‘Bully’ by Ye

★★

The artist formerly known as Kanye West is “probably the most contentious figure in all of popular music,” said Kelefa Sanneh in The New Yorker. So, after 2025’s flashes of blatant antisemitism and his more recent published apology, who is Ye now? “Listening to Bully, it can be hard to tell,” because on this 12th album from the 48-year-old hip-hop groundbreaker, “many of the tracks resemble fragments or sketches, with bits of singing and rapping that sound unusually tentative.” While several songs “seem designed to remind listeners of his older, less incendiary incarnations,” Ye seems “not quite sure how to give his listeners what they want.” In truth, “some of it still hits,” said Peter A. Berry in Complex. “‘All the Love’ sounds like Lion King in Space” and “‘Preacher Man’ features a nice blend of charisma and cinema.” Unfortunately, the album is “plagued by lethargic vocals, drab choruses, and trite lyricism.” You sense that Ye is unsure how to reattain excellence, and “the biggest tell” is how many songs evoke classic Kanye tracks without recapturing what worked. “Ultimately, Bully feels like Kanye searching through the crates for past glory.”

‘This Music May Contain Hope’ by Raye

★★★

“Our story begins at 2:27 a.m. on a rainy night in Paris. Cue the thunder!” That’s the British belter Raye, narrating the first few seconds of her latest album, “an epic autobiography of romantic despair,” said Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. Over arrangements packed with “show-tune razzle-dazzle, big-band swing frills, retro ’60s R&B, and the occasional club beat,” the 28-year-old Grammy nominee laments her serial heartbreaks with “mighty pipes” that are “as unstoppable as her flair for mascara-melting melodrama.” Whether she’s soothing herself with Edith Piaf records and chocolate cake or falling yet again for a disappointing Romeo, Raye conjures a limitless supply of “glamorously tragic scenarios.” Raye has been dogged by “endless Amy Winehouse comparisons,” said Will Hodgkinson in The Times (U.K.). But she’s “far more florid and theatrical, matching Shirley Bassey for searing drama and operatic bombast.” While her lyrics here can be “excessively on the nose,” Raye also shows ample ambition and welcome flashes of wit, and “the end result is unquestionably dynamic—the musical equivalent of seeing one’s life as a movie.”

‘Honora’ by Flea

★★★

The first bona fide solo album of Flea’s career “sounds nothing like the music that made him famous,” said Sadie Sartini Garner in Pitchfork. Anyone expecting the “screwball energy” of the bassist’s wildest Red Hot Chili Peppers contributions “may be disappointed.” Yet the 63-year-old’s idiosyncratic melodic sense informs the entire project, which features Flea on both bass and trumpet, an instrument he studied as a child. For an album whose six original compositions sound indebted to Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter, “jazz is as apt a descriptor as any.” The record also includes a wan instrumental interpretation of Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You” and a “strikingly beautiful” cover of Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain.” Even in the company of such L.A. jazz luminaries as guitarist Jeff Parker, Flea proves “capable of holding his own,” said Janne Oinonen in The Line of Best Fit. “Morning Cry,” the fifth track, “tips its hat to bebop” while “the 10-minute ‘Frailed’ pitches Flea’s atmospheric trumpet against a minimalist electronic pulse with hypnotic results.” At one point, Flea shouts, “This shit is real”—and “that could apply to the whole of this surprising debut.”

What happened

Pepsi on Sunday withdrew its sponsorship of a London music festival after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said it was “deeply concerning” that the headliner was Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, given his history of antisemitic and pro-Nazi comments. Pepsi, listed as the lead sponsor of July’s Wireless Festival, did not give a reason for its withdrawal.

Who said what

“Antisemitism in any form is abhorrent and must be confronted firmly wherever it appears,” Starmer told British newspaper The Sun in an article published on Sunday. “Everyone has a responsibility to ensure Britain is a place where Jewish people feel safe.” Ye “has been seeking to return to public view in ways that do not create controversy” since apologizing for his antisemitic statements in a full-page Wall Street Journal ad in January, The New York Times said. Starmer’s comments “suggested that the prime minister did not believe Ye’s latest apology was sincere.”

Ye was also blocked from entering Australia last year “after releasing a song titled ‘Heil Hitler,’ glorifying the Nazi leader,” and he has not yet applied to enter the U.K., the BBC said. Leaders from across Britain’s political spectrum joined Starmer in distancing themselves from the rapper, but “three songs from his latest album” are “in the U.K.’s top 100 singles chart.”

What next?

It is “not clear what Pepsi’s decision will mean for the festival,” which still lists other major sponsors, the Times said. But “pressure was mounting” for Ye to be “pulled from his headline role,” The Associated Press said.

Taylor Swift is the biggest name in music right now, and she is also one of the defining entertainers of the 21st century. No other pop star has captured the global zeitgeist quite like the Pennsylvania country singer-turned-pop superstar. Swift broke dozens of records in 2024 and has already been continuing her success in 2025, which isn't new for her; she has been breaking records since the time she first came on the scene in the early 2000s.

Swift's globetrotting "Eras" tour became its own cultural phenomenon and defined her status as perhaps the most dominating musician of her generation. It was the highest-grossing concert tour in history and the first to surpass $1 billion in sales. But this was only the latest in a string of record-breaking successes for Swift, who has been setting precedents in the music industry since practically her first song, making waves at record stores, movie theaters and more.

"The Tortured Poets Department," was released in 2024 following massive anticipation. Swift's popularity only grew when she announced her next album, "The Life of a Showgirl," which was released Oct. 3. The album is largely inspired by her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, whom Swift recently became engaged to.

First and only female artist to surpass 100 million RIAA album sales

It's no shocker that Swift's albums fly off the shelves, and she reached a major milestone in September 2025, becoming the first and only female artist to surpass 100 million certified album sales, as confirmed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The singer has currently sold 105 million RIAA-certified albums, according to the association's website. Her 2024 album "1989" was the one that "moved the most units with 14 million," said People.

Youngest artist to win Entertainer of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards

Swift "made history at 19 by becoming the youngest artist ever" to win the CMA's Entertainer of the Year accolade, said Prestige. This is one of several awards she garnered at the CMAs that year, including Female Vocalist of the Year and Music Video of the Year.

Most American Music Awards in history

With 40 awards, Swift has taken the lead as the artist with the most American Music Awards in history. She surpassed Michael Jackson, the male artist with the most awards at 26, and Whitney Houston, who has 22. She was also recognized with the AMA's "Artist of the Decade" award in 2019 and performed a medley of some of her most popular tunes at the ceremony that year.

Most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for a solo artist

In January 2024, Swift saw her music reach the top of the Billboard 200 chart for the 68th week. This surpassed Elvis Presley's 67 weeks, giving Swift the most weeks at the top of the chart ever for a solo artist. While not consecutive, this means that Swift is behind only The Beatles, The Kingston Trio and the Rolling Stones to have the most No. 1 weeks, period.

First woman with 4 albums in Billboard chart top 10 simultaneously

When "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" debuted in July 2023, it was Swift's fourth album to occupy the Billboard 200 chart's top 10 at the same time, alongside "Midnights," "Lover" and "Folklore." This made her the first woman to have four albums in the Billboard chart's top 10 simultaneously and only the second living artist to do so after Herb Alpert in 1966. Prince also previously achieved this after his death in 2016.

"It's a pretty amazing feat," Alpert said to The New York Times. "With the way radio is these days, and the way music is distributed, with streaming, I didn't think anyone in this era could do it."

Additionally, Swift set a record for most albums by a female artist to chart on the Billboard 200 in a single week with 11. According to Billboard, since 1963, Prince and The Beatles are the only other artists who charted more albums simultaneously.

Most No. 1 albums by a woman in history

Swift's re-recording of her album "Speak Now" debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart when it was released in July 2023. This was the singer's 12th album to debut at number one, breaking the record for most number one albums by a female artist in history. This record was previously held by Barbra Streisand.

