Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of 2022

Unique, strong, and sexy—that’s how Beyoncé wants you to feel while listening to *RENAISSANCE*. Crafted during the grips of the pandemic, her seventh solo album is a celebration of freedom and a complete immersion into house and dance that serves as the perfect sound bed for themes of liberation, release, self-assuredness, and unfiltered confidence across its 16 tracks. *RENAISSANCE* is playful and energetic in a way that captures that Friday-night, just-got-paid, anything-can-happen feeling, underscored by reiterated appeals to unyoke yourself from the weight of others’ expectations and revel in the totality of who you are. From the classic four-on-the-floor house moods of the Robin S.- and Big Freedia-sampling lead single “BREAK MY SOUL” to the Afro-tech of the Grace Jones- and Tems-assisted “MOVE” and the funky, rollerskating disco feeling of “CUFF IT,” this is a massive yet elegantly composed buffet of sound, richly packed with anthemic morsels that pull you in. There are soft moments here, too: “I know you can’t help but to be yourself around me,” she coos on “PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA,” the kind of warm, whispers-in-the-ear love song you’d expect to hear at a summer cookout—complete with an intricate interplay between vocals and guitar that gives Beyoncé a chance to showcase some incredible vocal dexterity. “CHURCH GIRL” fuses R&B, gospel, and hip-hop to tell a survivor’s story: “I\'m finally on the other side/I finally found the extra smiles/Swimming through the oceans of tears we cried.” An explicit celebration of Blackness, “COZY” is the mantra of a woman who has nothing to prove to anyone—“Comfortable in my skin/Cozy with who I am,” ” Beyoncé muses on the chorus. And on “PURE/HONEY,” Beyoncé immerses herself in ballroom culture, incorporating drag performance chants and a Kevin Aviance sample on the first half that give way to the disco-drenched second half, cementing the song as an immediate dance-floor favorite. It’s the perfect lead-in to the album closer “SUMMER RENAISSANCE,” which propels the dreamy escapist disco of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” even further into the future.

“I like to prepare myself and prepare the surroundings to work my music,” Bad Bunny tells Apple Music about his process. “But when I get a good idea that I want to work on in the future, I hold it until that moment.” After he blessed his fans with three projects in 2020, including the forward-thinking fusion effort *EL ÚLTIMO TOUR DEL MUNDO*, one could forgive the Latin superstar for taking some time to plan his next moves, musically or otherwise. Somewhere between living out his kayfabe dreams in the WWE and launching his acting career opposite the likes of Brad Pitt, El Conejo Malo found himself on the beach, sipping Moscow Mules and working on his most diverse full-length yet. And though its title and the cover’s emoting heart mascot might suggest a shift into sad-boy mode, *Un Verano Sin Ti* instead reveals a different conceptual aim as his ultimate summer playlist. “It\'s a good vibe,” he says. “I think it\'s the happiest album of my career.” Recorded in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, the album features several cuts in the same elevated reggaetón mode that largely defined *YHLQMDLG*. “Efecto” and “Un Ratito” present ideal perreo opportunities, as does the soon-to-be-ubiquitous Rauw Alejandro team-up “Party.” Yet, true to its sunny origins, *Un Verano Sin Ti* departs from this style for unexpected diversions into other Latin sounds, including the bossa nova blend “Yo No Soy Celoso” and the dembow hybrid “Tití Me Preguntó.” He embraces his Santo Domingo surroundings with “Después De La Playa,” an energizing mambo surprise. “We had a whole band of amazing musicians,” he says about making the track with performers who\'d typically play on the streets. “It\'s part of my culture. It\'s part of the Caribbean culture.” With further collaborations from familiars Chencho Corleone and Jhayco, as well as unanticipated picks Bomba Estéreo and The Marías, *Un Verano Sin Ti* embodies a wide range of Latin American talent, with Bad Bunny as its charismatic center.

Let‘s start with that speech. In September 2022, as Taylor Swift accepted Songwriter-Artist of the Decade honors at the Nashville Songwriter Awards, the headline was that Swift had unveiled an admittedly “dorky” system she’d developed for organizing her own songs. Quill Pen, Fountain Pen, Glitter Gel Pen: three categories of lyrics, three imagined tools with which she wrote them, one pretty ingenious way to invite obsessive fans to lovingly obsess all the more. And yet, perhaps the real takeaway was the manner in which she spoke about her craft that night, some 20 years after writing her first song at the age of 12. “I love doing this thing we are fortunate enough to call a job,” she said to a room of her peers. “Writing songs is my life’s work and my hobby and my never-ending thrill. A song can defy logic or time. A good song transports you to your truest feelings and translates those feelings for you. A good song stays with you even when people or feelings don’t.” On *Midnights*, her tenth LP and fourth in as many years—*if* you don’t count the two she’s just rerecorded and buttressed with dozens of additional tracks—Swift sounds like she’s really enjoying her work, playing with language like kids do with gum, thrilling to the texture of every turn of phrase, the charge in every melody and satisfying rhyme. Alongside longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, she’s set out here to tell “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout \[her\] life,” as she phrased it in a message to Apple Music subscribers. It’s a concept that naturally calls for a nocturnal palette: slower tempos, hushed atmosphere, negative space like night sky. The sound is fully modern (synths you’d want to eat or sleep in, low end that sits comfortably on your chest), while the aesthetic (soft focus, wood paneling, tracklist on the cover) is decidedly mid-century, much like the *Mad Men*-inspired title of its brooding opener, “Lavender Haze”—a song about finding refuge in the glow of intimacy. “Talk your talk and go viral,” she sings, in reference to the maelstrom of outside interest in her six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn. “I just want this love spiral.” (A big shout to Antonoff for those spongy backup vocals, btw.) In large part, *Midnights* is a record of interiors, Swift letting us glimpse the chaos inside her head (“Anti-Hero,” wall-to-wall zingers) and the stillness of her relationship (“Sweet Nothing,” co-written by Alwyn under his William Bowery pseudonym). For “Snow on the Beach,” she teams up with Lana Del Rey—an artist whose instinct for mood and theatrical framing seems to have influenced Swift’s recent catalog—recalling the magic of an impossible night over a backdrop of pizzicato violin, sleigh bells, and dreamy Mellotron, like the earliest hours of Christmas morning. “I’ve never seen someone lit from within,” Swift sings. “Blurring out my periphery.” But then there’s “Bejeweled,” a late, *1989*-like highlight on which she announces to an unappreciative partner, a few seconds in: “And by the way, I’m going out tonight.” And then out Swift goes, striding through the center of the song like she would the room: “I can still make the whole place shimmer,” she sings, relishing that last word. “And when I meet the band, they ask, ‘Do you have a man?’/I could still say, ‘I don’t remember.’” There are traces of melancholy layered in (see: “sapphire tears on my face”), but the song feels like a triumph, the sort of unabashed, extroverted fun that would have probably seemed out of place in the lockdown indie of 2020’s *folklore* and *evermore*. But here, side by side with songs and scenes of such writerly indulgence, it’s right at home—more proof that the terms “singer-songwriter” and “universal pop star” aren’t mutually exclusive ideas. “What’s a girl gonna do?” Swift asks at its climax. “A diamond’s gotta shine.”

Midnights is the tenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released on October 21, 2022, via Republic Records. Announced at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, the album marks Swift's first body of new work since her 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore.

“I literally don’t take breaks,” ROSALÍA tells Apple Music. “I feel like, to work at a certain level, to get a certain result, you really need to sacrifice.” Judging by *MOTOMAMI*, her long-anticipated follow-up to 2018’s award-winning and critically acclaimed *EL MAL QUERER*, the mononymous Spanish singer clearly put in the work. “I almost feel like I disappear because I needed to,” she says of maintaining her process in the face of increased popularity and attention. “I needed to focus and put all my energy and get to the center to create.” At the same time, she found herself drawing energy from bustling locales like Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, all of which she credits with influencing the new album. Beyond any particular source of inspiration that may have driven the creation of *MOTOMAMI*, ROSALÍA’s come-up has been nothing short of inspiring. Her transition from critically acclaimed flamenco upstart to internationally renowned star—marked by creative collaborations with global tastemakers like Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, and Oneohtrix Point Never, to name a few—has prompted an artistic metamorphosis. Her ability to navigate and dominate such a wide array of musical styles only raised expectations for her third full-length, but she resisted the idea of rushing things. “I didn’t want to make an album just because now it’s time to make an album,” she says, citing that several months were spent on mixing and visuals alone. “I don’t work like that.” Some three years after *EL MAL QUERER*, ROSALÍA’s return feels even more revolutionary than that radical breakout release. From the noisy-yet-referential leftfield reggaetón of “SAOKO” to the austere and *Yeezus*-reminiscent thump of “CHICKEN TERIYAKI,” *MOTOMAMI* makes the artist’s femme-forward modus operandi all the more clear. The point of view presented is sharp and political, but also permissive of playfulness and wit, a humanizing mix that makes the album her most personal yet. “I was like, I really want to find a way to allow my sense of humor to be present,” she says. “It’s almost like you try to do, like, a self-portrait of a moment of who you are, how you feel, the way you think.\" Things get deeper and more unexpected with the devilish-yet-austere electronic punk funk of the title track and the feverish “BIZCOCHITO.” But there are even more twists and turns within, like “HENTAI,” a bilingual torch song that charms and enraptures before giving way to machine-gun percussion. Add to that “LA FAMA,” her mystifying team-up with The Weeknd that fuses tropical Latin rhythms with avant-garde minimalism, and you end up with one of the most unique artistic statements of the decade so far.

Harry Styles’ third solo album, *Harry’s House*, is the product of a chain reaction. Had the pandemic not thrown his world into a tailspin in early 2020, he would’ve continued to tour behind *Fine Line*, his critically adored sophomore album, and played its songs hundreds of times for sold-out crowds around the world. A return to the studio was planned, of course, but when COVID-19 canceled those plans too, Styles faced an empty calendar for the first time in a decade. The singer opted to use this free time carefully, taking a solo road trip through Italy and visiting with family and friends for rare long, drawn-out stretches. It was an important moment of reevaluation. “You miss so many birthdays,” he told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “And eventually it\'s just assumed you\'re unable to be at stuff. Finally I was like, ‘I want to balance my life out a bit. Working isn’t who I am, it\'s something I do. I want to be able to put that down.’” His upbeat, lightly electronic third LP riffs on the concept of home, viewing it less as a geographical location and more as a state of mind—his mind. “Imagine it’s a day in my house, a day in my mind,” he said. “What do I go through? I’m playing fun music. I’m playing sad music. I have doubts. I’m feeling stuff.” Because of the pandemic, Styles recorded the songs with a small handful of longtime friends and close collaborators who gathered in a single room to drink wine, write, and play. That intimacy is reflected in the songs, which are conversational and casually confessional, as if he’s thinking out loud. Blending vintage folk rock with flickers of disco and a generally more relaxed sensibility, they illustrate a turning point in Styles’ career as he transitions even further towards career singer-songwriter. “For a while it was, how do I play that game of remaining exciting?” he says. “But I finally had a moment where I felt like, ‘Okay, I’m not the young thing, so I would like to really think about who I want to be as a musician.’” Read on for the inside story behind a handful of standout selections from *Harry’s House*. **“Music for a Sushi Restaurant”** “After *Fine Line*, I had an idea of how I thought the next album would open. But there\'s something about ‘Sushi’ that felt like, ‘Nah, *that\'s* how I want to start.’ It becomes really obvious what the first song should be based on what you play for people when they’re like, ‘Oh, can I hear a bit of the music?’ It\'s like, how do you want to set the tone?” **“Daylight”** “We were like, ‘We have to find a way to stay awake and finish this, because if we all go to bed, then this won’t turn out the way it would if we finished tonight.’ So we powered through, finished it, and went down to the beach as the sun was coming up and it was like, ‘Okay. Yeah.’ It felt correct that we\'d finished it in that place. Life, and songs in particular, are so much about moments. In surfing, for example, sometimes you don\'t get the wave and sometimes the wave comes and you haven\'t practiced. But every now and again, the wave comes and you’re ready, you\'ve practiced enough that you can ride it. Sometimes when the songs write themselves like that, it feels like, ‘Okay, there\'s a reason why sometimes I sit out there, falling off the board a bunch. It\'s for this moment.” **“As It Was”** “‘As It Was,’ to me, is bittersweet. It’s devastating. It\'s a death march. It’s about metamorphosis and a perspective change, which are not necessarily things you have time with. People aren’t like, ‘Oh, we\'ll give you a couple more days with this moment and let you say goodbye to your former self,’ or whatever. No. Everyone is changing, and by the time you realize what’s happened, \[the moment\] is already gone. During the pandemic, I think we all at some point realized that it would never be the same as it was before. It was so obvious that it wouldn’t. You can\'t go backwards—we can’t as a society and I can’t in my personal life. But you learn so much in those moments because you’re forced to face things head-on, whether they’re your least favorite things about the world or your least favorite things about yourself, or all of it.” **“Matilda”** “I had an experience with someone where, in getting to know them better, they revealed some stuff to me that was very much like, ‘Oh, that\'s not normal, like I think you should maybe get some help or something.’ This song was inspired by that experience and person, who I kind of disguised as Matilda from the Roald Dahl book. I played it to a couple of friends and all of them cried. So I was like, ‘Okay, I think this is something to pay attention to.’ It\'s a weird one, because with something like this, it\'s like, ‘I want to give you something, I want to support you in some way, but it\'s not necessarily my place to make it about me because it\'s not my experience.’ Sometimes it\'s just about listening. I hope that\'s what I did here. If nothing else, it just says, ‘I was listening to you.’” **“Boyfriends”** “‘Boyfriends’ was written right at the end of *Fine Line*. I\'d finished the album and there was an extra week where I wrote ‘Adore You,’ ‘Lights Up,’ and ‘Treat People With Kindness.’ At the end of the session for ‘Lights Up,’ we started writing ‘Boyfriends,’ and it felt like, ‘Okay, there\'s a version of this story where we get this song ready for this album.’ But something about it just felt like, no, it’ll have its time, let\'s not rush it. We did so many versions of it. Vocal. Acoustic. Electric guitar. Harmonies on everything, and then we took them out for chunks and put them back in for chunks. You try not to get ahead of yourself when you write a song, but there was something about this one where I felt like, ‘Okay, when I\'m 50, if I\'m playing a show, maybe there\'s someone who heard me for the first time when they were 15 and this is probably the song they came to see.’ Because I\'m learning so much by singing it. It’s my way of saying, ‘I’m hearing you.’ It’s both acknowledging my own behavior and looking at behavior I\'ve witnessed. I grew up with a sister, so I watched her date people, and I watched friends date people, and people don\'t treat each other very nicely sometimes.” **“Cinema”** “I think I just wanted to make something that felt really fun, honestly. I was on a treadmill going, ‘Do-do-do-do-do-do.’ I tend to do so much writing in the studio, but with this one, I did a little bit here and then I went home and added a little bit there, and then kind of left it, and then went into the studio to put it all together. That was a theme across the whole album, actually: We used to book a studio and be like, ‘Okay, we\'ve got it for two months, grind it out.’ But some days you just don\'t want to be there, and eventually you\'ve been in the studio so long, the only thing you can write about is nothing because you haven\'t done anything. So with this album, we’d work for a couple of weeks and then everyone would go off and live their lives.” **“Love of My Life”** “‘Love of My Life’ was the most terrifying song because it\'s so bare. It\'s so sparse. It’s also very much in the spirit of what *Harry\'s House* is about: I wanted to make an acoustic EP, all in my house, and make it really intimate. It’s named after \[the Japanese pop pioneer Haruomi\] Hosono, who had an album in the \'70s called *Hosono House*. I immediately started thinking about what *Harry’s House* might look like. It took time for me to realize that the house wasn\'t a geographical location, it was an internal thing. When I applied that concept to the songs we were making here, everything took on new meaning. Imagine it\'s a day in my house or a day in my mind. What do I go through? I\'m playing fun music. I\'m playing sad music. I\'m playing this, I\'m playing that. I have doubts. I’m feeling stuff. And it’s all mine. This is my favorite album at the moment. I love it so much. And because of the circumstances, it was made very intimately; everything was played by a small number of people and made in a room. To me, it\'s everything. It\'s everything I\'ve wanted to make.”

