*A note from the artists:* \$$$4U 74 PERSONAL MINUTES BY PARTYNEXTDOOR & DRAKE FOR THE CITY OF TORONTO FOR CANADA AND FOR THE WORLD THAT HAS TUNED IN TO THIS SOUND OF OURS FROM TIME OVO OMO FERINA “Maybe it was karma that caused a reversal in my luck and family fortunes” — You most likely in the near future
On their sixth studio album, mystical Norwegian folk troupe Wardruna conjure a song cycle about the she-bear, or Birna. “Bears are an absolutely fascinating species, and it’s easy to understand why they have become such an important part of folklore in certain types of culture—in fairy tales, in lullabies, and in star signs,” Wardruna’s songwriter, co-vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Einar Selvik tells Apple Music. “Why I chose the she-bear rather than the male bear is the fact that their annual rhythm mirrors completely the rhythm of Mother Earth in a way—the cyclic turns of life, death, and regeneration. That’s the story I wanted to tell on this record.” Since 2003, Selvik and his musical partner and co-vocalist Lindy-Fay Hella—along with an ever-expanding cast of backing musicians—have used Old Norse language and ancient traditional instruments to channel the majesty of the natural world. “Giving voice to the wild, I think, is important,” Selvik says. “I think a lot of us feel a deeper and deeper void between us and our surroundings. To be living so removed from nature, from the cycles of the Earth, is not healthy. But our society doesn’t really allow us to follow the rhythm of the seasons. We tend to have one tempo year-round; we eat everything year-round, neglecting the fact that we are cyclic beings. That’s one of the things bears can teach us. And not only bears, but nature: They help us remember that we’re part of something.” Below, Selvik discusses each song on *Birna*. **“Hertan”** “Hertan is the proto-Scandinavian word for ‘heart,’ and that is where we start this journey—with the pulse that beats in everything and that governs all of these movements within ourselves, and also in nature in various forms and beings. That’s, of course, the physical heart, but then you also have the metaphorical heart, the ship of emotion. That is what counsels our decisions and choices here in life and our emotions. It takes us through one of these cycles of death and rebirth. In enduring that process, we understand it and see it clearly, these movements and patterns and our place in them.” **“Birna”** “The word means ‘she-bear.’ It is a track that represents a dialogue between man and she-bear. It’s written in a playful way, like many of the old bear songs from traditions where there are a lot of bears in their culture. It addresses the somewhat problematic relationship we have had with bears throughout time. It acknowledges that our path together has been a tangled one. And then, the she-bear asks to lend its hide, which is something that has been used ceremonially or in many traditions to borrow the bear’s strength, to borrow its courage or whatever skill. It is said that bears have the strength of 12 men and the wits of 10, and that is often the skills we wanted to learn from them.” **“Ljos til Jord”** “Here, we start at the summer solstice, and we follow the bear’s movement towards the den. We see the birds migrate, we see the salmon swim upstream in the river to spawn where they were born and then die. All of these movements we see in nature. It is written in the lyrics that it’s almost like every year we’re invited to this wonderful, luscious feast, but at some point, the hostess of the party leaves, and we’re left to gather what we can to survive until she returns in spring.” **“Dvaledraumar”** “It means ‘Dormant Dreams,’ and this, of course, is the hibernation. The bear doesn’t really hibernate, per definition—it goes into a semi-hibernating state where it lowers its heart rate to between eight and 10 beats per minute. I chose nine beats per minute for conceptual reasons, and that is the pulse that leads you through this 15-minute dreamscape. The sounds you hear—they’re almost whalelike—they come from a lake that freezes in a very specific way in wintertime. We were lucky to have Jonna Jinton, the Swedish artist who has been recording these singing ice lakes for several years now, collaborating on this song with both the field recordings and some vocals toward the end.” **“Jord til Ljos”** “This was made as one track with ‘Dvaledraumar,’ and the title means ‘Earth to Light’ or ‘Womb to Light.’ It follows the same pulse as ‘Dvaledraumar,’ with the same instrumentation in a way, but it subtly transforms as the den is becoming smaller and smaller, and the birds are singing. It’s time to wake up and enter spring, to enter the life cycle of the year.” **“Himinndotter”** “This is the emergence of spring, but also coming into light, or enlightenment. You have journeyed together with this bear through this cycle. It’s a song very much about seeing these movements and cyclic patterns that we are a part of and realizing the repercussions of messing with these systems. It’s a lot about seeking connection, but also acknowledging that at this point, the shepherd of the forest—in this case, the bear—is no longer welcome in its homelands. The choir you hear is an all-female choir from Oslo, the Koret Artemis. They work a lot with traditional music from all over the world. I wanted it to feel like we’re in unison, that we are many people who think and feel the importance of this.” **“Hibjørnen”** “It means ‘The Den Bear,’ or ‘The Hibernator.’ It’s written as a lullaby because lullabies are very much connected to bears. Wherever there are bears, you have a lot of lullabies about bears because of their sleep. And the way they mother their cubs is so powerful. It’s the reason why we call some mothers ‘mother bear’ or ‘mama bear.’ Bears are badass moms. They give it all. So, it’s a lullaby from the bear’s perspective within the den.” **“Skuggehesten”** “It means ‘Shadow Horse,’ and we’re in the human realm again, not the bear realm. It’s basically a long set of metaphors and descriptions of when you’re in a dark place or when darkness rides you. It’s pretty aggressive in a way. At the same time, it’s emotional. It’s the type of song I really recommend you have a look at the lyrics. It, of course, is best if you know the original language because it’s not as poetic in the translation, but we always include English translations in our booklets.” **“Tretale”** “It means ‘The Voice of Trees.’ It’s basically a song about how your surroundings speak to you—or through you, potentially—if you listen. It’s the type of voice that whispers silently in your ear. You can’t necessarily hear it externally, but it speaks through you from within. A lot of the sounds you hear in the song, it’s me out in the forest shaking big and small trees, scraping on the bark of many different trees and twigs and all sorts of things—and the wind in many different types of leaves. So, the soundscape is very much trees. Trees and instruments, of course.” **“Lyfjaberg”** “It means ‘The Healing Mountain,’ and this song came out a few years ago. It was made after the last album was finished, but as a result of us having to postpone the record \[due to the COVID-19 pandemic\], that is why we released the song \[in 2020\]. We really wanted to release music, and a lot of people were waiting. We know Lyfjaberg from the old myths and the old Eddic poetry as a mythical place where, if you were able to climb this mountain, you would be healed of all your illnesses. So, the song contains incantations and ancient healing spells. And climbing a mountain is a very good metaphor also for fighting difficult things in your life. The core of it is that anything of true value comes at a true cost. You won’t reach the top of the mountain without walking uphill.”
Since their debut in 2021, K-pop group IVE has been known for their robust choruses, gratifying harmonies, and messages of self-love. *IVE EMPATHY*, the fourth-generation girl group’s third mini-album after 2023’s *I’ve Mine* and 2024’s *IVE SWITCH*, continues the sextet’s pursuit of those qualities. The album takes its title as a broad theme, exploring the quality of “empathy” (defined here as emotional connection) across six pop tracks. In “REBEL HEART,” the group offers a sense of comfort and celebratory restlessness. Member Wonyoung contributed to the writing of the album’s second lead single, “ATTITUDE,” which doubles down on *IVE EMPATHY*’s theme of defiant self-love: “No matter what anyone says/Honestly, I like me.” Suzanne Vega is also credited on the track, as it samples the addictive hook originally from 1981’s “Tom’s Diner.” Metaphors abound: “FLU” boldly compares a toxic attraction to a virus, while “TKO,” a hip-hop-infused track, leans into boxing (“Float like a butterfly sting like a bee,” “’Cause I’m a TKO”) to boast about the members’ knockout power. “Thank U” (which includes songwriting contributions from member Liz) and “You Wanna Cry” offer album listeners more restrained bops.
