When Miley Cyrus won her first Grammys in 2024 (Record of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance for “Flowers” from 2023’s *Endless Summer Vacation*), something shifted. “I think somewhere inside of me, I needed to hold a trophy and just feel for a moment that I have something that I can hold in my hands that feels like a true achievement,” the 32-year-old child star turned pop icon tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “After every album, I’ve been able to say, ‘Well, I made the album I set out to make, and that’s enough.’ Somewhere, I was avoiding the fact that it did matter to me.” Having finally achieved the validation she’d been longing to feel since childhood, Cyrus says she “felt free to make the album that I’ve really been craving my whole adult career to create.” The name of the resulting album, her ninth, emerged out of the ether while riffing in the studio with producer Max Taylor-Sheppard and Cyrus’ boyfriend/collaborator, Liily drummer Maxx Morando. “As soon as \[Taylor-Sheppard\] played the first chord, I just said, ‘Tell me something beautiful tonight.’ It was so easy, but I have no idea where it came from. The chord he played was so beautiful that what needed to be said had to be beautiful.” In the title track, a Sunday morning soul jam erupts with a “flash, bang, spark” into post-apocalyptic prog-rock distortion. That clash of sensuality and chaos extends through *Something Beautiful*, whose ’80s-inspired melodrama swings for the fences in sound and theme. The deceptively sparkly-sounding “End of the World” celebrates one last blowout bash before the sky falls. “This, to me, is pop music in its fullest form,” Cyrus says. “Pop gets given a bad name by manufactured label creations, and that’s just not what it is.” She’s thinking of legendary pop innovators who evolved with the times: David Bowie, Madonna, Elton John. The ultra-funky “Easy Lover” was intended for another such icon: Cyrus originally wrote it circa 2020’s *Plastic Hearts*, then refurbished it for placement on Beyoncé’s *COWBOY CARTER*. When Bey went with “II MOST WANTED” instead, Cyrus kept the slinky number for herself, recruiting Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard to play electric guitar—though the “Tell ’em, B!” ad-lib stays. Cyrus’ inimitable voice has never sounded more soulful, though that has not come without a price. She tells Apple Music she has Reinke’s edema, a rare condition which causes fluid to build up in the outer layer of the vocal folds—hence her trademark rasp. “So I have this very large polyp on my vocal cord, which has given me a lot of the tone and the texture that has made me who I am,” she says. “But it’s extremely difficult to perform with, because it’s like running a marathon with ankle weights on.” It could be removed surgically, but for Cyrus, the benefit isn’t worth the risk, “because the chance of waking up from surgery and not sounding like myself is a probability.” Throughout a career that’s spanned two-thirds of her life, Cyrus has felt lost in the static. “White noise is essentially everything happening all at the same time, and I feel like that was what the last 20 years of my career felt like,” she says. But while recording *Something Beautiful*, she found herself coming to terms with everything that’s come before. Over the heavy disco groove of “Reborn,” she delivers a mission statement: “If heaven exists/I’ve been there before/Kill my ego/Let’s be reborn.”
Introduced to the world as a bubbly TikTok influencer, the singer/dancer/actor spent 2024 pulling off what looked like a total reinvention—screaming over the remix of mentor Charli xcx’s “Von dutch” remix, then releasing the steamy “Diet Pepsi,” a single charming enough to seduce even the doubters. In fact, Addison Rae was just reintroducing herself. “I always knew that I wanted to make music, I knew I wanted to perform,” Rae tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “That was something that was really obvious to me since I was a little girl.” And TikTok was the best way for a teenager from Lafayette, Louisiana, to catapult herself into the seemingly inaccessible world of showbiz. Pursuing her pop-star dreams in LA studio sessions to write the songs that would become her first EP (2023’s polarizing *AR*), Rae found herself deferring to the professionals. “When I moved here and started doing sessions, I was like, ‘I need as much guidance as possible,’” she says. “Then, over time, I really started to lean on myself. I really started to lean on my abilities.” In February 2024, Rae met songwriter/producers Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser (both part of the publishing camp of Swedish pop powerhouse Max Martin) and wrote the effervescent hook of “Diet Pepsi” that same day. “\[‘Diet Pepsi’\] was such a natural beginning to all of this,” says Rae. “I think it was a perfect introduction in so many ways.” Cue a string of curveball singles, each one presenting an unexpected new facet, from the moody, minor-key “High Fashion” to the Björk-inspired “Headphones On.” It feels apt, then, that her debut album drops the “Rae” and simply goes by *Addison*—a collection of dreamy, intense pop songs that sound like self-discovery, tied together less by genre than by mood. Tracks like “Fame Is a Gun” and “Money Is Everything” expertly straddle camp and sincerity: “You’ve got a front-row seat, and I/I got a taste of the glamorous life!” she winks on the former, a dizzy synth-pop number on the perils of hitting the big time. The songs on *Addison* are not exactly club bangers, though they’re informed by Rae’s childhood as a dancer; nor are any of them obvious hits. But Rae relished the opportunity to let her creative instincts run wild. “Once you start playing it safe, feeling like, ‘Okay, I’m going to respond with what people want,’ you lose all your freedom,” she says. “You lose all desire for the whole purpose of starting it, and feeling like it’s a form of expression and a reflection. It’s more scary to let that go and give people exactly what they think they want.” As for what Rae learned in the process of writing the album? “Let yourself play. Let yourself have fun, let yourself mess up,” she says. “I’m not saying, ‘All right, this is the real me now.’ No—it’s always been the real me, and those experiences have completely guided and shaped me to where I am now. It is about arrival—arrival to who I feel like I’ve become, and who has experienced all these ups and downs, to now land here, in this person that I am now.”