“You can’t come get this work until it’s dry. I made this album while the streets were closed during the pandemic. Made entirely with the greatest producers of all time—Pharrell and Ye. ONLY I can get the best out of these guys. ENJOY!!” —Pusha T, in an exclusive message provided to Apple Music

The mythology surrounding 23-year-old King Princess precedes them. Mikaela Mullaney Straus exploded on the indie-pop scene with their 2018 single “1950,” leading to a debut LP in 2019, *Cheap Queen*, a thoughtful, vintage-sounding modern-pop record centered on young, queer relationships. On their second full-length, they’ve matured into the raspy, raucous rock star of their dreams, unafraid to place gorgeous hooks atop asymmetrical production (“I Hate Myself, I Want to Party,” and the closer, “Let Us Die,” which features the late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins). “I’m in the same situation as when I was writing *Cheap Queen*,” they tell Apple Music. “I’m in a relationship, I want to write music, but I’m not writing about heartbreak, really. I’m writing about my heart being broken because I’m sad every day.” Before it was worked on by star producers like Aaron Dessner and Mark Ronson, *Hold On Baby* began when King Princess linked up with Phoebe Bridgers’ producer Ethan Gruska. “He would do an impression of his grandpa that was really loving and sweet and funny. He’d say, ‘Hold on, baby,’” they say. “I wrote this record as a reminder that it’s OK to be messy, that we’re living through hellish, hellish times, and especially when you’re a young person, it’s so easy to get lost in the sauce. I’ve used art and songwriting to heal myself so many times, to put myself back together, and to appreciate how messy, ridiculous, and foolish I am—and it’s OK to be all those things. We’re all in it together, boo.’” Below, King Princess walks Apple Music through their sophomore LP, *Hold On Baby*, track by track. **“I Hate Myself, I Want to Party”** “Parts of this record were written with Ethan and then another big chunk of it was with \[The National’s\] Aaron Dessner. I rolled up to Aaron’s studio compound \[in Upstate New York\], and I was like, ‘I don’t know this man. I’ve been doing writing sessions since I was 14 years old. I am really uninterested in meeting new people.’ I wrote with him—this was during lockdown. I was in New York, staying at my childhood home with my girlfriend and my best friend, literally playing PS5 every day in my underwear. Looking back, I was like, ‘Oh, I had depression.’ I was addressing these feelings of being a musician. You go out and people do treat you differently. You get this gratification. It feeds the ego, to go out and to party, to be adored onstage. I do think that, partially, that’s healthy and, partially, that’s ridiculous. Because I want to be a star.” **“Cursed”** “‘Cursed’ was written with my friend Dave Hamelin. I was being made to meet all these men. I got to this nasty-ass studio with no windows and a fucking keyboard. There were no \[other\] instruments. We just started talking, and I played him some of the music from the record—later on, we couldn’t write there. I went to his house, and we immediately started writing ‘Cursed.’ He managed the production, and I was writing. I played some drums. I love this song.” **“Winter Is Hopeful”** “I wanted it to be a song about what it feels like to be in a relationship and to stumble—like, constantly stumbling over words. We like the feeling that you’re battling the weather. It’s fucking cold, and you want to bundle up and go outside and feel like you’ve done something. It takes effort to go outside. In the summer, it feels like it’s this weird daze. I don’t really like sunlight. I like when it rains.” **“Little Bother”** “‘Little Bother’ started off because Fousheé and I were DMing. I heard her song that Lil Wayne was on, and I was like, ‘This is incredible.’ I just DM’d her, and I was like, ‘I want to be friends.’ We went in and, all day, we were trying out different stuff. At the very end, \[songwriter\] Zach \[Fogarty\] played this guitar loop he had recorded already, and I was like, ‘This is the vibe.’ We started writing this beautiful verse melody. I wrote the chorus, and we ended up with this song. I’d love to write with other artists.” **“For My Friends”** “I wrote this song with Ethan and Amy Allen. I had just gotten home from the New York trip where I was depressed and playing PS5 every day. My best friend from high school had moved around the corner and my other best friend was in the city. Those are my two girls. When I wasn’t sitting around depressed, the thing that was getting me out was hanging out with them. I wrote this song as a love letter to them, saying, like, ‘I’m always leaving, but I’m always coming back.’” **“Crowbar”** “Aaron wrote that piano line and played it for me. What’s funny is that he had sent that piano line to Ethan, like, months and months ago, unrelated to me, and Ethan had done something with it. So, that piano line was actually part of our little family. It is a love letter to the pillars of strength in your life. It’s reflecting on doing a lot of drugs, being really fucked up all the time, and not prioritizing what I find to be important, which is comfort, safety, art, rock, and roll. I was not prioritizing the things that were important.” **“Hold On Baby Interlude”** “I like for all of my interludes to feel like they’re going to be full songs and then they’re not. I thought it should kind of surmise what the album is about, with the interlude, and bring that melody as a motif back. I’m a woman of the theater, so I love a reprise.” **“Too Bad”** “I wrote ‘Too Bad’ sobbing. People are not going to like you in this life and that is just facts. You are not going to be a fucking patron saint. Anybody who tries to be a patron saint gets fucking slammed for being an asshole. All of the people who come forth and say, ‘I’m nice’—that is the death sentence of public figures.” **“Change the Locks”** “I wrote this song with Aaron, and it was kind of going to be canned, but then my queen warrior angel Jen Knoepfle called me and was like, ‘You need to finish this song.’ I finished it with Dave Hamelin, a hilarious French Canadian ex-indie musician/now-producer. He was like, ‘OK, we’re getting into the Lilith Fair section of the album.’ It just became a joke from there, like, ‘Fine. I need the people to feel like they’re menstruating at Lilith Fair \[when they listen to it\].’” **“Dotted Lines”** “I wrote this with Amy Allen, Nick Long, Tobias \[Jesso Jr.\], and Shawn Everett. Then Dave worked on it because it was going to get scrapped from the album, and then Dave was like, ‘Let me make it the Kate Bush fantasy that it deserves.’ All I was listening to when this album was being written was Kate Bush.” **“Sex Shop”** “I wrote this as a piano ballad, and then I asked my dad to record the vocals. He recorded a vocal on the piano and then I sent it to Ethan, and I said, ‘What can we do with this? This is bigger than a stripped-down ballad.’ He worked on it, and he turned it into this winding scene, like a crazy thing. Then I did the drum programming and played guitar, and it just went from there.” **“Let Us Die”** “Mark really loved this one. I wrote the chorus alone, and then I went in with Ethan and we wrote the verses together and the bridge. This is the type of song that I grew up listening to, the type of song I’ve always wanted to write: concise and emotionally relevant but also rocking. Then Mark enlisted the help of Taylor Hawkins to play drums on it, which was incredible. Taylor was so wonderful and was really excited to play on it. We FaceTimed and did a remote session, and I was sitting in my dad’s studio, and he was playing on it. I was fucking enamored. It was the thing I always wanted—real musicians that I look up to, playing on my music. It probably is my favorite song on the record. \[Also, when we were mixing it and\] we were trying to get the chorus to slap, my dad walked in and he’s like, ‘Just make the verses mono and then make the chorus stereo.’ We both looked at each other and we were like, ‘Oh.’ We took my dad’s note and then it completely changed the whole song. Dad did that.”

Just one month after BTS, arguably the biggest group on the planet, announced a break, j-hope, the charismatic dancer/rapper/singer known for his cheeky personality, released his debut solo LP—becoming the first member of BTS to do so. (No surprise there—back in 2019, he was the first to drop a solo single, the effervescent “Chicken Noodle Soup” with Becky G.) *Jack in the Box* is a complicated triumph: lyrically world-heavy, an eclectic mix of hip-hop, pop, raucous guitar rock detours, and, most importantly, optimism. There’s the bombastic Y2K hip-hop of “Pandora’s Box” (the first bar he drops on the release is “They call me hope/Do you know why I am hope?/Pandora’s history, that’s my birth.” It’s a savvy metaphor. Once the world’s evils have been released, all that is left is hope, j-hope). “= (Equal Sign)” recalls a smooth Justin Timberlake/Neptunes-esque falsetto—as impressive as his fiery flow on the closer “Arson” or “Safety Zone.” There are no features here—an interesting choice in the rap space, no doubt an intentional declaration of autonomy: Here is j-hope, your hope, my hope, in 2022.

A couple of years before she became known as one half of Wet Leg, Rhian Teasdale left her home on the Isle of Wight, where a long-term relationship had been faltering, to live with friends in London. Every Tuesday, their evening would be interrupted by the sound of people screaming in the property below. “We were so worried the first time we heard it,” Teasdale tells Apple Music. Eventually, their investigations revealed that scream therapy sessions were being held downstairs. “There’s this big scream in the song ‘Ur Mum,’” says Teasdale. “I thought it’d be funny to put this frustration and the failure of this relationship into my own personal scream therapy session.” That mix of humor and emotional candor is typical of *Wet Leg*. Crafting tightly sprung post-punk and melodic psych-pop and indie rock, Teasdale and bandmate Hester Chambers explore the existential anxieties thrown up by breakups, partying, dating apps, and doomscrolling—while also celebrating the fun to be had in supermarkets. “It’s my own experience as a twentysomething girl from the Isle of Wight moving to London,” says Teasdale. The strains of disenchantment and frustration are leavened by droll, acerbic wit (“You’re like a piece of shit, you either sink or float/So you take her for a ride on your daddy’s boat,” she chides an ex on “Piece of shit”), and humor has helped counter the dizzying speed of Wet Leg’s ascent. On the strength of debut single “Chaise Longue,” Teasdale and Chambers were instantly cast by many—including Elton John, Iggy Pop, and Florence Welch—as one of Britain’s most exciting new bands. But the pair have remained committed to why they formed Wet Leg in the first place. “It’s such a shame when you see bands but they’re habitually in their band—they’re not enjoying it,” says Teasdale. “I don’t want us to ever lose sight of having fun. Having silly songs obviously helps.” Here, she takes us through each of the songs—silly or otherwise—on *Wet Leg*. **“Being in Love”** “People always say, ‘Oh, romantic love is everything. It’s what every person should have in this life.’ But actually, it’s not really conducive to getting on with what you want to do in life. I read somewhere that the kind of chemical storm that is produced in your brain, if you look at a scan, it’s similar to someone with OCD. I just wanted to kind of make that comparison.” **“Chaise Longue”** “It came out of a silly impromptu late-night jam. I was staying over at Hester’s house when we wrote it, and when I stay over, she always makes up the chaise longue for me. It was a song that never really was supposed to see the light of day. So it’s really funny to me that so many people are into it and have connected with it. It’s cool. I was as an assistant stylist \[on Ed Sheeran’s ‘Bad Habits’ video\]. Online, a newspaper \[*The New York Times*\] was doing the top 10 videos out this week, and it was funny to see ‘Chaise Longue’ next to this video I’d been working on. Being on set, you have an idea of the budget that goes into getting all these people together to make this big pop-star video. And then you scroll down and it’s our little video that we spent about £50 on. Hester had a camera and she set up all the shots. Then I edited it using a free trial version of Final Cut.” **“Angelica”** “The song is set at a party that you no longer want to be at. Other people are feeling the same, but you are all just fervently, aggressively trying to force yourself to have a good time. And actually, it’s not always possible to have good times all the time. Angelica is the name of my oldest friend, so we’ve been to a lot of rubbish parties together. We’ve also been to a lot of good parties together, but I thought it would be fun to put her name in the song and have her running around as the main character.” **“I Don’t Wanna Go Out”** “It’s kind of similar to ‘Angelica’—it’s that disenchantment of getting fucked up at parties, and you’re gradually edging into your late twenties, early thirties, and you’re still working your shitty waitressing job. I was trying to convince myself that I was working these shitty jobs so that I could do music on the side. But actually, you’re kind of kidding yourself and you’re seeing all of your friends starting to get real jobs and they’re able to buy themselves nice shampoo. You’re trying to distract yourself from not achieving the things that you want to achieve in life by going to these parties. But you can’t keep kidding yourself, and I think it’s that realization that I’ve tried to inject into the lyrics of this song.” **“Wet Dream”** “The chorus is ‘Beam me up.’ There’s this Instagram account called beam\_me\_up\_softboi. It’s posts of screenshots of people’s texts and DMs and dating-app goings-on with this term ‘softboi,’ which to put it quite simply is someone in the dating scene who’s presenting themselves as super, super in touch with their feelings and really into art and culture. And they use that as currency to try and pick up girls. It’s not just men that are softbois; women can totally be softbois, too. The character in the song is that, basically. It’s got a little bit of my own personal breakup injected into it. This particular person would message me since we’d broken up being like, ‘Oh, I had a dream about you. I dreamt that we were married,’ even though it was definitely over. So I guess that’s why I decided to set it within a dream: It was kind of making fun of this particular message that would keep coming through to me.” **“Convincing”** “I was really pleased when we came to recording this one, because for the bulk of the album, it is mainly me taking lead vocals, which is fine, but Hester has just the most beautiful voice. I hope she won’t mind me saying, but she kind of struggles to see that herself. So it felt like a big win when she was like, ‘OK, I’m going to do it. I’m going to sing. I’m going to do this song.’ It’s such a cool song and she sounds so great on it.” **“Loving You”** “I met this guy when I was 20, so I was pretty young. We were together for six or seven years or something, and he was a bit older, and I just fell so hard. I fell so, so hard in love with him. And then it got pretty toxic towards the end, and I guess I was a bit angry at how things had gone. So it’s just a pretty angry song, without dobbing him in too much. I feel better now, though. Don’t worry. It’s all good.” **“Ur Mum”** “It’s about giving up on a relationship that isn’t serving you anymore, either of you, and being able to put that down and walk away from it. I was living with this guy on the Isle of Wight, living the small-town life. I was trying to move to London or Bristol or Brighton and then I’d move back to be with this person. Eventually, we managed to put the relationship down and I moved in with some friends in London. Every Tuesday, it’d get to 7 pm and you’d hear that massive group scream. We learned that downstairs was home to the Psychedelic Society and eventually realized that it was scream therapy. I thought it’d be funny to put this frustration and the failure of this relationship into my own personal scream therapy session.” **“Oh No”** “The amount of time and energy that I lose by doomscrolling is not OK. It’s not big and it’s not clever. This song is acknowledging that and also acknowledging this other world that you live in when you’re lost in your phone. When we first wrote this, it was just to fill enough time to play a festival that we’d been booked for when we didn’t have a full half-hour set. It used to be even more repetitive, and the lyrics used to be all the same the whole way through. When it came to recording it, we’re like, ‘We should probably write a few more lyrics,’ because when you’re playing stuff live, I think you can definitely get away with not having actual lyrics.” **“Piece of shit”** “When I’m writing the lyrics for all the songs with Wet Leg, I am quite careful to lean towards using quite straightforward, unfussy language and I avoid, at all costs, using similes. But this song is the one song on the album that uses simile—‘like a piece of shit.’ Pretty poetic. I think writing this song kind of helped me move on from that \[breakup\]. It sounds like I’m pretty wound up. But actually, it’s OK now, I feel a lot better.” **“Supermarket”** “It was written just as we were coming out of lockdown and there was that time where the highlight of your week would be going to the supermarket to do the weekly shop, because that was literally all you could do. I remember queuing for Aldi and feeling like I was queuing for a nightclub.” **“Too Late Now”** “It’s about arriving in adulthood and things maybe not being how you thought they would be. Getting to a certain age, when it’s time to get a real job, and you’re a bit lost, trying to navigate through this world of dating apps and social media. So much is out of our control in this life, and ‘Too late now, lost track somehow,’ it’s just being like, ‘Everything’s turned to shit right now, but that’s OK because it’s unavoidable.’ It sounds very depressing, but you know sometimes how you can just take comfort in the fact that no matter what you do, you’re going to die anyway, so don’t worry about it too much, because you can’t control everything? I guess there’s a little bit of that in ‘Too Late Now.’”

