Uproxx's Best Albums of 2023

Few rock bands this side of Y2K have committed themselves to forward motion quite like Paramore. But in order to summon the aggression of their sixth full-length, the Tennessee outfit needed to look back—to draw on some of the same urgency that defined them early on, when they were teenaged upstarts slinging pop punk on the Warped Tour. “I think that\'s why this was a hard record to make,” Hayley Williams tells Apple Music of *This Is Why*. “Because how do you do that without putting the car in reverse completely?” In the neon wake of 2017’s *After Laughter*—an unabashed pop record—guitarist Taylor York says he found himself “really craving rock.” Add to that a combination of global pandemic, social unrest, apocalyptic weather, and war, and you have what feels like a suitable backdrop (if not cause) for music with edges. “I think figuring out a smarter way to make something aggressive isn\'t just turning up the distortion,” York says. “That’s where there was a lot of tension, us trying to collectively figure out what that looks like and can all three of us really get behind it and feel represented. It was really difficult sometimes, but when we listened back at the end, we were like, ‘Sick.’” What that looks like is a set of spiky but highly listenable (and often danceable) post-punk that draws influence from early-2000s revivalists like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bloc Party, The Rapture, Franz Ferdinand, and Hot Hot Heat. Throughout, Williams offers relatable glimpses of what it’s been like to live through the last few years, whether it’s feelings of anxiety (the title cut), outrage (“The News”), or atrophy (“C’est Comme Ça”). “I got to yell a lot on this record, and I was afraid of that, because I’ve been treating my voice so kindly and now I’m fucking smashing it to bits,” she says. “We finished the first day in the studio and listened back to the music and we were like, ‘Who is this?’ It simultaneously sounds like everything we\'ve ever loved and nothing that we\'ve ever done before ourselves. To me, that\'s always a great sign, because there\'s not many posts along the way that tell you where to go. You\'re just raw-dogging it. Into the abyss.”

“The origin of all this goes back years,” Peso Pluma tells Apple Music. “My musicians, my team and I started this dream called Peso Pluma.” For Hassan Kabande Laija, 2023 has been sweet:. He has become one of the brightest stars and flag bearers for música mexicana’s incredible rise. In short order, he’s gone from local to global, with songs so popular that they’ve transcended into the collective subconscious. Peso Pluma became internationally known for hits like “Ella Baila Sola,” “La Bebé (Remix),” “PRC,” and “El Azul.” But *GÉNESIS*, his third studio album, clearly portrays the artist as someone more concerned with the longevity and legacy of his craft than with the momentary thrills that come from viral successes. “The title of the album represents the beginning of a new era,” says the Zapopan-born artist, referring to its release as a deliberate turning point both in his life and in his career. After such an impressive run, often in collaboration with other Latin hitmakers, *GÉNESIS* feels undeniably like a fresh albeit raw statement befitting his arrival on a new level. The album presents 14 corrido tracks across música mexicana’s spectrum, from the most romantic to the most *bélicos* and back again. On the instantly memorable “LUNA” with Junior H, he delivers a love letter in ballad form dedicated to the one who got away. “I made this song for a very special person, so that the moon could communicate the things that I cannot say to that person,” he says. The rest of the album’s stacked guest list includes his cousin Tito Double P, corridos tumbados master Natanael Cano, and previous collaborator Gabito Ballesteros, as well as artists as seemingly disparate as Luis R Conriquez and Eladio Carrión. “We are very happy to globalize Mexican music and the music we grew up with,” he says. “That has always been the goal and the same objective: to expand what we like to do and the type of music we listen to and globalize it to every corner of the world.” Having opened the ears of the world to música mexicana, he wanted to emphasize the idea that his work is not regional, but rather universal. The requinto and the bajoloche are now part of the world’s sonic tapestry, thanks in no small part to his efforts. “I\'m 23 and I\'m already out and about,” he says on “NUEVA VIDA,” a song that gives greater meaning to the album’s concept. Overall, *GÉNESIS* is a work that explores the artistic and conceptual capacities of the corrido in 2023, at the exact moment in which Peso Pluma has all eyes on him. “We are very happy with everything that is happening to us,” he says. “There are many blessings that are raining down on us, and I think that little by little, we have learned how to take the bull by the horns.”

It’s extremely fitting that the first feature on Quavo’s second solo project comes from his tragically departed Migos bandmate and nephew Takeoff. The two had an inseparable bond, from their work alongside Offset as the Atlanta trio to their debut collaborative LP, 2022’s *Only Built for Infinity Links*. That album was supposed to be the beginning of a triumphant new era, instead becoming a relic of their working relationship. Takeoff was killed less than a month after the project was released. So, after an exhilarating, epic intro titled “Fueled Up” in which Quavo declares, “I gotta go off for Take,” he brings Takeoff himself into the fold, setting the stage for the emotionally charged LP with the deliriously playful, horn-led “Patty Cake.” The album moves from mournful to celebratory, honoring Takeoff’s life while still relishing how far Quavo and everyone in his crew have come since the early days of Migos. On “Where Can I Start,” he reflects on his band’s origin story over a crisp, flute-laden beat, while still offering up the sort of triplet-flow one-liners that made him a superstar in the first place. “They call me unc’ (Why?)/They call me unc’ ’cause my money so old,” he spits. Quavo does a remarkable job of paying tribute to his departed nephew, honoring his memory in a proper way, while still celebrating the perseverance it takes to succeed in this industry—especially as your world crumbles around you. There are moments of hard-earned defiant joy on the album, which are all the more powerful when placed next to bars about Takeoff. On the penultimate track “Rocket Power,” Quavo illustrates the deftness of his pen in a single stanza, pouring some out for those no longer with us while gearing up for the next chapters. “Thinkin’ ’bout my nephew while I\'m rollin’ some trees, Mama said she cryin’ and she cryin’ in her sleep,” he raps, before concluding, “Yeah, that’s mama rocket, and she strong as can be.”