The cover art for *Virgin*—an X-ray of a pelvis with a visible IUD—was a far cry from that of Lorde’s bright, beachy third album, 2021’s *Solar Power*, whose sun-soaked, jasmine-scented songs drew from Laurel Canyon folk and Y2K soft rock. Looking back, that album’s free-spirited imagery was a bit idealistic—a projection of how the New Zealand native turned New Yorker wished she could be. Her fourth album, as she told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, is a portrait of the 28-year-old singer as she is, without edits or apologies: “Kind of like a photo of yourself that you don’t love, but captures something true about you.” The resulting songs, written between 2023 and 2025, are forthcoming and visceral, trading *Solar Power*’s New Age-chill for beats you can feel in your gut. (It’s her first album since her 2013 debut not co-written and -produced by Jack Antonoff; instead, she shared production duties with the LA-based electronic musician Jim-E Stack.) Surrealist introspection gives way to throbbing bass on opening track “Hammer,” where a walk down Canal Street ripples with psychedelic visions. “I had just come off my birth control, and I could not believe how I was feeling,” Lorde told Lowe about the song’s inception. “Everything was pure possibility. That first sound feels like it’s coming from a very guttural place in the body. My sister said, ‘It sounds like it’s coming from your womb.’” Cue the aura readings, 3 am cigarettes, broken mirrors, pregnancy tests, ego death. On “Man of the Year” and “Favourite Daughter,” questions beget more questions on the subject of what it means to be a woman, and moreover, a woman who’s now been famous for nearly half her life. The latter is at once a love letter to her mother and a meditation on being a teenager thrust into global pop stardom. “There’s been this dynamic for the last 10 to 12 years—and then further back—of wanting so badly to be loved, and to get this approval, and to be the favorite,” she told Lowe. “And it was really moving to me how, even as I was singing this song about my foremost idol and the person who I think is the most amazing in the world, I was also singing about what a crazy thing it is to have happened to you, what happened to me at 16.” Now the superstar finds freedom in the freefall: “I’ve been up on the pedestal/But tonight I just want to fall,” she sings on the shuffling “Shapeshifter.” “I still don’t know what happens when you put out a record that is like this,” she admitted about the unfiltered portrait *Virgin* presents. But in its full transparency, she arrives at something like peace.
The Toronto producer/DJ dropped her first *INFINITY CLUB* EP in the dog days of summer 2023—perfect timing for a sweaty, sultry blast of jungle, dancehall, and R&B that channeled the feeling of a packed club at peak hour. (Fitting, as the Jamaican Canadian artist, born Kirsten Azan, has spent the last decade-plus establishing herself as one of Canada’s most respected DJs, having helmed the annual JERK rave series since 2013.) Like its predecessor, *INFINITY CLUB II* plays out more like a DJ mix than a buttoned-up EP, its freewheeling fusion of techno, garage, R&B, and Caribbean-centric music of the diaspora as much a rebuttal of electronic music’s whitewashing as it is a good time. Vocalists like Aluna and Lady Lykez pop in to reprise their roles on the EP’s first edition, plus new cameos from Ravyn Lenae, BEAM, Jessy Lanza, and Yaeji; the latter two appear on “Mirror,” which envisions a universe in which a Police song comes with airhorns, breakbeats, and ad-libs in Korean.