When Kendrick Lamar popped up on two tracks from Baby Keem’s *The Melodic Blue* (“range brothers” and “family ties”), it felt like one of hip-hop’s prophets had descended a mountain to deliver scripture. His verses were stellar, to be sure, but it also just felt like way too much time had passed since we’d heard his voice. He’d helmed 2018’s *Black Panther* compilation/soundtrack, but his last proper release was 2017’s *DAMN.* That kind of scarcity in hip-hop can only serve to deify an artist as beloved as Lamar. But if the Compton MC is broadcasting anything across his fifth proper album *Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers*, it’s that he’s only human. The project is split into two parts, each comprising nine songs, all of which serve to illuminate Lamar’s continually evolving worldview. Central to Lamar’s thesis is accountability. The MC has painstakingly itemized his shortcomings, assessing his relationships with money (“United in Grief”), white women (“Worldwide Steppers”), his father (“Father Time”), the limits of his loyalty (“Rich Spirit”), love in the context of heteronormative relationships (“We Cry Together,” “Purple Hearts”), motivation (“Count Me Out”), responsibility (“Crown”), gender (“Auntie Diaries”), and generational trauma (“Mother I Sober”). It’s a dense and heavy listen. But just as sure as Kendrick Lamar is human like the rest of us, he’s also a Pulitzer Prize winner, one of the most thoughtful MCs alive, and someone whose honesty across *Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers* could help us understand why any of us are the way we are.

Alvvays never intended to take five years to finish their third album, the nervy joyride that is the compulsively lovable Blue Rev. In fact, the band began writing and cutting its first bits soon after releasing 2017’s Antisocialites, that stunning sophomore record that confirmed the Toronto quintet’s status atop a new generation of winning and whip-smart indie rock. Global lockdowns notwithstanding, circumstances both ordinary and entirely unpredictable stunted those sessions. Alvvays toured more than expected, a surefire interruption for a band that doesn’t write on the road. A watchful thief then broke into singer Molly Rankin’s apartment and swiped a recorder full of demos, one day before a basement flood nearly ruined all the band’s gear. They subsequently lost a rhythm section and, due to border closures, couldn’t rehearse for months with their masterful new one, drummer Sheridan Riley and bassist Abbey Blackwell. At least the five-year wait was worthwhile: Blue Rev doesn’t simply reassert what’s always been great about Alvvays but instead reimagines it. They have, in part and sum, never been better. There are 14 songs on Blue Rev, making it not only the longest Alvvays album but also the most harmonically rich and lyrically provocative. There are newly aggressive moments here—the gleeful and snarling guitar solo at the heart of opener “Pharmacist,” or the explosive cacophony near the middle of “Many Mirrors.” And there are some purely beautiful spans, too—the church- organ fantasia of “Fourth Figure,” or the blue-skies bridge of “Belinda Says.” But the power and magic of Blue Rev stems from Alvvays’ ability to bridge ostensible binaries, to fuse elements that seem antithetical in single songs—cynicism and empathy, anger and play, clatter and melody, the soft and the steely. The luminous poser kiss-off of “Velveteen,” the lovelorn confusion of “Tile by Tile,” the panicked but somehow reassuring rush of “After the Earthquake”. The songs of Blue Rev thrive on immediacy and intricacy, so good on first listen that the subsequent spins where you hear all the details are an inevitability. This perfectly dovetailed sound stems from an unorthodox—and, for Alvvays, wholly surprising—recording process, unlike anything they’ve ever done. Alvvays are fans of fastidious demos, making maps of new tunes so complete they might as well have topographical contour lines. But in October 2021, when they arrived at a Los Angeles studio with fellow Canadian Shawn Everett, he urged them to forget the careful planning they’d done and just play the stuff, straight to tape. On the second day, they ripped through Blue Rev front-to-back twice, pausing only 15 seconds between songs and only 30 minutes between full album takes. And then, as Everett has done on recent albums by The War on Drugs and Kacey Musgraves, he spent an obsessive amount of time alongside Alvvays filling in the cracks, roughing up the surfaces, and mixing the results. This hybridized approach allowed the band to harness each song’s absolute core, then grace it with texture and depth. Notice the way, for instance, that “Tom Verlaine” bursts into a jittery jangle; then marvel at the drums and drum machines ricocheting off one another, the harmonies that crisscross, and the stacks of guitar that rise between riff and hiss, subtle but essential layers that reveal themselves in time. Every element of Alvvays leveled up in the long interim between albums: Riley is a classic dynamo of a drummer, with the power of a rock deity and the finesse of a jazz pedigree. Their roommate, in-demand bassist Blackwell, finds the center of a song and entrenches it. Keyboardist Kerri MacLellan joined Rankin and guitarist Alec O’Hanley to write more this time, reinforcing the band’s collective quest to break patterns heard on their first two albums. The results are beyond question: Blue Rev has more twists and surprises than Alvvays’ cumulative past, and the band seems to revel in these taken chances. This record is fun and often funny, from the hilarious reply-guy bash of “Very Online Guy” to the parodic grind of “Pomeranian Spinster.” Alvvays’ self-titled debut, released when much of the band was still in its early 20s, offered speculation about a distant future—marriage, professionalism, interplanetary citizenship. Antisocialites wrestled with the woes of the now, especially the anxieties of inching toward adulthood. Named for the sugary alcoholic beverage Rankin and MacLellan used to drink as teens on rural Cape Breton, Blue Rev looks both back at that country past and forward at an uncertain world, reckoning with what we lose whenever we make a choice about what we want to become. The spinster with her Pomeranians or Belinda with her babies? The kid fleeing Bristol by train or the loyalist stunned to see old friends return? “How do I gauge whether this is stasis or change?” Rankin sings during the first verse of the plangent and infectious “Easy on Your Own?” In that moment, she pulls the ties tight between past, present, and future to ask hard questions about who we’re going to become, and how. Sure, it arrives a few years later than expected, but the answer for Alvvays is actually simple: They’ve changed gradually, growing on Blue Rev into one of their generation’s most complete and riveting rock bands.

Spoon’s tenth album, Lucifer on the Sofa, is the band’s purest rock ’n roll record to date. Texas-made, it is the first set of songs that the quintet has put to tape in its hometown of Austin in more than a decade. Written and recorded over the last two years –both in and out of lockdown –these songs mark a shift toward something louder, wilder, and more full-color.

“I want to love unconditionally now.” Read on as Steve Lacy opens up about how he made his sophomore album in this exclusive artist statement. “Someone asked me if I felt pressure to make something that people might like. I felt a disconnect, my eyes squinted as I looked up. As I thought about the question, I realized that we always force a separation between the artist (me) and audience (people). But I am not separate. I am people, I just happen to be an artist. Once I understood this, the album felt very easy and fun to make. *Gemini Rights* is me getting closer to what makes me a part of all things, and that is: feelings. Feelings seem like the only real things sometimes. “I write about my anger, sadness, longing, confusion, happiness, horniness, anger, happiness, confusion, fear, etc., all out of love and all laughable, too. The biggest lesson I learned at the end of this album process was how small we make love. I want to love unconditionally now. I will make love bigger, not smaller. To me, *Gemini Rights* is a step in the right direction. I’m excited for you to have this album as your own as it is no longer mine. Peace.” —Steve Lacy

As the child of an Air Force engineer, Bartees Strange moved around a lot; as an adult, he’s exhibited a similar propensity for uprooting his life, as he’s shifted his career course from college football prospect to press secretary in the Obama administration to indie-rock raconteur. But even as the D.C.-based singer/songwriter/producer has found his true calling in music, he’s remained a restless soul. His 2020 debut, *Live Forever*, introduced an artist equally comfortable with bedroom-pop confessionals, scrappy punk-powered salvos, synthesizer experimentation, and trap-schooled flows. But those discrete elements were skillfully threaded together by Bartees’ outsized emotionalism and lyrical oversharing. With his inaugural album for the iconic 4AD imprint, *Farm to Table*, Bartees doubles down on his mission to make you feel it all, all at once. In true write-what-you-know fashion, the album is a document of Bartees’ sudden entry into the spotlight, as a touring musician longing to be with his partner and as a Black man navigating both the largely white world of indie rock and the tumultuous racial politics of 2020s America. “What I\'m trying to say with all these feelings, and all these sounds, and all these thoughts, is I\'m just a person,” Bartees tells Apple Music. “All of it is coming from one vessel. What I\'m asking for is people to just listen to me fully, and hear what I\'m trying to say with all of this—because you may find something in it that relates to you.” Here, Bartees takes us through *Farm to Table*, one course at a time. **“Heavy Heart”** “When *Live Forever* came out, I was feeling a weird survivor\'s guilt around the success of the album, because it happened right as everything was just taking a huge downturn: The stock market crashed, and then the pandemic happened, and then my granddad died, and then all my friends were losing their jobs and getting COVID and there were no vaccines out...and I was experiencing the greatest moment of my life! I couldn\'t talk about it to anyone without feeling horrible. So this song is saying, ‘You\'ve got to let the guilt go. You got to let the heavy heart go. Life is bigger than that—you can enjoy it even when things are dark.’” **“Mulholland Dr.”** “I wrote this song when I was in LA, and I felt like I went through the full stages of grief with LA. I was like, ‘Damn, LA is the greatest city in the world! The weather\'s perfect! Everyone\'s so pretty!’ And the whole way that LA functions is ruining LA—you have the forest fires, extreme heat, the droughts, and people pumping water from Colorado up into the Hollywood Hills for their mansions, and you have all these homeless folks. This place is so pretty and so dark and evil at the same time. These people don\'t care about shit, and I don\'t know if that\'s good or bad, but they seem happy—and I\'m not!” **“Wretched”** “This song is basically a thank-you to the people who stood by me and always supported me, even when I was just kind of figuring it out and I didn\'t know who I was or what I was doing. But there were always people who said to me, \'Trust your gut—go with what you think works. Life is short, be happy.\' Even when I thought I wasn’t worth anything and I thought I was wretched, there were some people who would always check in with me. It\'s a big thank-you in a huge dance track.” **“Cosigns”** “There\'s two sides to success. People will be like, \'Yo, Bartees is crushing it!\' And I feel the same way: \'Yo, I\'m out here with the people I\'ve always looked up to and admired for years as songwriters, and I\'m finally getting to meet them and party with them and write with them and tour with them.\' But at the same time, it awakens this other side of me, which is fiercely competitive—I\'m wanting what they have, and more. And I kind of always worry, \'Will I ever be satisfied? What do I really want? Do I really want to be the biggest thing I possibly can be? Do I really want to tour 320 days a year?\' Those are things you have to weigh against the competitiveness and the drive.” **“Tours”** “This song is kind of about turning into your parents. My dad was in the military, and he would go on tour—he\'d be gone for a couple months, and we would all miss him. And I remember just thinking, \'Damn, when I grow up, I\'m never gonna be gone this much!\' And now, I look at my life, and it’s like, I\'m going to be gone more. I\'ll probably have a family and I\'ll be like my dad, saying, ‘Goodbye—see you in a couple of months,\' and rolling out. But as I\'ve gotten older, I understand why he did it—because he loves it. He wanted us to see him doing something that he loves to do, and I appreciate that more now.” **“Hold the Line”** “With this song, I knew I didn\'t have anything new to offer \[about the murder of George Floyd\]. That\'s kind of the point of the song: I don\'t have a solution. I don\'t know what it looks like in a world where things like this don\'t happen anymore, because I, nor anyone, has ever seen it. But I do know that it\'s wrong, and that it\'s hard, and it hurts every single time. And I remember seeing that young girl, Gianna Floyd, talking to the media about how her dad died. A lot of Black kids don\'t get to be kids—it\'s taken away so early. And my heart just went out to her in that moment, because I was watching her childhood just dissipate before our very eyes, knowing her life is never going to be the same, in so many ways. I live in D.C. and I was watching all of the protesters marching together, trying to hold the line. But we don\'t even know what we\'re really fighting for. We\'re just all hurting. And that\'s what that song is about: It\'s just a collective feeling of pain and sorrow, but knowing that we have to stick together no matter what. Even if we don\'t know what it looks like when it is all better, we do know that we all need to be together for it to get better.” **“We Were Only Close for Like Two Weeks”** “I was in LA, and I met this girl, and we were talking about this artist. And she\'s like, \'Oh, my god—I love him. We were soooo close, for, like, two weeks.\' And I was like, \'What? Is that even real?\' So I started thinking and realized, ‘I guess there are some people I can say in my life where, for a month, we were tight.’ And I was just kind of meditating on that and created a song that happens in a different time period to where I am currently.” **“Escape This Circus”** “This song is a kissing cousin to \'Mulholland Dr.\' That song is calling out all these issues and being like, ‘I don\'t really know what to do with all this, but the world is falling apart and some people are dancing in the sun.’ I end the song by saying, with all this stuff going on, the only thing you can do to change the world is to start with yourself—start with your community. I\'m saying, ‘That\'s why I really can\'t fuck with you all.’ I don\'t want to act that I care about going to the march or donating money to the Sierra Club—all these things that we think are changing the world is not going to do more than you taking like an active role in your community and in your own life and with your own mental health and the things that you could actually control.” **“Black Gold”** “This is about when I left Oklahoma and moved to the East Coast. And it was just a moment where nobody wanted me to leave, but I knew I had to leave. I don\'t think I understood what I had when I left, I was just kind of pissed off—like, ‘Why am I here? I fucking hate this!’ But everything that was there is what made me who I am, and the more that I learned to appreciate my gifts, and who I was, the more I felt bad about how I left town, and the things I said and how I made people feel about staying there. I wasn\'t very thoughtful. This song is me looking back and reflecting on something I wish I would have handled better.” **“Hennessy”** “You go through all these peaks and valleys of the album, some of which are very personal and some of which are very glassy and super-produced. And you get to the end with this song, and it\'s just kind of a torn-up, broken little thing. It\'s very human, and I wanted it to be that way, because I feel like it\'s so easy for people to look at Black artists and say, \'Oh, he\'s one thing—he\'s a rock person,\' or \'he\'s a rapper.\' And I\'m kind of playing with this idea by singing, \'And they say Black folks drink Hennessy\'—like, this is what they do. And I\'m saying, I want you to see me for who I really am: a person that contains just as many feelings as you may feel.”

Megan Thee Stallion wastes no time getting to the heart of the matter on *Traumazine*, the long-awaited follow-up to the Houston MC’s 2020 album, *Good News*. “I ain’t perfect/But anything I did to any of you n\*\*\*\*s, y’all deserved it!” she raps at the outset of album opener “NDA.” Indeed, Thee Stallion, who’s unwittingly made more headlines over the past two years for her role as a victim of a high-profile shooting than she has for the hits she continues to deliver, is not here to apologize. In fact, she’s here to remind both well-wishers and detractors alike that she’s going to win regardless, because that’s just how she’s built. “Fuck it, bitch, I’m not nice/I’m the shit/I’m done with being humble/’Cause I know that I’m that bitch,” she declares on “Not Nice.” Now, that’s “real hot girl shit.” And you’ll find it in abundance across *Traumazine*, Meg making time to address “fake-ass, snake-ass, backstabbing, hating-ass, no-money-getting-ass bitches” (“Ungrateful”), fair-weather friends (“Flip Flop”), and even her own mental health struggles (“Anxiety”). She’s having plenty of fun here, too, mostly in describing what sounds like really amazing sex (“Ms. Nasty,” “Who Me,” “Red Wine”), but also on a four-on-the-floor house jam (“Her”), a high-energy duet with Future (“Pressurelicious”), and an ode to her H-Town roots (“Southside Royalty Freestyle”). Thee Stallion draws power here from surviving fame as she knows it, basking in her own greatness on “Star” as she proclaims, “I’m a motherfuckin’ superstar.”

