual cousin of the things I was talking about. And I love that it was so organic. It was just one thing that we did amongst many other things that people haven’t even heard yet.”
Gabrielle Aplin’s fourth studio album opens with the sound of birdsong—sweet, melodic chirruping that sustains for the duration of “Skylight,” filtering through the spaces in between Aplin’s crystalline vocals and the languid, easy hum of warm guitar and soft percussion. It’s a fitting start to *Phosphorescent*, blowing through to clear the way for a lushly produced collection of songs that put the UK singer-songwriter’s voice front and center. A decade after a chart-topping spin on Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “The Power of Love” launched her career, Aplin here once again teams up with Mike Spencer, the producer behind her 2013 debut album *English Rain*. In the intervening years, Aplin’s artistry has evolved from the folky midtempo sound of her earliest work, and the progression continues apace here. Tracks like “Never Be the Same” and “Don’t Say” erupt with energy—driving guitar riffs, thudding percussion, choruses that soar skywards—and “Take It Easy” punctuates a crisp melody with electronic flourishes and shiny synth stabs, while “Anyway” layers harmonies for a full-bodied, rhythmic sing-along chorus. Even the mellower cuts gleam. On “Good Enough,” Aplin sings of admiration for a lover spurring her to be her own best self as gentle piano breaks in waves over a soft acoustic guitar; “Wish I Didn’t Press Send” captures the regret of sending harsh, drunken messages in the small hours of the morning, underlining the feeling with muddy, downbeat bass. Amid all the orchestration of *Phosphorescent*, it is Aplin’s elastic vocal that proves the most crucial and versatile instrument. Shifting from honey-toned richness to stretching out a high note on a breath with ease, Aplin flits around the music like a bird on the wing.
The Aces’ third album trades in the R&B leanings of 2021’s *Under My Influence* for a sound that cherry-picks from all corners of classic pop rock—from the ’80s synths of “Solo” to the Smiths-like jangle of “Girls Make Me Wanna Die” and windswept balladry of “Person.” The through line is a mix of polish and innocence that splits the difference between indie aesthetics and mainstream ones—a sound they would’ve called “alternative” in the ’90s but one that now feels both comforting and nostalgic. And with their Mormon pasts receding further into the rearview, their candor about subjects like mental health (“Always Get This Way”) and the strictures of small-town conservatism (“Suburban Blues”) sound that much more freeing.
After Mimi Webb released her debut EP, *Seven Shades of Heartbreak*, in 2021, her rise continued at a sharp pace, with the singer-songwriter playing Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022 and picking up a BRIT Award nomination for Best New Artist the following year. She documents the whirlwind of changes in her life on her first full-length album, *Amelia*, a pure blast of empowered pop that boasts hitmakers Cirkut, Stuart Price, and Digital Farm Animals among its credits. “The album is about two people,” Webb tells Apple Music. “Amelia, the countryside girl, and Mimi, the girl that gets to travel the world and play all these shows. Amelia has to handle more of the emotional journey than Mimi because Mimi is always busy. But they’re both me, so it’s about dealing with something mentally behind closed doors, and then also dealing with something so out there, in public.” Amelia is reflected in what Webb calls the “stripped-back, emotional, ballad” tracks, while the “sassy, fiery, empowered” songs demonstrate Mimi. While it’s up to Amelia to translate the emotional confusion triggered by a deeply toxic relationship into song, it’s Mimi who steps on stage and converts the turmoil into strength, power, catharsis—and success. Stepping out from under the discombobulating cloud of her last relationship, there’s a silver lining to be found in the lessons she has learned and the growth she has experienced. “I just look at it like I’m a very powerful woman, and only certain men will be able to deal with that,” says Webb. “I value my values, and I feel very empowered, and it’s great to be in that place. I want this album to be a soundtrack for people when they’re needing that pick-me-up. I want people to feel less lonely. I want them to feel like they’ve got someone there to listen to and to understand what they’re going through.” Here, she guides us through the record, track by track. **“The Other Side”** “I wrote this song about my 21st birthday. I’d been in a relationship for three years, and I realized on my birthday I just wasn’t really in it the way I wanted to be anymore, and I knew it wasn’t right. There’s a lyric—‘On my birthday, the penny dropped’—and I remember saying to my friends, ‘Right, girls!’ But me and him didn’t go near each other all night, so I think they knew! We all kind of cheered and said, ‘Here’s to the other side. Let’s see what happens.’” **“Red Flags”** “‘Red Flags’ is such a fun, sassy song. It’s about realizing someone’s not right for you, and they’re nonstop showing red flags, but you keep running through them because you’re so obsessed. You keep doing it, but you don’t care because that adrenalin rush and excitement is all part of it. It’s all over the shop, but I think it’s so relatable.” **“Roles Reversed”** “This is definitely an ‘Amelia’ song. It’s really emotional. ‘Roles Reversed’ is all about really being there for someone—picking someone up, getting them in a better place. Then, as soon as they’re \[feeling\] great, they ditch you and leave you in a crap place. I love to be able to challenge my voice for this one and do things that push my range a bit further.” **“House on Fire”** “This is like the ‘f-you’ stage of the album, where it’s like, ‘I’m just going to destroy you.’ That’s a Mimi song. Amelia would not be destroying people.” **“Both of Us”** “It can be really tough when you are in a place where you are so in love, but they’re maybe not as in love with you. ‘Both of Us’ is very much about having to hold on when it feels like you love them so much, but it’s not reciprocated. I’m someone that will never give up on anyone or anything. I’ll always give something a really good go. But certain loves can be manipulating in a really strange way where you kind of want what you can’t have, and there’s certain people that play on that. I would rather choose an equal love, even if it’s more chilled. I think that’s healthier and more sustainable than having that one-sided love.” **“Freezing”** “‘Freezing” is a play on ‘House on Fire.’ This is the part where you’re like, ‘No, I’m never letting you back in again. I’m throwing the key away. I’m completely ice-cold from you. You don’t exist. You are not in my world, and that’s it.’ It’s really empowering. That’s the last song on the album where it’s like, ‘This is the final decision. This is what’s happening.’” **“Last Train to London”** “With the journey the album goes on, it’s so nice to be able to do something so stripped-back—just me and the piano. It’s got that element where I can really go for it live, and that moment is going to be so special for the shows.” **“Ghost of You”** “‘Ghost of You’ is all about trying to live your life, trying to get on with your day-to-day jobs, and you’re constantly seeing that one person in your mind. You know when you think about someone every second of every day, and it’s exhausting? I wrote this with Phil Plested \[who’s written for Lewis Capaldi and Little Mix\]. At the time, I was just getting back into a situation I shouldn’t have been getting into, but I completely convinced myself. Now I look back, and it’s quite funny that when this song came out \[as a single in October 2022\], that situation was already done. It was a full-circle moment.” **“Is It Possible”** “I was in a toxic situation that put me in a really weird state, and I had to relearn everything when it comes to love and relationships. ‘Is It Possible’ is a song about that transition and relearning the right steps. It’s very theatrical, very intense.” **“Remind You”** “I wrote this song for the person I was with at the time—a lot of the songs were written while I was still in \[that situation\]—and we had this conversation where I was being told, ‘Well, we’re so young. If you ended it with me, I would be completely fine.’ When it ended, I changed the lyrics a little bit, and it kind of flipped around and played a bit different, so it tells the story properly. I was really happy to be able to do that with it.” **“See You Soon”** “I was doing a lot of traveling over the summer, going through a new chapter and having to get out of my comfort zone, and I was so sad. There were birthdays I had to miss that I really wanted to be there for, and I would just have to think to myself, ‘I’ll see that person soon.’ It’s hard because I love making memories, and I love being there for people’s special moments. I want to do the Mimi. I want to get on stage. I want to do the interviews with a smile on my face. But it definitely interferes with the Amelia side of me.” **“Amelia”** “I wanted to have a song where I could listen to it and feel like I could relate to it as a young girl at school—something that would help guide me and make me feel less alone. I’ve been through so much realization and growth over the last year, so I felt like it was the right time to jump in and write it. This song is a message to my younger self that everything does get better in the end, and I think it’s a message that young fans can really relate to. I think people will really appreciate and respect that message.”
