Ten albums in, and Toni Braxton\'s voice still sounds like a revelation, at once contemporary and classic. It\'s the centerpiece of *Spell My Name*, and the production is largely elegant and creates space for the singer to show off her chops. It opens with a bubbly dance-pop track and then proceeds to decrescendo from there, with “Do It,” a midtempo, radio-ready collaboration with Missy Elliott, and “Gotta Move On,” which features some phenomenal guitar work from H.E.R. and sets the tone for the slew of slow-burners that follow. By and large, this is a breakup album, the soundtrack of trying to hold on before trying to heal and face forward. (The lone exceptions are the sexy title track and “Fallin\',” which hinges on trying to resist the fall of a doomed relationship in the first place.) Songs like “O.V.E.Rr.” and “Saturday Night” capture the feeling of being drawn back into that person\'s arms in spite of yourself, with Braxton\'s naturally sultry tones imbuing them with steamy drama. The cinematic standout “Happy Without Me” is a bittersweet ballad that goes down easy in her hands: “Though it really hurts, baby, I’m happy for you,” she cries on the hook, every word believable. It\'s noteworthy that Braxton doesn\'t try to pander to the sensibilities of the time. There are no trap beats, no forced lingo, no millennial-style nonchalance—only songs that feel like a lived-in kind of love and heartbreak, measured and convincing and built to sound as timeless as she is.
Ten albums in, and Toni Braxton's voice still sounds like a revelation, at once contemporary and classic. It's the centrepiece of Spell My Name, and the production is largely elegant and creates space for the singer to show off her chops. It opens with a bubbly dance-pop track and then proceeds to decrescendo from there, with “Do It”, a midtempo, radio-ready collaboration with Missy Elliott, and “Gotta Move On”, which features some phenomenal guitar work from H.E.R. and sets the tone for the slew of slow-burners that follow. By and large, this is a breakup album, the soundtrack of trying to hold on before trying to heal and face forward. (The lone exceptions are the sexy title track and “Fallin'”, which hinges on trying to resist the fall of a doomed relationship in the first place.) Songs like “O.V.E.Rr.” and “Saturday Night” capture the feeling of being drawn back into that person's arms in spite of yourself, with Braxton's naturally sultry tones imbuing them with steamy drama. The cinematic standout “Happy Without Me” is a bittersweet ballad that goes down easy in her hands: “Though it really hurts, baby, I’m happy for you,” she cries on the hook, every word believable. It's noteworthy that Braxton doesn't try to pander to the sensibilities of the time. There are no trap beats, no forced lingo, no millennial-style nonchalance—only songs that feel like a lived-in kind of love and heartbreak, measured and convincing and built to sound as timeless as she is.
Coming off the eight-song appetizer that was 2018’s *K.T.S.E.*, Teyana Taylor offers up a buffet of options fit for every mood and palate. *The Album* explores the multifaceted experiences with romance and motherhood that play such a major role in the singer-songwriter and dancer’s life. “When I first started on this album, I wasn\'t pregnant, but I knew that I was in a way different space than what I was with \[2014\'s\] *VII* and all the other music that I had put out—just being a mother, being a wife, and being a public figure,” she tells Apple Music. “I knew I definitely wanted to have a lot more fun, and I didn\'t want people to put me in that category where it\'s like, ‘Ah, she\'s married and happy, so that means we\'re about to get all I\'m-in-love-type music,\' you know?” Instead, she splits up the project into “studios,” with each one matched to a particular emotional profile. Studio A is love songs; Studio L displays her sexuality; Studio B is about exercising self-worth; Studio U is all vulnerability; Studio M finds triumph. “Depending on our emotion, we\'ll choose certain songs to kind of create a playlist,” she says. “What I wanted to do was pre-do that on the album where everything is broken up into sections, so the album kind of already comes playlisted.” The arrangement allows for deeper excavations into the nuances that define our experiences within relationships and the feelings those raise within ourselves; the broadness is a chance to tap into the universal. “Like how they say there\'s someone for everybody, there\'s some type of record for each and every person you can possibly think of on this album somewhere,” she says. “It\'s family, love, sex, heartbreak, dance. You can literally laugh, cry, scream out loud with this record.” Here\'s the backstory on some of her favorite tracks from *The Album*. **Come Back to Me** “It\'s crazy how God worked, because I actually recorded \'Come Back to Me\' back when I was working on the *VII* album. This song is extremely old. So the fact that I\'ve never really gotten the chance to use it, and then I have \[daughter\] Junie—we happened to have her on the bathroom floor, so now we have a real 911 call. Everything just worked, and then that\'s one of Junie\'s favorite songs. So to actually be able to have the intro be the 911 call, and then it goes into \'Come Back to Me\' featuring \[Rick\] Ross and Junie, it was like God\'s timing is always the best timing. I never understood why it never fit on certain projects. It\'s almost like this song was literally made to open up this album. I\'m really happy that it\'s found a home.” **Lowkey** “I\'m still gagging. That was one of them records that the moment I heard the beat, I already knew exactly what I was doing. I have such a good ear for stuff like that. I was like, \'Yo, this sounds like “Next Lifetime.”\' I immediately started singing and I was like, \'How do I make it my own? How do I make it new? How do I make it relatable for girls in 2019, of my generation?\' I literally wrote that song in 30 minutes, because \'Next Lifetime\' by Erykah Badu was always one of my favorite songs anyways, and my mom\'s favorite song as well. It took me about three months to ask Erykah if she could get on the song because I was so nervous, because, one, Erykah don\'t give anybody features. She actually tweeted about my album *K.T.S.E.* a while back, and I was like, \'Okay, yeah, this is dope,\' you know, just being hype. But then when she commented on one of my pictures of me, Iman, and Junie, I was like, \'Oh yeah, I\'m in there.\' I remember I just took the chance. And I almost didn\'t, because whether you follow me or not, this is still Erykah Badu. I reached out, and I was so nervous, and she told me to send her the record. I sent it to her, and she called back and she was genuinely in amazement, because she was just like, \'Wow, the way you really turned it into your own.\' Because there\'s a lot of artists that will send you a record that they did and it\'s exactly what you did, word for word. She was like, \'I would be honored to be a part of it.\' And when she sent me the verse—you know, when you get features and stuff from people like that, legends, you almost don\'t expect a lot. So for her to send back and really go in on her verse and really—she really bodied that shit. I listen to it and I get chills every single time her verse comes in. So yeah, that\'s a moment.” **Morning** “‘Morning’ is a great song, especially live. As you can see, with the album version, even the intro is different—the way you hear it now is exactly how I perform it live. I wanted the album to feel like you could almost see me in concert. When it\'s time to go back on tour, if I wanted to perform this album in order, I could do that. And I think that\'s another thing that helped me come up with the idea of playlisting it and putting it in different categories and sections, because that\'s how I do it in concert, and that\'s the way people like to hear it because then they know what\'s coming next.” **Boomin** “Missy and Timbaland on the same track, that\'s another rare thing. Missy and Timbo on a track together with a splash of Future I think was super dope. You know when Missy\'s on a song, she gives you a little intro. That\'s the moment I was waiting for. She\'s also on the bridge, but that talking part—\'This is a Teyana Taylor exclusive, suckas\'— I\'ve always wanted that from Missy. And then to get the beatboxing from Timbo, you know, this is a big deal for me.” **Bad** “I think \'Bad\' is a bold record and that is a good record that goes to unapologetically being a bad bitch no matter what anybody put you through, no matter what heartbreak you\'ve ever been through. I think every girl goes through that stage where they\'re super innocent, they love someone, and the person kind of takes advantage, and it kind of puts you in a different bag for the better. I think it\'s important for girls because as women, in certain parts of life and in relationships and stuff, you can lose yourself sometimes. Sometimes you\'ve got to find yourself, pick yourself up and remind yourself, \'Okay, this is what it is.\'” **Lose Each Other** “It\'s one of my only ballads on the record. It\'s perfect because it\'s just like we don\'t have to completely throw away everything, you know? Even in the beginning-beginning—those puppy love stages with my husband, and we had our little breakups here and there. It was just like, I\'m still checking on your mom, checking on your brothers—like when y\'all not really broken up, but y\'all fake broken up for like a week. Everybody has been through that phase before in life, and that\'s what it\'s about. And that\'s the way I look at things—everything don\'t have to always be so bitter. You get into one argument and it\'s just like, \'Well, F you forever.\' It\'s just like everything don\'t have to be that. We don\'t have to end on negative terms, because it\'s still a person that you once loved. We can accept it for what it is, you know? I think it\'s a very important ballad, because when you usually hear ballads it\'s perfect—it\'s either super breakup or super make-up or super I\'m-in-love. Gray areas are definitely great, because I want to show the black, the white, the in-between.” **Concrete** “When I\'m in that in-my-feelings type of mood, for me, it\'s \'Concrete.