When Angel Olsen came to craft her sixth album, *Big Time*, the US singer-songwriter had been through, well, a big time. In 2021—just three days after she came out to her parents—her father died; soon after, she lost her mother. Amid it all (and, of course, with the global pandemic as a backdrop), Olsen was falling deep for someone new. *Big Time*, then, is an album that explores the light of new love alongside the dark devastation of loss and grief. Understandably, Olsen—who started work on *Big Time* just three weeks after her mother’s funeral—questioned whether she could make it at all. “It was a heavy time in my life,” she tells Apple Music. “It was the first time I walked into a studio and I had the option of canceling, because of some of the stuff that was going on. But I told my manager, ‘I just wanna try it.’” Working with producer Jonathan Wilson (Father John Misty, Conor Oberst) in a studio in Topanga Canyon, Olsen kept her expectations low and the brief loose. “Essentially, what I told everyone was, ‘I don’t need to turn a pedal steel on its head here, I just want to hear a classic,’” she says. “What would the Neil Young backing band do if they reined it in a little and put the vocals as the main instrument? If you overthink things, you’re really going down into a hole.” The starting point was “All the Good Times,” a song Olsen wrote on tour in 2017/18, and which she envisaged giving to a country singer like Sturgill Simpson. But it had planted a seed. On *Big Time*, she goes all in on country and Americana, inspired by her cherished hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, as well as by artists including Lucinda Williams, Big Star, and Dolly Parton. That sound reaches its peak on the title track, a woozy, waltzing love song that nods to the brighter side of this album’s title: “I’m loving you big time, I’m loving you more,” Olsen sings to her partner Beau Thibodeaux, with whom she wrote the song. In its embrace of simplicity, *Big Time* feels like a deep exhale—and a stark contrast to 2019’s glossy, high-drama *All Mirrors* (though you will find shades of that here, such as on the string- and piano-laden “Through the Fires” or closer “Chasing the Sun”). That undone palette also lays Olsen’s lyrics bare. And if you’ve ever been shattered by the singer-songwriter’s piercing lyricism, you may want to steel yourself. Here, Olsen’s words are more affecting, honest, and raw than ever before, as she navigates not just love and loss but also self-acceptance (“I need to be myself/I won\'t live another lie,” she sings on “Right Now”), our changed world post-pandemic (“Go Home”), and moving forward after the worst has happened. And on the album’s exquisite final track, “Chasing the Sun,” Olsen allows herself to do just that, however tentatively. “Everyone’s wondered where I’ve gone,” she sings. “Having too much fun… Spending the day/Driving away the blues.”

Fresh grief, like fresh love, has a way of sharpening our vision and bringing on painful clarifications. No matter how temporary we know these states to be, the vulnerability and transformation they demand can overpower the strongest among us. Then there are the rare, fertile moments when both occur, when mourning and limerence heighten, complicate and explain each other; the songs that comprise Angel Olsen’s Big Time were forged in such a whiplash. Big Time is an album about the expansive power of new love, but this brightness and optimism is tempered by a profound and layered sense of loss. During Olsen’s process of coming to terms with her queerness and confronting the traumas that had been keeping her from fully accepting herself, she felt it was time to come out to her parents, a hurdle she’d been avoiding for some time. “Finally, at the ripe age of 34, I was free to be me,” she said. Three days later, her father died and shortly after her mother passed away. The shards of this grief—the shortening of her chance to finally be seen more fully by her parents—are scattered throughout the album. Three weeks after her mother’s funeral she was on a plane to Los Angeles to spend a month in Topanga Canyon, recording this incredibly wise and tender new album. Loss has long been a subject of Olsen’s elegiac songs, but few can write elegies with quite the reckless energy as she. If that bursting-at-the-seams, running downhill energy has come to seem intractable to her work, this album proves Olsen is now writing from a more rooted place of clarity. She’s working with an elastic, expansive mastery of her voice—both sonically and artistically. These are songs not just about transformational mourning, but of finding freedom and joy in the privations as they come.

“Money made me numb,” Vince Staples repeats over and over again on “THE BLUES,” from his fifth full-length studio album. It’s not the song’s chorus and you can picture him saying it in the mirror, attempting to reckon with a truth he clearly understands but also maybe doesn’t quite know what to do with. At the time of *RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART*’s release, the Long Beach, California, MC was more popular and financially successful than he’s ever been. So, he chose—beginning with 2021’s *Vince Staples*—to release some of the most affecting and autobiographical music of his career. The decision sounds, across the album, much less a professional risk than a personal one, Staples utilizing production from Mustard, Cardo, and Coop the Truth, among others, to expose his innermost thoughts about turf politics, romantic relationships, and the ways money may or may not be changing him. More than anything else, he aims to honor those who have in some way contributed to his survival, often calling them out by name, holding especially close the memories of those no longer in his orbit. “Tryna make it to the top, we can’t take everybody with us,” he sings on “THE BEACH.” There are few artists who come off as comfortable as Staples does regarding their contributions to music culture at large, but what *RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART* makes abundantly clear is that few things mean as much to Staples’ art as the neighborhood that made him.

Miranda Lambert hits the road on *Palomino*, her eighth solo album and the follow-up to her 2019 Grammy-winning LP *Wildcard*. Across 15 tracks, Lambert treks all over the United States, spinning colorful yarns of a rambling life out on the road. “We go to 36 different locations in this record and meet all kinds of characters that we made up,” Lambert tells Apple Music. “Or it might have been characters we have all met in our travels, put into these songs. I\'ve never written with that much purpose.” Lambert sets the freewheeling tone with opener “Actin’ Up,” a swampy ode to bad behavior. Tracks like “Scenes” and “Tourist” are some of Lambert’s most image-rich material yet, while “Music City Queen”—a collaboration with pioneering New Wavers The B-52’s—is easily one of her most fun. Some songs, like standout “Geraldene,” previously appeared in demo form on Lambert’s critically acclaimed *The Marfa Tapes*, a 2021 collaborative LP with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall, and take on new life thanks to thoughtful production from Lambert, Randall, and frequent collaborator Luke Dick. Below, Lambert shares insight into a handful of tracks on *Palomino*. **“Geraldene”** “She\'s everyone. I feel like we\'ve all known one or been one at one point or the other. I just had that title because I was watching *Heartworn Highways* like a million times, and in that movie, Townes’ dog is named Geraldine. And Geraldine\'s this German shepherd, and I was like, ‘That\'s a cool name.’” **“Country Money”** “Aaron Raitiere pulls me in on a write one day. He\'s like, ‘Hey, come write with me and Mikey Reaves.’ I had never written with him before, and I was like, ‘Okay, cool, that\'d be different,’ and we wrote ‘Country Money.’ It fit right into the vibe of this road trip we were taking. So it all just happened easily, which makes me a little nervous because I\'m like, ‘Okay, when\'s the other shoe going to drop?’” **“Carousel”** “That is a real feeling. We joined the circus in one way or another, and we\'re so lucky to be part of it. I mean, I\'m like, ‘If I ever lived before, I think I was either best friends with Calamity Jane or riding an elephant somewhere.’ Truly, that\'s what I was doing, because this is as close as I could get to those two things, what I do for a living. I miss so many weddings and funerals and baby showers and important moments of people that are important to me, and of my own, just because I\'m rolling. But I think ‘Carousel’ puts this romantic spin on it where it\'s like, ‘It\'s okay. There\'s this whole other life that can happen, too.’”

I let my humbleness turn to numbness at times letting time go by knowing I got the endurance to catch it another time I work with every breath in my body cause it’s the work not air that makes me feel alive That’s some real detrimental shit but that’s that shit my perfectionist mind doesn’t really mind because no one knows whats on my mind when I go to sleep at 9 & wake up at 5 - unless I say it in rhyme I can’t remember the last time someone put they phone down, looked me in the eyes and asked my current insight on the times But I remember every single time someone shined a light in my eyes I purposely try to forget what went on between some ppl and I because I know I’m not a forgiving guy even when I try My urge for revenge wins the game against my good guy inside every single fckn time I got plans I can’t talk about with more than like 4 guys because the last time I shared em with someone on the outside…well that’s another story for another night I was tryna get thru that statement to get to saying I’m not @ a time in my life where pats on the shoulder help get me by I’ll take loyalty over an oh my & emoji fire I know if it was a dark night where all the odds were against my side & my skill went to whoever took my life they’d done me off with a big smile & maybe evn post it for some likes I know everyone that tells me they love me doesn’t love me all the time especially when im doing better than alright & they have to watch it from whatever point they at in their life I got here being realistic I didn’t get here being blind I know whats what and especially what and who is by my side Honestly…Nevermind. DEDICATED TO OUR BROTHER V —Drake

“Right now, I’m still very much restless,” Charli XCX tells Apple Music. “Because I know that I would be an excellent humongous pop star. But I also unfortunately know that there’s a vision of who I am in the mainstream’s mind. It’s a constant headfuck, to be honest. While I’m a very defiant person, I’m also a human, and sometimes I do just want to be accepted, and I don’t understand why I’m not totally—even though sometimes I relish in the fact that I’m not.” Charlotte Aitchison is one of pop music’s more self-aware, self-deprecating, and self-examining artists. *CRASH* is her fifth studio album, and the final one to be released as part of a longtime record deal. It’s partly, as Charli says, an experiment. An opportunity to utilize a major label’s resources and dress up her left-leaning pop in something ultra luxe. A bold and refreshingly transparent attempt to move up a few rungs, it’s a considered move also designed to clear up some of Charli’s nagging what-ifs. “I’ve always questioned myself,” she says. “And it’s why I’ve made this entire album, really. I ask myself, am I a likable artist? Am I too opinionated? Do I look too weird? Am I too annoying? If I shut up and put out certain songs and do the right features, will I become more accepted, more liked, more commercial?” Of course, Charli’s notoriously engaged fanbase—with whom she exchanged ideas, including song lyrics, directly online for 2020’s quarantine album *how i’m feeling now*—would argue she doesn’t need any such validation. “It’s a blessing and a curse, to be extremely honest,” she says of her “Angels.” “I’m very lucky to have the fanbase that I have, who are extremely invested in literally every breath I take. They are very vocal and very smart, which draws me to them, because they’ve got great taste and amazing ideas—as I found out when doing *how i’m feeling now*. But you can’t please everyone. I’ve done so many different things that people are always going to gravitate to certain eras. Plus, I think that there’s an element where they like to root for an underdog, or an on-the-fringes personality like mine. Because we feel like we’ve been in it together for a really long time, the online discourse can be so vigorous. So I can’t lie, sometimes it’s a bit of a headfuck, because whilst I absolutely adore them, I don’t make music for them specifically when I’m sat in the studio—I’m making it for me. And I don’t think they would admire me as the artist I am if I just kept giving them what they expected.” It’s time to listen for yourself. Explore Charli’s premium pop with her own track-by-track guide. **“Crash”** “Until maybe a week before I made this song, the album was going to be called *Sorry If I Hurt You*. But one day, I was driving in my car and *CRASH* just came to me, and I called A. G. Cook. Even though he wasn\'t a *huge* part of this record, he\'s still very much my creative confidant. He agreed it made sense with the constant car references in my work—and I like the onomatopoeia, I like how it references \[2014 single\] ‘Boom Clap,’ and I like how it feels much more punchy and in-your-face than *how i’m feeling now*. I felt that the title needed a song, so A. G. and I got in the studio pretty quickly and knew we needed to make it sound extremely ’80s—if you could bottle the album into one song, this is it. We—plus the song’s co-producer George Daniel—had been sending a lot of new jack swing beats back and forth, and I knew I wanted this guitar solo, and to add these crazy Janet-esque stabs.” **“New Shapes” (feat. Caroline Polachek & Christine and the Queens)** “Caroline, Christine, and I had worked together many times in different forms, and it was time for the three of us to come together. And actually, this song was recorded a long time ago—pre-pandemic. I like how it\'s an antihero song. We’re saying to the love figure, ‘I haven\'t got what you need from me, because I am not typical. I don\'t operate in the way that you want me to. I want multiple partners. I want somebody else. I want no convention within sex and love.’ And I like that as a statement right after the sound of a car crash in the previous song. To do that song with them—two artists who I really feel have such a unique, defiant, and topsy-turvy vision of what pop music is—felt really classic and right for us. There’s a true connection between us now, in music and in our personal lives.” **“Good Ones”** “I think this song deserved to be bigger, but I will always think that of my work. But I do think it established the Cliffs Notes version of what the record is—it\'s got a darkness to it, and it\'s very pop. I like how drastic the jump was between coming out of *how i’m feeling now* into this, both sonically and in how they were made. *how i’m feeling now* was obviously my quarantine album made in my living room over five weeks by me and two trusted collaborators. This song is produced by Oscar Holter—an extremely active part of the Max Martin camp—and not really written hugely by myself but by two amazing topliners, Caroline Ailin and Noonie Bao. So it’s the absolute polar opposite.” **“Constant Repeat”** “This song features an imaginary scenario I created in my head, where I fell for somebody but imagined that they didn\'t want me—which turned out to not be the case. But it was this fear that I had, and my prediction of the situation. I think it\'s interesting that you can convince yourself of that. When you are falling for someone, unfortunately, I think human nature just crushes in on you and tells you you\'re not good enough, and fills you with doubt and dread and fear and all of those things. This song really poured out of me quite late in the album process, and it just felt so real and natural.” **“Beg for You” (feat. Rina Sawayama)** “Rina wanted to do something uptempo together, and give our fans a bit more of a moment. So when this song idea bubbled up, I called her immediately. She rewrote the second verse, and sounded incredible on it. It’s a very perfect-storm moment, because we’re two artists operating within the pop sphere, but always challenging it and doing something a little bit more left. She also has that hardcore, diehard fanbase—there’s a lot of crossover. Whilst maybe some of them were expecting something a little bit more experimental from us, I think, in a way, you can\'t deny that this actually is the perfect song for us in that we are paying a homage to a gay anthem \[‘Cry for You’ by September\]. She\'s queer, I\'m a queer ally, we\'re coming together to really just live our best lives and sing an iconic pop song.” **“Move Me”** “This song came from a writing camp that I was invited to by \[US producer and songwriter\] Ian Kirkpatrick. I hadn’t done a very classic camp for a while. Not because I\'m anti them—I actually think I thrive quite well in them and enjoy them. I ended up writing this with \[US songwriter and producer\] Amy Allen. We’re actually polar opposites in terms of our styles, which is why this song ended up being so beautiful—the aggressive parts of the song where I was basically yelling into a mic are very me, then you have the balance of Amy’s gorgeous verses. As we were doing it, everyone kept talking about how it’d be a great song for Halsey. I was like, ‘No, I love Halsey, but this is a great song for me and I’m fucking keeping it.’ People talk about writing-camp songs being fake and constructed in a test tube or whatever. But it’s very real. We write from our reality. That’s why we’re good songwriters.” **“Baby”** “This was one of the first tracks I made for this album, probably pre-pandemic, and with Justin Raisen—who was a very crucial part of my first album, *True Romance* \[2013\]. So it felt really good to be going back and working with him in the same house where we made part of the first album. This was a song that I always felt was so passionate and fiery and sexy. And I think the making of this song helped me feel powerful, and want to explore the sexier side of pop music and my artistry. It’s the song that helped me decide that I wanted to dance for this campaign, because I just couldn\'t stop wanting to move to it whilst we were making it.” **“Lightning”** “It began as one of those half demos that I took away and lived with. I then called up Ariel Rechtshaid, who was also a huge part of the first album, alongside Justin Raisen, and said, ‘OK, I have this song. I want to do *True Romance in 2022* with it.” And while I know he’s not really on that hype currently, I told him he was the king of the ’80s and if he felt it needed to go down that road, I trusted him because he has the most impeccable taste. So he sent it back to me, and there was a question mark over the Spanish guitar moment, which goes into a chorus. I sent it to A. G. to ask his opinion. He was like, ‘It\'s insane. I laughed out loud.’ And I was like, ‘OK, great. We\'re keeping it.’” **“Every Rule”** “It\'s the true story of me meeting my previous partner, and both of us being in relationships but knowing that we were meant to be together. I think that that\'s a story that a lot of my friends have also experienced—and obviously there\'s a lot of controversy that comes with that circumstance. People are afraid to talk about it. People feel shame. But it\'s also, it\'s really real. I think you have to be really brave to admit to yourself that you\'re not in love with maybe the person that you\'re with, and that you are in love with someone else. It\'s cruel on both sides, and I think you can really hear that. It was a song that I really only felt comfortable enough to make with A. G. He would never judge me for saying these things. It’s another pre-pandemic song, and A. G. was living in a place with a studio in his garage. There was a tree outside that was always covered in crickets. You can hear the crickets in the recording, which I think is really sweet and charming. Once we’d lived with the song for about a year, A. G. had the idea of asking Oneohtrix Point Never to add some things to the song, which I loved.” **“Yuck”** “I like the drastic gear change here. I like that it makes you laugh. I like those jarring moments on albums and in live shows where you\'re going from the most intimate, quiet song to the most hilarious or poptastic. That was the reasoning behind putting ‘Every Rule’ and ‘Yuck’ back to back. I really struggle with that feeling of being smothered. It\'s probably an only-child thing, or something. When you\'re like, ‘Get away from me, give me some fucking space’—that is seriously how I feel 50% of the time. It also reminds me of that gang vocal element of ‘Boom Clap’ and ‘Boys.’ Not sonically, but more in terms of the way that I\'m singing. I\'m definitely not the most technical singer ever—if you put me next to Ariana Grande and made us both sing the same song, I would sound absolutely insane, and she would sound absolutely gorgeous—but when it comes to singing like this, I feel pretty confident. That’s really nice for me, just in a technical way. It\'s really fun to be like, ‘Yeah. You know what? I can sing this song.’ Which I know sounds stupid because I am a professional ‘singer.’” **“Used to Know Me”** “I was trying to emulate myself on ‘Fancy’—or get back into that headspace. I really remember searching for the chorus melody to ‘Fancy’ in a way that I hadn\'t really searched for a melody before. Normally I\'m very instinctual and spontaneous when it comes to melodies, but with ‘Fancy,’ I had to really maneuver my brain around different corners to figure it out—to understand the formation of the notes. I wrote this on my own at Stargate’s studios, which probably made me feel like I had to write a really big pop song, and then when I was listening to it on repeat in my car, I just started singing the synth line to ‘Show Me Love’ by Robin S. So I called a few people and was like, ‘Is this possible?’ And everyone said, ‘Yes, but do you care about publishing?’ And I was like, ‘I guess not.’ It feels to me like a big song—it’s about reshaping who you are after a breakup.” **“Twice”** “I had reservations about making this the last song because it\'s such an obvious choice with the key change and outro. And generally speaking, I\'m anti the obvious choice. But then George Daniel, who is very good with tracklisting, simply said, ‘You\'re an idiot if you don\'t put this song last.’ It’s actually interesting lyrically, because it\'s about the end of the world and that you shouldn\'t think twice about intimate moments, or these off-the-cuff moments. Essentially, YOLO, and enjoy delving into these once-in-a-lifetime situations that everybody ends up in. I was picturing the scene from \[Lars von Trier’s 2011 film\] *Melancholia* where Kirsten Dunst’s character is sat on a hill waiting for the end of the world. It’s a perfect closer, and I also think it’s a very beautiful song.”

