What’s a girl gonna do after the record-smashing Eras Tour? Well, its success sparked the flame inside Taylor Swift that led to a reunion with former collaborators Max Martin and Shellback for her 12th full-length *The Life of a Showgirl*. Indeed, in a very showgirl manner, Swift flew back and forth to Sweden between stops on her European leg—remember, the singer-songwriter believes “jet lag is a choice”—to join Martin and Shellback, Swift’s co-writers and producers on some of the most memorable and popular hits of her career (“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “22,” “Shake It Off,” “Blank Space,” “Don’t Blame Me,” and “Delicate,” to name a few). The result? A confident, dazzling, at times elegant, at times cheeky, at times sensual pop explosion that examines Swift’s relationships and her fame, which is both deeply personal yet extremely relatable...mostly. (The struggles of “Elizabeth Taylor”—with its thumping rock vibes—can understandably be reserved for the uber-famous showgirls in the room.) “This album, by personality, was a funnier album,” she tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “It was coming off of *TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT*—the character attributes I was highlighting in that writing process were much more serious and sensitive and introspective, and oftentimes more earnest and stoic, and the characteristics of a poet. This one was like, showgirls are mischievous, fun, scandalous, sexy, fun, flirty, hilarious.” On the album’s first single “The Fate of Ophelia,” Swift tests that theory by dipping back into the Shakespearean well that earned her crossover success and adoring fans, and once again, she turns the Bard’s tale into a romance rather than a tragedy. But this time, it’s more mature and fierce—as the acceptant heroine resigns herself to solitude before the hero ever comes around: “I swore my loyalty to me, myself, and I/Right before you lit my sky up.” Her muses, of course, will be well-dissected. The aforementioned savior in “Ophelia” is most likely Swift’s husband-to-be, the three-time Super Bowl champion Travis Kelce. (She did, after all, announce the album on his podcast.) And he *probably* has a few more cuts dedicated to him—the most direct being the saucy, ’70s-funk-infused “Wood” and its “new heights of manhood” revelation. “When I met Travis, I started to feel a little bit like I could be like a person who could have romantic whims and have these dreams,” she says. “Actually Romantic,” with its semi-stripped-down production, deals not with a lover but with a certain hater. “You think I’m tacky, baby/Stop talking dirty to me/It sounded nasty but it feels like you’re flirting with me/I mind my business, God’s my witness that I don’t provoke it/It’s kind of making me wet,” Swift teases. And “Father Figure” pays homage to George Michael with Swift’s breathy vocals, ending with a menacing act of betrayal by a protégé: “You made a deal with this devil/Turns out my dick’s bigger/You want a fight, you found it/I got the place surrounded.” Importantly, though, remove Swift’s own personal inspirations and score-settling and you get what she does best: vibrant songs that speak to universal emotions through her storytelling. The buoyant “Opalite” shows two people finding each other at the right time; baroque-pop “Wi$h Li$t” portrays someone who knows what her heart desires. And “Eldest Daughter,” the famous track 5—generally one of Swift’s most vulnerable on each of her albums—reveals a promise of devotion. Swift ends the record on its title track, an epic duet with Sabrina Carpenter where the women volley back and forth about a girl named Kitty, perhaps alluding to their own places in the world. “And all the headshots on the walls of the dance hall are of the bitches who wish I’d hurry up and die/But I’m immortal now, baby dolls, I couldn’t if I tried,” Swift sings proudly. In other words, as she’s proven time and time again, she’ll never go out of style. “Making this was really something I’ve been wanting to do for my entire career, because I have always wanted to have fun in this type of way,” she says. “To have fun, to exhibit mischief and be flirty and fun and make jokes—that’s a huge part of my personality. Oftentimes, I get so serious, or I’m really known for a lot of my sad songs, my cathartic songs or breakup songs or whatever, because I love to write those things—but that’s not the place I’m in my life. So what I have left behind is something that really exhibits who I am in this moment.”