\' You just feel it, like you ain\'t even gotta be going through nothing. You hear that song—you may not be going through it now, but you\'ve been through it before. I think \'Concrete\' is like that perfect song that\'s like, \'Yo, what\'s up? What we doing? Come on. I feel like I\'m talking to concrete at this point.\' It\'s like beating a dead horse.” **Still** “I think for what\'s going on now with the world, one of my favorites for sure is \'Still\'—it\'s not the typical \'I\'m crying for love from a specific man.\' It\'s about being Black in America and everything that we\'re going through. We\'re constantly crying for love, we\'re constantly crying for hope, we\'re constantly crying for peace. It just seems like nothing\'s wiping our tears. We\'re getting places, but it\'s not enough. We need more. And being a mom and being a pregnant woman during a time like this, of protests and riots and stuff, it\'s very emotional. I get emotional seeing my people go through what they\'re going through and waking up to my husband and my baby every morning and looking at my husband while he sleeps knowing that, above all, you\'re a Black man first. I take that risk with you walking out that door. I could have lost you yesterday, I could lose you today, I could lose you tomorrow. So \'Still\' is, I think, a very powerful record for me right now personally with what I\'m going through. But I feel like \'Still\' is also—you can take that record any way you want to take it. If you feel like you\'re going through something with your companion and you\'re crying for love and you feel like he don\'t hear you, that can mean that too. That\'s what I love about it.” **Ever Ever** “That\'s actually one of the first songs that I recorded. I think I might have recorded \'Ever Ever\' and \'Still\' on the same day. It took me a while to get through those records, because that\'s another record kind of like \'Lose Each Other\' where it\'s just like, you know, \'Do you think about me sometimes? N\*gga, I know I\'m in your brain somewhere in there—even when you acting like you fake moved on or you acting like you fake in love for a little five minutes, then I already know you coming back.\' So even though the song sounds so serious, that\'s really all it\'s saying. Just the petty back-and-forth that guys and girls do, because we\'ve all done it at some point in our lives, no matter where you are in life, no matter how famous, no matter how regular you are.” **Made It** “I think wrapping it up with \'We Got Love\' and \'Made It\' was important because you done went through all the different emotions. And we got love at the end of it all. So we done been through this whole rollercoaster to wind up getting up where we really wanted to be and learning self-love and learning to love one another and embrace each other. I definitely wanted to end it on a more happy, upbeat note, because honestly, it goes to show that no matter what, you\'re going to have your bumpy rides and shit. This is what life is. Every single day is not the happiest day. Every single day is not the saddest day neither. I think with \'Made It\' and \'We Got Love,\' you take that deep breath and you realize you\'re still alive, and you\'re more grateful to still be able to live and have purpose.” **We Got Love** “\[Lauryn Hill\] specifically did this for me. I just wanted some inspirational words. I personally asked her for that, and she gave me words for \'We Got Love.\' She sent me a dope voice note, and I used it for the album. That wasn\'t anything that I grabbed off the internet.”
“In my opinion, part of creating a song, it\'s not just about lyrics, even though those are extremely important to me,” Colorado-bred Nashville newcomer Ingrid Andress tells Apple Music. “It\'s also sonically setting the right tone for what you want, how you want the listener to feel.” Andress translated her country-pop vision to her full-length debut, *Lady Like*, through her writing, vocal performances, piano playing, and production ideas alike. She bypassed the familiar arrangement where new artists place their projects in the hands of big-name producers, instead working with collaborative peers like Sam Ellis and applying her years of formal training and genre-spanning professional songwriting experience to the recording process. The results stand out for their sharply articulated vantage points and fresh sonic palette. She’s the sort of singer equally versed in conversational inflections and full-voiced projecting, and she built her tracks around piano more than guitar or beats, using string arrangements to supply added rhythm and motion and bolster hooks. Andress admits to being “really picky about drum sounds” and “obsessed with string quartets,” she says. “I was able to express what I wanted.” Andress talks through each of the songs on her debut below. **Bad Advice** “Production-wise, it was fun to get creative on it, because I did want to do a nod to Western just because I\'m from Colorado and that\'s kind of the country that I personally enjoy. But then I also wanted to make it modern and relevant to what I\'m listening to now. So there\'s an 808 in there, which I thought was fun. I put it at the top of the album because the strings play like an intro almost. I also wanted to set the tone, as far as just showing a bit of my personality straight out the gate. Sure, the rest of the songs are going to be heartfelt, but at least you know me as a person, \[I’m\] not taking myself super seriously.” **Both** “This was actually the only song on the album that started with a melody and not a lyric. Normally, all the other songs start with a concept that I want to write about. \[Writer-producer\] Jordan Schmidt was playing me tracks that he had premade. And I heard this one and I was like, ‘Wait, that\'s the one.’ A lot of the songs, we never really went into the studio to cut live instrumentation. This is the only song where we went in and did it properly, quote unquote, where we got a Nashville band and they just went hard on it. And it was pretty cool to be leading a session like that with musicians that are really awesome. And they added their own sauce to it that made the whole process super easy.” **We’re Not Friends** “I definitely wanted it to be as conversational as possible, which is why I wanted to start it intimate. Actually, when I was writing it, I didn\'t think I was writing it for me, which definitely freed me up and made the phrasing a little different. Normally I\'m more focused on trying to keep something like a classic countryish kind of sound, but for this one I used more pop phrasing. After we got done writing it, I was like, ‘Oh, wait, I think I need to sing this, because this actually happened to me and I feel like I wrote it about me without even realizing it.” **The Stranger** “It started as just a piano thing. Building this song was really fun because I wanted it to be driving; you could easily get really sad on the piano. The whole point of the song is acknowledging that it\'s kind of a tragic thing, but there\'s still hope, because I think love is a choice. Most love songs don\'t talk about how it does get a little stale if you don\'t work at your relationship, and that it\'s a completely normal emotion to feel. Adding all the vocal stuff and the dynamism of it, and having it build and grow, it sounds more like a story that you\'re moving forward.” **Anything But Love** “It\'s a guitar-driven song, and I only know four chords on the guitar; I\'m not planning on being a great guitar player anytime soon. Zach Abend was on guitar and taking the musical lead on this one, which was nice because normally I\'m at the piano starting things. So this let me fully focus on the lyrics and the phrasing. And I think this song is probably one of the more poetic ones on the album, with the metaphors. I feel I was really able to get into a deeper headspace and not so much think about chords and movement. So it was like a different way of writing for me that I also enjoy.” **More Hearts Than Mine** “I feel like this song kind of encapsulates why I gravitate towards country music; it\'s because you do have that time in the song to paint such a vivid picture for people. I feel like this story could not have been told in a catchy pop song. The canvas of country music is very open and allows you to go into that detail. I just wanted to get as specific as possible, drawing from my own life. The song hook is a very traditional way of writing a country song, which is why I wanted the production to not be over-the-top country. I wanted it to be relatable outside the genre as well.” **Life of the Party** “I wanted it to sound like a party song, but really it\'s like a sad girl party song, and I love the irony of that. It\'s hard for me to write a happy, uptempo song, because that\'s not how I feel. So this is probably as close as I will get, really, to something like that.” **Lady Like** “The whole concept of ‘Lady Like’ and it being the title track, it\'s really just the message that I want people to take away from the album. It\'s a statement that I really think needs to be heard, especially in country music right now. I needed to write about my experience from moving from Colorado to Nashville, because I felt Western and Southern were the same thing, and they\'re not, it turns out. When I first got to Nashville six years ago, there were mostly male songwriters. I would experience a lot of people telling me that I wasn\'t very feminine for being a girl, which I thought was so funny, because I didn\'t realize people were still putting women in a box of what female songwriters should be writing about, or how you should be dressing, or \[that you\] shouldn\'t be swearing. So this song really came from feeling that pressure, and then finally just letting it go and being like, ‘I\'m blatantly not following your rules on purpose.’ That was my moment of freeing myself from whatever stereotype people felt like I needed to be. I really want people to feel empowered to be who they are, and not have to feel like they fit into any box, which is also kind of what the album represents as well.”
