Detroit-bred singer and producer Mike Posner is a music industry veteran, but on his fifth studio album, he starts over. After a five-year hiatus filled with illness, depression, and addiction, his first solo album since 2020’s *Operation: Wake Up* begins with a triumphant declaration: “It’s a beautiful day to be alive.” Posner feels stronger than he could have imagined coming through the other side of his struggles, and *The Beginning* is a celebration, as well as a renaissance for one of pop’s most thoughtful songwriters. On “High Forever,” he kicks things off with a spoken-word introduction before reflecting on the triumphs and valleys that make life worth living. “You can’t stay high forever,” he sings.
“My Saturn has returned,” the cosmic country singer-songwriter proclaimed to announce her fifth album (apologies to *A Very Kacey Christmas*), *Deeper Well*. If you’re reading this, odds are you know what that means: About every 30 years, the sixth planet from the sun comes back to the place in the sky where it was when you were born, and with it, ostensibly, comes growth. At 35, the chill princess of rule-breaking country/pop/what-have-you has caught up with Saturn and taken its lessons to heart. OUT: energy vampires, self-sabotaging habits, surface-level conversations. IN: jade stones, moon baths, long dinners with friends, listening closely to the whispered messages of the cosmos. (As for the wake-and-bake sessions she mentions on the title track—out, but wistfully so.) Musgraves followed her 2018 breakthrough album, the gently trippy *Golden Hour*, with 2021’s *star-crossed*, a divorce album billed as a “tragedy in three parts,” where electronic flourishes added to the drama. On *Deeper Well*, the songwriter’s feet are firmly planted on the ground, reflected in its warm, wooden, organic instrumentation—fingerpicked acoustic guitar, banjo, pedal steel. Here, Musgraves turns to nature for the answers to her ever-probing questions. “Heart of the Woods,” a campfire sing-along inspired by mycologist Paul Stamets and his *Fantastic Fungi* documentary, looks to mushroom networks beneath the forest floor for lessons on connectivity. And on “Cardinal,” a gorgeous ode to her late friend and mentor John Prine in the paisley mode of The Mamas & The Papas, potential dispatches from the beyond arrive as a bird outside her window in the morning. As Musgraves’ trust in herself and the universe deepens, so do her songwriting chops. On “Dinner With Friends,” a gratitude journal entry given the cosmic country treatment, she honors her roots in perfectly sly Musgravian fashion: “My home state of Texas, the sky there, the horses and dogs, but none of their laws.” And on the simple, searching “The Architect,” she condenses the big mysteries of human nature into one elegant, good-natured question: “Can I pray it away, am I shapeable clay/Or is this as good as it gets?”
It’s a golden age for troubadours. Following the end of the bro-country era, a new generation of story-driven, acoustic-guitar-slinging singer-songwriters wearing their hearts on their sleeves took firm hold of the genre, birthing stars like Zach Bryan and Charles Wesley Godwin. Sam Barber is another formidable voice in this still-emerging canon, as he shows on this sprawling collection of songs written over the course of the 21-year-old’s five-year foray into music. Like Bryan, Barber worked with producer Eddie Spear, whose light but thoughtful touch keeps the ambitious, 28-song project from sounding repetitive. Anchored by Barber’s viral song “Straight and Narrow,” *Restless Mind* is a winding, sometimes surprising journey through dying relationships and dead-end towns, with appropriately spare, rough-hewn production. The record opens with “Man You Raised,” itself beginning with a voicemail from Barber’s mother that sets a homespun tone for the songs that follow. With its aggressively strummed guitar and folksy melody, it’s easy to hear Bryan’s influence on this one, though Barber’s story is all his own as he assures his mother “the moon will never steal your son away.” Other highlights include the title track, one of two collaborations with Avery Anna that cranks up the moodiness, and “Streetlight,” a Lumineers-reminiscent track that ups the record’s tempo.
This sophomore album from Max McNown comes less than a year after his 2024 full-length debut, the viral success *Willfully Blind*. On that outing, the pop-folk singer-songwriter from Oregon crafted a collection of songs tailor-made for fans of fellow of-the-moment troubadours like Noah Kahan and Zach Bryan. *Night Diving* doesn’t mess with that formula, instead doubling down on the raw, heart-on-his-sleeve sound that made McNown a TikTok favorite. *Night Diving* opens with its title track, a brooding rendering of youthful regret that recalls the more somber sounds of The Lumineers. Another ballad, “It’s Not Your Fault,” offers absolution to an unknown subject, adding a sense of universality to the song’s titular message. And another highlight, “Roses and Wolves,” is the lone collaboration on the album, bringing McNown together with critically acclaimed country singer-songwriter Hailey Whitters for a duet about the last days of a doomed relationship.
Across a decades-long career with well over a dozen albums, plus countless awards and accolades, Ricardo Arjona has reached such great heights that it can alter one’s definition of success. For the sexagenarian star, with his massive global fandom spanning generations, his drive to continue creating new music that authentically speaks to him means more than chasing trends. Coming some three years after his genre-hopping *Negro*, the similarly diverse *SECO* showcases the Guatemalan singer-songwriter’s devotion to his artistic craft. Balladic moments such as opener “Barcelona” and the classically accented “70%” abut driving rockers like “Luna” and the bombastically orchestral “Poquita Fe.” His storytelling powers are prominently displayed on the nostalgic yet rejuvenating “Motel Revolución,” while the immersive “Mujer” marks a tender, sympathetic paean to the feminine. Elsewhere, he examines the personal dynamics of love on “Nirvana” and critically details the superficiality of viral fame for “Gritas.”