“This is about me telling the stories I want to tell, in the order I want to tell them, through the sonic landscape I want to tell them,” RAYE tells Apple Music of her debut album, *My 21st Century Blues*. The South London singer-songwriter, born Rachel Keen, had to wait longer than most to do that. In June 2021, she claimed on social media that she hadn’t been “allowed” to release a debut LP, despite having signed a four-album deal seven years earlier, and that she was “sick of being slept on.” (She left her label shortly after and released this LP as an independent artist.) “There really did have to be quite a lot of soul searching and therapy and forgiveness and reflection,” says RAYE of the aftermath. “I wanted to go back to the songs that I was passionate about.” Those were tracks that RAYE had written years earlier, and which, revisited and reworked, make up half of *My 21st Century Blues*. Most of the others were written fresh, after she escaped to a cabin in Utah with producer and friend Mike Sabath, armed with a laundry list of topics to dig into (reflected in some of the album’s meatier song titles, such as “Body Dysmorphia.” and “Environmental Anxiety.”). *My 21st Century Blues* can sometimes be a difficult listen: RAYE unflinchingly processes traumatic experiences including sexual violence, substance abuse, disordered eating, and the suffocation she has felt as a woman in music, with embraces of everything from trip-hop to hypnotic dance, dancehall, cinematic pop, gospel, blues, and more. Getting to this point, she says, feels like “the most beautiful validation,” as well as something close to healing. “Everything for me on this is so medicinal,” she says. “I’m so excited for the artist now I get to become. This has set the tone for me, knowing how much potential there is in what I can say and what stories I can tell.” Read on as RAYE talks us through every track on her long-awaited debut. **“Introduction.”** “Before synths and electronic stuff, it was just a show. It was a real band. The singer would come on and sing for you in a nice dress or a nice suit. I really wanted listeners to feel like they’re in this little blues club or a jazz club, taking in all the songs as they go on a wild tangent far away from that.” **“Oscar Winning Tears.”** “The version you hear now has really taken on its own form since the original demo. When the situation with the spiking happened \[RAYE’s drink was spiked by a man she knew and trusted\], the man was just crying tears in my face. He was the victim. I was like, ‘Wow, I have a song for this.’ It was liberating. And when we finished it, I knew this had to be the start. I think the initial concept and then the story ended up just merging so perfectly into just a beautiful piece of medicine for me.” **“Hard Out Here.”** “When the story or feeling is burning at my chest, it has to force its way out. It was just rage and pain flowing out. For the line about CEOs and white privilege \[‘All the white men CEOs, fuck your privilege/Get your pink chubby hands off my mouth/Fuck you think this is?’\], my engineer turned and looked at me, but I was like, ‘Yeah, we’re going there!’ This song was me promising myself that I will bounce back. It’s hard to put the story of what I’ve been through into words because it’s so much over so long. In my opinion, I really did such a good job of holding it down and in. Some of the things that were said and the way I was emotionally manipulated, it’s so dark. Coming out the other side of it, I just needed to remind myself that I will bounce back.” **“Black Mascara.”** “I’d just come back from where these assaults took place and was very much not good. It was just after ‘BED’ \[RAYE’s 2021 hit with Joel Corry and David Guetta\] came out, so I was having to sell the pop-girl image. At that time, I had the green light to do an album before they changed their mind for the last time. I played some chords, and they were very vampire-y and medieval. I had the phrase ‘Once you see my black mascara/Run from you’ on the way there, and so I was just building the lyrics. We had a session the next day, but I canceled it—I just wasn’t there—and didn’t listen to the song until maybe three weeks after I was sent it. I pressed play, and it sounds like what you hear now. I put it on repeat.” **“Escapism.” \[with 070 Shake\]** “I think when I was on my way out of the darker chapters in my life, I needed this song. It gives me hope. Mike played me this beat in the car, and I was rapping all this aggressive stuff. I knew exactly what story I wanted to tell on this. When we got to Utah, I went into the toilet and said a little prayer: ‘Dear God, help me find the best lyrics for the song.’ Then I got on the mic, and it came together so quickly—maybe in an hour and a half. I’m still processing the success of this song because I just did not expect it at all. I’m not doing this to gun for mainstream success. I’m not doing this to have the biggest chart records. These songs aren’t about that.” **“Mary Jane.”** “I’m an all-or-nothing person in every aspect of my life. So, when something dangerous is introduced \[substances\], it can get really bad—really, really bad. The lyrics in this song are dark, but substance abuse can really, really take you there. It’s a love song married with a slightly uneasy feeling behind the music. I wanted it to feel uncomfortable.” **“The Thrill Is Gone.”** “This song existed for years but was completely different in the beginning. I always wanted to take it back in time. We recorded it on tape and made it in the Valentine Studio in LA. It’s all carpeted walls, and it felt like a real taste of how music used to be created. Recording it was a beautiful experience. The story feels so classical, but the picture in my head is so distorted and modern and weird. I really love where we took it.” **“Ice Cream Man.”** “This is the hardest song on the album for me. There are so many layers of what’s taken and what’s affected and changed after trauma and sexual violence. So much is stolen. You battle so many minefields of, ‘Is this my fault? Did I put myself in the wrong position? Am I blowing something out of proportion?’ It just becomes this ugly thing that I’m having to deal with for the rest of my life because of someone else’s stupid, disgusting actions. And I think that, at the very least, this is me proclaiming what I am and that these things shouldn’t be allowed to define what we become. It’s as much for me as whoever might be listening who needs to hear it. I wanted it to just feel super intimate, with that hum that comes in at the beginning and these filtered drums. And at the end, you get this moment to feel beautiful with your tears, to stand up and walk out the room and continue with your day.” **“Flip a Switch.”** “I did this with Stephen McGregor \[aka producer Di Genius\], who’s a dancehall legend. He produced so many of the songs I grew up listening to, so he really brought his flair and flavors to the sound. I was in a budding relationship, and I had just decided to let my walls down. I felt it was safe, and then it was like, *bang*. I would have been fine if \[he\] hadn’t given me all this false hope. I was so angry, and it was like, ‘You know what! This song is going to be about you now. Let’s get all the drama out.’ It was very empowering and me saying all the things that I would love to say to his face. But instead, I just put it in the song and proceeded to listen to it all week.” **“Body Dysmorphia.”** “I’d been putting this one off for a while. It was the last day in Utah, and I felt I had to do it. I wanted it to feel sexy, in a weird way. So, we started with these scratchy, really uncomfortable strings, and then you have these smooth drums, which—if you were ignoring the lyrics—you’d probably have a little slow vibe to. It was a stream of consciousness. \[The things I talked about in this song\] can manifest in such ugly ways and hold really intense power over you. I think half of the power of this song is just saying them out loud.” **“Environmental Anxiety.”** “I’m a musician, but we know the state of the world, and you can see so clearly that things are just evidently flipping wrong. But \[the climate crisis\] is out of the control of an average citizen. It requires governments to pull their flipping pants up and put laws in place to better impact the climate. Banning plastic forks is all well and good, but you lot \[politicians\] are doing real serious damage. I thought I’d make a song about it, and I wanted to take the piss because that’s what the government does out of us. I wanted this eerie, childlike energy that brings you in, but also a punky, weird drum thing.” **“Five Star Hotels.” (feat. Mahalia)** “This song existed for a long time, and I always loved it. It was just a way of feeling sexy. We sent it to Mahalia, and when she sent me her verse, it was like, ‘Yes!’ We’re two girls who have dreams and have worked really hard from young ages. She just felt like the right person. Creating music to feel \[sexy\] has been empowering for me.” **“Worth It.”** “I wanted to release this a long time ago. Sometimes there are moments where it’s like, ‘Here comes someone—let’s make all of the shit things feel really cool. And all this work that I’m supposed to be doing on myself, I might pause for a section and start putting some work into this other thing because it feels really nice.’ I wanted to have this near the end of the album—a warm hug as you are leaving some of those darker earlier things. The irony is in putting it just before ‘Buss It Down.’ because it didn’t fucking work out!” **“Buss It Down.”** “It’s the juxtaposition between gospel feelings and a song about getting down. The choice to be single is empowering, and I think this is something for the single girls. It’s all right to be single and be joyous about it. It can be a good thing.” **“Fin.”** “I wanted to have the audience cheer at the end of ‘Buss It Down.’, and I want this thank-you moment. It’s a personal closing—I’m so proud of this album, I’m so grateful that people will even listen to this outro. I’m a human who’s put some stories together, and I’m excited for next time. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point, but we’re here. And the joy of being able to share this moment is really exciting. It’s been a long time coming.”

