Fresh off the success of their debut album Honeymoon, Beach Bunny are back to announce a new EP, Blame Game. It’s out January 15th on Mom+Pop Music, and the band is today offering a preview with lead single “Good Girls (Don’t Get Used)”. Our former Artist of the Month went from underground rockers to TikTok sensation on the strength of endlessly catchy hooks. Led by songwriter Lili Trifilio, the band returns with a four-track look at toxic masculinity and laborious relationships. The EP was recorded in Chicago in August, and produced by Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Joyce Manor, Modern Baseball). As “Good Girls (Don’t Get Used)” can testify, Beach Bunny haven’t lost their gift for earworms. Trifilio warns a trifling partner that while, “I still think that you’re cute/ Good girls don’t get ...
Back in 2017, when only a handful of outlets knew she would become a breakout star, Billie Eilish stopped by Vanity Fair for a video interview. Since then, they’ve invited her back each year to answer the same questions and see how she’s changed — and the 2020 installment of “Time Capsule” might be the best yet, as it sees Eilish touching on her identity crisis, new music she has yet to release, and everything in between. The 27-minute-long video places Eilish’s annual answers side-by-side for easy comparison. The big takeaways? She never wants to stop performing live, and living through a global pandemic where the safest option is staying home has made her all the more aware of that. “I never thought I wouldn’t be able to do shows someday. It’s the one thing I feel like I’ve ever been goo...
By Ashley Oken Miley Cyrus’s long awaited seventh studio album, Plastic Hearts, dropped on Friday (November 27) and sees Cyrus embracing a throwback rock sound, reinventing herself yet again and unapologetically reflecting on her journey from Disney child star to mature artist exploring herself. She spent her immediate post-Disney career trying to shed the clean-cut image that comes with child stardom, and since then, Cyrus has tried embracing many sounds, from pop to country to psychedelic, in order to break away. Now, she seems to have found a bold, fitting path in rock. The track “Gimme What I Want” has Cyrus drawing deeply from Nine Inch Nails and her penchant for covers of ‘80s tunes, while “Prisoner” melds a Runaways-style glam-rock vibe and Dua Lipa’s dance-pop sound with bits of Ol...
James Blake has shared a cover of “In the Bleak Midwinter”, the iconic Christmas carol first set to music in 1906 by Gustav Holst and popularized by Harold Darke in 1911. Stream it below exclusively through Apple Music. The Assume Form singer was approached by Apple Music to record a holiday song for their streaming platform earlier this year. At first, Blake wasn’t sure which song to pick, namely because he wanted to choose something pop-leaning that would do well on a playlist. That’s when he began a mental tug-of-war about playing into algorithms versus staying true to his interests. Eventually, Blake realized he should just pick an old British gem he loves instead. “Look man, all the pop Christmas songs have been covered a million times. I’m not going to out-sing Mariah,” Bla...
Like many Icelandic artists before her, Björk spent much of her teenage years singing as part of the renowned Hamrahlid Choir. Things have now come full circle, as the experimental artist has contributed to the choir’s upcoming album, Come and Be Joyful. The two acts have specifically collaborated on a new version of “Sonnets”, originally taken from Björk’s 2004 album Medúlla. This completely reworked a cappella rendition was actually first premiered live by the choir during Björk’s mesmerizing “Cornucopia Tour” in 2019, but hasn’t been released to the public until today. “[Hamrahlid Choir founder] þorgerður is a legend in iceland and has guarded optimism and the light in the tumultuous times that teenagedom is,” Björk praised the choir’s leader on social media. “she has also encoura...
‘Tis the season for classic holiday songs, which means ’tis also the season for society to wrestle with outdated and offensive holiday lyrics. Our latest discourse is brought to you by Nick Cave, who is incensed at the BBC’s decision to censor a homophobic slur in The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York”. In the latest edition of his Red Hand Files, Cave wrote that the BBC had “tampered with, compromised, tamed, and neutered” a track that he considers “the greatest Christmas song ever written.” “Fairytale of New York” is a duet with Kirsty MacColl that first appeared on The Pogues’ 1988 album If I Should Fall from Grace with God. The lyrics are set on Christmas Eve “in the drunk tank,” and features frontman Shane MacGowan trading insults with MacColl. MacGowan’s character calls MacColl’s “...
Artist Mentioned “When I was nine years old, I told my mom, ‘I’m going to be an artist, let’s do this,’” Snoh Aalegra laughs. Her mother picked up the phone book and started making calls. Without any demos or recordings to share, she landed a meeting with a studio executive who gave her young daughter a chance to sing for him. That eventually led to a development deal with Sony ATV in Sweden for the hopeful 13-year-old. At the time the family lived in Enköping and a young Aalegra had to travel 45 minutes to Stockholm after school and on the weekends to attend recording sessions. She looks back on those years fondly, remembering train rides as a time to sit quietly with her thoughts. In the first of two new exclusive performances, Aalegra returns to that familiar train setting w...
This year marks the 25th anniversary of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, the seminal sophomore album from Oasis. Recently, Liam Gallagher performed the LP’s opening track, “Hello”, for the first time in 18 (!) years. The momentous performance took place on BBC Radio 2 late last week. Gallagher, not missing a beat after the last two decades, charged through “Hello” like it was any ordinary in-studio Oasis session circa the ’90s. The British rocker’s voice stretched out in that nasally way fans have come to love, as he sang out, “Nobody ever mentions the weather/ Can make or break your day/ Nobody ever seems to remember/ Life is a game we play.” “It’s never gonna be the same,” continued the 48-year-old Gallagher, a line that seems to have taken on a different meaning considering the break-...
This past week saw the release of Stardust, a biopic about David Bowie’s first trip to the United States. If you’ve seen any piece of media related to the film, you probably know that the movie was received poorly — to say the least. This isn’t surprising, though. When the film’s first trailer dropped months ago, the film was immediately scorched online for being a very blatant and very poorly executed attempt to piggyback off the recent success of other musical biopics such as 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody and last year’s Rocketman. Whereas those two films at least had the wherewithal to secure the rights to their stars’ likeness and discography, Stardust opted out of either of those things. Even so, the film chugged along on the strength of its premise alone, but mostly because it’s a musical...