Most Grammy nominations for Song of the Year

Swift is breaking records even with her nominations. The singer has earned eight Grammy nods for Song of the Year, the most in the history of the category. However, this marks one of the rare instances in which there is something she hasn't accomplished, as Swift has never actually won the award. Prior to 2024, she "shared the record with Paul McCartney and Lionel Richie, who have six nominations in the category," said Business Insider.

Longest song ever to reach No. 1

This may not be a record most people think of, but it stands nonetheless: Swift's "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" is the longest song ever to top the Billboard charts at No 1. The song is slightly over 10 minutes long and beat out one of the most famous songs in history: Don MacLean's "American Pie," which is about eight minutes long.

First woman with new number one albums in five consecutive years

Swift is the only woman to chart a new number one album on the Billboard 200 in five consecutive calendar years with 2019's "Lover," 2020's "Folklore" and "Evermore," 2021's "Fearless (Taylor's Version)" and "Red (Taylor's Version)," 2022's "Midnights," and 2023's "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)," according to Billboard. The only other artists to achieve this feat are The Beatles, Drake, Jay-Z and Paul McCartney.

Swift also became the only act to have nine records sell half a million copies in one week in the U.S. since at least 1991, when Luminate started tracking the sales, per Billboard.

Second most Hot 100-charting songs ever

When "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" dropped in 2023, all 22 songs from the album debuted on Billboard's Hot 100. This means Swift has released 212 Hot 100-charting songs in her career, the second most of all time after she surpassed the cast of "Glee," Billboard said. She's second only to Drake, making her number one for a female artist.

First woman to dethrone herself on Hot 100

Swift shook it off in 2014 when her song "Blank Space" debuted at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. The artist she was replacing: herself, as Swift's song "Shake It Off" had previously held the top spot on the list. This makes her the only female singer to dethrone herself on top of the list.

Only artist to win Album of the Year Grammy four times

Swift made history at the 2024 Grammy Awards when she took home the Album of the Year for "Midnights," becoming the first and only person to have won the award four times. She previously won AOTY for "Fearless" in 2010, "1989" in 2016, and "Folklore" in 2021. Her win for "Folklore," which she wrote and produced during the Covid-19 lockdown, made her the first woman to win AOTY three times.

Youngest artist to win Album of the Year

Not only has she won the award four times, but Swift also became the youngest person to win an Artist of the Year Grammy when she earned her "Fearless" award in 2010 at the age of 20. This is one of the few records Swift no longer holds, as Billie Eilish "won the Grammy for her debut album, 'When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?'" in 2020 at the age of 18, said Business Insider.

Most attended concert by a female artist in the U.S.

According to Capital FM, the opening night of Swift's Eras Tour in Glendale, Arizona, in March 2023, set a record for the most attended U.S. concert by a female artist with a crowd of 69,000. Madonna reportedly held this record since 1987.

Swift's tour went on to continue breaking numerous attendance records, including at Texas' AT&T Stadium, Tennessee's Nissan Stadium, and Pennsylvania's Acrisure Stadium. "Apparently, you have broken the attendance record for any event in Pittsburgh ever," Swift told the crowd at Acrisure Stadium, adding, "No group of people this big has ever gotten together for one thing in Pittsburgh ever."

First concert tour to gross $1 billion

One of Swift's biggest milestones was setting the record for the highest-grossing music tour ever after her "Eras" tour became the first to surpass $1 billion in revenue, according to the Guinness World Records. The international tour earned $1.04 billion as of the halfway point in December 2023, according to Pollstar. She broke the record set by Elton John with his "Farewell Yellow Brick Road" tour, which lasted from 2018 through 2023 and grossed $939 million. The tour, which ended in December 2024, generated over $2 billion total, which is "double the gross ticket sales of any other concert tour in history and an extraordinary new benchmark for a white-hot international concert business," said The New York Times.

Highest-earning female musician in the industry

In October 2023, Forbes reported that Swift became a billionaire, making her the highest-earning female musician in the industry, with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion. She is also the first person to reach billionaire status with her music alone, driven in part by the success of her "Eras" tour.

Biggest vinyl sales week of modern times

Out of the 1.5 million copies in "Tortured Poets" first-week sales, 700,000 were vinyl records, breaking her record for the biggest sales week for an album on vinyl since Luminate began tracking data in 1991, Billboard said. Her latest album's sales beat the 693,000 sold by "1989 (Taylor’s Version)" in its first week in 2023.

One of the best-selling artists ever

Since the start of her career, Swift has sold an estimated 114 million albums worldwide, according to U.K. radio station Rayo. While the exact number is unclear, this makes her one of the best-selling artists of all time. She still has a long way to go to catch the number one act, The Beatles, who have reported sales of more than 230 million albums globally (though some reports say they've sold up to 600 million albums).

Most streams in a single day on Spotify

Spotify said "Tortured Poets" broke the record for most streams in a single day in the platform's history less than 12 hours after its release and was the first ever to amass over 300 million streams in a single day. The record was previously held by Beyoncé's "Cowboy Carter" album.

Relatedly, the opening song on the album, "Fortnight," broke Spotify’s record for the most streams ever gained by one song in a day.

Highest-grossing concert film of all time

Given the popularity of the Eras Tour, it shouldn't be surprising that the tour's movie became the highest-grossing theatrically released concert film ever. The film, shot during one of Swift's Los Angeles shows, reportedly "earned approximately $250 million in sales, making it the highest-grossing concert film of all time," said CBS News.

Historic Billboard 200 debut

The release week of "Tortured Poets" was a smashing success, with the album debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 chart in its first week. The album also "nabbed the record for largest streaming week ever for an album since the chart started measuring by units in December 2014," Billboard said. The first-week total reached 2.61 million units, with album sales accounting for 1.914 million. With this being her 14th chart-topper, Swift now ties with Jay-Z for most number one debuts among solo artists.

Most new albums to generate Hot 100 number ones

With "Fortnight" at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, Swift broke Rihanna's record for most albums with all-new material with at least one number-one hit on the chart, as "TTPD" brought her to eight. As her seventh song to debut at the top of the Hot 100, "Fortnight" helped Swift tie with Ariana Grande for most chart-toppers among women. Drake has the most overall, with nine, but "Fortnight" also ties Swift with him for the most Hot 100 number ones this decade, as both of them have seven.

Most views for a podcast on YouTube

Forget about music — Swift is busy breaking all kinds of records. She appeared on an episode of "New Heights," a podcast hosted by her fiancé Travis Kelce and his brother Jason Kelce, in August. The episode, during which Swift announced her 2025 album, earned the "most concurrent views for a podcast" on YouTube, said Guinness World Records, with 1.3 million people tuning in at once. The podcast episode has been viewed on the platform nearly 21 million times.

‘Arirang’ by BTS

★★★

“Comebacks don’t get bigger than this one,” said Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. The world’s biggest band, after a hiatus during which all seven members fulfilled their mandatory South Korean military service obligation, has returned “stronger than ever” with the group’s first album since 2020. The record’s first half is “one up-tempo stomp after another, loaded with hip-hop braggadocio,” while the second half “stretches out in more interesting directions.” And though the lyrics mix Korean and English, the music repeatedly stresses BTS’s Korean roots. The album title is taken from a popular Korean folk song that’s also woven into the stadium-ready opening track, producing “a powerful collision of the ancient and the modern.” The entire album feels like a fulfillment of the band’s promise to be a bridge of South Korean culture to the rest of the world, said Sheldon Pearce in NPR.com. And while the “grungy pop” of “Like Animals” qualifies as a “quintessential” BTS song, that’s even more true of the rap songs, in part because rapper RM is the lead creative force. The band “has never felt more connected, inwardly or to its calling.”