On *Sleepless Empire*, Italian goth-metal stars Lacuna Coil examine the pervasive difficulty of balancing real life with an increasingly online world. “It can sound like a critique of society, but it’s more of an analysis because we are also doing this,” co-vocalist Andrea Ferro tells Apple Music. “We use social media a lot, and it’s not something we can avoid. But we’re old enough to have the experience of living life before the internet. We kind of have a balance in our life between what we know we can put on the internet and what we just want to enjoy with our friends and family.” *Sleepless Empire* is Lacuna Coil’s first album of all-new material since 2019’s *Black Anima*. During the pandemic, they worked remotely on a new version of their 2002 breakout album, *Comalies*, which was released in 2022 as *Comalies XX*. Ferro and his bandmates—co-vocalist Cristina Scabbia, multi-instrumentalist Marco Coti Zelati, and drummer Richard Meiz—view quarantine as one of the accelerants of the always-online lifestyle. “Once we were free to go out again, some people went back to their normal life, and a lot of other people got stuck in this situation, living online and being on Twitch all the time or something,” Ferro says. “So, the album is more of a reflection that we can’t avoid, but we’re also not prisoners. We are stuck in a loop, and it’s so hard to slow down, but it can be done. I just wish we could handle all of it in a more reasonable way.” Below, he discusses each track on *Sleepless Empire*. **“The Siege”** “It’s a song that starts quite aggressively, to show the fact that we feel under this siege in our society nowadays. But it’s also about growing your own existence in sort of a figurative battle and walking between all these stages of your life, surviving and trying to make your best way out of it. We need to learn and resist, and even if we fall, we have to get back up. So, it’s basically about all of us. It’s about how we have to face life with all the difficulties that we might encounter, especially in this very weird-shaped society that we are living in.” **“Oxygen”** “It’s quite an intense song. It’s very aggressive, but also very melodic at the same time. It’s about finding balance, in a way. This can be in a relationship, but also within yourself. The way we write the songs, it usually starts from some real feelings that we experience, but then we try to write it in a way that everybody can sort of find their own interpretation. It doesn’t have to be our reason—it can be your own. So, ‘Oxygen’ can be about a relationship, or it can be about survival in general, fighting your way out of what surrounds you, basically.” **“Scarecrow”** “This one starts with some intricate layers, but then it also portrays an abstract image that represents how we feel in the middle of a lot of people. Sometimes, even between a lot of people, you can kind of still feel alone. It’s important that you accept yourself even in the weirdness, even in the not feeling all right, even if you have a different condition than other people. Sometimes, coming from an alternative environment, we create our own point of view, our own way of living, and we embrace a lot of different people who feel isolated from what’s considered the norm.” **“Gravity”** “It’s a song that features a constant switch between, as we way, abrasion and allure—something that is rough but also very delicate at the same time. It’s probably one of the most gothic songs on the album. Many people who have heard it say that it kind of portrays all the eras of Lacuna Coil in one song. It captures some vibes from the past, some vibes from the current sound of the band—and for us, it also opens a new pathway. It’s a dark song with the dark meaning of not being focused anymore, but in the end, there is also a little bit of hope.” **“I Wish You Were Dead”** “It\'s a more melodic song, maybe the most accessible song on the record. We wanted to twist it a little bit with the lyrics, although they do have an ironic overtone. We always start from personal feelings, but we don’t wish that anybody was dead. Surely, we all have this person that we wish was not in our life anymore somehow—or even never existed. We’re shooting a video that will have some special features that apply to the title, but also to the release date of Valentine’s Day.” **“Hosting the Shadow” (feat. Randy Blythe)** “This is the first record where we used a guest vocalist. We had some guests on a previous record, but on lead guitars mostly. This time, we wanted to try and