Seven years have passed since Lily Allen bagged herself a Mercury Music Prize nomination for *No Shame*, a peppy yet vulnerable record that chronicled the singer-songwriter’s attempts to pick up the pieces following the breakdown of her first marriage. Her fifth studio album, *West End Girl*, adheres to a similar formula—eviscerating themes concealed within bright pop melodies—pulling the listener into a tightly contained soap opera that arrives in the wake of her second marriage (to *Stranger Things* star David Harbour) ending. Announcing the record, she said it was an attempt to document “the events that led me to where I am in my life now” while also describing it as a “mixture of fact and fiction.” Setting the scene with the title track—a dreamy, orchestral number that depicts a couple moving into a new home but hitting a bump when one of them lands a role in a play—the album narrates a bait-and-switch story in which the boundaries of a relationship (and Allen’s narrator along with them) warp and mutate. “Ruminating” is a drum ’n’ bass spiral into her racing thoughts after an admission of infidelity, while “Relapse” finds her struggling to maintain her sobriety in the wake of ever more painful revelations, her vocals chopped and echoing. Later, “Beg For Me” taps into heartbreak over a pitch-shifted sample of Lumidee’s “Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh),” before resigning herself to the stark reality of her situation on “Let You W/In,” a soft, folky production. There are, it must be said, very few moments of levity to be found throughout *West End Girl*, but tracks like “Nonmonogamummy” and “Dallas Major,” which portray reluctant participation in a newly opened relationship, are patterned from the same sardonic cloth as the more biting cuts from her early catalog—albeit dampened by the weary sadness that permeates the album at large. *West End Girl* closes the window on the drama at the same time as Allen closes the door on her marriage, leaving the listener to mull over events with no return for a triumphant encore—but her razor-edge lyricism and stunning attention to production detail provide ample reasons to wind back to the start and press play all over again.
The title of Testament’s 14th studio album is a reference to the immortal Latin phrase attributed to the 4th-century Roman writer Vegetius: *Si vis pacem, para bellum* (if you want peace, prepare for war). As such, the veteran Bay Area thrashers delve into all manner of bellicose topics, from AI aggression (“Infanticide A.I.”) and invisible weapons (“Havana Syndrome”) to Wild West gunslingers (“High Noon”) and the January 6 insurrection (the title track). With a jolt of youthful energy from new 27-year-old drummer Chris Dovas, Testament OGs Chuck Billy (vocals), Eric Peterson (guitars), Alex Skolnick (guitars), and long-serving bassist Steve Di Giorgio revisited their roots via musical references to their 1987 debut, *The Legacy*, and their first ballad (“Meant to Be”) in many years. Even the cover image, by Israeli artist Eliran Kantor, is a reference to the band’s early days as Legacy, before they changed their name to Testament. “Our very first Legacy poster had this demon guy pushing two missile launchers with a giant explosion,” Billy tells Apple Music. “We were like, ‘Let’s bring that back.’” Below, the singer comments on each track. **“For the Love of Pain”** “That was the last song we wrote for the record. Chris wrote some lyrics and then I put my spin on it and sent it back. Then Eric took it even further and added some black metal vocals and some more lyrics. It’s odd that it was the last one we wrote but ended up being the first one on the record, but it just comes out smashing you in the face right away, a heavy song right at the top.” **“Infanticide A.I.”