‘The Way I Am’ by Luke Combs

★★★

Luke Combs’ new album “plays like an hour of prime contemporary
country radio,” said Stephen Thomas Erlewine in Pitchfork. Mixing ballads with “sports-bar anthems,” the 22-song set “hits the expected marks crisply, sometimes even memorably.” There’s talk of whiskey, Saturday nights, cowboys, and everlasting love. They’re “hand-me-down stories,” in other words, but “distinguished by an expert sense of craft.” The album proves careless only in its “rambling” length. Still, the “honeyed rasp” of Combs’ voice “commands attention,” and on weepers like “15 Minutes,” about a prison inmate, he remains “a storyteller who knows when to not telegraph a twist.” With this frequent Grammy nominee, “consistency is the name of the game,” said Ethan Beck in Paste. Throughout Combs’ catalog, “there are almost no terrible songs but only a few life-changing ones,” because he relies mostly on “well-deployed clichés” and “a blandly rocking atmosphere.” If he’d “get down in the weeds” and reveal more of his personal shortcomings, as rivals Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan do, he’d “strike gold” more often.

‘Girlfriend’ by Grace Ives

★★★

Grace Ives’ latest tunes “bubble with detail,” said Laura Snapes in The
Guardian. The Brooklyn native, who earned her initial acclaim as a DIY
bedroom-pop artist, has expanded her sound for this third album, a record filled with “hyper-detailed songs that streak by like big-city streetlights and shimmer with cosmic awe.” Ives, 30, embraced sobriety just before starting work on the album, and she appears to be exorcising demons. With its collage-like assemblages of club beats, glitchy synths, and stabs of strings, Girlfriend evokes “the broken-mirror glitter” of Lorde’s Melodrama, distinguished by “off-the-cuff vocals” that “nudge melodies into earworms.” After making 2022’s acclaimed Janky Star, said Lindsay Zoladz in The New York Times, “Ives was often described as a kind of endearingly sloppy agent of Millennial-girl chaos.” The new album “finds her reckoning with the consequences of such behavior,” but it’s also “relentlessly catchy.” Her songs remain “cut through with her poetic sense of humor,” and they still have an intimacy that makes each sound “as if the listener is eavesdropping on the personal theme songs she hums to herself.”

‘Monica’ by Jack Harlow

★★

Jack Harlow’s swerve into muted R&B turns out to be “at once easy to mock and easier to enjoy than expected,” said Jeff Ihaza in Rolling Stone. The 28-year-old white rapper, who scored back-to- back No. 1 hits in 2022–23, has returned three years later with a 10-song set that contains no rapping at all. But while he’s taken hits for a prerelease interview in which he described himself as getting “Blacker” by turning to R&B, the album is “one of Harlow’s most coherent projects,” a collection of songs that “rely on texture, pacing, and arrangement—muted keys, unfussy bass lines, drums that never push too hard—to create a sense of intimacy he can slide into.” His fine backing musicians give the record “an easy warmth.” So here he is, three years after trying to rap like Drake, “sounding like Robin Thicke without the vocal chops,” said Peter A. Berry in Okayplayer. That’s not the insult it may seem. “By his own admission, Jack is a limited vocalist,” and some of these tracks “kinda go, to be honest.” Still, the album proves “a bit drab in spurts,” and because the star is trying to write more mature lyrics, “the incisive wit he’s been known for really isn’t there.”

‘A Pound of Feathers’ by The Black Crowes

★★★

It’s a “miracle” that a band this far into its career could still make an
album “this daring and defiant,” said Tim Sendra in AllMusic. Written and recorded in just 10 days, the Black Crowes’ follow-up to their strong 2024 comeback release is “loose and gritty,” the work of a decades-old band eager to “kick up some serious rock ’n’ roll noise.” On the punkish “Do the Parasite!” the Crowes come across “like a Southern-fried Hives” while “Doomsday Doggerel” finds them dipping into Zeppelin-like psychedelia. A couple strong ballads are mixed in; elsewhere, singer Chris Robinson is “at his strutting best” while guitarist Rich Robinson “sounds like he’s having a blast tossing off molten lava riffs and lightning-fingered leads.” In these toxic times, the Black Crowes are “dancing toward doomsday,” said Matt Melis in Paste. At the same time, the band “finds a natural balance between raucousness and reflection,” invoking in the album’s title and the record’s first single the old riddle, What’ll you have, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead? “As the Crowes remind us, it’s really all about how you choose to shoulder that pound.”

‘Play Me’ by Kim Gordon

★★★

“Chill vibes are in short supply on Kim Gordon’s third exhilarating collaboration with Charli XCX producer Justin Raisen,” said Victoria Segal in Mojo. “Immersed in the helter-skelter currents of modern life,” the latest songs from the 72-year-old Sonic Youth alum capture “the high-wire panic of daily existence.” In Gordon’s “stress-fractured” vocals, we hear an artist “whose nerve endings are uninsulated” as she highlights “both the absurdity and the seriousness” of our current political predicament. Meanwhile, the “brutalist, slabby” tone of the music is tempered by “the distinct sense of joy taken in its creation.” On every level, Play Me is “the most populist music Gordon has ever made,” said Emma Madden in Pitchfork. At less than 28 minutes, it’s “addictive and brisk,” chugging forward with “modulating bass lines and a steady krautrock influence.” But too often Gordon forgoes her signature ambiguity. The title track is simply a recitation of imagined Spotify playlists, and once the joke lands we’re not left with much. “In an era defined by un-subtlety, simply pointing at the surface can feel indistinguishable from scrolling through it.”

While it might not be quite warm enough yet for outdoor concerts, that doesn’t mean indoor venues won’t get plenty of action. Welcome in the sounds of spring with tours from your favorite big-name artists.

Alabama Shakes

Alabama Shakes has not released a studio album in over a decade following a long hiatus, but the rock band hasn’t left its fans in the dark when it comes to tours. Now the group — formed, unsurprisingly, in Alabama — is embarking on another tour that will see them crisscross venues in the United States, Europe and Canada.

The tour will feature “special guests” including soul icon Mavis Staples, according to the band’s Facebook page. With Alabama Shakes also announcing it is working on new music, fans have a lot to look forward to. (through September)

Cardi B

Cardi B has conquered the rap world during the last decade but has only ever headlined one concert tour — until now. The New York City-born rapper kicked off her “Little Miss Drama” tour in February in support of her second LP, “Am I the Drama?”

The tour, which takes Cardi B to destinations across North America, has featured some significant surprise guests, including Kehlani and Megan Thee Stallion, the latter of whom collaborated with Cardi B on the hit single “WAP.” The show has received rave reviews and is a “dramatic and weighty performance,” said The Minnesota Star Tribune. (through April)

Don Toliver

Since Don Toliver released his debut mixtape in 2018, the Houston native has emerged as one of the most popular names on the rap scene. Now he is embarking on his fourth concert series in five years with his “Octane” tour, which supports his recently released album of the same name.

The tour will see Toliver crisscross North America, though rumors of a future European leg also abound. In a potential preview of the tour, Toliver recently performed at SXSW in Texas, where he played a “headlining set packed with pyrotechnics and pulse-pounding production,” said The Austin Chronicle. (through July)

David Byrne

As a founder of the rock band Talking Heads, David Byrne is no stranger to fame, but he hasn’t hit the tour circuit since 2018. That is changing as the singer-songwriter embarks on his “Who is the Sky?” tour supporting his LP of the same name.