One of the toughest things to do as an artist is a feat of transfiguration whereby a songwriter changes the individual into the universal. It’s a rare accomplishment, and even rarer for an artist as young as Reneé Rapp to do it. “I write a lot from specificity,” she tells Apple Music. “So many of these songs have to come from real things that are happening in my life. Friendships end, relationships end. Sometimes you just have to sit with your feelings.” The 23-year old actor and musician blazed through Charlotte, North Carolina’s thriving theater scene before taking on the roles of Regina George in the *Mean Girls* musical, both on Broadway and in the upcoming movie adaptation, and Leighton on the HBO Max series *The Sex Lives of College Girls*. Through all that success, Rapp also somehow found the time to develop into a preternaturally talented songwriter. On her full-length debut *Snow Angel*, she fuses the raw catharsis of Olivia Rodrigo with the scenic storytelling of Maggie Rogers, bouncing back and forth between stadium-ready hooks (“Talk Too Much,” “The Wedding Song”) and intimate, slinky crooning (“I Wish,” “Willow”). Rapp enlisted her longtime collaborator, the Grammy-nominated producer Alexander 23, to work on *Snow Angel*, and you can sense his guiding hand throughout the record, helping Rapp channel and focus her emotions—heartbreak, anxiety, venom, and hope in equal measures—into personal stories that also feel like they’re for everyone. Below, she tells the stories behind those stories on *Snow Angel*. **“Talk Too Much”** “I have a lot of stress dreams, and one night I had a dream that I killed my girlfriend. I was so stressed out and I was so confused. The relationship was very new, and I got really overwhelmed. I ended up confessing and asked her how she felt. They were like, ‘What is wrong with you?!’ Then I just decided to write ‘Talk Too Much’ because I don\'t think I should have told them that, but also I did tell you this. It’s about the spiraling of being in a new relationship and wondering if it\'s good or bad.” **“I Hate Boston”** “This song comes from two different places. It started because I was in a session with some of my friends and I was talking about this show I played in Boston. The fans were just so awesome and it was a great gig by all accounts, but I was sick and I felt like shit. I also wore these faux leather pants and big boots and a fuzzy sweater, and the venue was so hot and I was suffocating. It was awful. The other side was that I wanted to use Boston as an alias because the word sings beautifully. The lyrics are about a city that an ex tainted for me, and I wanted to make sure that it felt really close to the hyper-specific situations that I went through in this relationship. Boston was sort of a cover-up.” **“Poison Poison”** “This is probably the most sarcastic, cynical song that I have on this record. I had a friendship with another girl that ended really horribly. I think as a woman and as women, it sucks when we get in a fight with another woman. We don\'t want to be a girl that takes down another girl. I wanted to write a song about it because I cared about this person so much and we were such good friends and I felt really betrayed. I wanted to deal with my feelings in a way that was comedic and sarcastic and kind of coped with it in a different way than how I actually felt about it, which was extremely hurt and betrayed and really confused and very sad.” **“Gemini Moon”** “This song is so fucking funny because actually I\'m a Pisces moon. But I wrote \'Gemini Moon\' because I had a really tough breakup a couple years ago which started as us taking a break—this in-between thing where you\'re feeling two states at once. I walked outside after this happened and I looked up and, of course, it\'s a full fucking moon. That shit always happens to me on a full moon. I always have full moons on my birthdays, and it sucked. Then I wondered if the moon is in Gemini right now. And through tears, I looked it up, and sure enough, it was Gemini moon. Then I was in the studio one day and fresh into a new relationship and I was experiencing being in love with someone again after having that fallout. I hadn\'t felt that intensely for someone in a long time, and I was really scared. I was criticizing every little thing I did. So I was like, wow, I wonder if it\'s a Gemini moon right now. I looked it up and it was a Gemini moon, and I was like, are you fucking kidding? It was almost exactly two years apart.” **“Snow Angel”** “I went through a really shitty experience in early 2022. I was extremely sad, and I was involved with the wrong people. I had recounted the situation so many times to friends over and over again. It was something that I think I had just stored in a place that I was never really going to process it the way that other people did. Then one day I was sitting with Alexander and he was like, ‘We really should write that snow song.’ And everybody else on my team was like, ‘We\'re so happy. Oh my god, this is the code for this album, we\'ve cracked it.’ In my brain I\'m like, ‘Well, this was one of the worst experiences in my life, so glad that it could turn into something like this.’” **“So What Now”** “I was seeing this person and we had a really quick in-and-out kind of thing. It was just so intense and I was so mad. So after the situation had subsided, I was like, ‘Are you going to ever speak to me again? Am I supposed to speak to you?’ ‘So What Now’ is just the culmination of this overarching thought of ‘you\'re treating me like shit’ but also ‘I\'m not mad at you, but what are we supposed to do?’” **“The Wedding Song”** “I was living in New Jersey for work for a few months when I wrote this. I was in a relationship at one point with someone who I thought I was going to marry, and that was the first time that had ever happened to me. And I thought that it would be so just gut-wrenching to be like, ‘I wrote you a wedding song because I thought I was going to be with you forever and I never played it for you, and now you\'re never going to hear it because we don\'t speak anymore.’ It\'s meant to be this really soul-sucking kind of song that\'s so happy and beautiful in the chorus, then it\'s just so sad in the verses because it\'s like, ‘Well, this is what I would\'ve said had you stuck around, but you decided to not and that\'s just now something that I have to deal with.’” **“Pretty Girls”** “I think ‘Pretty Girls’ is the universal gay-girl experience, in my opinion. Ever since I became more publicly out, so many straight girls are like, ‘I couldn\'t be with a girl, but wow, if I did...’ So it\'s just the gay-girl experience of all these straight girls being like, ‘I am either a closeted gay in a way that I don\'t understand or I\'m just kind of using you as a little prop.’ And that sucks any way you slice it. But in a really sick and twisted way, it’s kind of flattering. I love to be hit on. I\'m so sorry, but I do.” **“Tummy Hurts”** “This was the last song we wrote that ended up making the album. It started because I wrote down in my notes one day the sentence ‘My tummy hurts, he\'s in love with her.’ It wasn\'t really about any specific situation, which is usually where I write from. I love this almost childlike way of saying I have a stomach ache and then this really adult feeling of someone is in love with somebody else. I liked how it felt and I liked how it was worded. And it all came from there.” **“I Wish”** “I wrote this when I was living in New Jersey. I was writing with some of my friends and they had come up with a different kind of concept for the chorus and some of the lyrics. They said, ‘Oh, this is like writing a song to your childhood self.’ But for me, it\'s reading in a different way. It was more about how I remember my first taste of mortality when I realized my parents were going to die when I was 10. I remember not being able to sleep for such a long time because I was like, holy shit, my parents are not invincible. I was just so shocked by it and I was so confused. I was young and it was really jarring and I struggled with it for a long time. I think I still do. And so I just wanted to make \'I Wish\' this sort of love letter to the idea that I wish I didn\'t know about the concept of death.” **“Willow”** “‘Willow’ is two things. Frank Ocean is my favorite songwriter of all time. I didn\'t feel like I had any songs on my project that took any lyrical inspiration from him and his projects, and I really wanted there to be. I also loved willow trees as a kid. As I got older, I also thought there was something so interesting about it being called a weeping willow. I felt like I kind of had a lot of similar qualities to this tree, which sounds crazy, but I just always felt that way. I ended up framing it as my little self sitting under a willow tree talking to my current self. It was me personifying the tree as my younger self, which sounds kind of crazy, but it\'s one of my favorite songs on the whole album.” **“23”** “I think it’s the first song that Alexander and I did together. I was having full birthday panic the day before I turned 23. I was like, ‘Wow, it\'s my birthday, but I feel like all my friends hate me and I feel extremely alone.’ I thought that these feelings would be gone by now, but here I am, a young adult about to be in my Jordan year, and I still feel like shit. It’s a birthday blues kind of song. Then the outro is this hopeful message that I don\'t feel that same way when I\'m 24 next year. So the kind of annual terror that comes around your birthday, it\'s like wishing that away.”