** “AI is everywhere these days. I rode in taxis in San Francisco and Texas without drivers, which is so weird. I even went to a restaurant where there was a robot clearing the tables and taking the dishes back to the dishwasher. But I used the song as a message to beware because AI is something that just keeps collecting data. It’s going to come to a point where it’s going to have an opinion and make its own decisions. If it’s during a time of war, is it just going to start popping off nuclear warheads? Who’s stopping it? Who’s controlling it?” **“Shadow People”** “I saw this show on TV about people who are frozen in bed because of a nightmare, or they see dark shadows in the room and things moving in the dark, but they can’t scream or move. I looked into it more and found something where they compare it to alien abductions involving the man in the black hat, who’s a common figure in alien abduction stories. So I put both of those ideas together in this song.” **“Meant to Be”** “It’s been a long while since we’ve done something like this. When I first heard it, I was just stoked, because it really did take me back to ‘Return to Serenity’ or something like that. The riff and the tone and the parts that Alex and those guys came up with, it really is epic. Then I got kind of scared, because it’s like eight minutes long. That’s a lot of words, a lot of singing. But once I found my way through it, it took on a life of its own and set it up for Alex and Eric to have this really cool lead guitar journey towards the end of the song. Lyrically, people might think it’s a love song, but it’s about the planet and how mankind keeps abusing it.” **“High Noon”** “That was a fun one. I don’t know why, but I just had an idea in my head about a gunslinger. The pace of the song brought out this whole storyline of a duel on a dirty street and hanging out in a saloon with hookers, drinking whiskey. Eric wasn’t sure about the idea at first, but it grew on him over time. And it just makes for something differently lyrically, musically, and vocally.” **“Witch Hunt”** “The day Steve Souza told me he was out of Exodus, I said, ‘I’m coming over. We’re writing some songs.’ I originally wrote lyrics for ‘High Noon’ and ‘For the Love of Pain’ with Steve as well, but they didn’t work in the studio. With this song, it stuck. Eric had a working title of ‘Witch Hunt’ for this, so we combined the idea of a political witch hunt with an actual witch hunt and the burning of witches.” **“Nature of the Beast”** “Another oddball track here. When I first heard it, it didn’t really sound metal to me. I love Thin Lizzy, and I love the dueling guitar parts they came up with, but I didn’t feel it was right for the record. But when we started compiling all the songs for the album, we had enough death stuff and enough fast stuff. The intro on this has a Motörhead feeling, and the overall vibe is classic rock, so I kind of took that approach vocally. I pulled my voice back a bit so I’m not pushing it as much. Lyrically, it’s about going to Vegas, gambling, and putting everything on the line.” **“Room 117”** “I’ve been writing songs with Del James for almost 30 years now, and we co-wrote the lyrics to this one. This was another song that didn’t fit the metal mold to me, but I wasn’t going to throw it away. I had a melody, but I didn’t have any words yet. At the time, Del’s mom was in the hospital, and he was spending a lot of time there. Room 117 was her room number, and she never left that room. He lost his mom there. One day he texted me some words he wrote about that and said, ‘If you can use it, go for it. If not, I’m just sharing it with you.’ So I took some of his stuff and combined it with some of my stuff, and it fit the melody I had in my head perfectly.” **“Havana Syndrome”** “Since we were talking about war and weaponry on ‘Infanticide A.I.,’ another thing that came up was Havana syndrome, which is \[believed to be\] the result of an invisible weapon used on the US consulate, sound waves that were targeting US ambassadors and causing dizziness and headaches and balance problems—really screwing them up. I guess this is a weapon that’s also being used to defend against pirates. They hit their boats with these sound waves and the pirates get dizzy and start throwing up and then they take off.” **“Para Bellum”** “Me and Alex wrote this one. We knocked it out in about two hours. In the process of writing the lyrics together, I found that weird little hook of the lyric to throw off the timing of the chorus just enough to make a vocal hook without changing the riff. The song was inspired by the January 6 insurrection, which basically makes it another war song. And then of course this became the title of the album and the idea behind the cover art, with the angel with missile wings. It all fit together perfectly.”