Daddy Yankee wrote this exclusive message to mark what he says will be his last album: *I’m celebrating my 32-year career with my final musical footprint. All of the styles that defined me in one piece. LEGENDADDY is struggle, celebration, war and romance. Thank you to my amazing global family for inspiring me so much in my life. I love you* ❤️ *…….Daddy Yankee* 🐐

The Shirelles and The Supremes. Spice Girls and Destiny’s Child. Girls’ Generation and, now, BLACKPINK officially enter the pantheon of history-making, culture-defining girl groups. Since debuting in 2016 with YG Entertainment (the company also responsible for launching the careers of BIGBANG, 2NE1, and “Gangnam Style” hitmaker PSY), the K-pop quartet—rapper/singer JENNIE (Jennie Kim), rapper/dancer LISA (Lalisa Manobal), singers JISOO (Jisoo Kim) and ROSÉ (Chae-young Park)—have broken records and changed the face of modern pop. They have collaborated with Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, and Selena Gomez while rocking Celine, Chanel, Dior, and Saint Laurent, major fashion houses for which they are ambassadors. They were the first K-pop girl group to perform at Coachella. They have become, without a doubt, one of the most popular K-pop groups across the globe—all with only a few singles and one full-length album to their name. Well, until now: *BORN PINK*, the group’s highly anticipated sophomore release, heralds a new era for the band and a chance to stake out a real legacy. From the familiar raucous rap and hyperpop of single “Pink Venom” and the ROSÉ-led 2010s pop-rock “Ready for Love” to the haunting violins-meets-trap of “Shut Down” and the fully English-language piano ballad “The Happiest Girl,” *BORN PINK* boasts a new eclecticism. The trick is in how the group succeeds without sacrificing any of the hallmarks of a classic, idiosyncratic BLACKPINK song: bombastic raps, nostalgic EDM drops, larger-than-life harmonies, multiple melodies stacked one after the other, and unbridled enthusiasm. When ROSÉ shouts, “I’m so rock ’n’ roll!” you believe her. Prior to the release of *BORN PINK*, some fans (lovingly labeled BLINKs) were concerned about BLACKPINK’s material. With so few songs between them (and understanding that exclusivity breeds intrigue), what would their latest evolution look and sound like? How could they play into a pop landscape now devoid of BTS, the biggest K-pop group on the planet? Their pleasures are found in their indissoluble relationship with one another and how that manifests in each performance, harmony, and comeback for the group—and they have the potential to grow still. In a saturated pop and K-pop music market, BLACKPINK distinguishes themselves from the competition. They’re adaptable: unafraid of traversing new genres, styles, or fashions, somehow managing to make them all their own.

Ten years on from Wizkid’s debut single, 2020 witnessed the Nigerian’s coronation as an undisputed Afrobeats icon. Global names including Justin Bieber and Damian Marley as well as emerging ones (see: Tems and producer P2J) helped Wizkid’s fourth album *Made in Lagos* strike a sonic balance to electrify bases at home and overseas, and unlocked fresh dimensions to his signature Afro-fusion. “That was where I\'m from. And now you know it’s time for me to show the world what else we actually need at this moment,” Wizkid tells Apple Music. “And that’s a whole lot of love. I\'m reminding myself, reminding the world, and reminding everybody.” On *More Love, Less Ego*, the task is made smoother with P2J again by his side. Their percussive, midtempo palette makes for a rich, winning combo, and the duo lean into it here—with Wizkid’s pillowy vocals and the bright, unifying themes of passion and celebration the ideal complements. But, as the title suggests, a more emotionally exposed artist emerges across the album’s 13 tracks. “All the time, I want to show up as my highest self,” he says. “I\'m really trying to show how God has blessed me with this talent and what I can do with it. And I’m here on earth to take this to the highest of my abilities.” As Wizkid’s Grammy-nominated “Essence” galvanized the thrilling rise of Tems, on “2 Sugar”—a sultry, toe-tapping duet—Ayra Starr is the beneficiary of the Starboy’s magic touch. And it’s far from the only inspired collaboration. Wizkid\'s cultural crosswinds take in talent including Jamaica’s breakout stars Shenseea and Skillibeng (“Slip N Slide”) and British Nigerians Skepta and Naira Marley (“Wow”) in a confident show of the diaspora’s effortless genre-fusing. Amapiano, meanwhile, is also explored on album highlight “Plenty Loving”—indicating another rich area for Wizkid to mine in the future. “I’ve been in the clubs for the past couple months—traveling, doing shows, touring,” he says. “Of course, I\'ve been partying to amapiano. I\'ve been making that \[sound\] for years, with \[DJ\] Maphorisa back in South Africa. So I’ve made what I really love and just put it out there. I can do amapiano, I can do music from Mali, I can do sounds from anywhere, I\'m African.”

Part of the appeal of Alex G’s homespun folk pop is how unsettling it is. For every Beatles-y melody (“Mission”) or warm, reassuring chorus (“Early Morning Waiting”) there’s the image of a cocked gun (“Runner”) or a mangled voice lurking in the mix like the monster in a fairy-tale forest (“S.D.O.S”). His characters describe adult perspectives with the terror and wonder of children (“No Bitterness,” “Blessing”), and several tracks make awestruck references to God. With every album, he draws closer to the conventions of American indie rock without touching them. And by the time you realize he isn’t just another guy in his bedroom with an acoustic guitar, it’s too late.

“God” figures in the ninth album from Philadelphia, PA based Alex Giannascoli's LP’s title, its first song, and multiple of its thirteen tracks thereafter, not as a concrete religious entity but as a sign for a generalized sense of faith (in something, anything) that fortifies Giannascoli, or the characters he voices, amid the songs’ often fraught situations. Beyond the ambient inspiration of pop, Giannascoli has been drawn in recent years to artists who balance the public and hermetic, the oblique and the intimate, and who present faith more as a shared social language than religious doctrine. As with his previous records, Giannascoli wrote and demoed these songs by himself, at home; but, for the sake of both new tones and “a routine that was outside of my apartment,” he asked some half-dozen engineers to help him produce the “best” recording quality, whatever that meant. The result is an album more dynamic than ever in its sonic palette. Recorded by Mark Watter, Kyle Pulley, Scoops Dardaris at Headroom Studios in Philadelphia, PA Eric Bogacz at Spice House in Philadelphia, PA Jacob Portrait at SugarHouse in New York, NY & Clubhouse in Rhinebeck, NY Connor Priest, Steve Poponi at Gradwell House Recording in Haddon Heights, NJ Earl Bigelow at Watersong Music in Bowdoinham, ME home in Philadelphia, PA Additional vocals by Jessica Lea Mayfield on “After All” Additional vocals by Molly Germer on “Mission” Guitar performed by Samuel Acchione on “Mission”, “Blessing”, “Early Morning Waiting”, “Forgive” Banjo performed by Samuel Acchione on “Forgive” Bass performed by John Heywood on “Blessing”, “Early Morning Waiting”, “Forgive” Drums performed by Tom Kelly on “No Bitterness”, “Blessing”, “Forgive” Strings arranged and performed by Molly Germer on “Early Morning Waiting”, “Miracles”

Tove Lo’s fifth studio album is also her first as an independent artist. Full of surprising collaborations, intimate confessions, and sexy, sparkly, ’80s-inspired synths, it marks a new era of creativity and experimentation for the Swedish singer-songwriter who is known as club pop’s rebellious and raunchy cool girl. Lo spent three years writing these songs in Los Angeles and Torekov, Sweden—a small fishing village where she spent summers growing up. That extended timeline gave her space to explore new soundscapes and musical ideas. “I had time to push myself and go to new places,” she tells Apple Music. “I had time for the details. I had time to be myself.” The album reflects a time of transition for the singer—she and her husband eloped to Vegas during the pandemic. Around the same time, she invited a few of her friends to move into her new home in LA, forming what she described as a collective. “It’s been wild, *fun*,” she says. “But there have been moments where I’m like, ‘Where is this going? Who am I? What are we doing?’” *Dirt Femme* explores these questions with sincerity (“Grapefruit,” “No One Dies From Love”), but makes it clear that Lo has no plans to hang up her party-girl crown anytime soon (“Pineapple Slice,” “Attention Whore”). She wrote each song with a certain character in mind: a “horny huntress,” scorned girlfriend, or intense, intimidating Scorpio (see: the album art). “The point is that we all contain multitudes,” she says, “and each of these women is me.” **“No One Dies From Love”** “When lockdown hit, I was already worn out from an intense, emotionally draining year. My go-to collaborator, Ludvig, was, too. We were both in the middle of little existential crises and spent a few weeks in Malibu trying to write some songs. ‘No One Dies From Love’ was the only thing that came out of those sessions. We mostly cried and drank and walked on the beach, talking about those all-consuming relationships where you feel like your whole existence revolves around a single person, and like there won\'t be anything left of you if they leave. Obviously, it’s not true. Time heals most wounds. But it doesn’t feel like that at the time.” **“Suburbia”** “My husband and I both had fairly traditional childhoods, and I’ve always \[sensed\] a certain amount of confusion around my lifestyle—friends and family wondering when we’ll stop partying and settle down. In 2020, we eloped in Las Vegas, and the reaction was pretty uniform, like, ‘Oh, thank god, you did something normal! So when are you having kids?’ People seem to have this idea about how our life is supposed to look, and if that idea doesn’t appeal to you, it makes your head spin. You’re like, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’ We made a beat that sounded sad and upbeat at the same time, and it reminded me of the Stepford Wives—that eerie feeling you get in suburbia that everyone is hiding something.” **“2 Die 4”** “My friend Oscar Görres and I were talking about the reemergence of Y2K trends—in music, films, photography, fashion—and it makes us feel old. But sometimes it’s interesting to look at things from a new angle—trance music, for example. When I was a kid, I hated it. I was like, ‘There\'s no vocals, I don’t get this.’ Now I\'m like, ‘How did I ever miss out on all this sick synthy shit?’ So this song kind of channels that era. It’s a slower tempo, but it’s nostalgic to me.” **“True Romance”** “I haven\'t ever really released a ballad before. My songs always have a beat or full production. In opera, they tell the story all the way through and it just builds and builds and builds. So I went into this song with that essence. I wanted it to be about a destructive relationship. The movie *True Romance* popped into my head, and I decided to watch it and then write a storyline into the lyrics. It took me three days to write the lyrics, but I recorded the vocals in one take. We kept it because it just felt raw and powerful.” **“Grapefruit”** “Up until now, I’ve never really been up front about the fact that I had a severe eating disorder when I was a teenager. I did a movie in Sweden, and had to lose some weight for it—nothing extreme, maybe four or five kilos, but I had to lose it in two weeks. I went on a diet for the first time in 10 years and it triggered so many memories—the obsession, the anxiety, being hungry all the time. All these memories flooded back and I was like, ‘Can I do this without falling back into old patterns?’ In the end, I did it and it was fine. To me, it felt like validation that I’d healed. So I started writing about that. When I played this song for my friends, they were like, ‘I never would\'ve known. You\'re so much about body positivity.’ And my response is: ‘Yes, because I went through that.’” **“Cute & Cruel”** “This is my sunset song. It\'s about accepting what love does to you as a human being. I wrote this with Elvira, who is one of my favorite producers in Sweden. She and I really click. There\'s an emotional sweetness to it, a tenderness. This folksy, cinematic sound was new for me, so I wanted to bring in one more voice, preferably someone from that scene. First Aid Kit really elevated the song because they’re so at home in this world. It’s a really unexpected, powerful one.” **“Call On Me”** “I made this song with SG Lewis, who is a close friend. He\'s an emotional party person just like me. He actually wrote this song and then sent it to me, which isn’t something I do very often; it’s hard for me to find a way to make it mine. But I loved this song, so we agreed that I’d play with the lyrics. Initially, I rewrote them to make them more deep and complex, but it actually felt like that took away from the energy of the song. We decided to just let it be what it is, which is a big, fun dance anthem that all my gays are going to love.” **“Attention Whore”** “I wrote this track at four in the morning after having a silly drunk argument with my husband. I don’t even remember what it was about. He was probably just being his great self, but sometimes when I\'m drunk I just decide to get mad like an idiot. You know when you’re just feeling jealous and sassy and maybe a little bitchy? That’s the essence of this song. I\'d just seen Channel Tres live at a festival and was floored by his performance—it was sexy and cool and full of attitude. I knew he’d be perfect for this track.” **“Pineapple Slice”** “SG Lewis and I wrote this song together from scratch, and he kept pushing me to make the lyrics dirtier. Finally I was like, ‘Okay, fine, let me show you what I can do.’ I just went for it. In pop, you\'re supposed to insinuate. You\'re never supposed to say things outright. So it was fun to break the rules and really *go* there.” **“I’m to Blame”** “I wrote this song with Ali Payami, who told me he wanted to make something ‘Oasis-inspired with hip-hop drums.’ I was like, ‘That sounds out of my lane, but let\'s do it.’ Growing up, I listened to a ton of rock and indie rock, and those days came right back to me when we got in the studio. With the help of his guitar and instrumentals, I found a lyrical and melodic place that I hadn\'t gone to yet for this album. It\'s more poetic and nuanced, whereas I’m usually pretty blunt. And the vocals sound less perfect, more alive. It\'s really special to me.” **“Kick in the Head”** “This was one of the first songs I wrote when I was feeling inspired again. I’m singing about being unmotivated, not knowing what to say, how I need someone to shake me, feelings creative people experience when everything feels...flat. But things turned around when Tim, my roommate and one of my producers, brought me this beat. It had a funky bassline that reminded me of Fatboy Slim, and I thought it was so cool and interesting. Even a little experimental. It stands out in the best way and I love having it on this album because I think it helps show my range as an artist.” **“How Long”** “This was definitely written with *Euphoria* in mind. The ominous beat, the darkness, the slow, hypnotic energy...even when we hadn’t written lyrics yet, there was just so much anger in the track. It felt like revenge. I was working on the lyrics for a few days with a songwriter, and had a dream about my husband cheating on me. I\'m the kind of person who will wake up and be mad about something like that. I’ll pretend I\'m not, but I am. I\'m playing out the scenario in my head like, ‘If he did this, what would I do? How would I handle it?’ I’d go through every worst-case scenario. So I wrote about that. He knows I’m like this and will get nervous, like, ‘Babe, you know I didn’t actually cheat on you, right?’ And I just sit there like, ‘I know. I think.’”