The tour took Byrne throughout the U.S. in 2025 and is set to bring him internationally in 2026. The result is an “ambitious new show blending visual art, storytelling and music into one compelling live performance,” said Rolling Stone Australia. Several of Byrne’s longtime collaborators are also accompanying him on stage. (through July)

Florence and the Machine

Florence and the Machine has always provided its fans with a unique blend of genres and sounds, and the rock band is continuing that streak as part of the “Everybody Scream” tour. The tour, in support of Florence and the Machine’s studio album of the same name, is visiting the U.S. and Europe. It received rave reviews during its opening shows, particularly for the performance of band leader Florence Welch. The tour is a “fitting manifestation of a weighty album about mortality and acceptance, midlife and motherhood, trauma, success, desire and more,” said the London Evening Standard. (through August)

FKA Twigs

British singer FKA Twigs has a loyal fanbase and is coming off a big year, having released two studio albums in 2025: “Eusexua” and “Eusexua Afterglow.” Now she is hitting the road on her “Body High” tour, bringing her music to listeners across the United States and Europe. The singer is known for incorporating a variety of artistry into her music, and the tour shows off a “full feast: classics from her catalog, acclaimed songs from ‘Eusexua,’ unreleased tracks and techno remixes of new hits,” said the Miami New Times. (through June)

My Chemical Romance

Go see a marching band with My Chemical Romance, currently crossing the globe to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their acclaimed studio album “The Black Parade.” The tour is a continuation of a separate anniversary journey the group embarked on in 2025, and the punk band has some lofty expectations to live up to.

The 2025 tour was critically acclaimed, and when the band played New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, it put on the “most thrilling stadium show in MetLife history,” said Paste magazine. The show at that time felt “both eerily real and absolutely absurd.” (through November)

PinkPantheress

British singer PinkPantheress provides a unique sound, with her spunky pop songs becoming a hit among Gen Z fans. In 2025, she set off on her third concert tour in four years, “An Evening with …PinkPantheress,” tour, which is continuing throughout this year.

The tour, which takes place on several continents, comes on the heels of her debut album from 2023. PinkPantheress has also been riding the popularity of her recent song “Stateside,” which “found its breakthrough moment,” said Forbes, after U.S. figure skater Alysa Liu performed to it on her road to an Olympic gold medal. (through August)

“Weird Al” Yankovic

If you’re looking for a musical parody, there is only one master of the genre: “Weird Al” Yankovic, and now he’s back on the road with his comedic chops in the “Bigger & Weirder 2026” tour. The U.S. tour is a celebration of the singer’s wide body of parody songs, and fans can expect to hear “his iconic hits as well as a few fan favorites and deep cuts,” said the tour website. Yankovic, whose iconic songs like “Amish Paradise” and “White & Nerdy” remain cultural tentpoles, is joined on tour by four additional band members to “create a super-sized concert experience.” (through October)

Zach Bryan

Zach Bryan rose from the small town of Oologah, Oklahoma, to become one of the biggest names in country music, and you can catch his guitar chords in action during his ongoing “With Heaven” tour. The tour, in support of Bryan’s sixth studio album, “With Heaven on Top,” is making its way across two continents to critical acclaim.

In 2025, his performance at Michigan Stadium became the largest ticketed concert in U.S. history. It is only fitting, then, that his tours so far this year provide “world-class storytelling, chart-topping hits and a 20-piece band,” said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. (through October)

‘Kiss All the Time, Disco Occasionally’ by Harry Styles

★★★

From the start, Harry Styles’ first album in nearly four years establishes “an almost psychedelic sense of adventure,” said Joe Levy in Rolling
Stone. Subverting the expectations sown by Harry’s House, his 2022 Grammy winner, the 32-year-old pop idol has turned down his star power to create a more sensory musical experience. His voice is often submerged in the mix, “and though there are hooks—plenty of them—they too sometimes take a back seat to low-frequency thumps and grooves.” Strings and acoustic guitar pop up amid the beats and synth washes, resulting in an album that’s “delightfully strange, often lovely, and consistently fascinating.” You can often hear the influence of Radiohead and LCD Soundsystem on Styles’ new sound, said Lindsay Zoladz in The New York Times. It’s there in the “nervy electro-pop” of “Are You Listening Yet?” and the “glitchy pulse” of “Aperture,” the lead single. If you’re seeking depth, don’t bother. Often, the lyrics “resemble the seemingly life-altering epiphanies one has during a psychedelic trip.” Most don’t hold up to sober scrutiny. But when “Aperture” praises love, “who can argue with that?

‘Mutiny After Midnight’ by Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds

★★★★

Though you won’t find it on streaming services, the new Johnny Blue
Skies LP is “an instant contender for Album of the Year as well as Greasiest Album of the Year,” said Alex Pappademas in GQ. Johnny is the alter ego alt-country great Sturgill Simpson adopted in 2024, and this time he takes listeners on a seriously wild ride, mixing “fevered curly-guitar-cord boogie” with “life-in-the-fast-lane disco” plus “true-testimonial soul” and “possible-final-season-of-American-democracy anxiety.” Currently, the record, an Atlantic release, is available for sale only in physical copies, and when some country fans hear it, said Matt Mitchell in Paste, they’re “going to call Simpson a commie or a libtard more than they already do.” He rips into Trump 2.0’s cruel authoritarianism from Track 1 and, keeping a promise about the album’s theme, “argues that sex is an antidote to fascism.” But he also pours his heart into “Don’t Let Go,” a tribute to his wife, and makes most of the rest grease-fry hot. Mutiny finds the 47-year-old Kentucky native and his band “on a country-funk tear, letting muscular guitar riffs defrost into mirror-ball rhythms.”

‘Memory Be a Blade’ by Waterbaby

★★★

“It all felt so important, till it all went away,” sings Waterbaby on her debut
album. Such is the mood of the brief eight-song record, which finds the
28-year-old Stockholm-based songwriter “half-fraught and half-free” as she looks back on a breakup, said Ben Beaumont-Thomas in The Guardian. Some lyrics are improvised, which may explain why the opening track feels vague. After that, though, Waterbaby “locks into a run of superb material,” her pretty voice sailing atop music featuring piano, guitar, strings, and brass, with occasional flute and dulcimer. Compared with the down-tempo bedroom pop she originally shared online, the record reveals “a surprising evolution in sound,” said Marcy Donelson in AllMusic. The music still has hints of jazz, but it leans more on acoustic instrumentation, and “the result is something physically closer, more delicate, and more diaristic.” Over the “bright and staccato” piano groove of “Beck n Call,” she and her singer-rapper brother, Ttoh, sketch a happy alternative reality in which the expired relationship worked out. The spell
can’t last. “By its final ‘mmm,’ Memory Be a Blade’s title has come into sharp focus.”

The chill of winter has passed. So while you wait for April showers to bring May flowers, immerse yourself in a bunch of new music from your favorite artists.

Blackpink, ‘Deadline’

The K-pop supergroup Blackpink released their last album four years ago. While they don’t have a full LP drop on the radar, you can still listen to some fresh music with the band’s new EP “Deadline.” The extended play, which heavily features English lyrics, is Blackpink’s first official release since 2022’s “Born Pink” album. It was released to largely positive reviews. Most notable is the EP’s lead single, “Jump,” a “punchy, hardstyle-inspired track” that places Blackpink “within the current wave of K-pop influenced by electronic dance music,” said Pitchfork. (out now)

Bruno Mars, ‘The Romantic’

Pop sensation Bruno Mars took more than a four-year break after his last album, but now he’s back with a new solo effort: Mars’ album “The Romantic” is the fourth LP to be released by the Hawaii native. The artist’s mid-2010s singles like “The Lazy Song” and “Just the Way You Are” remain tentpoles of the era, but “The Romantic” hasn’t received similarly universal acclaim. The LP is “so-so” and “very unadventurous and just very predictable,” said The Needle Drop, although others have praised it. (out now)

Gorillaz, ‘The Mountain’

If you are looking for something truly different, Gorillaz might be for you; unlike the other entries on this list, this is an entirely virtual band that just released its ninth studio album, “The Mountain.” The band typically appears in 2D media like comic books and art strips, but “The Mountain” marks another new direction for Gorillaz. It focuses on sounds of the Indian subcontinent and “gathers collaborators both living and departed for a characteristically audacious monument to grief, India and archival memory,” said Pitchfork. (out now)

Harry Styles, ‘Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally’