On his Mercury Prize-winning debut album, 2017’s *Process*, Sampha Sisay often cut an isolated figure. As the Londoner’s songs contended with loss—particularly the passing of his parents—and anxieties about his health and relationships, a sense of insularity and detachment haunted his poignant, experimental electro-soul. Arriving six years later, this follow-up presents a man reestablishing and strengthening connections. Lifted by warm synths and strings, songs are energized by the busy rhythms of jungle, broken beat, and West African Wassoulou music. Images of flight dominate as Sampha zooms out from everyday preoccupations to take a bird’s-eye view of the world and his place in it as a father, a friend, a brother, a son. “I feel sometimes making an album is like a manifesto for how I should be living, or that all the answers are in what I’m saying,” he tells Apple Music. “I don’t necessarily *live* by what I’m saying but there’s times where I recognize that I need to reconnect to family and friends—times where I can really lose connection by being too busy with my own things.” So where *Process* ended with Sampha ruefully noting, “I should visit my brother/But I haven’t been there in months/I’ve lost connection, signal/To how we were” on “What Shouldn’t I Be?” *Lahai* concludes in the fireside glow of “Rose Tint,” a song celebrating the salve of good company: “I’m needy, don’t you know?/But the fam beside me/Is what I needed most.” Before then, *Lahai* examines Sampha’s sense of self and his relationships through his interests in science, time, therapy, spirituality, and philosophy. “I became more confident with being OK with what I’m interested in, and not feeling like I have to be an expert,” he says. “So even if it comes off as pretentious at times, I was more comfortable with putting things out there. That’s an important process: Even in the political sphere, a lot of people don’t speak about things because they’re worried about how people will react or that they’re not expert enough to talk on certain things. I’m into my science, my sci-fi, my philosophy. Even if I’m not an expert, I could still share my feelings and thoughts and let that become a source of dialogue that will hopefully improve my understanding of those things.” Started in 2019 and gradually brought together as Sampha negotiated the restrictions of the pandemic and the demands and joys of fatherhood, the songs, he says, present “a photograph of my mental, spiritual, physical state.” Read on for his track-by-track guide. **“Stereo Colour Cloud (Shaman’s Dream)”** “I wanted to make something that felt like animation and so the instrumentation is quite colorful. What started it off was me experimenting with new kinds of production. I was using a mechanical, MIDI-controlled acoustic piano and playing over it. Same thing with the drums—I built a robotic acoustic drummer to build these jungle breaks. So, it’s all these acoustic instruments that I programmed via MIDI, and also playing over them with humans, with myself.” **“Spirit 2.0”** “It’s a song I started in my bedroom, a song I wrote walking through parks in solitude, a song I wrote at a time I felt I needed to hear for myself. It took probably a year from start to finish for that song to come together. I had the chords and the modular synths going for a while and then eventually I wrote a melody. Then I had an idea for the drums and I recorded the drums. It was also influenced by West African folk music, Wassoulou music. I guess that isn’t maybe quite obvious to everyone, but I’ve made quite a thing of talking about it—it’s influenced the way I write rhythmically.” **“Dancing Circles”** “This also came from this kind of acoustic/MIDI jamming. I wrote this pulsing, slightly clash-y metronomic piano and wrote over and jammed over it. I put the song together with a producer called Pablo Díaz-Reixa \[Spanish artist/producer El Guincho\], who helped arrange the song. I sort of freestyled some lyrics and came up with the dancing refrain, and then had this idea of someone having a conversation with someone they hadn’t seen in a long time, and just remembering how good it is, how good it felt to dance with them.” **“Suspended”** “I feel like a lot of what I’ve written goes between this dreamlike state and me drawing on real-life scenarios. This is a song about someone who’s reminiscing again, but also feeling like they’re kind of going in and out of different time periods. I guess it was inspired by thinking about all the people, and all the women especially, in my life that I’ve been lifted up by, even though I frame it as if I’m speaking about one person. The feeling behind it is me recognizing how supported I’ve been by people, even if it’s not been always an easy or straightforward journey.” **“Satellite Business”** “This feels like the midpoint of the record. I guess in this record I was interrogating spirituality and recognizing I hadn’t really codified, or been able to put my finger on, any sort of metaphysical experience, per se—me somewhat trying to connect to life via a different view. The song is about me recognizing my own finitude and thinking about the people I’ve lost and recognizing, through becoming a father myself, that not all is done and I’m part of a journey and I can see my parents or even my brothers, my daughter. \[It’s\] about connection—to the past and to the future and to the present. Any existential crisis I was having about myself has now been offloaded to me thinking about how long I’m going to be around to see and protect and help guide someone else.” **“Jonathan L. Seagull”** “I speak a lot about flying \[on the album\] and I actually mention \[Richard Bach’s novella\] *Jonathan Livingston Seagull* in ‘Spirit 2.0.’ For me, the question was sometimes thinking about limits, the search for perfection. I don’t agree with everything in *Jonathan Livingston Seagull* as a book, it was more a bit of a memory to me \[Sampha’s brother read the story to him when he was a child\], the feeling of memory as opposed to the actual details of the book. I guess throughout the record, I talk about relationships in my own slightly zoomed-out way. I had this question in my mind, ‘Oh, how high can you actually go?’ Just thinking about limits and thinking sometimes that can be comforting and sometimes it can be scary.” **“Inclination Compass (Tenderness)”** “Birds, like butterflies, use the Earth’s magnetic field to migrate, to be able to navigate themselves to where they need to get to \[this internal compass is known as an inclination compass\]. I feel that there’s times where love can be simpler than I let it be. As you grow up, sometimes you might get into an argument with someone and you’re really stubborn, you might just need to hug it out and then everything is fine—say something nice or let something go. Anger’s a complicated emotion, and there’s lots of different thoughts and theories about how you should deal with it. For me personally, this is leaning into the fact that sometimes it’s OK to switch to a bit more of an understanding or empathetic stance—and I can sometimes tend to not do that.” **“Only”** “It’s probably the song that sticks out the most in the record in terms of the sonic aesthetic. It’s probably less impressionistic than the rest of the record. I think because of that it felt like it was something to share \[as the second single\]. Thematically as well, it just felt relevant to me in terms of trying to follow the beat of my own drum or finding a place where you’re confident in yourself—recognizing that other people are important but that I can also help myself. It’s a bit of a juxtaposition because there’s times where it feels like it’s only you who can really change yourself, but at the same time, you’re not alone.” **“Time Piece”** “Time is just an interesting concept because there’s so many different theories. And does it even exist? \[The lyrics translate as ‘Time does not exist/A time machine.’\] But we’re really tied to it, it’s such an important facet of our lives, how we measure things. It was just an interesting tie into the next song.” **“Can’t Go Back”** “I feel like there’s a lot of times I just step over my clothes instead of pick them up. I’m so preoccupied with thinking about something else or thinking about the future, there’s times where I could have actually just been a bit more present at certain moments or just, ‘It’s OK to just do simple things, doing the dishes.’ The amount \[of\] my life \[in\] which I’m just so preoccupied in my mind…Not to say that there isn’t space for that, there’s space for all of it, but this is just a reminder that there’s times where I could just take a moment out, five to 10 minutes to do something. And it can feel so difficult to spend such short periods of time without a device or without thinking about what you’re going to do tomorrow. This is just a reminder of that kind of practice.” **“Evidence”** “I think there’s times where it just feels like I have ‘sliding door’ moments or glimpses or feelings. This is hinting \[at\] that. Again, the feeling of maybe not having that metaphysical connection, but then feeling some sort of connection to the physical world, whatever that might be.” **“Wave Therapy”** “I recorded a bit of extra strings for ‘Spirit 2.0,’ which I wanted to use as an interlude after that, but then I ended up reversing the strings that \[Canadian composer and violinist\] Owen Pallett helped arrange. I called it ‘Wave Therapy’ because, for some of the record, I went out to Miami for a week to work with El Guincho and before each session, I’d go to the beach and listen to what we had done the day before and that was therapeutic.” **“What if You Hypnotise Me?” (feat. Léa Sen)** “I was having a conversation with someone about therapy and then they were like, ‘Oh, I don’t even do talking therapy, I just get hypnotized, I haven’t got time for that.’ I thought that was an interesting perspective, so I wrote a song about hypnotizing, just to get over some of these things that I’m preoccupied with. I guess it’s about being in that place, recognizing I need something. Therapy can be part of that. As I say, nothing has a 100 percent success rate. You need a bit of everything.” **“Rose Tint”** “Sometimes I get preoccupied with my own hurt, my own emotions, and sometimes connecting to love is so complicated, yet so simple. It’s easy to call someone up really and truly, but there’s all these psychological barriers that you put up and this kind of headspace you feel like you don’t have. Family and friends or just people—I feel like there’s just connection to people. You can be more supported than you think at times, because there’s times where it feels like a problem shared can feel like a problem doubled, so you can kind of keep things in. But I do think it can be the other way round.”