The harmonies that Chloe and Halle Bailey conjure sound like heaven. It\'s what got them tens of millions of views on YouTube; it\'s what eventually attracted Beyoncé\'s attention; and it\'s what continues to make them a force on their second album, *Ungodly Hour*. The duo experiments with a multitude of sounds and textures—many of their own making—while keeping their voices centered and striking as ever. Where their 2018 debut *The Kids Are Alright* played up an almost angelism that connected that moment to their origins as child stars, this new project is about maturation—both musically and otherwise. “I feel like we were more sure of ourselves, more sure of our messaging and what we wanted to get across in just showing that it\'s okay to have flaws and insecurities and show all the layers of what makes you beautiful,” Halle tells Apple Music. “I feel like we\'ve come a long way and in our growth as young women, and you\'d definitely be able to hear that in the music.” This time around, they\'re owning their sexuality and, along with it, the messiness that comes with being an adult and trying to figure out your place. On its face, *Ungodly Hour* is an uplifting album, but it doesn\'t shy away from the darker feelings that come along the way. “A lot of the world sees us as like little perfect angels, and we want to show the different layers of us,” Chloe says. “We\'re not perfect. We\'re growing into grown women, and we wanted to show all of that.” Here the sisters break down each song on their second album. **Intro** Halle: “This intro was made after we had finished making ‘Forgive Me.’ We thought about how we wanted to open this album, because our musicianship and musical integrity is always super-duper important to us, and we never want to lose the essence of who we are in trying to also make some songs that are a bit more mainstream. It felt like us being us completely and just drowning everyone in harmonies like we love to and just playing around. That was our time to play and to open the album with something that will make people\'s ears perk up as well as allow us to have so much fun creatively.” Chloe: “And the reason why we wanted to say the phrase ‘Don\'t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness’ is because that was a statement that wrapped and concluded the whole album. We should never have to apologize for being ourselves. You should never apologize for who you are or any of your imperfections, and you don\'t need to get permission from the world to be yourself.” **Forgive Me** Chloe: “I love it because it\'s so badass, and it\'s taking your power back and not feeling like your self-worth is in the trash. I remember we were all in the studio with \[songwriter\] Nija \[Charles\] and \[producer\] Sounwave, and for me personally, I was going through a situation where I was dealing with a guy and he picked someone else over me, and it really bothered me because I felt like it wasn\'t done in the most honest light. I like to be told things up front. And so when we were all in the session, this had just happened to me. I went in the booth and laid down some melodies, and some of the words came in, and then Halle went in and she sang ‘forgive me,’ and I thought that was so strong and powerful, and Nija laid down some melodies. We kind of constructed it as a puzzle in a way. It felt so good—it felt like we were taking our power back, like, ‘Forgive me for not caring and giving you that energy to control me and make me sad.’” **Baby Girl** Halle: “‘Baby Girl’ is a girl empowerment song, but our perspective when we were writing the song, personally, for me, it was a message that I needed to remind myself of. I remember we wrote this song in Malibu. We decided for the day after Christmas, we wanted to rent an Airbnb, and we wanted to just go out there with no parents and be by the beach and bring our gear and just create. And I remember at that time I was just feeling a little bit down, and I just needed that pick-me-up. So I started writing these lyrics about how I was feeling, how everybody makes it looks so easy and how everything that you see—it seems real, but is it really? So that was definitely an encouraging, empowering song that we wanted other girls to relate to and play when they needed that messaging—when you\'re feeling overwhelmed and insecure and you\'re just like, \'Okay, what\'s next?\' Like, nope, snap out of it. You\'re amazing.” **Do It** Chloe: “We just love the energy of that record. It feels so lighthearted and fun but simple and complex at the same time. We worked with Victoria Monét and Scott Storch on this one, and when we were creating it, we were just vibing out and feeling good. Our intention whenever we create is never to make that hit song or that single, because whenever you kind of go into that mindset, that\'s when you kind of stifle your creativity, and there\'s really nowhere to go. So we were just all having fun and vibing out, and we were just going to throw whatever to the wall and see what sticks. After we created the song, about two weeks later, we were listening to it and we were like, \'Uh-oh, we\'re really kind of feeling this. It feels really, really good.\' And we decided that that would be one that we would shoot a video to, and it just kind of made a life of its own. I\'m always happy when our music is well received, and it just makes us happy also seeing people online dancing to it and doing the dance we did in the music video. It\'s really exceeding all of our expectations.” **Tipsy** Halle: “‘Tipsy’ was such a fun record to write. My beautiful sister did this amazing production that just brought it to a whole nother level. I remember when we were first starting out the song, I was playing like these sort of country-sounding guitar chords that kind of had a little cool swing to it, and then we just started writing. We were thinking about when we\'re so in love, how our hearts are just open and how the other person in the relationship really has the power to break your heart. They have that power, and you\'re open and you\'re hoping nothing goes wrong. It\'s kind of like a warning to them: If you break my heart, if you don\'t do what you\'re supposed to do, yes, I will go after you, and yes, this will happen. Of course it\'s an exaggeration—we would never actually kill somebody over that. But we just wanted to voice how it\'s very important to take care of our hearts and that when we give a piece of ourselves, we want them to give a piece of themselves as well. It\'s a playful song, so we think a lot of people will have fun with that one.” **Ungodly Hour** Chloe: “I believe it was Christmas of 2018, and we knew that we wanted to start on this album. With anything, we\'re very visual, so we got a bunch of magazines, and we got like three posters we duct-taped together, and we made our mood board. There was a phrase that we found in a magazine that said \'the trouble with angels\' that really stuck out with us. We put that on the board, and we put a lot of women on there who didn\'t really have many clothes on because we wanted this album to express our sexuality. Halle\'s 20, I\'m 22. We just wanted to show that we can own our sexuality in a beautiful way as young women and it\'s okay to own that. So fast-forward a few months, and we were in the session with Disclosure. Whenever my sister and I create lyrics, sometimes we\'re inspired randomly on the day and we\'ll hear a phrase or something. I forgot what I was doing or what I was watching, but I heard the phrase \'ungodly hour\' and I wrote it in my notes really quick. So when we were all in a session together, we were putting our minds together, like, what can we say with that? And we came up with the phrase \'Love me at the ungodly hour.