It’s hard not to see this first installment in Óscar Maydon’s intended *Rico o Muerto* series as an existential ultimatum. Though the get-rich-or-die-trying ethos hardly originates here, already a thematic staple of rappers galore, the way the música mexicana singer unites so many of his peers for these dozen songs turns that sentiment into a collective Latin exclamation. Heavy hitters in the contemporary corridos scene, such as Junior H, Neton Vega, and Tito Double P, actively build with him here. Whether resigned to the prospect of immeasurable loss with Fuerza Regida on “Tu Boda” or playing as brash Clydes in search of baddie Bonnies with Peso Pluma on “Asquerosamente Rico,” he demonstrates an ability to both excel and lead. Elsewhere, he erodes intra-genre boundaries by hosting both Gabito Ballesteros and Luis R Conriquez for the evocative “Fina Con Los Valentinos” and reaches further than that by bringing Latin trap star Anuel AA into the fold for the beat-switching “Tuxxxi.” That latter vibe resurfaces toward the end, with “Mejores Jordans” rapper Victor Mendivil in tow for “ZAZA.”
At 34, Dylan Scott has a lot figured out. The “Can’t Have Mine (Find You a Girl)” hitmaker is married with children and has found his stride and his voice as an artist, too—so much so that he tells Apple Music he feels like he can take a laidback approach to making music. “The backbone of this whole deal is my family and my wife and my kids and my friends, and I don’t let too much stuff get to my head,” Scott says. “At this point of my career, it makes you more grateful for the wins and for what’s happening, so I don’t get too discouraged by things. The new album is called *Easy Does It* for a reason.” Of course, “easy” doesn’t mean lazy, and *Easy Does It* is Scott’s most ambitious project yet, digging into difficult themes like marriage and mortality while maintaining a spirit of love and hard-earned joy. The record opens with one of the bigger songs of Scott’s career thus far, the emotional and surprising “What He’ll Never Have.” An especially vulnerable song, the track finds Scott imagining what would happen to his family should he die unexpectedly, and hoping that someone who is at least “half the man” that he is would step in to care for his wife and children should the worst ever happen. Elsewhere, Scott dips back into lifelong love on the sweet and breezy “Till I Can’t, I Will” and pays tribute to small-town living on the nostalgic “This Town’s Been Too Good to Us.” Sonically, the record sounds almost timeless in its approach toward radio-friendly country pop, eschewing the hard-rock-influenced sound that’s so prevalent on current country charts in favor of sturdy songwriting, ironclad hooks, and relatable narratives.
Given his decades in the game, Wisin might technically qualify for elder-statesman status among reggaetoneros, yet he continues to be one of the more reliable reps for his generation and beyond. As should be expected, his latest album *EL SOBREVIVIENTE WWW* includes the polished reggaetón that characterizes some of his biggest hits, with cuts like “Laguna” and “De Antes” closely resembling fan favorites. Yet his tenure in the genre means his range includes room for homage, executed faithfully on “Duro Pal Piso” and especially “Quiere Perreo” with fellow genre vet Sir Speedy. His collaborative powers remain strong as well, building with Zion on “Carita” and flexing with Jory Boy and Brray on the throwback-laden “Dale Baby.” Naturally, he’s inclined to experiment with other styles as well, something his guests are all too happy to assist with. Beéle brings tropical fusion to their breezy “¿Qué Pasó Bebe?,” while an energized Farruko lets his dancehall reggae flag fly on “Sí o No.” Proudly on the Latin Afrobeats wave, Wisin links with Kapo for the lustrous “Luna.”
“Since 2018, I brought life to the game. From the M-Town, Europe, States, even Zante. Cooking up with Sheeran, on stage with Ashanti,” Aitch raps on “STRAIGHT RHYMEZ 2.” That’s one of many typically confident bars that Aitch—born Harrison Armstrong—spits on his second album, *4*. The Mancunian rapper has seen a shift in the landscape since 2022’s *Close to Home*, and *4* reflects that. “Music’s changed a lot since album one and I think I tried to find the balance of not trying to look like the sickest rapper in the world, but then over-confusing people,” he tells Apple Music’s Dotty. “I’ve found the middle ground of making a three-and-a-half-minute song into a two-minute song, also getting my point across.” It’s an efficiency that extends to the largely sinewy beats that back his verses across the album. Aitch sees *4* as a move away from more heartfelt, personal tracks of the past like “My G,” his Ed Sheeran-assisted tribute to his little sister. This is the sound of a man who’s given away a lot and is now reaping the rewards and having fun with it. “I feel like my last album was a little bit more vulnerable, you got a side to me that no one knew. Before, I was that guy that was just rapping about partying all the time and I was sick of being that person. So then I made *Close to Home* with the thought process of: ‘Let people get to know Harrison, maybe do the “My G” tune.’ This one now is like: ‘Here’s a load of sick rap tunes. See you later,’” he says. With such an accomplished album—and linkups with AJ Tracey (“TEST”), Tamera (“LOCKED IN”), and Anne-Marie (“LUV?”)—it’s hard to believe Aitch still has anything left to prove. “I’ve always believed in my little sauce,” he says. “I wanted to just channel a little bit of that old-school energy and kind of give people a feeling of rap and hip-hop. I’ve never really doubted myself.”