get a couple of songs with guest vocalists, but not too many because we obviously have already two vocalists in the band. It was great to work with Randy because we’ve known him since Ozzfest 2004. He’s a big fan of Lacuna Coil, as much as we are fans of Lamb of God. He’s also a friend, so it was a natural choice to ask him. We sent him the song, and he came back super enthusiastic. He put some of his own arrangement into it, and it was just great to have him. It’s a celebration of our friendship.” **“In Nomine Patris”** “We had this title ready that we wanted to use, but we weren’t sure how in the beginning. Then we thought about what it means, and that it’s also the beginning of a prayer as well—‘In the name of the father’—so that gave us the connection. We lose ourselves sometimes in the name of something that seems bigger than us, but we don’t have a clear reason why. It’s in our blood, in our culture, in the way we’ve been raised sometimes. We personally are not very religious, but we do respect faith. We know something higher exists because we’re just a tiny bit of this universe.” **“Sleepless Empire”** “We are living in this generation that is losing the capability of elaborating thoughts because we are bombed with so much information—so many inputs, so many TV shows, music, video games. Everything is in abundance, and we are always connected. But in the end, we become like zombies. We’re always in front of the phone and depending on it, waiting for the next thing to come out. Sometimes we forget to go out into real life and just hang out with our friends or have a drink with dear people and spend time with them. We need to find this balance.” **“Sleep Paralysis”** “This is coming from a personal experience of real sleep paralysis that Cristina had, but in the song, we play with that idea a little bit. When you have sleep paralysis, you are scared because you’re awake, but you can’t control your body. Sometimes, we feel we need to regain control a little bit of our lives. There’s a lot of pressure from the outside because everybody on social media shows their best life. They never show their weaknesses or their low moments. And so, there is pressure to be as good as this, especially if you are very young and don’t have experience in life. You don’t have to let these things drive your life and decide the speed of how you want to live.” **“In the Mean Time” (feat. Ash Costello)** “We were looking for more of a rock voice, not a super clean or operatic voice, for this song because it goes into more of a rock dimension. We considered a couple of people, but Ash was the main person who came to mind. We never met her in person, but we’re labelmates, so we kind of know her. We asked her if she would join us for the song, and she got excited and sent her part right away. To our ears, her vocal arrangement is more American sounding, and we are really happy with the result. The chorus transports you from a claustrophobic moment to a feeling of hope, especially in the part that Ash sings.” **“Never Dawn”,/b> “We are big nerds, and we always play board games, video games, and read comic books. This is a song that we’ve done for a collaboration with a board game called Zombicide. They had this new edition of the game coming out called White Death, and they asked us to write a song to be used in the trailer on YouTube and in all the promo. It was actually much easier than working on one of our regular songs because we already had the theme and a very clear vision for the lyrics and for the aggressiveness of the music. They even made a comic book that we gave away at Comic Con to explain how the band gets dragged into the fantasy world of the game.”**
After three Years & Years albums, *Polari* is Olly Alexander’s first release under his own name. “I’m still trying to convince people I’m a brand-new artist, like, ‘Surprise!’” he tells Apple Music. “It’s quite nerve-wracking, because it’s a slightly different feeling to having a Years & Years album out. I’m so excited—I felt like I couldn’t have done this album without the experience of making music for more than 10 years.” Danny L Harle, who’s also worked with Charli xcx, Nile Rodgers, and Rina Sawayama, handled production duties—and he and Olly pulled in their favorite influences from the 1980s for the 13 tracks. “I was taking so much inspiration from that era, with Stock Aitken Waterman, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Janet Jackson, and George Michael,” says Alexander. “It’s a fascinating era for music. I think that’s