After Mimi Webb released her debut EP, Seven Shades of Heartbreak, in 2021, her rise continued at a sharp pace, with the singer-songwriter playing Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022 and picking up a BRIT Award nomination for Best New Artist the following year. She documents the whirlwind of changes in her life on her first full-length album, Amelia, a pure blast of empowered pop that boasts hitmakers Cirkut, Stuart Price, and Digital Farm Animals among its credits. “The album is about two people,” Webb tells Apple Music. “Amelia, the countryside girl, and Mimi, the girl that gets to travel the world and play all these shows. Amelia has to handle more of the emotional journey than Mimi because Mimi is always busy. But they’re both me, so it’s about dealing with something mentally behind closed doors, and then also dealing with something so out there, in public.” Amelia is reflected in what Webb calls the “stripped-back, emotional, ballad” tracks, while the “sassy, fiery, empowered” songs demonstrate Mimi. While it’s up to Amelia to translate the emotional confusion triggered by a deeply toxic relationship into song, it’s Mimi who steps on stage and converts the turmoil into strength, power, catharsis—and success. Stepping out from under the discombobulating cloud of her last relationship, there’s a silver lining to be found in the lessons she has learned and the growth she has experienced. “I just look at it like I’m a very powerful woman, and only certain men will be able to deal with that,” says Webb. “I value my values, and I feel very empowered, and it’s great to be in that place. I want this album to be a soundtrack for people when they’re needing that pick-me-up. I want people to feel less lonely. I want them to feel like they’ve got someone there to listen to and to understand what they’re going through.” Here, she guides us through the record, track by track. “The Other Side” “I wrote this song about my 21st birthday. I’d been in a relationship for three years, and I realized on my birthday I just wasn’t really in it the way I wanted to be anymore, and I knew it wasn’t right. There’s a lyric—‘On my birthday, the penny dropped’—and I remember saying to my friends, ‘Right, girls!’ But me and him didn’t go near each other all night, so I think they knew! We all kind of cheered and said, ‘Here’s to the other side. Let’s see what happens.’” “Red Flags” “‘Red Flags’ is such a fun, sassy song. It’s about realizing someone’s not right for you, and they’re nonstop showing red flags, but you keep running through them because you’re so obsessed. You keep doing it, but you don’t care because that adrenalin rush and excitement is all part of it. It’s all over the shop, but I think it’s so relatable.” “Roles Reversed” “This is definitely an ‘Amelia’ song. It’s really emotional. ‘Roles Reversed’ is all about really being there for someone—picking someone up, getting them in a better place. Then, as soon as they’re [feeling] great, they ditch you and leave you in a crap place. I love to be able to challenge my voice for this one and do things that push my range a bit further.” “House on Fire” “This is like the ‘f-you’ stage of the album, where it’s like, ‘I’m just going to destroy you.’ That’s a Mimi song. Amelia would not be destroying people.” “Both of Us” “It can be really tough when you are in a place where you are so in love, but they’re maybe not as in love with you. ‘Both of Us’ is very much about having to hold on when it feels like you love them so much, but it’s not reciprocated. I’m someone that will never give up on anyone or anything. I’ll always give something a really good go. But certain loves can be manipulating in a really strange way where you kind of want what you can’t have, and there’s certain people that play on that. I would rather choose an equal love, even if it’s more chilled. I think that’s healthier and more sustainable than having that one-sided love.” “Freezing” “‘Freezing” is a play on ‘House on Fire.’ This is the part where you’re like, ‘No, I’m never letting you back in again. I’m throwing the key away. I’m completely ice-cold from you. You don’t exist. You are not in my world, and that’s it.’ It’s really empowering. That’s the last song on the album where it’s like, ‘This is the final decision. This is what’s happening.” “Last Train to London” “With the journey the album goes on, it’s so nice to be able to do something so stripped-back—just me and the piano. It’s got that element where I can really go for it live, and that moment is going to be so special for the shows.” “Ghost of You” “‘Ghost of You’ is all about trying to live your life, trying to get on with your day-to-day jobs, and you’re constantly seeing that one person in your mind. You know when you think about someone every second of every day, and it’s exhausting? I wrote this with Phil Plested [who’s written for Lewis Capaldi and Little Mix]. At the time, I was just getting back into a situation I shouldn’t have been getting into, but I completely convinced myself. Now I look back, and it’s quite funny that when this song came out [as a single in October 2022], that situation was already done. It was a full-circle moment.” “Is It Possible” “I was in a toxic situation that put me in a really weird state, and I had to relearn everything when it comes to love and relationships. ‘Is It Possible’ is a song about that transition and relearning the right steps. It’s very theatrical, very intense.” “Remind You” “I wrote this song for the person I was with at the time—a lot of the songs were written while I was still in [that situation]—and we had this conversation where I was being told, ‘Well, we’re so young. If you ended it with me, I would be completely fine.’ When it ended, I changed the lyrics a little bit, and it kind of flipped around and played a bit different, so it tells the story properly. I was really happy to be able to do that with it.” “See You Soon” “I was doing a lot of traveling over the summer, going through a new chapter and having to get out of my comfort zone, and I was so sad. There were birthdays I had to miss that I really wanted to be there for, and I would just have to think to myself, ‘I’ll see that person soon.’ It’s hard because I love making memories, and I love being there for people’s special moments. I want to do the Mimi. I want to get on stage. I want to do the interviews with a smile on my face. But it definitely interferes with the Amelia side of me.” “Amelia” “I wanted to have a song where I could listen to it and feel like I could relate to it as a young girl at school—something that would help guide me and make me feel less alone. I’ve been through so much realization and growth over the last year, so I felt like it was the right time to jump in and write it. This song is a message to my younger self, that everything does get better in the end, and I think it’s a message that young fans can really relate to. I think people will really appreciate and respect that message.”