"When making this album, I wanted to do something that creatively pushed a button. Something that served a purpose while trying to understand both sides of the fence that it represents. The idea of a fictional character, Franklin Saint, and what his innermost thoughts could be when dealing with the fictional world he’s caught within. What makes it so intriguing is that his character and his world are mirrors of a time and EDA that really happened. The birth of one of the world’s most addictive drugs and how its ripple effect took on a life that may seemingly never die. The crack era was one of the worst chapters in black America’s story. Using the “Snowfall” series as a vehicle to delve into both sides was truly fascinating as an emcee. It’s a project that is layered beyond measure. If you’ve never seen Snowfall, you’ll think it’s a really great album, but if you’re an avid fan of Snowfall, you’ll truly feel as if Franklin, the conflicted boy genius turned millionaire and career criminal, truly did pick up a pen and pad to write his life story over a bed of beats. It was one of the most intense projects I’ve ever written. The idea of becoming a fictional character which represents actual real life events, making sure to hit every detail, be it from both the show and our real world, was a writing work out like no other. I’m honored to have been able to do so, and I’m honored that The Other Guys trusted me to step outside of a box and truly push the envelope with this. Enjoy, and remember, like they told us in the 80’s: just say no." -Skyzoo

For the last two decades, Sufjan Stevens’ music has taken on two distinct forms. On one end, you have the ornate, orchestral, and positively stuffed style that he’s excelled at since the conceptual fantasias of 2003’s star-making *Michigan*. On the other, there’s the sparse and close-to-the-bone narrative folk-pop songwriting that’s marked some of his most well-known singles and albums, first fully realized on the stark and revelatory *Seven Swans* from 2004. His 10th studio full-length, *Javelin*, represents the fullest and richest merging of those two approaches that Stevens has achieved to date. Even as it’s been billed as his first proper “songwriter’s album” since 2015’s autobiographical and devastating *Carrie & Lowell*, *Javelin* is a kaleidoscopic distillation of everything Stevens has achieved in his career so far, resulting in some of the most emotionally affecting and grandiose-sounding music he’s ever made. *Javelin* is Stevens’ first solo record of vocal-based music since 2020’s *The Ascension*, and it’s relatively straightforward compared to its predecessor’s complexity. Featuring contributions from vocalists and frequent collaborators like Nedelle Torrisi, adrienne maree brown, Hannah Cohen, and The National’s Bryce Dessner (who adds his guitar skills to the heart-bursting epic “Shit Talk”), the record certainly sounds like a full-group effort in opposition to the angsty isolation that streaked *The Ascension*. But at the heart of *Javelin* is Stevens’ vocals, the intimacy of which makes listeners feel as if they’re mere feet away from him. There’s callbacks to Stevens’ discography throughout, from the *Age of Adz*-esque digital dissolve that closes out “Genuflecting Ghost” to the rustic Flannery O’Connor evocations of “Everything That Rises,” recalling *Seven Swans*’ inspirational cues from the late fiction writer. Ultimately, though, *Javelin* finds Stevens emerging from the depressive cloud of *The Ascension* armed with pleas for peace and a distinct yearning to belong and be embraced—powerful messages delivered on high, from one of the 21st century’s most empathetic songwriters.

**100 Best Albums** In 2017, *Ctrl*—a 14-track project rife with songs about love, sex, self-doubt, and heartbreak—became one of the most influential albums in R&B. *Ctrl* was the soundtrack for many people in their twenties, highlighting the growing pains of young adulthood. SZA’s vulnerability and raw honesty, coupled with ultra-relatable lyrics full of diary-like ruminations and conversations from friend group chats, are what made her debut so impactful. Where *Ctrl* reflected SZA’s journey towards finding self-love and acceptance, her long-awaited sophomore LP *SOS* finds the St. Louis-born singer-songwriter dealing with some of the same topics of love and relationships from a more self-assured place. She ditches the uncertainties of her romantic entanglements to save herself—most of the time. On the soulful and gritty album opener “SOS,” SZA reintroduces herself and says precisely what’s on her mind after a night of crying over a lost relationship: “I talk bullshit a lot/No more fuck shit, I’m done,” she swaggers. This isn’t the only song that shows her weariness towards relationships that no longer serve her; see also “Smoking on My Ex Pack” and “Far.” She finds the confidence to know that she doesn’t need to depend on a man to find happiness on “Conceited” and “Forgiveless.” However, not every song on the project is about moving on and leaving her past relationships behind her; SZA still has a penchant for making wrong decisions that may not end well for her (“Too Late,” “F2F”) and questions her worth in some instances (“Special”). The album sketches the ebbs and flows of emotions, with strength in one moment but deep regret and sadness the next. There’s growth between her debut and sophomore album, not just lyrically but sonically as well, blending a mix of her beloved lo-fi beats and sharing space with grunge- and punk-inspired songs without any of it sounding out of place. On the Phoebe Bridgers collaboration “Ghost in the Machine,” the duo take a deeper look at the realities of stardom, looking for a bit of humanity within their day-to-day interactions. The track is not only progressive in its use of strings and acoustic guitars but haunting in its vocal performance. Throughout the journey of *SOS*, there are moments of clarity and tenderness where SZA goes through the discomfort of healing while trying to find the deeper meaning within the trials and tribulations she endures. She embraces this new level of confidence in her life, where she isn’t looking for anyone to save her from the depth of her emotions but instead is at peace with where she’s at in life.

A great deal obviously occurred in the five years between *ASTROWORLD* and *UTOPIA*, Travis Scott’s third and fourth solo studio albums, respectively. Still, looking at hip-hop and rap music specifically, few could deny the extraordinary impact his music had on a young generation of emerging artists, their radical vocal and production style choices so overtly informed by his own vision. His commercial success at least partially hinged on the futuristic, otherworldly sound and image he cultivated, with listeners tuning in just to hear what fresh level of the game he’d unlocked. Thus the collective anticipation for *UTOPIA* could not have been higher. Without fail, Scott delivers something only he could have delivered, a thoroughly riveting album that transmutes star power and experimental artistry into a marvelous musical monument. The opening boom-bap bombast of “HYAENA,” the funkadelic crunch of “MODERN JAM,” and the proggy thump of “CIRCUS MAXIMUS” are just a few examples of how he has so lavishly expanded his sonic universe with this record. He now seems to enjoy a certain austerity, as on “I KNOW ?” and “LOST FOREVER,” but remains incapable of completely escaping the maximalist thrills of his past. The deliberately concealed guest list contains quite a few stars and superstars, and shrewd listeners may enjoy trying to identify them all without a cheat sheet. Drake’s unmistakable baritone leads the shape-shifting “MELTDOWN,” while Playboi Carti unspools his magnificent mumble over the buzzy “FE!N.” But when Beyoncé arrives for “DELRESTO (ECHOES),” its muted club contents echoing her own dance music renaissance, she provides a big diva energy that luxuriates amid Scott’s cutting edge.