Harry Styles has been moving in one direction: up. The global pop superstar has had fans on their toes for his fourth studio album, “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally,” which marks his first LP in four years. While Styles has been in the spotlight for years, he only started releasing solo albums since 2019, and his most recent outing is a “murky self-portrait that obscures as much as it reveals,” said The New York Times. The “surface, though, is usually where Styles’ music sparkles, and there’s plenty of gleam throughout this LP.” (out now)

BTS, ‘Arirang’

While Blackpink may have the K-pop girl group on lock, South Korean boy band BTS is its own cultural sensation. Now the band is releasing its milestone 10th studio album, “Arirang.” Fans have been eagerly awaiting the LP; BTS has not released new music in three years due to the band members’ mandatory military service. The album’s name “refers to the title of a beloved Korean folk song, often described as an unofficial national anthem and a core symbol of Korean culture and identity,” said Consequence. A trailer for a live reunion concert on Netflix has also been released. (March 20)

José González, ‘Against the Dying of the Light’

José González is known for blending a rich cultural background, and now the Swedish singer born to Argentinian parents is dropping his fifth studio album, “Against the Dying of the Light.” González doesn’t release solo music often, as his five LPs have landed during a 23-year period. But when he does put out new tunes, they typically receive critical acclaim; the upcoming album’s self-titled lead single, out now, is a “reflective meditation on the humanity of 2025, embracing who we are and what has shaped us, while turning our focus toward the challenges that lie ahead,” said KCRW. (March 27)

Raye, ‘This Music May Contain Hope’

British singer-songwriter Raye has released several EPs but only one full studio album — until now. Her second LP, “This Music May Contain Hope,” is on the horizon, and will feature a hefty 17 songs. Raye is known for imbuing her music with a variety of symbolism, and the album is “set in four different ‘seasons’ that will span the complexities of human emotion,” said Melodic magazine. For fans of album art, these ‘seasons’ will “also be featured on each side of the vinyl release.” The album’s lead single, “Where Is My Husband!,” is out now. (March 27)

Thundercat, ‘Distracted’

Thundercat started as a member of the heavy metal group Suicidal Tendencies before reinventing his music as a solo artist. His solo albums are typically a blend of funk, R&B and psychedelic, and his fifth LP, “Distracted,” is expected to continue this approach. The album features collaborations with artists like A$AP Rocky and Tame Impala, as well as a “previously unreleased collaboration with the late Mac Miller,” said Consequence. “Just know that the struggle is real and changes shape but just to keep pushing forward,” Thundercat said of the album. The LP’s lead single, “I Did This to Myself,” is out now. (April 3)

Zayn, ‘Konnakol’

As the second member of One Direction to appear on this list, Zayn is no stranger to superstardom. Like Harry Styles, Zayn has forged his own solo path and is preparing to release his fifth LP, “Konnakol.” The English singer is known for pulling from various musical sources, and the album’s title references the “vocal percussion technique used in South Indian Carnatic music,” a “deliberate nod to his South Asian heritage and a signal of the musical direction he's taking,” said Forbes. The album features “deep integration of South Asian musical elements” and the lead single, “Die for Me,” is out now. (April 17)

Foo Fighters, ‘Your Favorite Toy’

Rockers rejoice: The Foo Fighters are back with their first LP in three years, “Your Favorite Toy,” which will be the band’s 12th overall studio album. Fans of the Nirvana successor may notice a difference from prior work, as this is the Foo Fighters’ first album without drummer Ilan Rubin. While details on the album are slim, the LP’s self-titled second single, out now, is the “fuse to the powder keg of songs we wound up recording for this record. It feels new,” frontman Dave Grohl said in a statement, calling the song an “insidious earworm.” (April 24)

‘The Romantic’ by Bruno Mars

★★★

“A new Bruno Mars album is not a grand artistic or personal statement,”
said Tom Breihan in Stereogum. The 40-year-old multi-Grammy winner
is “a one-man tribute act,” a performer whose hits are invariably “a pastiche of sounds that tend to do well at weddings,” essentially “anything that might get the party started.” His first solo album in nearly 10 years delivers more of the same, though it adds traces of Latin pop and “goes harder on sincere puppy-dog-eyes low-dance numbers” than any Mars album since his 2010 debut. Just nine songs long, it’s “a supremely easy listen,” but nothing more. The album’s recent No. 1 hit, “I Just Might,” was “clearly designed to please large crowds,” said Andy Kellman in AllMusic. It seems to mix early Jackson 5 with disco-era Leo Sayer, just as “Cha Cha Cha” connects Havana, Tijuana, and Philadelphia and “Something Serious” pairs Philly soul with 1970s Latin rock. In the decade between his solo albums, Mars has continued to crank out hits as a collaborator. Here, as always, “no matter how trite the lyrics are, he sells them effectively,” and his “beaming rasp of a voice” remains a remarkable instrument.

‘Nothing’s About to Happen to Me’ by Mitski

★★★

The new Mitski album is “as much an immersive literary experience as an exercise in listening,” said Hanif Abdurraqib in The New Yorker. For all 11 songs, the 35-year-old indie rock star assumes the character of a recluse in a messy house. Though the music combines “big orchestral swings” and “moments of loud, frantic guitar,” its formal ambitions “feel secondary to its lyrical themes.” At a line-by-line level, “the song-writing comes alive with imagery and ache,” but the album’s “most fascinating quality” is its “wonderfully complicated” central character. The singer is “having fun here,” imagining herself as a loner whose only companions are two cats, said Craig Jenkins in NYMag.com. There’s talk of loneliness and even death, but Mitski’s recluse enjoys the freedom of isolation, and “even in its glummest moments, this album is full of life.” Its quiet songs are “intricately plush,” and many lines are more funny than forlorn. All in all, “it’s Mitski’s best work since Be the Cowboy,” the 2018 album that brought her an unwanted degree of fame. Putting her own such worries aside, “she works wonders with a little distance.”

‘The Mountain’ by Gorillaz

★★★

“Much of The Mountain fits into the enduring Gorillaz tradition of the
apocalyptic party album,” said Jazz Monroe in Pitchfork. This time, the animated band, a project Damon Albarn launched with his friend Jamie Hewlett in 1998, weaves in the voices of half a dozen collaborators who’ve died since the Britpop veteran coaxed them into the studio. But their presence fits the album’s theme. Made shortly after the deaths of both Albarn’s and Hewlett’s fathers, it’s “a convocation of souls,” and while some of its efforts to blur the line between the dead and living “teeter into folly,” Albarn “takes an infectious pride in linking one world to the next.” Because the album is also inspired by a trip Albarn and Hewlett made to India, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian, “a host of Indian artists,” including traditional musicians, contribute. Given the record’s grim theme, “the overall mood is weirdly upbeat.” You’ll hear “post-disco boogie” on “The Moon Cave” and “Arabic acid house” on “Damascus.” The idea that we live on after death provides a uniting theme, and “the result is an unexpected career highlight, a quarter of a century in.”

‘Wuthering Heights’ by Charli XCX

★★★

Give Charli XCX credit, said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal.
With her new album featuring several songs from the new movie Wuthering Heights, the pop pioneer who made 2024’s Brat has delivered “a satisfying listen as well as a canny solution to the problem of how to follow up a breakthrough record.” Invited to create music for the film, Charli “seems to have viewed the project as an aesthetic challenge, a chance to make sticky electro-pop about love and death with orchestrations that blow up every breathy sigh to IMAX proportions.” A couple of tunes don’t quite fit the theme, including “Out of Myself,” which is “effortlessly catchy” in its own right. Otherwise, the album “holds together beautifully.” The middle of the record “really soars,” said Liz Shannon Miller in Consequence. The single “Chains of Love” pairs “big orchestral swirls” with “a rough electro edge” to generate an “aura of tortured romance.” For some reason, Charli chooses to close the set with “two relatively forgettable, upbeat tracks.” As in the movie that inspired it, “there’s messiness here, and messiness feels like the point.”