partly due to how it was being created, using technology for the first time. There’s a real simplicity to the complexities, where it feels exciting and elements are too loud or are sticking out in places. So I wanted to tap into that feeling in the music, but give it my own spin.” *Polari* takes its name from a form of slang with a rich history. “It’s made up of lots of different dialects and it became quite popular among some gay men as a way for them to communicate in secret, in the days when homosexuality was criminalized. It came up in discussion when we were in the studio and suddenly this lightbulb went off in my head. ‘Polari’ seemed to encapsulate so much of what I was trying to get at with this album. I love how it sounds magical, like Polaris—it’s in the night sky like a star. Because of everywhere I was taking inspiration from, it felt like the right word to contain all of this stuff that I was trying to make.” Read on, as Alexander takes Apple Music through 10 key tracks from *Polari.* **“Polari”** “I wanted to surprise people with the opening track, which acts as an introduction to kick-start this journey into *Polari*. It’s bold and unlike any other song I’ve ever put out. We’d made about eight or nine songs by this point and then Danny pulled together bits he’d been working on from different songs and put in a few synth ideas that he’d had. We thought ‘Polari’ felt like the album title, but we’d wondered if it should be a song. There are only a few lyrics, but it’s ‘Say what you’ve got to say/Tell me something/Talk to me/Polari.’ I wrote that because, after Eurovision \[Alexander represented the UK in the 2024 contest\], I felt like everyone had an opinion about me, so I was like, ‘Go on. I’m welcoming your opinion. Say what you have to say, talk to me.’” **“Cupid’s Bow”** “I’ve always been inspired by desire and the ways in which we search for intimacy with other people. I’d been pulling from different, quite random places for inspiration, and Greek mythology kept coming up. There’s a lot on the album about fate and whether you’re destined to love someone and that was in my mind because of my own relationship. ‘Cupid’s Bow’ was about that moment just as you meet someone and you think they’re the one and it’s love at first sight—and how powerful that first shot of the arrow can be. It’s propulsive and it switches between major and minor, so it gives you this slinky, ambiguous feeling that emulates the tension when you first meet someone.” **“I Know”** “‘I Know’ came quite late in the process. I felt I’ve grown up with people telling me they knew my sexuality before even I did. And even that phrase ‘I know what you are’ means you get reduced to a thing, so I wanted a song that would take some power back. It references hidden codes, so the first verse has ‘What’s in your pocket, hanging out?’ which could refer to hanky code. The song is about someone coming to terms with their sexuality and how it feels so amazing when you finally accept yourself. But it was important for it to feel playful rather than heavy-handed.” **“Shadow of Love”** “The first half of the album is very much about the chase, the push and pull, the yearnings and the confusion that come with love. ‘Shadow of Love’ encapsulates that. In a way, I’ve been trying to write the same song for 10 years. It’s about the pain and all the conflicts and paradoxes you have when you love someone. And then what those feelings make you think you deserve. It’s about someone—and I’ve been this person—who goes on a night out and just wants to meet someone, but doesn’t care who it is. It’s that desperation, when you get to a point where you think that’s all you deserve.” **“Make Me a Man”** “I had a lot of fun with ‘Make Me a Man.’ It’s a Vince Clarke \[Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure\] production. We emailed him asking if he’d like to work on something, and he sent a track over and it was almost exactly how it ended up on the record. He was in New York, so we couldn’t meet up in person. I wrote it from the perspective of Adam in the Garden of Eden, asking God to provide a man for him to fall in love with. It’s such fun because you’ve got so many puns and double entendres. I was scared, thinking, ‘Can I even do this?’ but it’s one of those songs that just wrote itself.” **“Dizzy”** “I had to slightly reclaim ‘Dizzy’ from Eurovision, but I love it so much and I always intended it to be on the album. The word ‘Dizzy’ was actually part of Polari—people used to say it to mean ‘scatterbrained’ and the song’s part of this journey with these ’80s grooves and different flavors. And so I just had to keep it on there, even though it was a moment of like, ‘Oh, should I maybe take it off?’ For me, it feels like quite a good mid-album song.” **“Archangel”** “I wanted ‘Archangel’ to sound very optimistic, because I think sometimes we can be too concerned with not showing too much emotion or being too cynical. This whole album is about not hiding and being honest about even those corny feelings. It’s got a simple hook: ‘You can do whatever whenever you want ’cause everything’s yours tonight.’ That’s like a mantra for myself and for whoever’s listening. This song makes me cry when I listen to it. A lot of the album is about searching for love and returning to it, because I got back together with my partner, who I dated 10 years ago. I’m madly in love with him, but also our relationship’s been on such a journey. I can plot all these highs and lows and write songs about those feelings, but I like to imagine it slightly more dramatically, of course.” **“Miss You so Much”** “I think this song is quite Stock Aitken Waterman-style with a big, pop melody. We replaced the synth a few times and I was like, ‘This needs to be more in your face, more annoying.’ It’s pulling in a lot of different references. Me and Danny wanted to write the most joyful-sounding sad song ever, about someone that’s with you but isn’t really there anymore. Something’s gone wrong in the relationship and you’re still together, so it’s that feeling of when you’re with someone, but still feeling so incredibly lonely. So to make that into this positive-sounding song was the challenge.” **“When We Kiss”** “‘When We Kiss’ is the most in-your-face club song on the album. It’s a real crescendo. There’s been a lot of searching, the chase, and then maybe by ‘Archangel’ the two people have met and something good has happened, but then it feels like it’s gone back to longing and yearning again. I wanted this song to feel like the climax of all those emotions. And I guess that’s a theme on a lot of the songs: the opposing forces at play when you’re at that moment in relationship where you don’t know if you’re going to stay together or break up, but you love the other person so much. It’s a song that seems to resonate with people. I don’t know why, maybe they like it when I’m singing about pain.” **“Whisper in the Waves”** “The album is full-on up to this point so, by ‘Whisper in the Waves,’ we’re taking a breath. I always have to have a song like this on a record—on \[2022 Years & Years album\] *Night Call* it would have been ‘Strange and Unusual.’ The inspiration for this song is so random. It’s a Greek myth about Calypso who was banished to an island and traps Odysseus there. She falls in love with him and he’s there for seven years, but she tries to keep him there forever, before he eventually leaves. I love songs with themes about water—I’m so inspired by it. We asked Seal to be on it, but he said no.”
It’s fitting that The Lumineers would release a new album on Valentine’s Day 2025. The longtime roots-pop favorites have no shortage of heartstring-tugging love and heartbreak songs in their catalog, adding more with this fifth studio album and follow-up to 2022’s *Brightside*. As they did with that record, The Lumineers tapped David Baron and Simone Felice to co-produce *Automatic*, with the band notching their first co-production credit while recording the album at Woodstock, New York’s Utopia Studios over the course of a month. Where earlier Lumineers records focused more squarely on relationships and heartbreak, *Automatic* zooms out to take stock of the collateral damage wrought by the ills of the day, like persistent anxiety on the deceptively warm and loping “Ativan” and the “black sedan of depression” referenced on the urgent and bracing opening track, “Same Old Song.” “Better Day” feels like a plainly rendered thesis statement, as singer/guitarist Wesley Schultz offers a laundry list of modern problems, like “senators \[making\] insider trades” and protests marred by “rubber bullets, pepper spray.” Other highlights on the album include “Plasticine,” on which Schultz subtly channels a grungier side of his vocal while lamenting artistic phoniness, and the aching “Keys on the Table,” which grapples with a loss of faith in oneself. And as for that canon of songs of love and love lost, “Asshole” is a lovely if biting addition, as Schultz squares up against his own foibles while acknowledging we all have our own dark shadows.