*Barbie The Album* was *almost* as anticipated as *Barbie* the movie—and for good reason. Executive-produced by Mark Ronson and featuring a global all-star lineup, the soundtrack is full of bangers and clever pop-cultural winks meant to capture the zeitgeist the same way the movie and its marketing machine have. It starts appropriately loud with “Pink,” a roséwave bop by Lizzo that makes you feel like Malibu Barbie driving her beach cruiser down the Pacific Coast Highway and features one of the album’s best sound bites—a cheer-style call-and-response spelling out “P, pretty! I, intelligent! N, never sad! K, cool!” Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” comes next, kicking off a stretch of songs that belongs on any summer going-out playlist: “Barbie World (With Aqua)” by Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice is a true Barbie multiverse moment, interpolating the Danish group’s 1997 global hit “Barbie Girl.” Charli XCX’s “Speed Drive” is basically “Vroom Vroom” but Barbie-fied, followed by KAROL G’s bouncing reggaetón track “WATATI” and “Man I Am,” a rousing himbo anthem by Sam Smith. But it’s not just banger after banger: Tame Impala’s trippy intergalactic disco jam “Journey to the Real World” shifts the tone, while “I’m Just Ken,” an ’80s-style power ballad sung by Ryan Gosling himself, threatens to steal the whole show here. With “Home,” HAIM provides Tauruses everywhere with their very own theme song, while Billie Eilish’s spare and surprisingly existential “What Was I Made For?” contributes a healthy measure of emotional depth. But it’s Ava Max’s empowerment anthem “Choose Your Fighter” that may best sum up the hectic but high-minded spirit of the entire project: It’s a celebration of self-expression and freedom from rigid, outdated standards of beauty and femininity. Her point is that anyone can be Barbie, and by the time the Korean girl group FIFTY FIFTY is singing about that “pretty state of mind” in the album’s finale, we are all living our own P-I-N-K Barbie dream.

Victoria Monét is known throughout the industry for her songwriting skills, the brains behind hits for Ariana Grande, BLACKPINK, Chloe x Halle, and many more. “I moved to LA to pursue artistry and just all of the things that I dreamed for myself, and life takes you in different turns, so I ended up songwriting a lot more than recording my own music,” she tells Apple Music. Although the Sacramento native spent most of her career writing, she still released music independently with her 2014 and 2018 EP series *Nightmares & Lullabies* and *Life After Love*, but it wasn’t until 2020’s *JAGUAR* that Monét came into her own as an artist of the same stature as the ones she’d worked for. Named after the fierce jungle cat—known for lurking undetected until they’re ready to pounce—the project introduced a motif that Monét created to show her transition from illustrious songwriter to full-fledged R&B star. “*JAGUAR I* and *II* are relatives, but you see, *JAGUAR II* is an older, more developed, voluptuous older sister,” she says. “I just really wanted to make it in my eyes better than *JAGUAR I*, which I feel like I’ve done.” Co-produced by longtime collaborator D’Mile, *JAGUAR II* is a seamless continuation enlisting live musicians and delving further into the psychedelic sounds of the 1970s—an era that influenced and inspired both albums. Still, Monét takes it further by guiding listeners through different soundscapes of funk, pop, R&B, and reggae while capturing the different moods she wanted to create. Instead of songs about her experiences as a new mom and being in love, Monét decided to showcase the full spectrum of emotions that women feel, whether she’s singing about her affinity for cannabis on the Lucky Daye-assisted “Smoke,” being outside on the flirty party anthem “Party Girls,” or women’s empowerment on “Cadillac (A Pimp’s Anthem).” “I\'m trying to listen to it from a fan\'s perspective, and I would think that people would be like, oh, she\'s going to talk about just being completely in love and wanting to get married and having kids, this white-picket-fence life,” she says. “And it\'s not that I feel like even making the album with my relationship, I had the freedom to discuss things that I may not feel currently, but they came up in the making of this album, even though I\'m not necessarily in that mindset right now.” On the swaggering “On My Mama,” Monét adds some Southern twang, interpolating Texas rapper Chalie Boy\'s 2009 track “I Look Good” for an infectious hook that makes it a soundtrack to positive affirmations about not just looking good but feeling good as well, while the follow-up “I\'m the One” continues that cocky persona over a pop-leaning track. Monét reflects on her stardom on the retro track “Hollywood,” which features legendary funk group Earth, Wind & Fire and her daughter Hazel. “Philip Bailey came in and did his vocals, but then Verdine came in on a different day to play the bass,” she explains. “Just knowing that I\'m inspired by them so much from the inception of *JAGUAR* to have them on it as an exclamation point for *JAGUAR II*, it just means so much.\"