Thebe Kgositsile emerged in 2010 as the most mysterious member of rap’s weirdest new collective, Odd Future—a gifted teen turned anarchist, spitting shock-rap provocations from his exile in a Samoan reform school. In the 12 years since, he’s repaired his famously fraught relationship with his mother, lost his father, and become a father himself, all the while carving out a solo lane as a serious MC, a student of the game. Earl’s fourth album finds the guy who once titled an album *I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside*, well, going outside, and kinda liking it; on opener “Old Friend,” he’s hacking through thickets, camping out in Catskills rainstorms. There’s a sonic clarity here that stands apart from the obscure, sludgy sounds of his recent records, executed in part by Young Guru, JAY-Z’s longtime engineer. Beats from The Alchemist and Black Noi$e snap, crackle, and bounce, buoying Earl’s slippery, open-ended thoughts on family, writing, religion, the pandemic. Is he happy now, the kid we’ve watched become a man? It’s hard to say, but in any case, as he raps on “Fire in the Hole”: “It’s no rewinding/For the umpteenth time, it’s only forward.”

In the five years between Syd’s solo debut, *Fin*, and its follow-up, the singer-songwriter experienced her first major heartbreak. It upended her world right as our social lives were already contracting under the weight of the pandemic, giving her plenty of time to mourn and then heal. Most of the songs on *Broken Hearts Club*, despite its name, were written before that, when she was still swaddled in the bliss of deep, reciprocal love. What results is a conceptual evolution of romance and its subsequent unraveling, traced over the course of the album. “CYBAH” (as in “could you break a heart”—one of the few songs written after the fact) captures the ambivalence of catching feelings, as fear begins to give way to surrender. Warm fuzzy feelings abound. They\'re in the ecstasy of “Fast Car,” an ode to not-so-secret rendezvous and stolen kisses, and the sentimental delight of “Sweet” and “Control,” both emblems of infatuation transforming into safety and comfort. Around “Out Loud”—a gorgeous plea to be desired and adored without shame which becomes especially cogent through the voices of Syd and Kehlani, both of whom are gay—cracks begin to emerge, before the all-out shattering of “Goodbye My Love.” Love is a risk and deserves music that reflects as much, and likewise, within the space of *Broken Hearts Club*, Syd shows up more vulnerable than ever. The lilt of her voice shifts forward, front and center to sing the kind of lyrics that could only come from real-life inspiration. There\'s no hiding here. It may be her most personal album to date, but it resonates far beyond.

Anitta has long straddled various genres—and languages—as she sees fit. Yet with *Versions of Me*, the trilingual Brazilian star presents the clearest display of her talent and appeal, often accompanied by a multinational array of guests, from Afro B to Cardi B. Following the reggaetón one-two punch of “Envolver” and the Chencho Corleone-assisted “Gata,” she switches things up with the propulsive pop of “I’d Rather Have Sex” and collaborates with R&B hooksmith Ty Dolla $ign on the clever interpolation “Gimme Your Number.” She playfully recontextualizes a classic on the trap-informed “Girl From Rio” while repping her home country further on the dynamic “Que Rabão.” From the retro electro rock of “Boys Don’t Cry” to the tantalizing polyrhythmic Khalid team-up “Ur Baby,” her self-described versions won’t disappoint the fans.

Fans of Brent Faiyaz love him for his shamelessness, and on his second album, he leans all the way into that. Opening with a collage of clips that address his reputation (aptly called “VILLAIN\'S THEME”), he sets out on a quest in search of honesty—an answer to the question “What purpose do your vices serve in your life?” That tension between vice and intent—between love and a lifestyle that actively discourages it—is immediately introduced on “LOOSE CHANGE” and snakes its way through the album. Three skits at the beginning, middle, and end provide an underlying narrative of baby-mama drama and betrayal that culminates in a devastating turn of events; it\'s all fun and games until people get hurt. But the cost can\'t be known until it\'s known, and so Faiyaz barrels towards romantic oblivion. All of his sweet talk comes affixed with disclaimers. On “ALL MINE,” he tries to get his girl back—despite the fact that she may not even be available. (“You told me your new man don\'t make you nut, that\'s a damn shame,” he coos at one point.) “WASTING TIME,” which features fellow toxic king Drake, doesn\'t even try to hide its here-for-a-good-time-not-a-long-time attitude, while the album\'s centerpiece, an apologetic ballad titled “ROLLING STONE,” could also double as its mission statement: “First I\'m exciting, then I\'m gaslighting, make up your mind/I\'m rich as fuck and I ain\'t nothing at the same time/People hate me and they love me at the same time/I guess I\'m everything and nothing at the same time.” But to only appreciate the persona of the music is to miss the atmospheric details that give it shape. His production choices—the expansive creep of “PRICE OF FAME” or the anthemic swirl of “GRAVITY” or the plodding drama of “ROLE MODEL”—help to keep listeners off balance and cultivate an air of mystery that furthers the impact of his lyrics and brings the lothario to life. It becomes difficult to tell where the line between fantasy and reality exists, whether this is a character or Faiyaz himself. One thing is certain, though: It\'s impossible to turn away, repulsive and alluring at once, like the best toxic relationships are.

Country music has a long-held tradition of narrative music, though the commercial side of the genre has strayed away from such character- and story-driven songs in recent years. Zach Bryan is here to change that, though, on his sprawling, ambitious triple album *American Heartbreak*. Across 34 tracks, the Navy veteran and cult favorite envisions bull riders, long-lost lovers, wandering road warriors, and more, telling their stories over simple arrangements and with an emotionally potent voice that recalls Tyler Childers or early Jason Isbell. “There\'s plenty of characters on *American Heartbreak*—some of them I know, some of them I don\'t,” Bryan tells Apple Music. “Sometimes I\'m just in a breakfast place and I see someone doing something and I\'m like, ‘It\'d be crazy if that person was a bull rider.’ And then I\'m like, ‘Oh wait—that would be a cool story.’” Album highlights include the massively successful “Something in the Orange,” which crackles with brooding intrigue, and “From Austin,” a heartbreak song that avoids the tropes and clichés of similar country tracks in favor of more poetic lines like “Babe, I’ve gotta heal myself from the things I’ve never felt.”

In sharply differing ways, thoughts of place and identity run through Fontaines D.C.’s music. Where 2019 debut *Dogrel* delivered a rich and raw portrait of the band’s home city, Dublin, 2020 follow-up *A Hero’s Death* was the sound of dislocation, a set of songs drawing on the introspection, exhaustion, and yearning of an anchorless life on the road. When the five-piece moved to London midway through the pandemic, the experiences of being outsiders in a new city, often facing xenophobia and prejudice, provided creative fuel for third album *Skinty Fia*. The music that emerged weaves folk, electronic, and melodic indie pop into their post-punk foundations, while contemplating Irishness and how it transforms in a different country. “That’s the lens through which all of the subjects that we explore are seen through anyway,” singer Grian Chatten tells Apple Music’s Matt Wilkinson. “There are definitely themes of jealousy, corruption, and stuff like that, but it’s all seen through the eyes of someone who’s at odds with their own identity, culturally speaking.” Recording the album after dark helped breed feelings of discomfort that Chatten says are “necessary to us,” and it continued a nocturnal schedule that had originally countered the claustrophobia of a locked-down city. “We wrote a lot of it at night as well,” says Chatten. “We went into the rehearsal space just as something different to do. When pubs and all that kind of thing were closed, it was a way of us feeling like the world was sort of open.” Here, Chatten and guitarist Carlos O’Connell talk us through a number of *Skinty Fia*’s key moments. **“In ár gCroíthe go deo”** Grian Chatten: “An Irish woman who lived in Coventry \[Margaret Keane\] passed away. Her family wanted the words ‘In ár gCroíthe go deo,’ which means ‘in our hearts forever,’ on her gravestone as a respectful and beautiful ode to her Irishness, but they weren’t allowed without an English translation. Essentially the Church of England decreed that it would be potentially seen as a political slogan. The Irish language is apparently, according to these people, an inflammatory thing in and of itself, which is a very base level of xenophobia. It’s a basic expression of a culture, is the language. If you’re considering that to be related to terrorism, which is what they’re implying, I think. That sounds like it’s something out of the ’70s, but this is two and a half years ago.” Carlos O’Connell: “About a year ago, it got turned around and \[the family\] won this case.” GC: “The family were made aware \[of the song\] and asked if they could listen to it. Apparently they really loved it, and they played it at the gravestone. So, that’s 100,000 Grammys worth of validation.” **“Big Shot”** CO: “When you’ve got used to living with what you have and then all these dreams happen to you, it’s always going to overshadow what you had before. The only impact that \[Fontaines’ success\] was having in my life was that it just made anything that I had before quite meaningless for a while, and I felt quite lost in that. That’s that lyric, ‘I traveled to space and found the moon too small’—it’s like, go up there and actually it’s smaller than the Earth.” GC: “We’ve all experienced it very differently and that’s made us grow in different ways. But that song just sounded like a very true expression of Carlos. Perhaps more honest than he always is with himself or other people. All the honesty was balled up into that tune.” **“Jackie Down the Line”** GC: “It’s an expression of misanthropy. And there’s toxicity there. There’s erosion of each other’s characters. It’s a very un-beneficial, unglamorous relationship that isn’t necessarily about two people. I like the idea of it being about Irishness, fighting to not be eroded as it exists in a different country. The name is Jackie because a Dubliner would be called, in a pejorative sense, a Jackeen by people from other parts of Ireland. That’s probably in reference to the Union Jack as well—it’s like the Pale \[an area of Ireland, including Dublin, that was under English governmental control during the late Middle Ages\]. So it’s this kind of mutation of Irishness or loss of Irishness as it exists, or fails to exist, in a different environment.” **“Roman Holiday”** GC: “The whole thing was colored by my experience in London. I moved to London to be with my fiancée, and as an Irish person living in London, as one of a gang of Irish people, there was that kind of searching energy, there was this excitement, there was a kind of adventure—but also this very, very tight-knit, rigorously upkept group energy. I think that’s what influenced the tune.” **“The Couple Across the Way”** GC: “I lived on Caledonian Road \[in North London\] and our gaff backed onto another house. There was a couple that lived there, they were probably mid-seventies, and they had really loud arguments. The kind of arguments where you’d see London on a map getting further, further away and hear the shout resounding. Something like *The Simpsons*. And the man would come out and take a big breath. He’d stand on his balcony and look left and right and exhale all the drama. And then he’d just turn around and go back in to his gaff to do the same thing the next day. The absurdity of that, of what we put ourselves through, to be in a relationship that causes you such daily pain, to just always turn around and go back in. I couldn’t really help but write about that physical mirror that was there. Am I seeing myself and my girlfriend in these two people, and vice versa? So I tried to tie it in to it being from both perspectives at some point.” **“Skinty Fia”** GC: “The line ‘There is a track beneath the wheel and it’s there ’til we die’ is about being your dad’s son. There are many ways in which we explore doom on this record. One of them is following in the footsteps of your ancestors, or your predecessors, no matter how immediate or far away they might have been. I’m interested in the inescapability of genetics, the idea that your fate is written. I do, on some level, believe in that. That is doom, even if your faith is leading you to a positive place. Freedom is probably the main pursuit of a lot of our music. I think that that is probably a link that ties all of the stuff that we’ve done together—autonomy.” **“I Love You”** GC: “It’s most ostensibly a love letter to Ireland, but has in it the corruption and the sadness and the grief with the ever-changing Dublin and Ireland. The reason that I wanted to call it ‘I Love You’ is because I found its cliché very attractive. It meant that there was a lot of work to be done in order to justify such a basic song and not have it be a clichéd tune. It’s a song with two heads, because you’ve got the slow, melodic verses that are a little bit more straightforward and then the lid is lifted off energetically. I think that the friction between those two things encapsulates the double-edged sword that is love.” **“Nabokov”** GC: “I think there’s a different arc to this album. The first two, I think, achieve a sense of happiness and hope halfway through, and end on a note of hope. I think this one does actually achieve hope halfway through—and then slides back into a hellish, doomy thing with the last track and stuff. I think that was probably one of the more conscious decisions that we made while making this album.”

"2020’s A Hero’s Death saw Fontaines D.C. land a #2 album in the UK, receive nominations at the GRAMMYs, BRITs and Ivor Novello Awards, and sell out London’s iconic Alexandra Palace. Now the band return with their third record in as many years: Skinty Fia. Used colloquially as an expletive, the title roughly translates from the Irish language into English as “the damnation of the deer”; the spelling crassly anglicized, and its meaning diluted through generations. Part bittersweet romance, part darkly political triumph - the songs ultimately form a long-distance love letter, one that laments an increasingly privatized culture in danger of going the way of the extinct Irish giant deer."