After several years building a following on YouTube with his inventive cover songs (as well as a viral *America’s Got Talent* appearance alongside Journey’s Neal Schon), Georgia-hailing singer-songwriter Teddy Swims burst onto the global pop scene in 2023 with *I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 1)*, which featured the chart-topping single “Lose Control” and showcased his innovative blend of country’s open-hearted melodicism and the soulful textures of vintage R&B. The sequel to that record finds Swims diving headlong into the latter genre more than ever before, with a few guests to accentuate his loverboy stylings; GIVĒON lends his impressive lower range to the slow jam “Are You Even Real,” while Coco Jones and GloRilla make for perfect foils on the swaggering, low-slung “She Got It?” But as with its predecessor, *ITEBT (Part 2)* is above all a testament to Swims’ adventurousness; single “Bad Dreams” combines modern-production touches with a retro-rock sound favored by contemporaries like Black Pumas and Leon Bridges, while the sweeping chorus of “Guilty” finds Swims tipping a cowboy hat towards his recent work with artists like Thomas Rhett and Luke Bryan. Swims’ wide-ranging approach continues to ensure that there’s something for everyone in his music, even as he retains his sense of self throughout.
While searching for a title for her second album, Mallrat kept coming back to a line in the song “Pavement”: “light hit my face like a straight right.” “I chose it because I noticed there were a lot of lyrics about light in the album, or using light as a metaphor or simile,” the Brisbane artist born Grace Shaw tells Apple Music about the project, which was recorded largely between Melbourne and Los Angeles. “So I thought it would make sense to have something related to that as the title. And it was my favorite lyric, because in boxing, a straight right is like a power punch. So,” she laughs, “*Light hit my face like a straight right* is just honestly really clever.” Given the album’s textured, minimalist electronic approach, it’s no surprise she lists Buddy Ross (with whom she worked on “Pavement”) as a production influence. Shaw also singles out SOPHIE and Hudson Mohawke, praising their minimal yet colorful and bold sounds, characteristics that resonate through songs such as “Hocus Pocus” and “Hideaway.” Perhaps less predictable is the influence of British shoegazers my bloody valentine on the doom rock of “The Worst Thing I Would Ever Do”; also surprising is the impact of country artists from the ’60s and ’70s, with Shaw pointing to Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” as a favorite. “The things about that style of music I try to emulate are the warmth and beautiful lyrics,” she explains. “Especially all the warm textures.” Here, Shaw takes Apple Music through *Light hit my face like a straight right*, track by track. **“My Darling, My Angel”** “It’s about feeling love, but not necessarily for other people. In the last section of the song, the lyrics are, ‘Felt that I was fleshless/Anchored by my necklace/Now my eyes are sparkling/Thinking ’bout my darling.’ To me, the song is more about feeling alive and like a zest for life.” **“Pavement”** “I wrote the first seed of the idea when I was walking home in the rain with my friends. The line ‘Oh, the light on the rain, on the pavement’ was sitting in my phone for a little bit. I wrote the verses and the hum melody with Buddy Ross, and then I left certain sections blank because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I kept hearing this Cub Sport lyric \[from the song ‘Beg U’\] in that pre-chorus section. They’re my best friends, so I got the a cappella and I arranged it. Then I also brought in this DJ Zirk sample \[‘Born 2 Lose’\] as the other hook, and it worked so perfectly.” **“Something for Somebody”** “This is my one of my proudest songs, from a lyrical perspective especially. I wrote most of the song on the first day in the studio, and I kept rewriting it because I had this idea and I wanted to execute it as well as possible. The song is about pretending to have moved on, in quite a not nice and almost creepy way. I was really excited to disguise that in such pretty melodies. If you didn’t listen to the words you’d be like, ‘Oh, this is a lovely song.’ Listening to the lyrics you’re like, ‘She needs to seek fucking help.’” **“Virtue”** “Casey MQ works on this song, and also the interludes ‘Love Songs / Heart Strings’ and ‘The Light Streams in and Hits My Face.’ He showed me this Finnish a cappella group, Rajaton, and I was like, ‘Oh my God. I would love to sample this.’ And he goes, ‘I already kind of did, let’s rework it.’ The lines ‘Sweet is the touch of your newborn wings/We fly in circles and play with the sun,’ that’s from the Rajaton song ‘Butterfly.’ It’s from the perspective of a butterfly. And butterflies only live a day or two. So all of the lyrics of that song follow a butterfly being born, or emerging from a chrysalis throughout the day, then what happens as night begins.” **“Defibrillator”** “‘Defibrillator’ is my favorite word, and I have been wanting to use it in a song for the longest time. I started this one with Lonelyspeck, a producer from Adelaide. The first bit that really made sense was, ‘Oh defibrillator/Had to try to hate ya,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll build \[on that\].’ It all started because I wanted to use the word ‘defibrillator.’” **“The Light Streams in and Hits My Face”** “Casey and I composed this song so that it would perfectly flow in to ‘Hocus Pocus.’ It’s exactly half the BPM of ‘Hocus Pocus,’ and it’s in the same key. Then the last lyric of this song sets up the first lyric of ‘Hocus Pocus.’ It’s designed to introduce it.” **“Hocus Pocus” (with Kito)** “This song changed a lot from the day I started it. It was originally this really bouncy thing, like bouncy piano chords. I remember writing the lyric ‘I can’t help but notice/You’ve been falling for hocus pocus’ and laughing out loud, and then saying to Leroy \[Clampitt, co-producer\], ‘I’ve just written this lyric and it’s so silly, I wonder if I should change it.’ He laughed and said, ‘No, it’s good, because karaoke songs have silly lyrics.’ So maybe this will be a karaoke song one day. I kept working on it with Kito, and then brought it back to Australia and worked on it more with Styalz \[Fuego\]. It was just a case of slowly chipping away at it.” **“Hideaway”** “I started this with Japanese Wallpaper, who is one of my best friends. I love Two Shell, they make really fast, bright dance music. I wanted to make something that was in a similar world and at a similar pace. It’s about having a massive crush on someone.” **“Love Songs / Heart Strings”** “This samples ‘The Light Streams in and Hits My Face.’ And also, this ties together ‘Hideaway’ and ‘Ray of Light.’ So it starts at the same BPM as ‘Hideaway,’ then, when the kind of siren sounds happen at the end, the BPM slows down to be the same BPM as ‘Ray of Light.’ It’s another case of wanting to make an interlude and tie in some ideas that I think are interesting.” **“Ray of Light”** “My favorite lyric in this song is in the second verse: ‘Look outside, the day begins/A golden orb above me spins/A pair of wings catch in the silk/Invisible threads hold her still.’ I really like it, because a golden orb sounds like the sun, and it is about the sun, but I was thinking about a golden orb spider, which is a really common spider in Queensland. I was imagining a butterfly or a moth getting stuck in the web, and really feeling like that butterfly or moth. \[With the line\] ‘I’m a moth and there’s a glow around you, babe,’ it’s just feeling so stuck or enchanted by a situation and not sure how to possibly unstick yourself.” **“The Worst Thing I Would Ever Do”** “Part of the reason this song exists is because I’d never properly listened to my bloody valentine. But then when Buddy Ross and I were working on ‘Pavement,’ he showed me the *Loveless* album and I was like, ‘Oh, this is so cool.’ So that’s one of the things that kind of made this song happen. To me, this song feels like the end of the world. Like in a movie or something. It’s like the world is about to end, and they’re either gonna save it or they’re not, but they’re just accepting that it’s out of their hands.” **“Horses”** “The main reason I wanted it to be the end of the album is because at the end you hear Annika \[Schmarsel\], who I made the song with, take her foot off the pedal of the piano. And because you can hear that pedal sound, that’s what made it feel like the end.”