A Wednesday song is a quilt. A short story collection, a half-memory, a patchwork of portraits of the American south, disparate moments that somehow make sense as a whole. Karly Hartzman, the songwriter/vocalist/guitarist at the helm of the project, is a story collector as much as she is a storyteller: a scholar of people and one-liners. Rat Saw God, the Asheville quintet’s new and best record, is ekphrastic but autobiographical and above all, deeply empathetic. Across the album’s ten tracks Hartzman, guitarist MJ Lenderman, bassist Margo Shultz, drummer Alan Miller, and lap/pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis build a shrine to minutiae. Half-funny, half-tragic dispatches from North Carolina unfurling somewhere between the wailing skuzz of Nineties shoegaze and classic country twang, that distorted lap steel and Hartzman’s voice slicing through the din. Rat Saw God is an album about riding a bike down a suburban stretch in Greensboro while listening to My Bloody Valentine for the first time on an iPod Nano, past a creek that runs through the neighborhood riddled with broken glass bottles and condoms, a front yard filled with broken and rusted car parts, a lonely and dilapidated house reclaimed by kudzu. Four Lokos and rodeo clowns and a kid who burns down a corn field. Roadside monuments, church marquees, poppers and vodka in a plastic water bottle, the shit you get away with at Jewish summer camp, strange sentimental family heirlooms at the thrift stores. The way the South hums alive all night in the summers and into fall, the sound of high school football games, the halo effect from the lights polluting the darkness. It’s not really bright enough to see in front of you, but in that stretch of inky void – somehow – you see everything. Rat Saw God was written in the months immediately following Twin Plagues’ completion, and recorded in a week at Asheville’s Drop of Sun studio. While Twin Plagues was a breakthrough release critically for Wednesday, it was also a creative and personal breakthrough for Hartzman. The lauded record charts feeling really fucked up, trauma, dropping acid. It had Hartzman thinking about the listener, about her mom hearing those songs, about how it feels to really spill your guts. And in the end, it felt okay. “I really jumped that hurdle with Twin Plagues where I was not worrying at all really about being vulnerable – I was finally comfortable with it, and I really wanna stay in that zone.” The album opener, “Hot Rotten Grass Smell,” happens in a flash: an explosive and wailing wall-of-sound dissonance that’d sound at home on any ‘90s shoegaze album, then peters out into a chirping chorus of peepers, a nighttime sound. And then into the previously-released eight-and-half-minute sprawling, heavy single, “Bull Believer.” Other tracks, like the creeping “What’s So Funny” or “Turkey Vultures,” interrogate Hartzman’s interiority - intimate portraits of coping, of helplessness. “Chosen to Deserve” is a true-blue love song complete with ripping guitar riffs, skewing classic country. “Bath County” recounts a trip Hartzman and her partner took to Dollywood, and time spent in the actual Bath County, Virginia, where she wrote the song while visiting, sitting on a front porch. And Rat Saw God closer “TV in the Gas Pump” is a proper traveling road song, written from one long ongoing iPhone note Hartzman kept while in the van, its final moments of audio a wink toward Twin Plagues. The reference-heavy stand-out “Quarry” is maybe the most obvious example of the way Hartzman seamlessly weaves together all these throughlines. It draws from imagery in Lynda Barry’s Cruddy; a collection of stories from Hartzman’s family (her dad burned down that cornfield); her current neighbors; and the West Virginia street from where her grandma lived, right next to a rock quarry, where the explosions would occasionally rock the neighborhood and everyone would just go on as normal. The songs on Rat Saw God don’t recount epics, just the everyday. They’re true, they’re real life, blurry and chaotic and strange – which is in-line with Hartzman’s own ethos: “Everyone’s story is worthy,” she says, plainly. “Literally every life story is worth writing down, because people are so fascinating.” But the thing about Rat Saw God - and about any Wednesday song, really - is you don’t necessarily even need all the references to get it, the weirdly specific elation of a song that really hits. Yeah, it’s all in the details – how fucked up you got or get, how you break a heart, how you fall in love, how you make yourself and others feel seen – but it’s mostly the way those tiny moments add up into a song or album or a person.

With A Hammer is the debut studio album by New York singer-songwriter Yaeji. “With A Hammer” was composed across a two-year period in New York, Seoul, and London, begun shortly after the release of “What We Drew” and during the lockdowns of the Coronavirus pandemic. It is a diaristic ode to self-exploration; the feeling of confronting one’s own emotions, and the transformation that is possible when we’re brave enough to do so. In this case, Yaeji examines her relationship to anger. It is a departure from her previous work, blending elements of trip-hop and rock with her familiar house-influenced style, and dealing with darker, more self-reflective lyrical themes, both in English and Korean. Yaeji also utilizes live instrumentation for the first time on this album—weaving in a patchwork ensemble of live musicians, and incorporating her own guitar playing. “With A Hammer” features electronic producers and close collaborators K Wata and Enayet, and guest vocals from London’s Loraine James and Baltimore’s Nourished by Time.

Like all great stylists, the artist born Sean Bowie has a gift for presenting sounds we know in ways we don’t. So, while the surfaces of *Praise a Lord…*, Yves Tumor’s fifth LP, might remind you of late-’90s and early-2000s electro-rock, the album’s twisting song structures and restless detail (the background panting of “God Is a Circle,” the industrial hip-hop of “Purified by the Fire,” and the houselike tilt of “Echolalia”) offer almost perpetual novelty all while staying comfortably inside the constraints of three-minute pop. Were the music more challenging, you’d call it subversive, and in the context of Bowie as a gender-nonconforming Black artist playing with white, glam-rock tropes, it is. But the real subversion is that they deliver you their weird art and it feels like pleasure.

Zach Bryan has very quickly achieved Ubiquitous Pop-Mythology Origin Story status. The Oklahoma singer-songwriter’s trajectory, from Navy cadet with a preternatural talent for storytelling and a YouTube following to honorable dischargee with a massive grassroots following to, now, major-label superstar selling out 100 or so arenas a year, was both dizzyingly fast and seemingly preordained. His self-titled follow-up to 2022’s triple-LP Warners debut *American Heartbreak* doesn’t necessarily advance Bryan’s story or status so much as cement it, moving past the introduction phase into something more permanent and more meaningful. One way or another, Zach Bryan—and *Zach Bryan*—is going to be with us for a while. The album—a lean 16 tracks compared to *Heartbreak*’s 34—begins with a double-barrel mission statement. The first is the spoken-word opening track, “Fear and Friday’s (Poem),” which distills Bryan’s everyman charm and philosophy into a benediction (“I think fear and Fridays got an awful lot in common/They are overdone and glorified and always leave you wanting”). This is followed immediately by a Hendrixesque “Star-Spangled Banner” guitar lick and the shout-along bravado of “Overtime,” complete with horn section and empowered nods to his aforementioned mythology: “They said I\'s a wannabe cowboy from a cutthroat town/With tattooed skin and nobody around/Your songs sound the same, you\'ll never make a name for yourself.” Bryan’s three-year whirlwind of making a name for himself has only sharpened his eye for detail—the songs only sound the same in that they all share this quality. A slick turn of phrase like “If you need a tourniquet or if you want to turn and quit/Know that I\'ll be by your side” is delivered like someone who knows what he\'s doing. The songs comfortably inhabit traditional country, Americana, and, on relative barn burners like the veteran’s tale “East Side of Sorrow” and “Jake’s Piano - Long Island,” at least one boot in Springsteen-anthem story-song terrain. And at a moment when country music, possibly more than any other genre, is roiled by reactionary entrenchment in the face of long-overdue advancement, Bryan has managed to stake himself to the center without alienating anyone or, chiefly, himself. He preaches love and tolerance and sings about hard drinking and ’88 Fords, and they don’t sound like opposing energies, because why should they? He goes toe-to-toe with Nashville-outsider kindred spirit Kacey Musgraves on “I Remember Everything,” and even the most intimate songs, like the solo acoustic closer “Oklahoman Son,” sound built for the back row, which gets further away each tour leg. The sum of these parts is nothing less than a confident, headstrong star turn from someone who seems a little ambivalent about stardom, at least on any terms other than his own.