In the period following the 2022 death of his longtime creative and matrimonial partner Mimi Parker, Low founder Alan Sparhawk sought comfort in the company of friends, as many of us do in times of unimaginable loss. In his case, those friends were fellow Duluth musicians and chart-topping bluegrass crew Trampled By Turtles, who invited Sparhawk to ride shotgun on their 2023 tour and join them onstage whenever the mood struck. That act of kindness spawned Sparhawk’s second post-Low release, whose earthy Americana arrangements and naked vocal performances contrast sharply with the electronic experimentation and vocoderized mutations of 2024’s *White Roses, My God*. Yet the two records are united through a yin-yang relationship: If its predecessor captured Sparhawk working his way through the fog and confusion of grief, *With Trampled by Turtles* sees him ready to face the world and open his heart without obfuscation. The two albums even share two songs—“Get Still” and “Heaven”—that are liberated from their DIY digital dimensions and reborn as cathartic choral hymns. The appearance of Sparhawk and Parker’s daughter Hollis on the wistful chorus of “Not Broken” is especially moving, as it highlights both the absence at the core of the record and the optimistic life-goes-on spirit that radiates from it. But even that poignant performance won’t prepare you for the emotional wallop delivered by the Dylan-esque hymn “Screaming Song,” where Sparhawk’s most pointed expressions of sorrow are washed away by a rising tide of humming harmonies and screeching violins.
Hip-hop loves a franchise, and arguably none deserves more of that adoration than Lil Wayne’s *Tha Carter*. Plenty of rappers have gone the sequels route in the hopes of recapturing a vibe or reinvigorating a fanbase, but the first four installments of the Young Money impresario’s album series hit the culture like monumental events. The exhaustive way in which this quartet was discussed, dissected, ranked, and re-ranked by listeners and critics alike almost eclipsed their chart successes, securing Weezy’s spot in the G.O.A.T. debate forever. The seven-year gap between the fourth and fifth volumes felt like an eternity, especially as focus shifted towards fresh stars and new sounds. Yet even that wait came with a massive payoff—not rebooting the saga to suit the times but continuing his story in a way only he could. Another seven years may have passed, with a handful of mixtapes in between, yet this sixth volume proves well worth the wait. After the brief albeit maximalist opener “King Carter,” those who’ve missed his powerful punchlines and rich rhyme schemes are immediately rewarded with the triumphant “Welcome to Tha Carter.” As should be expected this deep into his storied career, his proverbial pen prevails on “Banned from NO” and “Peanuts 2 N Elephant,” just two examples of his devotion to the MC craft. Longtime fans will rejoice over the Mannie Fresh team-up “Bein Myself,” while those unsure of how a fortysomething Wayne fits into the contemporary mix will be corrected swiftly on the Wheezy-produced “Rari.” Though some vocally resisted his literal rock-star tendencies on records like 2010’s *Rebirth*, he remains committed to that side of his artistry. Starting with the opening moments of “Bells,” he reminds everyone listening that rap and rock share genetic material before wrapping his wordplay around an ’80s-informed flow. Mixing Weezy with Weezer, the inventive interpolation “Island Holiday” starts out like a faithful cover song until he swaps out the “hip hip” with “sip sip” and proceeds to make it his own. After a ruthless two-and-a-half-minute streak of bars, “Loki’s Theme” drops an unexpected swell of guitar soloing, leading directly into the acoustic balladry of “If I Played Guitar.” Considering his guest list includes Bono and Jelly Roll alongside Big Sean and BigXthaPlug, not to mention operatic pop icon Andrea Bocelli, clearly no one genre can contain the force that is Lil Wayne.