Shortly before releasing her eighth album in 2022, Demi Lovato posted a photo dressed in all black with her middle fingers up, captioned “a funeral for my pop music.” That album, *Holy Fvck*, channeled heavy feelings through hard rock and pop punk, abandoning the sweetness of her biggest hits to embrace her early inspirations. Lovato’s first remix album, 2023’s *REVAMPED*, doubled down on the pivot, reworking songs like “Heart Attack” and “Cool for the Summer” into tough rock numbers. But as she teased her ninth studio album in summer 2025, the 33-year-old singer captioned a cheeky TikTok from the studio: “My pop music coming back to life after we held a funeral for it.” Popvato had officially returned. On *It’s Not That Deep*, Lovato sweats it out under the strobe lights, reveling in the sultry, celebratory sounds of house, EDM, and club pop. “I wanna go fast/I wanna go hard,” she sings on “Fast,” a pulsing ode to letting go of inhibitions. She breaks out the choreo for the first time in years in the video for “Here All Night,” a synth-pop jam about hitting the club after a breakup. Executive producer Zhone (whose past credits include Troye Sivan’s “Rush” and Kesha’s “Joyride”) maintains the frisky, fully embodied mood. “It’s not that deep, unless you want it to be,” Lovato winks on the electro thumper “Kiss,” though it’s not shallow, either. See “Sorry to Myself,” a sparkling synth-pop reckoning: “I was my favorite hater, but I’m tired,” she belts out. “Now I’m flirting with hope.”
Orbit Culture guitarist, vocalist, and founder Niklas Karlsson likens the band’s fifth album to a rebirth. “It’s the first album we’re doing on a big label like Century Media, so that by itself feels like a new chapter,” he tells Apple Music. “But we also put in so much hard work doing all these support tours for a bunch of years to finally someday become steady headliners of our own. So everything feels way bigger and fancier than it’s ever been, with way more responsibility. But we’re ready.” On *Death Above Life*, the Swedish band has taken their hybridized style of modern metal—part groove, part industrial, part melodic death metal—and cinematic soundscapes into new territory. The mechanized and abrasive “Bloodhound” was inspired by the expletive-laced delivery of Slipknot, while “Inside the Waves” kicks off with a big chorus in the style of LINKIN PARK. Elsewhere, “The Storm” rides a triumphant riff in direct reference to fellow Swedes Amon Amarth, while closer “The Path I Walk,” Orbit Culture’s first true ballad, is dedicated to guitarist Richard Hansson’s late father. Below, Karlsson comments on each track. **“Inferna”** “This has the classic Orbit Culture formula, and we wanted to open the album with that to not scare away the old fans. But also, it just felt right because it acted like a bridge from what we’ve done in the past. This album is kind of new when it comes to experimenting with stuff and taking in some different elements that we have never touched before, and even some touches of different genres, too. Putting ‘Inferna’ as the opening track with classic intro, verse, and this big chorus, I guess we played it a bit safe. But we did it to ease the fans into the album.” **“Bloodhound”** “That\'s really where our tour with Slipknot came in, I would say. We thought about putting ‘Bloodhound’ first, because it is kind of like a baseball bat to the face. But then again, we might scare people away. So instead we put ‘Inferna’ first and then ‘Bloodhound’ to create contrast. In terms of the lyrical content, we’ve never used curse words in a song before. But seeing how Slipknot can be with their lyrics, you don’t have to have fancy metaphors all the time. It can be just raw and almost childish lyrics. So that’s where we went—more with feeling rather than the words themselves. It’s the most raw, honest lyric that we’ve written.” **“Inside the Waves”** “This one came from how I’ve been listening to music these days. I get very obsessive with certain stuff. I rediscovered LINKIN PARK during the time I wrote this. I knew they’ve always been this massive, massive band, but it was something that was more in the Walkmen of people when they’re growing up. So I had to discover it with a grown-up ear, if that makes sense. And I was completely sold by LINKIN PARK, so I think naturally I wanted to take some inspiration from how they did their choruses with Chester Bennington back in the day. Also, we have never done a chorus at the first second of a song, so we tried that here.” **“The Tales of War”** “It has this long-ass cinematic intro, which is also one of the reasons it became the first single: We wanted to open the shows with this song. Before, we would always use long cinematic scores as openers—Hans Zimmer or whatever—but this time around, we wanted to incorporate it into the song itself. But this also kind of serves as a bridge from the old material to what we’ve done on this new album, because we also follow the typical Orbit Culture formula.” **“Hydra”** “This came from just trying out guitar sounds. I only had one hand free because I had to keep my left hand on the mouse while chugging, basically for hours, just to find a good sound. And so that marching rhythm was born, and then I just started to add all these