Like its title suggests, *Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You* continues Big Thief’s shift away from their tense, early music toward something folkier and more cosmically inviting. They’ve always had an interest in Americana, but their touchpoints are warmer now: A sweetly sawing fiddle (“Spud Infinity”), a front-porch lullaby (“Dried Roses”), the wonder of a walk in the woods (“Promise Is a Pendulum”) or comfort of a kitchen where the radio’s on and food sizzles in the pan (“Red Moon”). Adrianne Lenker’s voice still conveys a natural reticence—she doesn’t want to believe it’s all as beautiful as it is—but she’s also too earnest to deny beauty when she sees it.

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is a sprawling double-LP exploring the deepest elements and possibilities of Big Thief. To truly dig into all that the music of Adrianne Lenker, Max Oleartchik, Buck Meek, and James Krivchenia desired in 2020, the band decided to write and record a rambling account of growth as individuals, musicians, and chosen family over 4 distinct recording sessions. In Upstate New York, Topanga Canyon, The Rocky Mountains, and Tucson, Arizona, Big Thief spent 5 months in creation and came out with 45 completed songs. The most resonant of this material was edited down into the 20 tracks that make up DNWMIBIY, a fluid and adventurous listen. The album was produced by drummer James Krivchenia who initially pitched the recording concept for DNWMIBIY back in late 2019 with the goal of encapsulating the many different aspects of Adrianne’s songwriting and the band onto a single record. In an attempt to ease back into life as Big Thief after a long stretch of Covid-19 related isolation, the band met up for their first session in the woods of upstate New York. They started the process at Sam Evian’s Flying Cloud Recordings, recording on an 8-track tape machine with Evian at the knobs. It took a while for the band to realign and for the first week of working in the studio, nothing felt right. After a few un-inspired takes the band decided to take an ice-cold dip in the creek behind the house before running back to record in wet swimsuits. That cool water blessing stayed with Big Thief through the rest of the summer and many more intuitive, recording rituals followed. It was here that the band procured ‘Certainty’ and ‘Sparrow’. For the next session in Topanga Canyon, California, the band intended to explore their bombastic desires and lay down some sonic revelry in the experimental soundscape-friendly hands of engineer Shawn Everett. Several of the songs from this session lyrically explore the areas of Lenker’s thought process that she describes as “unabashedly as psychedelic as I naturally think,” including ‘Little Things’, which came out of this session. The prepared acoustic guitars and huge stomp beat of today’s ‘Time Escaping’ create a matching, otherworldly backdrop for the subconscious dream of timeless, infinite mystery. When her puppy Oso ran into the vocal booth during the final take of the song, Adrianne looked down and spoke “It’s Music!” to explain in the best terms possible the reality of what was going on to the confused dog. “It’s Music Oso!” The third session, high in the Colorado Rockies, was set up to be a more traditional Big Thief recording experience, working with UFOF and Two Hands engineer Dom Monks. Monks' attentiveness to song energies and reverence for the first take has become a huge part of the magic of Thief’s recent output. One afternoon in the castle-like studio, the band was running through a brand new song ‘Change’ for the first time. Right when they thought it might be time to do a take, Monks came out of the booth to let them know that he’d captured the practice and it was perfect as it was.   The final session, in hot-as-heaven Tucson, Arizona, took place in the home studio of Scott McMicken. The several months of recording had caught up to Big Thief at this point so, in order to bring in some new energy, they invited long-time friend Mat Davidson of Twain to join. This was the first time that Big Thief had ever brought in a 5th instrumentalist for such a significant contribution. His fiddle, and vocals weave a heavy presence throughout the Tucson tracks. If the album's main through-line is its free-play, anything-is-possible energy, then this environment was the perfect spot to conclude its creation — filling the messy living room with laughter, letting the fire blaze in the backyard, and ripping spontaneous, extended jams as trains whistled outside.  All 4 of these sessions, in their varied states of fidelity, style, and mood, when viewed together as one album seem to stand for a more honest, zoomed-out picture of lived experience than would be possible on a traditional, 12 song record. This was exactly what the band hoped would be the outcome of this kind of massive experiment. When Max’s mom asked on a phone call what it feels like to be back together with the band playing music for the first time in a year, he described to the best of abilities: “Well it’s like, we’re a band, we talk, we have different dynamics, we do the breaths, and then we go on stage and suddenly it feels like we are now on a dragon. And we can’t really talk because we have to steer this dragon.”  The attempt to capture something deeper, wider, and full of mystery, points to the inherent spirit of Big Thief. Traces of this open-hearted, non-dogmatic faith can be felt through previous albums, but here on Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You lives the strongest testament to its existence. 

Camila Cabello’s solo career continues to be one of modern pop’s most worthwhile musical journeys. Where 2019’s *Romance* stepped back from the Caribbean vibes of her smash hit “Havana,” *Familia* shifts decidedly closer to her Cuban American roots and culture. Indeed, the first time we hear her voice here is on the subversively playful “Celia,” sung entirely in Spanish. Far from some staid Latin crossover, the rest of the project jumps between languages and genres as she sees fit, earnest and revealing on “psychofreak” with WILLOW and just crazy in love on “Hasta Los Dientes” with Maria Becerra in her corner. She goes back and forth with Ed Sheeran over the salsa sway of “Bam Bam” and revels in the expansive rhythms of “Don’t Go Yet” on her own.

*“You are now listening to 103.5 Dawn FM. You’ve been in the dark for way too long. It’s time to walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms. Scared? Don’t worry. We’ll be there to hold your hand and guide you through this painless transition. But what’s the rush? Just relax and enjoy another hour of commercial ‘free yourself’ music on 103.5 Dawn FM. Tune in.”* The Weeknd\'s previous album *After Hours* was released right as the world was falling into the throes of the pandemic; after scrapping material that he felt was wallowing in the depression he was feeling at the time, *Dawn FM* arrives as a by-product of—and answer to—that turmoil. Here, he replaces woeful introspection with a bit of upbeat fantasy—the result of creatively searching for a way out of the claustrophobic reality of the previous two years. With the experience of hosting and curating music for his very own MEMENTO MORI radio show on Apple Music as his guiding light, *Dawn FM* is crafted in a similar fashion, complete with a DJ to set the tone for the segments within. “It’s time to walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms,” the host, voiced by Jim Carrey, declares on the opening track. “Scared? Don\'t worry.” Indeed, there is nothing to fear. The Weeknd packs the first half with euphoric bursts that include the Swedish House Mafia-assisted “How Do I Make You Love Me?” and “Sacrifice.” On the back half, he moves into the more serene waters of “Is There Someone Else?” and “Starry Eyes.” Despite the somewhat morose album cover, which reflects what many feel like as they wade through the seemingly endless purgatory of a life dictated by a virus, he’s aiming for something akin to hope in all of this gloom.

“I know one song won’t change everything, but all I have is my voice,” Koffee tells Apple Music. “So, that’s what I’ll use to speak out. I might not be affected by certain injustices directly, but living in a place like Jamaica, you can’t avoid the truth of it. There’s youths here that have grown up with violence right on their doorstep, and I’m not just representing myself now—I also must speak out for them.” In 2019, the world bowed as Koffee—real name Mikayla Simpson—unveiled her innovative blend of reggae, dancehall, and sculpted rap flows on the Grammy-winning EP *Rapture*. That was a historic victory, too, seeing Koffee become the youngest and first female winner of the Best Reggae Album award. The pandemic could’ve threatened to slow her rise, but she instead leaned into the rich musical heritage of Jamaica (the spirit of Bob Marley is present on “x10,” while “Lonely” is a stunning ode to ’80s lovers rock) and the expertise of her live band to help craft a gorgeous, rich debut album. “It was about recreating those uplifting vibes that I had in my mind,” she says. “And I’m so happy we were able to, especially during a time that people need us to spread this message. I feel honored when I listen back to these songs, perfectly arranged and beautifully done, feeling like, ‘Yeah, I am gifted.’” Read on for her track-by-track guide to *Gifted*. **“x10”** “I came up with this song after a show in Antwerp. I was listening to my Bob Marley playlist, with \[1980 single\] ‘Redemption Song’ on repeat, alone in my room. In Jamaica, he is pretty much a permanent part of the culture. And we all experience his music from a young age, one way or another. I laid these lyrics down that night as a voice note, and the message is still so true. ‘It’s a pleasure to be outside’ was about coming from Jamaica and having my music take me far away overseas to Belgium. I put that down in 2019; now it’s even more relevant, coming off the pandemic. It’s a *real* pleasure to be back outside now.” **“Defend”** “In my heart, I didn’t want this project to be too heavy. On *Rapture*, the songs are more political, but this one is short and simple—and represents for the fans that love that vibe. I also worked \[in the studio\] with Kendrick Lamar on this track, which was a really dope experience.” **“Shine”** “The first part of this song tells a story, a real ghetto story. ‘Sun’s rising, gun violence, police sirens’—that’s a regular day for the youths. This song speaks to them, especially with the Jamaican and Caribbean scene right now pushing this vibe of senseless crime. These artists probably think it doesn’t affect anyone, and some don’t even care if it does. So, consider this song here a counter to that: if someone’s coming with that vibe, cool, I’ll come with this vibe and show you what’s good.” **“Gifted”** “This one’s a little bit more lyrical, but still very fun. It’s a very Jamaican vibe and a self-affirmation, a simple reminder that whatever happens, you’re ‘guided and gifted.’” **“Lonely”** “I’ve been trying not to ruminate too hard on lyrics lately, just keep the vibe and let it flow. And I was inspired by John McLean’s music, its real lovers rock vibes, and one of my favorites of his: \[1988 single\] ‘If I Gave My Heart to You.’ I really love his music, and I would listen to this particular song, thinking, ‘Man, I’d love to pull this off in my own style,’ and together with my band, we came up with our version.” **“Run Away”** “The vibe that runs through this song—escaping to paradise, running away—is probably as we were away at writing camp. Sat by the seaside, literally. I was thinking, ‘What if we could just get on a boat, go out into the ocean, and just live there with everything we need?’” **“Where I’m From”** “This is a more hardcore, dancehall track dedicated to Jamaica. When I’m away, I miss the warmth—especially in Europe, where it’s freezing. But I also miss the people. There’s a quote from Martin Luther King. He says, ‘In Jamaica, I feel like a human being.’ And it’s because of the way the people relate to everyone and make you *feel*. There’s a certain warmth to it that I love.” **“West Indies”** “During the pandemic, I got the chance to link up with \[Jamaican producer and DJ\] Iotosh, who I’ve been a fan of for a while, and this beat is so sick. This song represents me in the way that, of course, I’m not immune to sadness or frustration, but I also love to laugh and make the best of any situation. This is about having fun, whatever mood you’re in.” **“Pull Up”** “Trust me, even if it’s not my reality at the time, or there’s no party, I consider myself a happy enough person to find the vibe within me. Making this was a fun experience. I had a session with JAE5; we had just recorded ‘Shine,’ and we both weren’t done. He’s playing me more and more beats, trying to get another one in—and I knew I would find the right lyrics once we found it, the right one, with this beat. This was a really fun experience in London for me.” **“Lockdown”** “This was a song I wrote during the pandemic, obviously, but it came really spontaneously. Just as my shows were being canceled, it was also a good time to hit the road and connect with people. I received a call from Popcaan, to come by his studio, hold a vibe, and there I met \[Jamaican producer and artist\] Dane Ray, who’s responsible for some of \[Popcaan’s\] biggest hits. I already knew exactly what I was gonna do with this one, and it helps that he’s a great engineer too.”tes go here.

When Ahmed Ololade put out his *Ololade Asake* EP in February 2022, few people knew what to expect from an eclectic artist whose Olamide-assisted “Omo Ope” remix had announced his belated arrival to mainstream audiences. In the seven months between *Ololade Asake* and the release of this, his debut album, the Lagos-based artist scored further hits and seized control of the Afropop zeitgeist with his dizzying mix of street-inspired lyricism, signature chanted vocals, and a fascinating fusion of amapiano, hip-hop, and Fuji instrumentals. *Mr. Money With The Vibe* sees Asake lean into the larger-than-life persona that songs like “Sungba” and “PALAZZO” established. He details his new realities with swagger—contemplating romance, life, and his position in the game over beats delicately crafted by close creative ally Magicsticks. His flair for experimenting within the amapiano framework continues here as he loops the call-and-response pattern of classic Afrobeat over the log drums, sax, and piano on “Organise.” Elsewhere, he brings back a revamped version of blog-era favorite “Joha” and offers a soulful ode to the grind on “Nzaza.” Russ joins for a cautionary tale on “Reason,” and a blistering remix of “Sungba” sees Burna Boy make an appearance here—but the narrative of *Mr. Money With The Vibe* belongs to Asake alone as he continues to blaze a new path for street-pop.

Singer, songwriter, rapper, filmmaker, visual artist—Cruel Santino flexes all of his creative muscles on *Subaru Boys : FINAL HEAVEN*. Influenced by his love of anime, gaming, and exploring new soundscapes, the project fuses multiple story arcs into a sonic tale of war and glory. “ I wanted to make something more than just music,” he tells Apple Music; “something that when you hear it, you just think ‘Where am I; where are you taking me to?’ I had to create a world before I made the music. I feel like world building is kind of key when you want to make a sound; it makes you have no boundaries.” He’s joined on this epic narrative by a diverse range of guests including Skepta (“DIRTY EYES EVIL MANNERS”), Amaarae (“BORN AGAIN”), Koffee (“DEADMAN BONE”).

The irony of Sophie Allison calling her second Soccer Mommy album *color theory* is that the title would be a better fit for her third, *Sometimes, Forever*. Not only is this record more stylistically varied on a track-to-track level—the flinty, classic indie rock of “Bones” and “Following Eyes,” the industrial tilt of “Darkness Forever,” the country vibe of “Feel It All the Time”—but it amplifies the internal mixings that make Allison’s songs vivid: beauty and dissonance (“Unholy Affliction”), romance and violence (“I cut a piece out of my thigh/And felt my heart go skydiving” on “Still”), bitter wisdom and wide-eyed innocence (“Feel It All the Time”). She’s a devoted student of the ’90s, to be sure—but one who’s rapidly outgrowing her influences, too.

Sometimes, Forever, the immersive and compulsively replayable new Soccer Mommy full-length, cements Sophie Allison’s status as one of the most gifted songwriters making rock music right now. The album finds Sophie broadening the borders of her aesthetic without abandoning the unsparing lyricism and addictive melodies that made earlier songs so easy to obsess over. To support her vision Sophie enlisted producer Daniel Lopatin, whose recent credits include the Uncut Gems movie score and The Weeknd’s Dawn FM.