\' Love me at my worst. Love me when I\'m not the best version of myself. And the song kind of wrote itself really fast. It\'s about being in a situationship with someone who isn\'t ready to fully commit or settle down with you, but the connection is there, the chemistry is there, it\'s so electric. But being the woman, you know your self-worth and you know what you won\'t accept. So it\'s like, if you want all of me, then you need to come correct. And I love how simple and groovy the beat feels, and how the vocals kind of just rock on top of it. It feels so vibey.” **Busy Boy** Halle: “So ‘Busy Boy’ is another very playful love song. The inspiration for it basically came from our experiences, kiki-ing with our girls, when we have those moments where we\'re all gossiping and talking about what\'s going on in our lives. This one dude comes up, and we all know him because he is so fine and he\'s tried to holler at all of us. It was such a fun story to ride off of, because we have had those moments where—\'cause we\'re friends with a lot of beautiful black girls, and we\'re all doing our thing, and the same guy who is really successful or cute will hop around trying to get at each of us. So that was really funny to talk about, and also to talk about the bonding of sisterhood, of just saying all this stuff about this guy to make ourselves feel better. I mean, because at the end of the day, we have to remind ourselves that even though you may be cute, even though you may be trying to get my attention, I know that you\'re just a busy boy, and I\'m going to keep it moving.” **Overwhelmed** Chloe: “Halle and I really wanted to have interludes on this album, and we were kind of going through all of the projects and files that were on my hard drive listening on our speakers in our studio. This came up and we were like, wow. The lyrics really resonated with us, and we forgot we even wrote it. We went and reopened the project and laid down so many more harmonies on top of it. We just wanted it to kind of feel like that breath in the album, because there\'s so many times when you feel overwhelmed and sometimes you\'re even scared to admit it because you don\'t want to come off as weak or seeming like you can\'t do something, but we\'re all human. There have been so many times when Halle and I feel overwhelmed, and I\'ll play this song and feel so much better. It\'s okay to just lay in that and not feel pressured to know what\'s next and just kind of accept, and once you accept it, then you could start moving forward and planning ahead. But we all have those moments where we kind of just need to admit it and just live in it.” **Lonely** Halle: “This song is so very important to us. We did this with Scott Storch, and it ended up just kind of writing itself. I think one friend that we had in particular was kind of going through something in their life, and sometimes, a lot of the situations that we\'re around we take inspiration from to write about. We were also feeling just stuck in a way, and we wanted to write something that would uplift whoever it was out there who felt the same way we did, whether it was just being lonely and knowing that it\'s okay to be alone. And when you are alone, owning how beautiful you are and knowing that it\'s okay to be by yourself. We kind of just wrote the story that way, thinking about us alone in our apartment and what we do, what we think when we\'re in our room, and what they think when they go home. I mean, what is everybody thinking about in all of this? When people are waiting by the phone, waiting for somebody to call them, and the call never comes—you don\'t have to let that discourage you. At the end of the day, you are a beautiful soul inside and out, and as long as you\'re okay with loving yourself wholeheartedly, then you can be whoever you want to be, and you can thrive.” **Don\'t Make It Harder on Me** Chloe: “We wrote this with our good friend Nasri and this amazing producer Gitty, and we were all in the studio, and I believe Halle really inspired this song. She was going through a situation where she was involved with someone, and there was also someone else trying to get her attention, and we kind of just painted that story through the lyrics: You\'re in this wonderful relationship, but there\'s this guy who just keeps getting your attention, and you don\'t want to be tempted, you want to be faithful. And it\'s like, \'Look, you had your chance with me. Don\'t come around now that I\'m taken. Don\'t make it harder on me.\' I love it because it feels so old-school. We wanted the background to feel so nostalgic. Afterwards, we added actual strings on the record. It just feels so good—every time I listen to it, I just feel really light and free and happy.” **Wonder What She Thinks of Me** Halle: “I was really inspired for this song because of a story that was kind of happening in my life. I mean, the themes of \'Don\'t Make It Harder on Me\' and this song as well are kind of hand in hand. There was this amazing guy who\'s so sweet, and it just talks about this bond that you have with somebody and how this person came out of nowhere. And then all of a sudden, you kind of find yourself wanting that person, but they\'re in a situation and you\'re in a situation, and you don\'t want to seem like you\'re trying to take this girl\'s man. We spun it into this story of being the other woman—even though, just so you know, Chloe and I were never that. So we pushed that story so far, and it was really fun and exciting to talk about, because I don\'t think we had ever experienced or heard another song that was talking about the perspective of the other woman—the woman who is on the side or the girl who wishes so badly that she could be with him and is always there for him. So we flipped it into this drama-filled song, which we really feel like it\'s so exciting and so adventurous. The melodies and the lyrics and the beautiful production my sister did, it just really turned out amazing.” **ROYL** Chloe: “I love \'Rest of Your Life\' because it kind of feels like an ode to our debut album, *The Kids Are Alright*, with the anthemic backgrounds and feeling so youthful and grungy. With this song, we just wanted to wrap this album up by saying, \'It doesn\'t matter what mistakes you make, just live your life, go for it, have fun. You don\'t know when your time to leave this earth is, so just live out for the rest of your life.\' And even though we are in the ungodly hour right now, and we\'re learning ourselves through our mistakes and our imperfections, so what? That\'s what makes us who we are. Live it out.”
JoJo\'s later career has come to be defined by a seven-year battle with her label which all but halted her momentum—in 2004, she was then the youngest singer to ever top the Hot 100—and kept her from releasing a proper album for a decade. In 2017, she created her own imprint, Clover Music, and good to me marks the first full-length of this brave new chapter, as much a rebirth as a reintroduction. The singer\'s maturation, even from her 2016 release *Mad Love.*, is evident, but she carries it without a hint of reticence. When she sings of the nuances of heartache—trying to move on, establishing boundaries—sincerity penetrates her every lyric. “For the first time, I finally believe we\'re done,” she belts at the peak of the piano-driven closer, “Don\'t Talk Me Down,” wounded grit bleeding into her tone. Throughout the album, she also expands to showcase a bit of her range in both subject and sound: “Pedialyte” is an anthemic ode to partying and forgotten nights, while “Small Things” is a graceful acoustic ballad about pretending to be okay that doubles as a flooring display of her vocal prowess. Elsewhere, the sexy slow jams “So Bad” and “Comeback” are executed with aplomb. No matter the subject matter, JoJo overarchingly sounds like a woman liberated, finally ready to find her voice anew.