soundscapes. During that period of time, *Dune: Part Two* had just come out and I went to the cinema twice to see it, just taking all the sounds in and trying to replicate the soundscape in my computer. That was the birth of ‘Hydra.’” **“Nerve”** “The skeleton of this song was born during the *Nija* days, and I think it’s kind of noticeable too. Our guitarist Richard always loved the demo, but we never knew what to do with it until now. It’s also one of the songs where we switched things around, having the verses completely with raspy vocals rather than growls. So that was a new thing, but of course it has an Orbit Culture twist in the end, because we get too bored to just listen to the same shit.” **“Death Above Life”** “We played more with a horror kind of soundscape and just letting the main riff repeat itself over and over because we felt the ID of the song was in that riff. The rest of the song just lives in the back while this very down-tuned riff goes on and on. The reason it’s called ‘Death Above Life’ is because it feels like a very marching type of song, and this new album is us marching into a new era. It just felt right. And the chorus works with the title, so that helped.” **“The Storm”** “This one is a bit of a wild card. With this album being as dark as it is, we felt like we needed an uplifting, almost comical song just to break the darkness up a bit. The problem we had doing it was that we thought it was way too similar to Amon Amarth, because they have these heroic riffs all the time, and this has a very heroic riff too. But then again, it was made to be uplifting, and Amon Amarth does that so fucking well. So we call this the Amon Amarth song. It’s catchy. It’s rather short to be an Orbit Culture song, but we love it.” **“Neural Collapse”** “It’s a chaotic track with a very mechanical, industrial sound that I always loved so much. To me, it’s like Cyborg mixed with Static-X in some weird way. And Meshuggah is also present in that track for sure. Lyrically, it’s about getting dementia, a pretty tough topic. I imagine getting dementia would be very chaotic, so it is a very chaotic song.” **“The Path I Walk”** “This is my personal favorite of the album. That might sound weird because it’s so far away from the usual metal that we do, but this song has been with us for years. It always was in our computers as a kind of movie soundtrack that we made back in the day, but we never knew what to do with it until we put the lyrics down. It’s a very tough subject because it’s about suicide, so we had to be very careful with our words and have a lot of respect for that. But then Richard said we should dedicate this to his father, who passed by suicide. Then it made more sense for us to have as an Orbit Culture track—it became a very personal and important song for us. Sonically, we have never put our vocal tracks this much in front of your face. It has barely any heavy metal drums or heavy metal bass. It’s just a cinematic track that became our ballad, and I’m super proud of it.”
After 20 years of writing historically based albums that deal with specific wars and specific time periods, Swedish power metal champions Sabaton decided to do something different on their 11th studio album. *Legends* recounts the stories of famous warriors across many time periods and many lands, from history book fixtures like Genghis Khan and Joan of Arc to lesser-known figures (at least in the West) like Lü Bu, China’s Flying General, and the wandering samurai Miyamoto Musashi. “We wanted to sing about so many of these people for such a long time, but they never fit the theme or concept of the albums we’ve been writing,” vocalist and songwriter Joakim Brodén tells Apple Music. “We are probably idiots not to realize this before, but they do all have something in common—the Templars, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Joan of Arc—they’re all legends. We usually love to dig up stuff that nobody’s ever heard about before, so we had to give a little bit on that to make this record. Obviously, you wouldn’t be a legend if you weren’t well-known.” Below, Brodén details each track. **“Templars”** “This was one of the first subjects we designated when we talked about different legends we could sing about. We already had some musical ideas, and we felt right away that this would be the Templars song. I sent a demo of an intro, pre-chorus, and chorus to \[bassist\] Pär \[Sundström\] and asked him, ‘Which legend?’ And he answered right away, ‘Templars.’ So we were on the same page.” **“Hordes of Khan”** “Genghis Khan was also one of the first legends that came to mind. The song did give us a bit of a problem with the music video, though, because going out on the Mongolian steppes, learning how to ride horses, and filming that is certainly out of our budget. And we wouldn’t have survived, probably. So we did a very different video there, with a little bit of a nod to *Night at the Museum*. And this is a tricky one live. It’s got a lot of syllables, and the verses are long. Every time we come to halfway through the first chorus, I’m like, ‘I need a break.’” **“A Tiger Among Dragons”** “This is about the ‘Flying General,’ Lü Bu. I had heard the name, maybe in a game like *Dynasty Warriors* or something, but it was Pär who came across him. At that time, me and \[guitarist\] Chris \[Rörland\] and \[guitarist\] Thobbe \[Englund\] were working on this song idea with a lot of war drums going on because we wanted to utilize a different soundscape. So my mind went, ‘War drums, Chinese general—yes. That’s what we’re looking for.’ Pär wrote the lyrics on this one and had this great idea where in the pre-choruses we would have a female choir repeating, just before the chorus starts, and calling in a whisper. A lot of the little details like that make this song sound different.” **“Crossing the Rubicon”** “This one was a very late addition. We didn’t have a Julius Caesar song yet, which annoyed us to bits. The same goes for Alexander the Great, but everything I wrote around that idea was pretty much shit. So we put Alexander aside and focused on Caesar. A sound engineer friend of ours who I’ve been writing music with before had some ideas for a song, and that triggered me creatively. We started bouncing ideas back and forth and came up with this nice Caesar idea just weeks before recording started.” **“I, Emperor”** “This is our Napoleon song, but nowhere in the lyrics does it say anything about Napoleon. In the bridge, it says, ‘Soldiers of my old guard, I’ve come to bid you all farewell…’ That’s the speech Napoleon gave to his guard before going into exile, but you’re going to have to know your history. We made it quite complicated, but many fans figured it out already. Musically, it’s very Sabaton—all the classic elements are there. I’m insanely proud of the pre-chorus because it’s beautiful and catchy and has this little suspended chord that is giving it a French vibe somehow.” **“Maid of Steel”** “We couldn’t resist the wordplay here. It’s cheesy, but we thought it was cheesy in the right way. This is our Joan of Arc song, and to me, it feels like how I wrote songs 15 years ago, or maybe more. It was very instinctive. I think what I heard in this song is that it’s like you’re running, but you’re almost falling forward, and you have to run faster to keep up. You’ve got to stay alert. I think this turned out better than expected, because as a songwriter, it’s easy to underestimate the songs that came really easy and fast like this. Just as it’s easy to overestimate the songs you worked really long and hard for.” **“Impaler”** “This one is funny for us, because Vlad the Impaler is a legendary figure, for sure, but is he legendary because of a work of fiction? How many people would know Vlad the Impaler if we didn’t have Bram Stoker’s *Dracula*? I think less than 10 percent of the people who know him today. And the song is the story of the historical figure, not Dracula. But the fact that myth exists around him, or that this work of fiction exists around him, makes it even more fun.” **“Lightning at the Gates”** “This is one of the trickiest ones in many ways, because Hannibal is a very well-documented figure and a great general. The story of him crossing the Alps is an iconic one, and that’s the image I had in my mind as we were making the music, so we went with that. But by only talking about him crossing the Alps and not his triumph at the Battle of Cannae, it feels like we’re doing him a disservice almost. So that’s one where we had to lean into the emotional language of the song. You can’t always try and squeeze in all the information and facts that you would like.” **“The Duelist”** “The legend of Miyamoto Musashi, the wandering samurai, was one I was familiar with—at least of him as a swordsman. When I started doing my deep research for the song, I realized there was much more to this guy than just being a warrior. He was a philosopher and an author, and I realized I could not leave that out of the lyrics. So I had to read his book, *The Book of Five Rings*. It’s not at all a light read, but if you are into Japanese culture or that sort of philosophy, I recommend it absolutely.” **“The Cycle of Songs”** “Senusret was one of the great pharaohs of Egypt. There aren’t many cultures or civilizations you can go this far back with and still have a solid writing system or any kind of record of what went on. In this case, we have a record. What’s cool about Senusret is that he was a military commander who was deified by his people while he was still alive—declared God, basically. While that was normal once a pharaoh died, it was unusual while they were living. His subjects wrote songs and hymns in his honor, and that’s the only material we could find that wasn’t really boring archeology, so we went with that.” **“Till Seger”** “This is one our drummer Hannes \[Van Dahl\] came up with. The main theme of the song really sounds like a Swedish folk melody, so we couldn’t get away from the fact that it sounded like Sweden to us. Me and Pär argued about what legend to do for this song, because Sweden does not have legends on par with Caesar. Few countries do. But the one we have, Gustavus Adolphus II—the Lion from the North, as he was known—we already covered him on \[Sabaton’s 2012 album\] *Carolus Rex*. But then Pär said, ‘It’s our album. Who says we can’t do it again?’ So we rolled with it. Unfortunately, there aren’t many people who will understand the lyrics. But you don’t have to know every detail about what is being said to enjoy the song.”