‘Cloud 9’ by Megan Moroney

★★★

“Fans of country music should be cheering for Cloud 9,” said Trigger Coroneos in Saving Country Music. Yes, Megan Moroney is “not a strong singer” and her latest is “more pop than country.” But at a time when the pop music world is becoming more country, the 28-year-old Georgia native is doing her part to steer country back toward personal songs written by the person who sings them, and she “does so in a way that’s entertaining, infectious, and widely appealing.” Moroney’s third album seems likely to launch her into megastardom, yet “what’s striking about Cloud 9 is how little it strays from her past approach,” said Jonathan Bernstein in Rolling Stone. It’s “Music Row songcraft dressed up with Gen Z internet speak” and “set to muscular pop rock,” albeit with a touch of twang. Still, “Moroney is often a deft and surprising storyteller,” and these songs have “newfound emotional complexity.” On the country waltz “Bells & Whistles,” she sings as the other woman in an affair, expressing admiration for her counterpart before tweaking the refrain to reveal self-loathing. “I’m not me,” she sings, “without the bells and the whistles.”

‘Prizefighter’ by Mumford & Sons

★★

“Mumford & Sons have achieved massive success, but they’re still desperate for respect,” said Hannah Jocelyn in Pitchfork. The British band’s sixth album arrives as the three original members of the former quartet are well positioned to re-establish themselves as the elder statesmen of the stomp-clap folk pop that’s recently been revived by younger artists. Unfortunately, on this record’s first six songs, “the choruses can’t muster up the old dopamine hits.” Only on the back half, as guest stars including Gracie Abrams “expand the band’s palette” and Marcus Mumford starts singing about things he cares about does the music come alive. I hear the entire project as the sound of a seasoned band “trusting their instincts, pairing earnest reflection with folk-pop musicality that favors emotion over reinvention,” said James Christopher Monger in AllMusic. Though it’s only “marginally better” than 2025’s Rushmere, this album, recorded under the guidance of the National’s Aaron Dessner, “reinforces Mumford & Sons’ reputation as purveyors of quality comfort food.” It’s also “deeply rooted in the folk and country traditions the band knows intimately.”

‘The Fall-Off’ by J. Cole

★★

“In the thick of midlife, J. Cole is reflecting on the legacy he’ll leave,” said Rodney Carmichael in NPR.com. His latest release is “less concept album than epic conceit,” supposedly a final statement from a Fayetteville, N.C., rapper who, at 41, is playing at being “an old man, a new man, and everyman all at once.” He’s still confident of his membership in the Big Three, alongside Kendrick Lamar and Drake, as one of the great emcees of their era. Yet his attempt to present his as an everyman’s hip-hop journey falls flat, especially when he invokes a classic 1994 Common track with “I Love Her Again,” repeating Common’s “cringe” metaphor of rap as a woman who’s slept around. “The sheer sprawl of the record—24 tracks, 100 minutes—is daunting,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. Cole considers the first dozen songs a reflection on his rise, and the next dozen wisdom from an elder. “Bombs in the Ville/Hit the Gas” even imagines his older and younger selves linking on FaceTime. Despite some highlights and sharp writing, the album “starts to feel like a concluding montage that lasts just a bit too long.”

‘To Whom This May Concern’ by Jill Scott

★★★

Jill Scott’s first album in more than 10 years “pushes her adventurous
streak to the fore,” said Mosi Reeves in Rolling Stone. “Dabbling in everything from trip-hop to New Orleans rhythm & blues,” the 53-year-old neo-soul pioneer has made a record that might initially disappoint fans who expect more of Scott’s “babymaker R&B anthems.” But there are plenty of new treasures to admire, including “Liftin’ Me Up,” with its “bubbly go-go rhythm,” and “Norf Side,” which finds Scott capably trading rhymes with Tierra Whack over a beat by DJ Premier. “A portrait of a warmly familiar, complex, all-too-human artist,” the 19-track record rewards repeated listening. “If there’s one universal truth about Scott, it’s that she contains multitudes,” said Steven J. Horowitz in Variety. She’s both “brassy and contemplative” on To Whom This May Concern, at times sifting through the wreckage of two divorces, at other times finding love in unexpected places. She “pulls from all directions here—cocktail jazz, big band, cosmic R&B, even diva disco—yet it all feels distinctly Scott,” an “ever-evolving” artist who knows exactly who she is.

‘The protein bar delusion’

Nicholas Florko at The Atlantic

Protein bars have “come a long way from the chalky monstrosities that lined shelves not long ago,” says Nicholas Florko. For “anyone with a sweet tooth, it can feel like food companies have developed guilt-free candy. But that’s where things get disorienting.” Some protein products are “seemingly nutritionally benign, whereas others are nothing more than junk food trying to cash in on protein’s good reputation.” The “line between protein bar and candy bar has never been blurrier.”

Read more

‘How tech turned against women’

Laura Bates at the Financial Times

The “Big Tech lobby, well oiled by money and unprecedented proximity to those in positions of power, has done an overwhelmingly successful job of convincing us that regulation in their sector is a near-impossible task,” says Laura Bates. We are “sleepwalking into a new age of gender inequality, propelled at breathtaking speed by the implementation of untested AI.” Existing “forms of inequality and discrimination are being repeated and intensified by tools that have been trained on biased or misleading data.”

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‘Tarique Rahman must revive Bangladesh’s economy’

Farid Erkizia Bakht at Time

New Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman will have to “work hard to maintain political stability but his political success will depend on his primary task: reviving the economy,” says Farid Erkizia Bakht. Many “identify structural bottlenecks in distribution channels, rather than monetary policy alone, as the chief cause of elevated food prices. This is the Rahman government’s Achilles heel.” The “challenges are significant but Rahman does have a chance to revive the economy and bring stability to Bangladesh.”

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‘How George Harrison transformed the music business’

Josh Harlan at The Wall Street Journal

Spotify “recently announced that it paid more than $11 billion in streaming royalties and other payments to the music industry in 2025,” and it is a “fitting occasion to recall how George Harrison, railing against Britain’s confiscatory tax regime, unwittingly helped create the template for this market,” says Josh Harlan. The Beatles’ “attempt to protect their income stream would backfire twice, costing them control of their own songs, but it also helped shape one of today’s most coveted asset classes.”

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“Bad Bunny’s critics said his Super Bowl halftime show would be divisive,” said Spencer Kornhaber in The Atlantic. “They were totally wrong.” The world’s most popular recording artist took the world’s biggest stage and chose to throw a party instead of picking a fight, letting his Spanish lyrics and roving celebration of his Puerto Rican culture say all that needed to be said to the forces in America who are menacing Spanish-speaking people of color. In short, “he applied one of the greatest lessons you learn as a part of an oppressed group: Joy is resistance. Pride in your heritage is protest,” said Nadira Goffe in Slate. As he ran through songs from his catalog, including from the record that was recently awarded the Grammy for Album of the Year, the 31-year-old Puerto Rican native danced amid island vignettes, surrounded himself with Latino celebrities including Karol G and Ricky Martin, hosted an actual wedding, and punctuated it all by spiking a football that read “Together we are America.”

Perhaps surprisingly, “MAGA is fighting with itself over Bad Bunny’s show,” said Hafiz Rashid in The New Republic. President Trump immediately issued a Truth Social post calling the performance “one of the worst EVER!” and “an affront to the Greatness of America” because “nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” But there was heavy pushback. On X, conservative influencer Emily Austin applauded Bad Bunny because, instead of dividing the audience, he “chose unity & love.”

Brothers Jake and Logan Paul, who both moved to Puerto Rico in 2021, personified the Right’s division, with Jake labeling Bad Bunny a “fake” U.S. citizen while Logan chided his brother’s ignorance and praised the
NFL’s display of Puerto Rican talent. In response to one conservative commentator’s racist post, former Trump campaign official Vianca Rodriguez responded, “Way to go alienating your Puerto Rican conservative base.” And Republicans should be concerned, because Trump’s standing with Latino voters has been slipping since 2024, and many will remember that the president can’t accept that Puerto Ricans are born Americans and that the world’s biggest star sings in Spanish.