Since Bruce Springsteen last released an album with the E Street Band—*High Hopes*, 2014’s collection of re-recorded outtakes and covers—he’s spent a lot of time thinking about his past. He followed his 2016 memoir *Born to Run* the next year with a one-man Broadway show in which he reimagined his songs as part of an intimate narrative about his own life and career. And while his 20th LP was recorded completely live with the band in a four-day sprint—for the first time since 1984’s *Born in the USA*—the songs themselves bear the deliberation and weight of an artist who knows he’s running out of time to do things like this. “The impetus for a lot of the material was the loss of my good friend George Theiss,” Springsteen tells Apple Music. “When he passed away, it left me as the only remaining living member of the first band that I had, which was a very strange thought, and it gave rise to most of the material. There\'s aging and loss of people as time goes by, and that\'s a part of what the record is. And then at the same time, you\'re sort of celebrating the fact that the band goes on and we carry their spirits with us.” That combination of wistfulness and joy—propelled by the full force of an E Street Band that’s been playing together in some form for nearly 50 years, minus two departed founding members, Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici—drives “Last Man Standing” and “Ghosts” most explicitly, but imbues the entire project. Though this may have been recorded live and fast, nothing sounds ragged or rambunctious; the efficiency owes to the shorthand of a unit that knows each other’s moves before they make them. While most of the songs were written recently, “Song for Orphans,” “If I Was the Priest,” and “Janey Needs a Shooter” date back to the early ’70s, only adding to the feeling of loose ends being tied. And it’s not lost on Springsteen after this long period of reflection that this album fits into a larger story that he’s been telling for most of his life. “If you wanted to find a body of work that expressed what it was like to be an American, say from 1970 to now, in the post-industrial period of the United States—I\'d be a place you could go and get some information on that,” he says. “And so in that sense, I always try to speak to my times in the way that I best could.” Here he digs deeper into just a few of the highlights from *Letter to You*. **One Minute You’re Here** “It\'s unusual to start a record with its quietest song. The record really starts with \'Letter to You,\' but there\'s this little preface that lets you know what the record is going to encompass. The record starts with \'One Minute You\'re Here\' and then ends with \'I\'ll See You in My Dreams,\' which are both songs about mortality and death. It was just sort of a little tip of the hat to where the record was going to go and a little slightly connected to \[2019\'s\] *Western Stars*. It was a little transitional piece of music.” **Last Man Standing** “That particular song was directly due to George\'s passing and me finding out that out of that group of people, I\'m kind of here on my own, honoring the guys that I learned my craft with between the ages of 14 and 17 or 18. Those were some of the deepest learning years of my life—learning how to be onstage, learning how to write, learning how to front the band, learning how to put together a show, learning how to play for all different kinds of audiences at fireman\'s fairs, at union halls, at CYO \[Catholic Youth Organization\] dances, and just really honing your craft.” **Janey Needs a Shooter** and **If I Was the Priest** and **Song for Orphans** “We were working on a lot of stuff that I have in the vault to put out again at some time, and I went through almost a whole record of pre-*Greetings From Asbury Park* music that was all acoustic, and these songs were inside them. The guys came in and I said, ‘Okay. Today we\'re going to record songs that are 50 years old, and we\'re going to see what happens.\' The modern band playing those ideas that I had as a 22-year-old—and for some reason it just fit on the record, because the record skips through time. It starts with me thinking about when I was 14 and 15, and then it moves into the present. So those songs added a little touchstone for that certain period of time. I went back and I found a voice that really fit them, and they\'re a nice addition to the record.” **House of a Thousand Guitars** “Every piece of music has its demands—what tone in my voice is going to feel right for this particular piece of music—and you try to meet it in the middle. That\'s one of my favorite songs on the record; I\'m not exactly sure why yet. It\'s at the center of the record and it speaks to this world that the band and I have attempted to create with its values, its ideas, its codes, since we started. And it collects all of that into one piece of music, into this imaginary house of a thousand guitars.” **The Power of Prayer** “I grew up Catholic, and that was enough to turn me off from religion forever. And I realized as I grew older that you can run away from your religion, but you can\'t really run away from your faith. And so I carried a lot of the language with me, which I use and write with quite often—\'Promised Land\' or \'House of a Thousand Guitars\' and \'The Power of Prayer\' on this record. Those little three-minute records and the 180-second character studies that came through pop music were like these little meditations and little prayers for me. And that\'s what I turned them into. And my faith came in and filled those songs, and gave them a spiritual dimension. It\'s an essential part of your life.” **I’ll See You in My Dreams** “I remember a lot of my dreams and I always have. But that song was basically about those that pass away don\'t ever really leave us. They visit me in my dreams several times a year. Clarence will come up a couple times in a year. Or I\'ll see Danny. They just show up in very absurd, sometimes in abstract ways in the middle of strange stories. But they\'re there, and it\'s actually a lovely thing to revisit with them in that way. The pain slips away, the love remains, and they live in that love and walk alongside you and your ancestors and your life companions as a part of your spirit. So the song is basically about that: \'Hey. I\'m not going to see you at the next session, but I\'ll see you in my dreams.\'”
On her third studio album *Celia*, Tiwa Savage deftly infuses Afrobeats with a feminine impulse, rhythmically exploring the many facets of womanhood. “Celia is my mum’s name and I wanted to pay homage to her,” Tiwa tells Apple Music. “She embodies everything that this album is. It speaks to a strong, modern African woman. This album is Afrobeats from a very female perspective. It’s an extension of the African woman: she still values her culture and her upbringing, but she’s also well-travelled, so it’s blending those two worlds. I want every woman that listens to this to feel attached and connect to it.” Reflecting on the album, Tiwa walks us through the process and inspiration behind each track. **Save My Life** “This is one of those songs that goes straight for the gut. I want you to press play on this album and it hits you straight in the jugular. ‘Save My Life’ is a very Afropop song about a girl asking her love interest to take her to the highest levels of euphoria. Literally, ‘Your love is the only thing that can save my life.’” **Temptation (feat. Sam Smith)** “Having Sam Smith on my record is so surreal. ‘Temptation’ was actually written by Fireboy DML. He wrote the record and I fell in love with it. Not only did God answer my prayer and give me the one artist I wanted on this record, but Sam killed his verse. It’s amazing!” **Ole (feat. Naira Marley)** “This song has a very strong Afrobeats bounce and it’s got a very bossy attitude. It just says, ‘Nobody messes with me and my money.’ Naira was the perfect person ‘cause he doesn’t play around. He comes on and says, ‘At one stage in our lives, we’ve all done something bad, so don’t judge me and I won’t judge you.’ It’s such a cool record and it’s definitely gonna get people’s attention. I really want everyone to pay attention to Naira’s lyrics, they’re so clever and witty.” **Koroba** “I feel like a lot of people misunderstood ‘Koroba’. This is music and entertainment but even while I’m entertaining you, I’m passing a message. If a young girl falls in love with a rich man or a politician, she’s instantly labelled a hoe or a prostitute. It takes two in that relationship, so why is the man not being labelled that way...why is it only the woman? A lot of the time in these situations, the politician is married—and a lot of times our politicians embezzle our money. You’re saying that this girl is bad for sleeping with this guy for money, but isn’t the guy even worse for stealing money from our country and spending it on young girls? That’s what ‘Koroba’ is about: we spend so much time putting women down for their actions and we don’t hold men accountable for theirs.” **Bombay (feat. Stefflon Don & Dice Ailes)** “‘Bombay’ is about a confident girl who’s just like, ‘You ain’t never gonna get a badder bitch than me. This is it—this is the best you’re going to get.’ I wanted Steff on this record because she’s beautiful and she’s a boss. Dice is such a perfect complement to that ‘cause his sound and vibe is so incredible. It’s an unexpected collaboration—all three of us on a record—but when you hear it, it makes perfect sense.” **Dangerous Love** “This is such a different vibe. It’s very R&B, but also Afrobeats—the perfect blend of those two worlds. It’s about a love that’s too good to be real, and you know that, but you’re just addicted to it. It’s like sugar: it’s sweet, but too much of it is bad for you. I feel like a lot of women have been in this situation; your friends have warned you about him and you start hiding when you hook up with him, but then you cry to them when he breaks your heart.” **Park Well (feat. Davido)** “Everybody knows I do love songs, so I had to have a love song on here. Davido is also known for giving us great love records like ‘If’, ‘Fall’ and ‘Fia’. He was the perfect person to have on this. It was co-written by Maestro, Peruzzi and me, and it’s a girl saying a guy is the first thing she thinks of when she wakes up and he’s the last thing on her mind. It’s literally just a beautiful love song.” **Us (Interlude)** “‘Us’ is actually a full song. I wanted it to have a special moment on the album because it’s the first time I’ve addressed my separation from my husband on a song. I wanted to put it in a song because there’s something about writing lyrics and putting them to music that gets your attention more—and it lives longer, too. I wanted people to know that there’s no blame or hard feelings. We literally tried our best and I don’t want anyone to walk away from this thinking we hate each other, because we don’t.” **FWMM (F\*CK With My Mind)** “This feels like a very pop song, sonically. I’m basically saying, ‘I am who I am with or without you, so you’re either with me, or you’re not.’” **Pakalamisi (feat. Hamzaa)** “‘Pakalamisi’ is for that girl that just wants to drown herself in her sorrows. Someone just broke her heart and all she wants to do is lock herself in her room and get high and drunk. My manager introduced me to Hamzaa’s music. I thought she was incredible and really wanted her on the album. I did my part and she sent these amazing, crisp vocals. There’s amazing songwriting on here as well.” **Attention** “‘Attention’ is just me telling a guy, ‘Don’t get it twisted…there are other guys out there. If you don’t get your act together, I’m gonna get love from somebody else!’ It’s definitely a female anthem; I wanted women to have an anthem that they can literally sing word-for-word and feel connected to.” **Glory** “‘Glory’ is a deep song. Sonically, it’s Afrohouse, but lyrically it’s very deep. I’m talking about me not being scared to pursue my destiny. I think a lot of people don’t fulfil their purpose in life because they’re scared. ‘Glory’ is basically saying, ‘I don’t know about anybody else, but all I want to do is live to tell my story.’ It’s also a prayer, saying, ‘I want to smell my flowers while I’m alive.’” **Celia’s Song** “‘Celia’s Song’ is a prayer. The words in here are a lot of the words she says to me when I feel like I can’t go on. My mum supported me doing music when everyone said she was crazy. I know that every time I’m feeling down and think I can’t do this anymore, she prays for me.”
A mere 11 months passed between the release of *Lover* and its surprise follow-up, but it feels like a lifetime. Written and recorded remotely during the first few months of the global pandemic, *folklore* finds the 30-year-old singer-songwriter teaming up with The National’s Aaron Dessner and longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff for a set of ruminative and relatively lo-fi bedroom pop that’s worlds away from its predecessor. When Swift opens “the 1”—a sly hybrid of plaintive piano and her naturally bouncy delivery—with “I’m doing good, I’m on some new shit,” you’d be forgiven for thinking it was another update from quarantine, or a comment on her broadening sensibilities. But Swift’s channeled her considerable energies into writing songs here that double as short stories and character studies, from Proustian flashbacks (“cardigan,” which bears shades of Lana Del Rey) to outcast widows (“the last great american dynasty”) and doomed relationships (“exile,” a heavy-hearted duet with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon). It’s a work of great texture and imagination. “Your braids like a pattern/Love you to the moon and to Saturn,” she sings on “seven,” the tale of two friends plotting an escape. “Passed down like folk songs, the love lasts so long.” For a songwriter who has mined such rich detail from a life lived largely in public, it only makes sense that she’d eventually find inspiration in isolation.
Victoria Monét is stepping into the spotlight. The Sacramento singer has a gift for making sexy yet subversive R&B and pop that challenges social norms around gender, race, and sexuality. And not just as a recording artist: She’s already one of the industry’s most in-demand songwriters and producers, collaborating on standouts by Fifth Harmony, Brandy, Chloe x Halle, and more—even grabbing two Grammy nominations for her work on Ariana Grande’s *thank u, next*. She titled this project after the fierce jungle cat—known for lurking undetected until, when you least expect it, they attack. “*JAGUAR* has helped me build my confidence and feel ready to come out of the shadows,” she tells Apple Music, explaining that she was shy and soft-spoken until she found her place on stage. “A lot of people know me first as a songwriter, but my artistry has always been there. This project allowed me the space and credibility \[to explore it\].” This collection of songs—the first third of what will ultimately become a three-part project, she says—feels both intimate and grand, with densely layered harmonies, serpentine melodies, and the rich, surprising instrumentation of a live band. Monét is a masterful storyteller who delights in challenging assumptions; “Big Boss” flips a lyrical cliché about catering to the male ego into an empowerment ballad for women to sing to themselves. Similarly, “Ass Like That” flatly rejects our culture’s objectification of the female body: Instead, it’s a workout anthem in which the only person whose opinion matters is the one in the mirror. Read on for her track-by-track breakdown of the project. **Moment** “It instantly gives you the feeling of psychedelics and draws you into this other, warping world. A lot of my previous projects are more playful and young, so I felt like this was an opportunity to show my more mature side. When I first played it for my mom, she was like, ‘That\'s you?!’ She felt like it was a different side of me, a side that people who’ve heard my previous work would be excited to learn about. It’s funky and whimsical and psychedelic. And especially when the strings come in, it really takes you somewhere.” **Big Boss (Interlude)** “It’d be natural to assume this song was talking to someone else, someone you want to make feel good. And it can be that! But it can also be sung to yourself. I imagine myself singing it in the mirror, like, ‘Remember who you are, remember what you have.’ It’s a form of affirmation. It’s not being cocky or conceited. It\'s just like, ‘This is what I feel about myself and I\'m allowed to say it, to be positive about myself.’ Because sometimes, when people say something positive to me, I’ll find a way to negate it. If they say I look cute, I’ll say, ‘Oh, I just woke up.’ Something to make me feel better about receiving the compliment. But sometimes it\'s important to be like, \'Yes, I am,\' or \'Thank you.\' You know? ‘Big Boss’ does that in song form.” **Dive** “My music is based on stuff that I\'ve had to absorb as a woman, and a lot of women have had to hear—whether in music or in life—men saying things that women would be frowned upon for saying, like, ‘I want to see what your head game like.’ So I felt like it was important for this project to take power back into our hands, to say things that we think about and talk about when women get together. It’s kind of like, ‘Girrrrrl,’ a little gossipy, but it’s also about us saying things to others the way they’re said to us. I also wanted to use double entendres and to make it clever so that if you played it around your grandmother, she wouldn\'t be like, ‘Turn it off!’ But when you really think about it and read the lyrics, you know there\'s deeper meaning going on.” **We Might Even Be Falling in Love (Interlude)** “Honestly, this song just felt like a vibe and it made me feel like I was in the \'70s. This natural, soulful feeling with soft instrumentation. It’s a window into my more vulnerable side. A lot of the project’s songs are more aggressive, just, like, bluntly aggressive, but this one has a softer side. It feels like a cousin of ‘Dive’ to me. I\'m hoping that people will love the interludes enough that one day I can do a project of all of the interludes from *JAGUAR* and turn them into songs.” **Jaguar** “I honestly don\'t know where ‘Jaguar’ came from. It wasn’t like I studied the animal. That\'s why I feel like this song in particular was a gift. It was like a gift from God, just like, ‘Okay, this is just going to pop into your head and give you a nice foundation for what you want to do.’ It ended up sounding really cool and came together in the perfect way. Later on, I brought in a string player and this horn player, Arnetta \[Johnson\]. I was adamant about finding a Black horn player, and my friend choreographed for Beyoncé and knew one from her Coachella set. He introduced me and I had her come in and sang her my ideas for the horn parts, and then \[producer\] D’Mile sang to her his idea of the horn part, and then we put those two together to make that bridge, added the strings, and it felt like magic. I want to do that a million more times.” **Experience** “We released this song on Juneteenth and during Pride month, and to me, that’s a form of protest. Of standing up for yourself and being outspoken. And I had wondered, like, if I release music that feels celebratory and happy, is that dismissive of everything that we\'re going through? But the answer I came to was no. After discussing it with my team and people who I care about, I realized that a lot of people don\'t have this opportunity, so part of my responsibility is making sure that there is representation in these spaces. In my eyes, it’s almost like back in the day when people are walking on the front lines and still singing ‘We Shall Overcome.’ I’m doing it my way. Two Black artists coming together, unafraid and unapologetic about singing their song.” **Ass Like That** “This song just says ‘freedom.’ It says I don\'t really care about your opinion about the title, about the song, about the quote-unquote radio playability, any of that. I just want to write about a body part that\'s talked about by other people, and that\'s a form of taking the power back into our own hands. Because when we look in the mirror sometimes, we check our own ass out. We see if we look good in those jeans. We have goals for our own bodies. I just wanted a song that allows people to have that. Also, I love a good old workout anthem, because I work really, really hard in the gym. I have a trainer, I make sure that I\'m eating healthy, and all these things are a daily focus of mine. So I think it was a way of being honest about what I’m going through.” **Go There With You** “This is another song where I wanted to find the vulnerable side of this sound. Something you could really sink into. It feels simple and classic to me, and the guitars add an element that I didn\'t have anywhere else. After doing Jimmy Kimmel with live guitars, I realized I wanted them to be a part of my stage performance, so I love that about it. It’s also about being realistic. Jaguars can be confident and sexy, but there\'s still some issues that we\'re going to want to smooth over. \[This song\] gives you a nice, realistic window into any relationship, when you’re going through an argument and need to think about the positive and act on that instead.” **Touch Me** “Instead of thinking about this song completing the project, I wanted it to be more of a pathway into part two for when the project completes itself as an album. It feels like a little bit of a cliffhanger to me, ending with the a cappella like that. The first track of part two starts with an a cappella, so it makes a lot of sense when you hear it down the line. But also, ‘Touch Me’ is one of the only songs where you can hear me sing a different pronoun. I say ‘girl,’ I say ‘her.’ It was really important for me to share that and make that statement so that people... I don\'t think that we get a lot of songs that are directly saying that, especially in a sexual way. I think it\'s important for music to have that. A lot of times we can make songs applicable to us, but they\'re not *directly* being like, ‘This is about a woman.’ It was a nice element to add, and based on a true story. People who have been around for a minute will pick up on that.”
Ask Ellie Goulding how she feels about her fourth album, *Brightest Blue*, and the singer responds by exhaling deeply. “Oh my gosh, it’s like a new world,” Goulding tells Apple Music. “When I listen to these songs, I feel proud of them.” Ask the same question of its predecessor, *Delirium*—the polished pop record Goulding released in 2015—and she isn’t quite as gushing. “I very quickly realized that when I was performing the songs, I was finding it cringe. It was like, ‘This is not what I want. This is not what I wanted to do.’ I was in such a bad place on that album, and I’m never afraid to admit that.” After a much-needed break (“I had to stop touring, stay in one place for a few months, and spend some time with myself”) and a brief foray into a Beach Boys-inspired sound (“I watched a film about them and was like, ‘Oh my god’”), Goulding landed on the idea of releasing a double album. On its first (and central) part, “Brightest Blue,” Goulding showcases her singer-songwriter credentials, drawing together euphoric choruses, pounding basslines, string arrangements, and piano ballads. The album\'s second part—“EG.0”—sees the singer delve into her bag of pop hits, with collaborations from Diplo, Lauv, and the late Juice WRLD. “I\'ve always been a vocalist and a musician and a songwriter, but I think sometimes that\'s got lost and blurred a bit,” says Goulding. “That\'s why I want to release both sides of this album. I do really appreciate the songs \[on “EG.0”\]—I love their lightheartedness. But actually, I think I’m a lot more than that.” “Brightest Blue” is Goulding’s most powerful (and empowered) work to date—a raw, vulnerable, and thrilling exploration of the “chaos and corruption” of her twenties. Here, Goulding ruminates on eye-roll-inducing dates with narcissists (the pulsating, prowling “Power”), exes she can’t quite shake (“Flux,” “Bleach”), and growing into womanhood. Such themes might not be quite what you expect from a singer who, in 2019, got married to art dealer Caspar Jopling. “When I got married, I think everyone around expected me to suddenly start writing about the joy of being in love,” she says. “But my relationship feels separate from what I do. There was so much unraveling for me to do over the last 10 years that I have a real backlog of things to talk about. You won’t be hearing any songs about marriage anytime soon.” What you will hear, by the serene final track, is resolution—and Goulding the most in control she’s ever been. “I think writing this music has made me feel a new kind of confidence in my songwriting ability and believing in myself for once. It’s really cool when you feel like you’ve got to a point where you’re starting to be the artist you always were.” Here, let Goulding walk you through the 13 songs that make up “Brightest Blue,” one at a time. **Start (feat. serpentwithfeet)** “I remember opening *Delirium* with ‘Aftertaste,’ which is big, kind of hypnotic, a bit tribal. I\'d start all my festivals with that song. On this album, I was conscious that I wanted to start with something that was still hypnotic, but which didn\'t quite give away what the album was going to be. I got serpentwithfeet on the track because I wanted there to be a kind of beautiful disruption and I just had this instinct that I wanted him on the first track. It’s so special and he nailed it. I think I always end up associating things back to a person. But when I say ‘I can start a truce for anyone but you’ on this song, maybe it\'s not a person. Maybe it\'s a figment of my imagination. Something that holds me back or something that pulls me forward. So when I say ‘you,’ it\'s not necessarily about a person. It\'s just about an enigmatic thing.” **Power** “The bass here is just so sexy. It reminded me of a mix of George Michael and Annie Lennox and that kind of ’80s sexual thing. There was something about it. I did so many different bits and pieces with \[English songwriter and producer\] Jamie Scott. We did folk songs. We did ballads. We did dance records. Then it ended up just being this strange, disjointed track that was very synth-heavy. It has this really big chorus that\'s almost celebrating something that, ultimately, is pretty depressing. It\'s like a first date where you’re completely uninspired in some bar somewhere. Just kind of being sick of this superficiality of everything, which I think has been driven by things like Instagram—I think it\'s a real thing. I suppose I also like the idea of a woman feeling empowered while singing this song, even though the lyrics suggest that she\'s been weakened by this unknown guy. The lyrics say, ‘Keep making me need a new fix,’ like I need something more and more. You’ve got me addicted to you like a drug. It\'s a sexual thing as well.” **How Deep Is Too Deep** “I think I have license to say things \[in music\] that I perhaps wouldn\'t say in real life. I would never say to someone, ‘I can do so much better than you,’ which is a lyric in this song. I just wouldn\'t. But at the same time, I feel like so many women need to be empowered with things like that, and need to understand not to settle for someone just because you need someone. Honestly, when I say things like that, I want to protect women, and I want them to sing out a line and be like, ‘Oh, you know what? I\'m with this guy for the wrong reasons, and actually he just makes me feel like shit.’ I think that I definitely went through situations in my teens and my twenties where I was always desperate for something to be deeper and deeper, but then I couldn\'t really figure out what that was. I guess all along, it was because I wasn\'t actually feeling real love. I was just trying to make something more than what it was, and give it more substance. It’s really a song about passion and lust for someone that, actually, is just screwing you over.” **Cyan** “‘Hide and Seek’ by Imogen Heap changed my life. When I first heard it, I was like, ‘Damn.’ I’d never heard anything like it before. I was really inspired by the fact that she could create such a powerful song with just her voice. This track is the moment where I explain the next one, ‘Love I’m Given.’ At the beginning of the track, you hear me speaking. I\'m trying to summarize why I think the way I do and everything that\'s made me who I am. That was a very honest moment there. I think I\'ve always found it easy to be very honest and open about my feelings. Not necessarily in person talking to people, but I\'ve always been able to write things down well.” **Love I’m Given** “This does touch on impostor syndrome a bit. What I\'m trying to sing about is that I don\'t think I\'ve always treated people right, and I think that there\'s been some times in my life where I\'ve been troubled and it\'s affected the way that I treat people, and the love I give people. I was destructive, and I think it was based on coping mechanisms of trying to pretend to be this person who was the most resilient about what was going on, and that the personality and the love, everything that I gave with that, wasn\'t right. I don’t know, maybe everyone goes through this kind of self-realization. All I know for me is that it affected my job—I was performing well, and I was selling records, and I was doing all that stuff, but as an artist I felt like I wasn\'t really giving my purest self. In ‘Love I’m Given,’ I think I had this moment of redemption. Or trying to rid yourself of sin. Vindication. Absolution. Those are the words I associate with this song. I\'m just like, ‘Right. I feel like I\'ve redeemed myself now, and it\'s time to move on.’” **New Heights** “I wrote it in a studio in Soho, in New York. I was by myself, and I just came up with these piano chords. The song feels like a waltz. But to me it felt like a waltz where you\'re just dancing by yourself. It was about reaching this point where you’re just like, ‘Oh my god, I’ve found this ultimate independence and security in myself and my love for myself.’ It just felt like it had to be that kind of sound because it feels hypnotically joyful. It feels like a resolution. Like you\'ve really found this amazing peace. This is one of my favorite songs on the album. When I say, ‘Love without someone else feels so bright,’ I think at the time I was just thinking about this immense independence, and I was shouting from the rooftops because I was like, ‘This is amazing. Who knew that life could be so great by yourself?’ Because I spent all my time doting over these guys, and actually, really, the answer was in myself all along.” **Ode to Myself** “I felt like, on this album, I really had to try and acknowledge myself. I\'ve always taken up quite a lot of my album space for singing about other people. And I was like, ‘Well, what happens if I actually just write for myself?’ I thought it was a good moment for people to understand where I was coming from with this album.” **Woman** “This is meant to be a song with just me and piano, but I slightly manipulated it to make it flow with the album. I know that I\'ll be performing this song so much, and I’m looking forward to hearing it in its purest form. But I also made sure that the production didn\'t take away from the song in any way. It’s me really singing about my honesty and my place as a woman and how I\'m feeling, and the feeling that I still need to figure out where I stand and what\'s next for me. It was the most simple way that I could really describe coming into womanhood. I love the lyric ‘I’m done listening to another man’s music, so I’m leaving with another drink in my hand.’ I think that\'s one of my favorite lines on the album. It’s me expressing that I know for a fact that male artists have been favored over me for things—regardless of their quality or success. Naturally, that bothers me, and I think that instinctively, for all female artists, they feel like they\'ve always had to try that bit harder or go that bit further, when in a fairer world that wouldn\'t have to be the case. I think people are finally waking up and there\'s a lot of change happening. I love the image of me walking out the bar with a drink in my hand and just being like, ‘See ya!’” **Tides** “I had so much fun writing this song. This wasn’t a dance record, but I was listening to people like The Blaze and Jamie xx at the time and wanted to make something that was an anti-dance record. I loved sampling my voice all over the place, and then singing and saying things like ‘Take those elbows off the table’ and shit that your parents used to say to you. And then just talking about my time in New York and telling this fairy-tale story about meeting this person. I also love that sentimental stuff here, like, ‘I want to stay with you tonight. I want to go against the tide. I want to be with you even if it means sacrificing something.’ This song wasn’t really about anyone. I was listening to The Blaze, and they have such empty lyrics, but at the same time, they\'re so meaningful. They just sing random lines that you would probably find in old pop songs, like ABBA songs. And then they would just put it over this really simple beat with a really euphoric sense. I love that idea. I\'ve had quite a few people tell me that this is their favorite song on this record.” **Wine Drunk** “This is my inner dialogue. It\'s me just talking, and it reminds me of when I\'ve been drinking wine and I just roll out thoughts. That\'s usually how I end up with lyrics. I just say what I think. I remember just reflecting on feeling like there was something missing and I finally discovered it.” **Bleach** “‘Bleach’ is about going back to my old habits of being like, ‘I want to write about how I literally can\'t erase someone from my brain.’ There’s a few songs on this album, like this one and ‘How Deep Is Too Deep,’ that do suggest somebody treated me badly. I like the simplicity of this song, but also how severe it is, especially the lyric ‘How can I bleach you?’ \[That feeling\] is something that so many of us have been through. You feel like you have to literally erase that person to not think about them. Obviously I don\'t feel like that now, but I still think about exes. And I\'m really open with my husband about this. I wrote this song in LA, and there were a lot of these kinds of songs on the radio. I think I got it from that. I’m always influenced by the things I hear on the radio.” **Flux** “I think this is really confronting something quite uncomfortable: thinking about what would happen if you\'d stayed together. To me, it\'s quite indulgent, because it\'s absolutely not good for you to do this. It’s not good for growth. But songs like this are great to sing along to and great to indulge in grief and sadness and your ex and all that kind of stuff. So I suppose I used that license a little bit to write this. And I just thought it was heartbreaking when me and \[UK songwriter\] Jim Eliot, who I’ve been writing with for years, wrote, ‘I\'m still in love with the idea of loving you.’ It\'s quite sad, really. It\'s not even like, ‘I still love you.’ It\'s ‘I\'m in love with the idea of you,’ which I think also happens quite a lot in life. Musically, I’ve spent so much time the past few years listening to classical music. There are these textures and layers in classic music, and it\'s so beautiful. I had this guy called Ola Gjeilo, who is a Norwegian composer, play at my wedding. And he just makes such like beautiful music—stuff that really hits the soul. I don\'t know, it kind of appeals to the human in you. ‘Flux’ had something to do with that. It definitely is the most raw song on the album, and probably the saddest song I’ve ever written.” **Brightest Blue** “I talk about ‘the blue evolution’ in this song. I think it’s my version of a happy, peaceful place. It’s about getting yourself to a place of harmony where even when bad stuff does come along and you find yourself in hard times, you can deal with it in a very different way because you\'ve discovered this harmony in yourself. I was also conscious when I was writing this album that we were doomed and something was happening and the world was changing. I think a lot about the natural world and about how much we\'ve destroyed it. For this song, I envisaged things connected with nature and flowers and all the beautiful things we associate the outdoors with. It was like a utopia—kind of like reaching this place of incredible enlightenment. I think the most poignant lyric on the album for me is ‘Maybe because we\'re doomed, we\'re whole.’ So it\'s just sort of accepting fate and just being in a state of like harmonious kind of acceptance. Then there’s the lyric ‘You’re my greatest revelation,’ which, again, wasn’t necessarily referring to a person, more to an energy. Like my greatest revelation was like the fact that I\'ve reached this point of ultimate independence. It\'s so crucial and it really is a recurring theme of the album. And I was in such a good place that I think that it was like a hyper kind of happiness.”