With a title that translates to “Flame,” Soulfly’s 13th album sees ringleader Max Cavalera returning to his South American roots. *Chama* tells the story of a boy raised in Brazil’s favelas who seeks a higher power in the jungles of the Amazon. On opening invocation “Indigenous Inquisition,” Cavalera recites the names of extinguished native tribes before launching into the percussion-heavy “Storm the Gates,” a track reminiscent of his work on Sepultura’s groundbreaking 1996 world music/nu-metal fusion album, *Roots*. The star-studded “No Pain = No Power” features cameos from Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares, Unto Others mastermind Gabriel Franco, and No Warning vocalist Ben Cook, while Arch Enemy guitar wizard Michael Amott lends a blistering solo to “Ghenna” and NAILS lead singer Todd Jones takes a vocal turn on “Nihilist,” a track dedicated to fallen Entombed vocalist L.G. Petrov.
Brandi Carlile is hardly the only songwriter to be inspired by Joni Mitchell. But she is on a short list of artists who can boast that her own album is a direct result of having been Mitchell’s close collaborator. “I had finished playing the Hollywood Bowl \[in 2024\] with Joni, and it took up so much of my spiritual space and my mind space,” she tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “I felt really emotionally make-or-break, because I just wanted that to be a pivotal moment for Joni.” Carlile’s stewardship of her hero’s comeback performances, alongside *Who Believes in Angels?*, her 2025 team-up with Elton John, another one of her idols and mentors, left her little time to tend to her own music. “It became so overwhelming and so all-consuming that this little voice did start to say, ‘OK, you’re not going to live very long if you keep setting the bar for yourself in these really stressful places,’” she says. “‘And you’re also hiding a little bit.’” Following her time in LA with Mitchell, she headed to Aaron Dessner’s Long Pond Studio in upstate New York to begin work on *Returning to Myself*. “I didn’t know whether we were going to be writing songs for someone else, or writing songs for me, or what we were going to be doing,” she explains. Though she admits to struggling initially with the process, the end result runs from the sweet and sentimental (“Anniversary”) to the angry (“Church & State”) and, of course, an emotional ode to Mitchell herself (“Joni”). Read below for Carlile’s thoughts on a few key tracks. **“Returning to Myself”** “I didn’t even bring a guitar. I went upstairs to the bedroom, and I sat on this bed looking at a blank wall, and I was so stressed to be that alone. I wrote the poem for *Returning to Myself*. It was just a poem; it didn’t have music or anything yet. I was just almost rejecting it. I was almost feeling like, ‘OK, this is it. This is a noble pursuit, me staring at this wall. This is what it means to learn to be alone. I guess I’m evolving right now. I feel like I’m not doing anything at all but just indulging myself and sitting here on this bed.’” **“Human”** “I do feel that every generation since recorded history believes that their generation is the one living through the end of the world. I think that’s really comforting. And we do. We all see our conflicts and our wars and our political upheavals and tyranny and democracy in constant balance. We are in a loop, and the loop is the loop of humanity. And don’t be apathetic. Don’t ignore it. Don’t look away. Do fight. Do be an activist. Do get out of bed every morning and think about how you can serve humanity. But also touch grass. Also realize that you’re here for a split second and that you don’t want to look back and realize you missed the whole thing because you believed you were living through the end of the world.” **“Church & State”** “We were set up to jam and that song was really carnal. We were in a circle. It was like rock ’n’ roll time, and it was November 5th, the night of the \[2024\] election. I went into the studio, laptop open, spiraling, just not doing great emotionally. I mean, I knew what was coming. I had written ‘Human’ the night before, and it was like a primal cry for self-preservation in a way, and not just for me, for everybody.”