Bad Bunny “stepped onto the field as a human Rorschach test,” said Jim Geraghty in National Review. Whether his performance left viewers thrilled or unimpressed mostly depended upon where each of them stood beforehand on his music or his previous statements criticizing Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts. But you can bet that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell loved the performance because it advanced his mission of conquering audiences worldwide, including in Spanish-speaking countries that have little historical connection to American pro football. By some estimates, the performance was seen live by 135 million people, including the crowd attending Trump’s Super Bowl watch party in Florida, said Nick Moyle in NJ.com. An alternative halftime show, which was mounted by the conservative group Turning Point USA and headlined by Kid Rock, was viewed live by 6 million.

Last year was packed with thrilling gigs from the Oasis reunion to Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” tour. And it seems 2026 is shaping up to be just as exciting with a packed calendar of musical treats including Lily Allen’s first tour in seven years, following her fiery revenge album “West End Girl”. Here are some of our top picks.

My Chemical Romance

It’s “the news every former emo kid was waiting for”, said Danni Scott in Metro. My Chemical Romance are bringing their “Black Parade” anniversary tour to the UK; the band will be performing the 2006 album “front to back” to mark two decades since its release. Anticipation is already building as “fans eagerly await hearing that iconic note – you know the one – live”.

Anfield Liverpool, 30 June, then touring, mychemicalromance.com

A$AP Rocky

“Hot on the heels” of his new album, “Don’t Be Dumb”, A$AP Rocky will be setting out on a “huge” 42-date world tour, said Miranda Pell in the Manchester Evening News. The rapper will take to the stage at London’s O2 arena in August before heading to Glasgow and Manchester.

The O2 London, 30 August, then touring, asaprocky.com

Ariana Grande

The internet went into “meltdown” when Ariana Grande announced her new tour, with five dates scheduled in London this August, said Alice Hall in Grazia. It will be the Grammy-Award winning singer-songwriter’s first tour in seven years, since her 2018 album “Sweetener”. Since then, Grande – known for her impressive four-octave vocal range – has been busy on the big screen starring as Glinda in “Wicked”. This is not one to miss.

The O2 London, 15 August, then touring, arianagrande.com

Lily Allen

Lily Allen managed the comeback of the century with her “confessional” post-break-up album “West End Girl”, said Helen Brown in The Telegraph. It was released to rave reviews last year, delivering “dirty linen” as she dissected the “jaw-dropping breakdown of her marriage” to David Harbour. “Lyrically dark and dense” and “written in just 10 days”, it was one of the year’s best albums. It’s little wonder the first batch of tickets for the accompanying tour sold out in minutes.

Touring (including abroad) until 1 November, lilyallenmusic.com

Metallica

Metallica’s “M72” world tour will be “heavy music heaven”, said Ed Cunningham on Time Out. The most “interesting” shows are those in London where the band will play a “no repeat weekend” where fans can expect two completely different set lists and opening acts. It might be worth buying a few tickets…

Hampden Park, Glasgow, 25 June, then touring (including abroad) until 5 July, metallica.com

Florence + The Machine

Given the number of hits Florence + The Machine has had over the years, these shows will no doubt have fans “hollering to the rafters”, said Cunningham on Time Out. The band is touring with their latest album “Everybody Scream”, with stops in Edinburgh, Leeds and Reading.

Touring (including abroad) until 30 August, florenceandthemachine.net

Harry Styles

The “grand return” of Harry Styles after his three-year career hiatus is “finally here”, said Joanna Magill in Radio Times. He will be in London for a handful of dates in June and July, before heading on to Amsterdam and New York.

Touring (including abroad) until 13 December, hstyles.co.uk

Olivia Dean

British singer-songwriter Olivia Dean rose to “stratospheric levels after blowing up” with “Man I Need”, said Scott in Metro. You’ll need to snap up tickets fast as she’s “already filling out arenas” just a couple of years after scooping BBC Music Introducing Artist of the Year. “Giving pop a soulful spin, Olivia is one of the artists of the moment, so why wouldn’t you want to see her perform live?”

Touring (including abroad) until 18 July, oliviadeano.com

While millions will tune in to watch the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots battle it out in Super Bowl LX, just as many are excited for Bad Bunny’s highly anticipated halftime show. The Puerto Rican singer is the latest in a long line of superstar musicians to make their mark at the Big Game. From Prince to Katy Perry, Super Bowl halftime shows have a long history of memorable moments.

Historical firsts

While modern Super Bowls are thought of as platforms for major acts, this wasn’t always the case; the majority of early halftime shows were performed by college marching bands. The first major pop group to headline a Super Bowl was New Kids on the Block, who performed during the game in 1991. The boy band performed alongside a choir of kids singing songs like “It’s a Small World.” But while the show was historic, it was also not well-received, even by the band. “I don’t know how much pride I take in the actual performance,” frontman Donnie Wahlberg once told Playboy. “But I take pride in the fact that we were the first ones to do it.”

When pop stars began regularly performing at the Super Bowl, they were exclusively English-language singers — until 1999, when Gloria Estefan headlined the halftime show. Estefan had previously made an appearance at the 1992 Super Bowl show, and as “part of the ‘A Celebration of Soul, Salsa and Swing’ halftime show in Miami, Estefan performed her single ‘Oye,’ which blends Spanish and English lyrics,” said ESPN. Ahead of Bad Bunny’s performance, Estefan also had some advice for the Latino singer. “Enjoy every second because it really goes by so fast,” she said to E! News. “In those minutes, he’s gonna have the ability to impact the world.”

While the Super Bowl is a uniquely American phenomenon, another barrier was broken in 2000 when Phil Collins became the first non-U.S. citizen to headline the halftime show. The British singer, known for his work with the rock band Genesis as well as solo songs like “In the Air Tonight,” performed alongside Christina Aguilera and Enrique Iglesias. After this, the floodgates opened for a slew of British icons to perform at Super Bowls, including Paul McCartney, The Who and The Rolling Stones.

Record-breaking performances

Given the hype and cultural status of the Super Bowl, it should be no surprise that the halftime show is often one of the year’s most-watched events. Millions of people tune in annually, but one concert stands above the others: Kendrick Lamar’s 2025 performance is the most-watched Super Bowl halftime show in history. Lamar’s show was watched by an estimated 133.5 million people, according to Billboard. The rapper “came into the gig riding sky high” following a big Grammys weekend and “wowed viewers with intensely satisfying versions” of his songs, said The Mercury News, including his hit diss track “Not Like Us.”

And while The Weeknd’s 2021 performance didn’t include a diss track, it does carry another distinction: It’s the most expensive halftime show of all time. The total cost was reportedly a staggering $17 million. Performing at the Super Bowl is so desirable that the Canadian performer “used $7 million of his own money to fund his incredible production,” said the South China Morning Post. This is “on top of the estimated $10 million the NFL is believed to allow for a halftime show budget.” The high price shouldn’t be surprising; airing a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl “costs about $8 million on average,” according to USA Today, and some companies are “paying $10 million or more.”

These shows are also known for incorporating many big-name artists into one act. This was never more apparent than during the 2022 halftime show, which featured the largest ensemble of performers at a Super Bowl. The show, which honored host city Los Angeles’ rap roots, was headlined by Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar, with a surprise appearance by 50 Cent. The “spectacular, high-energy performance was a powerful celebration of hip hop and its evolution over the last three decades,” said Time, and also “marked the first time the halftime show lineup consisted entirely of hip hop headliners.”