For any band, signing to a major label at the beginning of your career is a dream come true. For LGBTQ+ Los Angeles power pop-rock trio MUNA (musicians Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson all identify as queer), it was merely their first milestone. Great freedom and success came later, when they were dropped by their label after releasing two albums and just as quickly picked up by Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records. Now an independent band on their self-titled third full-length, they never sounded more confident. “\[*MUNA*\] has a lot to do with identity and agency and self-definition, the ideas that we project onto other people,” Maskin tells Apple Music. “It’s an interrogation of interpersonal relationships, and sexuality, and desire, and just trying to be a person in the world and present in your life.” Those complicated ideas are articulated with an eclectic musical nuance, from the country-folk of “Kind of Girl” and the Peter Gabriel-indebted “Solid” to the jagged, Robyn-esque synth-pop of “What I Want” and the playful pop of “Silk Chiffon.” “Music helps us feel less alone in our human experience, and I think we want people to feel that,” Gavin says. “There’s a hope that these songs can foster moments of connection and joy for people, like for our queer community—we want these songs to be a soundtrack to new experiences that aren\'t full of torment.” Below, MUNA walks Apple Music through their new album, track by track. **“Silk Chiffon” feat. Phoebe Bridgers** Naomi McPherson: “The song has been kicking about since the end of 2019. Katie wrote it, and at the time it was just the pre-chorus. The bridge lyrics were in the place of the chorus. It was synth-ier, but Jo and I had the instinct to make it feel like opening credits of a late-\'90s, early-aughts rom-com. We had been kicking around the idea of having someone feature on the second verse, and Phoebe came to mind—this was prior to us signing to her label. She loved the song and was so stoked to hop on it, which made us feel so, so good.” **“What I Want”** Katie Gavin: “This was a song that started as actually a Zoom co-write. I did it with Leland, who is an amazing songwriter and artist in his own right, and who has also done a lot of work on songs in the universe of *RuPaul\'s Drag Race*. I had a couple beats from Naomi, and I took them into the session and we both liked that one. After the session, I sent a demo to Naomi and Jo, and I remember Naomi freaking out and knowing that it was going to be a banger and wanting to work on it. I was a little bit scared of the song initially because of how much of a banger it is. There are strings in the chorus that were very inspired by \'Toxic,\' the classic Britney song.” **“Runner’s High”** NM: “MUNA’s anti-running song. The funny thing about this track is, I think, that the beat came about in the most peculiar way. During 2020, a friend of ours was letting us use her studio for very cheap, and we were trying to take making music very seriously. We wanted to do something where it\'s like, we had no songs that we were currently working on, so we came up with a game called \'the five-minute game,\' where each of us had to make a part in a five-minute period, and then someone else adds a part on top. The start of this song came from that game. And I don\'t think I\'ve ever heard a song that has this specific metaphor; obviously, it is one of a kind and the song slaps. So, you can run to it. We won\'t, but we hope that people do.” **“Home by Now”** Josette Maskin: “This came about in a pretty classic MUNA way. All the songs have different trajectories and paths, but this one was something that Katie wrote when we were on tour with Phoebe in the fall of 2021. We sometimes find that being on the road can be pretty inspiring. When you\'re away from your stuff and you don\'t have the obligation to work on an album that has a pending deadline, it can take you out of your element and inspire you in a way.” **“Kind of Girl”** KG: “For songs that I start on my own, there\'s two categories: I did it on Ableton, which was \'Home by Now,\' or I did it on an acoustic guitar, which is \'Kind of Girl.\' \'Kind of Girl\' I wrote in a bathtub. I wrote it from start to finish, chronologically, first the pre-chorus, then the chorus. I was thinking about the power that the words we choose to identify with have on the way that our story unfolds. How those affect what we think is possible and not possible and what we think is fixed or unfixed. We recorded just a bunch of layers of acoustic guitar and Josette\'s slide through a toy amp and built this world out.” **“Handle Me”** JM: “Katie wrote this song in January 2020. When we first did this song, Naomi and I were thinking a lot about, funny enough, 311—there’s a guitar part based on those early-2000s songs, something that would be on *The O.C.* Naomi felt really inspired about changing the drums and then I played the guitar part slightly differently and we tried to make it more of a lo-fi sexy track. I really fought for the song to be on the record, because I was like, ‘Oh, we don\'t really have a song in our discography that is sexy in this specific way.\' It shows a different side of MUNA.” **“No Idea”** NM: “‘No Idea’ started at the top of 2020. At the time we were toying with the idea of the third record being an alternative reimagining of the past wherein we were the biggest boy band in the late \'90s and early 2000s. But we are ourselves, and gay, we cast ourselves into that canon. I think of \'No Idea\' as our \'90s Max Martin moment meets a little bit of LCD Soundsystem and Daft Punk. Katie had written the song, it was pretty finished, but there wasn\'t a second verse. We had a session with Mitski; she came over to me and Jo’s apartment at the time, and we talked about disco. She thought the song was hot and fun to work on; she gave us a kick into the direction that the song found itself in.” **“Solid”** NM: “‘Solid’ has been around since 2018, 2017, I think. It just didn\'t have a place on the second record. It was in the archive for a bit and then it reappeared. It is one of my favorites. We’re always super inspired by \'80s music. I mean, who doesn\'t, that makes pop music nowadays? That artistic innovation, computerized sound, and synthesized sound. It was just fun to work on after all these years. It bops.” **“Anything But Me”** KG: “I wrote this song in my car. I had my laptop, and I was eating a burrito, and I came up with the first lines of the song and I was just like, ‘That\'s so stupid, but it\'s stupid in a way that\'s almost brilliant.’ This song is in 12/8, a really specific groove, and it has a buoyant energy. I had written the verse and the pre-chorus and had the basic groove down, and I sent it to Naomi and Jo. Naomi was like, \'There needs to be a section after the pre-chorus where you\'re doing something very like Shania \[Twain\] with the word “me,” holding it out and having a moment with it.\' We fleshed it out from there. When Jo and Naomi were working on it, they had some influence from Mariah Carey.” **“Loose Garment”** NM: “‘Loose Garment’ started because I was looking at furniture and I made a beat and called it ‘Teak Wood Nine.’ I sent Katie a bunch of beats that had wood and furniture names. We all love Imogen Heap and her collaboration with Guy Sigsworth. The band Frou Frou, they\'re a touchstone for us, both her solo project and that band; it felt like maybe \[the song\] could live in that universe. We switched the beat up and gave it a pulsating feel that motivated the song. It’s definitely a sad one. Cynthia Tolson killed it. She played strings on it and just went off.” **“Shooting Star”** KG: “This song was written literal weeks before we turned in the album. That\'s very MUNA. I always write until it is pencils down. I had written this on acoustic guitar, and it was this folky bassline guitar part that really turned Josette off, and I remember I wanted it. We always intended for this to be a 10-song record. There\'s a certain kind of guitar that we got obsessed with using, and I feel like we associate it a lot with the sound of music in LA: It\'s a rubber-bridge, vintage acoustic guitar, and Jo reworked the guitar part into something that was better. It was Naomi\'s idea to have kind of this Coldplay moment at the end where the song explodes into this more cathartic beat and arrangement, and that was really, I think, a big moment for that song as well.”

MUNA is magic. What other band could have stamped the forsaken year of 2021 with spangles and pom-poms, could have made you sing (and maybe even believe) that “Life’s so fun, life’s so fun,” during what may well have been the most uneasy stretch of your life? “Silk Chiffon,” MUNA’s instant-classic cult smash, featuring the band’s new label head Phoebe Bridgers, hit the gray skies of the pandemic’s year-and-a-half mark like a double rainbow. Since MUNA — lead singer/songwriter Katie Gavin, guitarist/producer Naomi McPherson, guitarist Josette Maskin — began making music together in college, at USC, they’d always embraced pain as a bedrock of longing, a part of growing up, and an inherent factor of marginalized experience: the band’s members belong to queer and minority communities, and play for these fellow-travelers above all. But sometimes, for MUNA, after nearly a decade of friendship and a long stretch of pandemic-induced self-reckoning, the most radical note possible is that of bliss. MUNA, the band’s self-titled third album, is a landmark — the forceful, deliberate, dimensional output of a band who has nothing to prove to anyone except themselves. The synth on “What I Want” scintillates like a Robyn dance-floor anthem; “Anything But Me,” galloping in 12/8, gives off Shania Twain in eighties neon; “Kind of Girl,” with its soaring, plaintive The Chicks chorus, begs to be sung at max volume with your best friends. It’s marked by a newfound creative assurance and technical ability, both in terms of McPherson and Maskin’s arrangements and production as well as Gavin’s songwriting, which is as propulsive as ever, but here opens up into new moments of perspective and grace. Here, more than ever, MUNA musters their unique powers to break through the existential muck and transport you, suddenly, into a room where everything is possible — a place where the disco ball’s never stopped throwing sparkles on the walls, where you can sweat and cry and lie down on the floor and make out with whoever, where vulnerability in the presence of those who love you can make you feel momentarily bulletproof, and self-consciousness only sharpens the swell of joy.

Like most people on this embattled earth, Maggie Rogers spent the better part of 2020 in isolation—in her case, in Maine, where *Surrender* took shape. “I started this record there,” she tells Apple Music. “And I was really drawn to big drums and distorted guitar, because I missed music that made me feel something physically. I missed the physicality of being at a festival”: a big feeling, she says—a little overwhelming, a little cold, a little drunk. The noise was a symbol of chaos, but also of liberation. “Like, in all the craziness in the world, being able to play with something like that,” she says, “it was as if it could make my body let go of the tension I was feeling.” So think of the album’s title as a possibility, or even a goal: that even at her most commanding—the electro-pop of “Shatter,” the country swagger of “Begging for Rain” and barroom folk of “I’ve Got a Friend”—Rogers can explore what it means to relinquish control without sacrificing the polish and muscle that makes her music pop. “When we’re cheek to cheek, I feel it in my teeth,” she sings on “Want Want”: an arthouse on paper, a blockbuster in sound. When Rogers started the album, she was so burned out from touring she could barely talk. “I hadn’t been to a grocery store in four years,” she says. “I was ready to bite. And this record is the bite. But when I listen back, there’s so much joy. I think that’s the thing that surprised me more than anything—that *that* was the place I escaped to, and it was the thing that became the way I survived it, or the way I worked through it. This idea of joy as a form of rebellion, as something that can be radical and contagious and connective and angry.” “Are you ready to start?” she sings on “Anywhere With You.” And then she repeats herself, a little louder each time.

On the cover of her second album, LA indie polymath Sasami Ashworth—aka SASAMI—appears in the form of the Nure-onna, a mythical half-woman/half-serpent creature from Japanese folklore. It’s more than just a badass image: On *Squeeze*, SASAMI re-emerges utterly transformed and all-powerful. With the untamed opener, “Skin a Rat,” she unleashes a torrent of moshable nu-metal that obliterates any trace of the dream-pop artisan heard on her 2019 self-titled debut. “I feel a little bit like a sci-fi or fantasy novelist this time,” SASAMI tells Apple Music. “And in a lot of ways, this album is my first book, whereas my last album was more like my diary entries being leaked.” But the skull-crushing heaviness of “Skin a Rat” is just the first steep drop on a thrill ride that sends you careening through aesthetic shifts—a volatile mood-ring reflection of her existence as a queer woman of color and a working musician entering her thirties. “The songs are much less about explicit experiences and much more about feelings,” she says. “Narratively, this album is inspired by movies like *Parasite*, where there’s a lot of different genres—one second it’s a dark comedy, one second it’s a thriller, the next second it’s romantic, and then it’s a horror. It keeps you on your toes, and I wanted to make an album that has that same dynamic range.” Here, SASAMI guides us through *Squeeze*, one scene at a time. **“Skin a Rat”** “Making art during the pandemic, you’re not having experiences—you’re just drawing from memories of experiences. And so, knowing that I wanted to make these angsty, aggressive tracks, it’s natural that I went back to middle school and high school, when you’re at your most angsty and emotional and rageful. And so, nu-metal creates an emotional portal to that time for me. This song is basically about systemic oppression and reclaiming some of this violent discourse that’s usually aimed towards femmes and using sonic elements that are usually used by cis men. I also wanted to be very clear about who the album was for: Patti Harrison and Laetitia Tamko from Vagabon are screaming the lyrics with me, and I really wanted it to be an anthem for my community.” **“The Greatest”** “‘The Greatest’ was really influenced by power ballads—like Bonnie Tyler and Heart and Aerosmith. I wanted to touch on a lot of different types of emotions and sounds on the album, and I wanted to stretch out as far as I could in each direction. So, the syrupy schmaltziness of power ballads was really inspiring for this one. But because there’s this mission statement of anti-toxic positivity on the album, I wanted this to be kind of an un-love ballad. You can’t take dirty laundry and put it directly into the dryer without first putting it into the washing machine—you can’t skip straight to healing and brightness and happiness without processing the dark shit that’s going on. A lot of power ballads are about the absence of love, but this song is basically my grungy power ballad about how the absence of love can sometimes be a bigger force than love itself.” **“Say It”** “This song and a couple of other ones are basically about the pain of someone not communicating with you. I feel like it’s a very in-my-early-thirties sentiment—it’s basically saying, ‘I don’t even need you to apologize or tell me what I want to hear; I just want to communicate. Just tell me how you’re actually feeling and release the toxicity of not being honest with people.’ It’s kind of a communication jam.” **“Call Me Home”** “This song is about synthesizing that feeling of nothing being wrong, but you still blow everything up just to feel something, and how numbness and a lack of feeling emotion can be just as heavy and dark as feeling something outright. This song is an ode to the wanderer—it’s an ode to someone who has restless legs and needs to be on the move and needs to be feeling things in extremes.” **“Need It to Work”** “This is another song about a lack of communication and a lack of connection and how that can kind of fester, and how we can obsess over not getting that attention or getting that reciprocation of feelings. Making yourself vulnerable to someone and then not having that be returned can make you feel fucking crazy. I’m a Cancer, so when people don’t respond to my texts, I completely freak out.” **“Tried to Understand”** “I really wanted to make a heavy album, but at the same time, songs are kind of like children: No matter how much you want them to be something, you just have to support them and let them be whatever they want to be. I’ve made so many different versions of ‘Tried to Understand,’ and, at the end of the day, she just wanted to be like a folk-pop song. ‘Tried to Understand’ is kind of like turning the lights on for a second before something dark happens again.” **“Make It Right”** “I wanted to put together something that was snappy and punk but also had this kind of pop sensibility. This song bridges the gap between the lightness of ‘Tried to Understand’ and ‘Sorry Entertainer,’ so it kind of feeds both beasts in that way.” **“Sorry Entertainer”** \"Honestly, if you listen to the \[Daniel Johnston\] original, my version doesn’t deviate too much from that guitar part. I just heard the original and I immediately heard the metal version in my head. It’s like I read the screenplay of the scene and imagined the big-budget action movie of it. Of course, I couldn’t get explicit permission from Daniel Johnston, so I hope he’s not rolling in his grave over this one. I liked having this kind of pathetic-loner vibe with this really aggressive sound. I think that’s a feeling a lot of musicians are familiar with: ‘I have all this power in my instrument, but I also still kind of feel like a loser.’” **“Squeeze” (feat. No Home)** “I was a fan of No Home’s first record, *F\*\*\*\*\*g Hell*. When I heard it, I was like, ‘She is completely pushing the bounds of genre. She has total pop chops, but is also down to make the weirdest, freakiest aggressive music too.’ And so, I felt like she was a kindred spirit. When I make music, I usually create all the menus and touch every piece of food before it goes out in the restaurant, whereas with this one I wanted to kind of let go and see what happens when I bring someone in to collaborate in a deeper way. She wrote all the verses and, as a black femme in the UK, she has a different experience and perspective. I really connect to a lot of metal and heavy rock songs where the imagery and the lyrics are really violent, but oftentimes they’re objectifying women. So, I wanted to reclaim some of that language and create something on my terms, but with the aggression and rawness of the lyricism that we bring.” **“Feminine Water Turmoil”/“Not a Love Song”** “I feel like the first three-quarters of the record kind of deals with these concepts of human nature—like systemic oppression and unrequited love and desperation and rage and anger. And I wanted to end the album by floating into a more existential place. I feel like an instrumental track \[‘Feminine Water Turmoil’\] can help us to detach from the human language and these human ideas. And then ‘Not a Love Song’ is really a lot more about humans’ relationship with nature and questioning why we always center ourselves in everything, and maybe posing the idea to the listener that we could be in more humility and harmony with nature. I just wanted to end the movie with a more philosophical ending, as opposed to hitting a raw nerve. The song is like aftercare—it’s a respectful way to end an arduous, whiplashing album. I wanted to end it in a way that someone might actually want to listen to it again.”

Squeeze, the second full length from Sasami, surveys the raw aggression of nu-metal, tender plainspokeness of country-pop and folk rock, and dramatic romanticism of classical music.