As hip-hop, jazz, and soul continue to mingle and merge into exciting new forms, Alfa Mist stands to make his biggest mark yet with the release of *Roulette*. An adventurous, nearly hour-long outing from the London-based composer and multi-instrumentalist, his follow-up to the already notable ANTI- label outings *Bring Backs* and *Variables* captures not only the spirit of those records but a clearer sense of where he’s headed. Queens-bred indie rapper Homeboy Sandman kicks things off with “Reincarnation,” a thematic prompt meant to provoke further thought for the subsequent selections. Those who savor the slow burn of a late-night supper-club set will find “Found You” and the title track deeply satisfying, particularly the latter’s culminating flurry of bass, brass, and rhythm. As the album progresses, we hear directly from the artist on “9 Months” and “Give Nothing,” his insightful raps touching on personal struggles and quiet vendettas.
On their seventh album, symphonic metal troupe Battle Beast offers a rousing, uptempo blast of positivity. Vocalist Noora Louhimo hoists the proverbial chalice high on the all-for-one, one-for-all anthem “Here We Are” as the Finnish band seamlessly fuses power metal and dancey synths with a Eurovision pop sensibility. The title track invokes ’80s sports flicks alongside Scandinavian metal and soft rock from the same era, while “Last Goodbye” turns up the aggression with a more syncopated, shred-heavy vibe courtesy of lead guitarist Joona Björkroth. Not to be outdone, “Angel of Midnight” splits the difference between Bonnie Tyler and Pat Benatar—and makes absolutely no apologies while doing it.
Biohazard’s first album in 13 years features the reunion of their classic lineup: vocalist/guitarist Billy Graziadei, vocalist/bassist Evan Seinfeld, guitarist Bobby Hambel, and drummer Danny Schuler. Which probably explains why *Divided We Fall* sounds like something straight out of the band’s early ’90s heyday, when NYC hardcore and streetwise metal merged with hip-hop, before bands like Korn took over and everyone started calling it “nu.” Hard-hitting tracks like the antiestablishment “Fuck the System,” pit-starter “Forsaken,” and watch-your-back call-out “Eyes on Six” provide the missing link between Biohazard’s *Headbangers Ball*-era one-two combo *Urban Discipline* and *State of the World Address*.
ITZY is a K-pop group that leaves no one behind. When member LIA returned from a year-long hiatus in mid-2024, the girl group rerecorded and rereleased many of the songs the other four members—YEJI, RYUJIN, Chaeryeong, and YUNA—had recorded without her for their EP *GOLD*. With 2025’s *Collector*—ITZY’s second Japanese album, following 2023’s *RINGO*—the quintet known for their performance charisma uses a similar strategy. The 10-track album includes “final versions” of “Algorhythm” and “No Biggie,” rerecorded in Japanese with Lia’s voice back in the mix. *Collector* also includes Japanese-language versions of ITZY’s Korean singles “GOLD,” “Imaginary Friend,” and “Girls Will Be Girls,” as well as five completely new tracks. The result is a Japanese-centric collection that bridges ITZY’s past and present, shortly following a JYP Entertainment contract renewal that solidified the group’s future. Lead single “ROCK & ROLL” is not really rock ’n’ roll at all; rather, the upbeat dance track uses the genre thematically to represent the subversive energy that has propelled the group to stardom. The confidence continues on the hype track “I. I. Know Me” before fading into something softer for the love song “Out of season.”