Super Bowl superlatives

While Tom Brady is widely considered the football GOAT, there has been debate as to which halftime show can truly be called “the greatest.” However, many analysts consider the 2007 performance featuring Prince to be the best Super Bowl halftime show ever. There was a “great deal of anticipation for Prince’s performance,” said The Athletic, and the legendary singer delivered, as “no one before nor after has gotten close to him.” His rendition of his iconic song “Purple Rain,” which happened to occur during a rainstorm, created a “performance for the ages.”

Not all superlatives are positive; many shocking and unexpected moments have happened at halftime shows, too. The most jaw-dropping incident likely came during the 2004 show featuring Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. During the pair’s performance, Timberlake accidentally ripped a piece of Jackson’s shirt, which “saw her right breast briefly exposed to 70,000 in-person spectators and more than 140 million TV viewers,” said The Guardian. The controversial moment “left Jackson, then 37, blacklisted from a significant portion of the music industry for years,” though she would later have a career resurgence.

And for as many halftime shows that have been lauded, there have also been some that have been questioned. The 2015 show, headlined by Katy Perry, is often considered the “campiest” in Super Bowl history. The show was filled with “Perry’s top songs, an entrance on top of a lion,” and costumes described as peak camp, said 303 Magazine. Given Perry’s history of concert performances, her Super Bowl outing “wasn’t too different than what we’ve seen from Perry previously.” But for many, it “seemed like they broadcast from one of Perry’s concerts instead of planning something new.”

Super Bowl shows have also had their fair share of daring, sometimes even death-defying moments. When it comes to stunts, many people think of Rihanna’s 2023 Super Bowl halftime show, when she entered the stadium from above on a platform suspended by cables. From there, the Barbadian singer carried out a 13-minute intense dance routine to rave reviews. But it was only when the show started that viewers realized Rihanna was also doing all of this while pregnant. Overall, the performance garnered critical acclaim, as Rihanna “graciously granted us a medley of her biggest hits,“ said Buzzfeed News.

‘Vacancy’ by Ari Lennox

★★★

Though Ari Lennox’s music “often nods to the past,” her latest album “feels more in tune with the zeitgeist,” said Steve Erickson in Slant. Newer stars such as Olivia Dean also favor throwback sounds, which helps. But it’s also because Lennox’s third full-length set “combines neo-soul signifiers with more modern flourishes.” This album is “far and away her most fun,” said Shaad D’Souza in The Guardian. While the 34-year-old D.C. native remains “one of contemporary R&B’s premier sophisticates, preferring a palette of lush jazz, soul, and ’90s hip-hop,” the opening run of songs “makes it eminently clear that tradition and wildness can coexist, with fabulously sparky results.” On “Mobbin’ in DC,” her vocals are all “lounge-singer coolness,” even as she delivers “withering” taunts. Whether Lennox is riding the “summery lightness” of the reggae-inflected “Cool Down,” comparing a lover to a werewolf on “Under the Moon,” or declaring her new outlook on “Soft Girl Era,” she seems fully at home. “Much has been made of Lennox’s struggles in the industry, but the sheer ease with which she performs on Vacancy suggests there’s plenty of road ahead.”

‘World’s Gone Wrong’ by Lucinda Williams

★★★

“It’s the perfect time for a statement like World’s Gone Wrong,” said Jon
Dolan in Rolling Stone. From the title track’s tale of a working couple’s
growing anxiety to the “distress call” of “Something’s Gotta Give,” the 73-year-old’s 16th studio album “channels today’s angst.” And while Williams has weighed in on worldly woes before, “this is the most focused social commentary she’s ever delivered.” Her rootsy ballads summon empathy for stretched-thin Americans while tracks such as “How Much Did You Get for Your Soul” direct “searing rage” at the ruling classes. It’s not easy to make a listenable album from such grim material, but Williams and her backing musicians “more often than not find a groove that makes our shared downward spiral feel downright danceable,” said Matt Melis in Paste. Three guest appearances underscore the album’s message that listeners are not alone in their worries. Brittney Spencer adds “urgent” backing vocals to two tracks, Mavis Staples echoes Williams’ laments on Bob Marley’s “So Much Trouble in the World,” and Norah Jones, finally, seconds a call for resistance on “We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around.”

‘Don’t Be Dumb’ by A$AP Rocky

★★

The long gap between A$AP Rocky’s two most recent albums “isn’t
terribly surprising,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. Since the 2018 release of Testing, the Harlem-born rapper has busied himself with screen acting, fashion collaborations, defending himself in a criminal trial, a whiskey launch, and parenthood, alongside his partner, Rihanna. His return finds him on familiar ground, employing a wide range of musical backdrops, from the “exhilarating” throb of “Helicopter” to the “supremely catchy” groove of “Stay Here 4 Life.” But while “the sonic richness is easy to appreciate,” often, “there’s not much to latch onto lyrically.” Don’t Be Dumb needed to reestablish Rocky as “a force to be reckoned with,” and it has done that, said Andrew Sacher in Brooklyn Vegan. It debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart and its big, booming trap songs “push the boundaries of what you might expect ‘big, booming trap songs’ to sound like.” High-wattage guests include Gorillaz and Tyler, the Creator, but it’s the appearance of folk singer Jessica Pratt on the closer, “The End,” that lingers longest. In fact, the song may “leave you speechless.”

What happened

Several artists broke new ground at Sunday’s 68th annual Grammy Awards, including Bad Bunny, whose “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” became the first all-Spanish-language record to win album of the year, and Kendrick Lamar, who broke Jay-Z’s record for most-awarded rapper by scooping five more prizes. “Golden,” from the Netflix hit “K-Pop Demon Hunters,” won best song written for visual media, becoming the first K-pop song to win a Grammy. Billie Eilish won song of the year with “Wildflowers” and British soul pop singer Olivia Dean was named best new artist.

Who said what

This was Bad Bunny’s second nomination for album of the year, and “the culture wars were seen as weighing in Bunny’s favor,” Billboard said. “Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ICE out,” the Puerto Rican artist said, in English, in his acceptance speech. “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.”

“Expletives flew as ICE got cursed multiple times by winners,” The Associated Press said. The “frequent pushback” and anti-ICE buttons “marked a much stronger showing of support” than at last month’s Golden Globes, but “public backlash has grown since a Border Patrol officer shot and killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti and federal agents detained 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos.” The recent arrest of journalist Don Lemon, who attended the Grammys, “only added to the outcry.”

What next?

“K-Pop Demon Hunters” will also get a chance to make history at the next major awards show, the Academy Awards, on March 15. “Golden” is nominated for a best original song Oscar and the movie is up for best animated feature. Bad Bunny will also be the headline act at the Super Bowl halftime show this coming Sunday.

‘With Heaven on Top’ by Zach Bryan

★★★

Zach Bryan’s music hasn’t changed much since his 2019 breakthrough,
and “it is hard to tell whether this means he is stuck or just sticking to what he does best,” said Kelefa Sanneh in The New Yorker. The ornery Oklahoma singer-songwriter didn’t need more than his “halfway hoarse” voice and simple country-folk strumming to become one of America’s biggest stars, and the willfully shaggy 25 tracks on his new album “evoke the blurry conviviality of a bar band at the moment between last call and
lights on.” Days after releasing the record, he issued a version that’s just Bryan and his guitar, helping push With Heaven on Top to No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart and “demonstrating how little adornment his best songs need.” But while his urge to share so much is commendable, 50 tracks are “just too much to take in at once,” said Daisy Innes in Holler. Still, a standout such as “Slicked Back,” which cribs from Tom Petty, works in both formats. The original “crackles with energy” while the acoustic version “showcases Bryan’s gift for capturing a moment with such sincerity that he seems to reflect on it before it’s even passed.”

‘Secret Love’ by Dry Cleaning

★★★★

“It’s hard to sing along to a Dry Cleaning song,” said Stuart Berman in
Pitchfork. And that’s not just because vocalist Florence Shaw “isn’t really one for singing.” The frontwoman of the Grammy-winning, London-based post-punk outfit typically maintains “the calm elocution of a wellness podcast host” as she channels various characters in a “blasé-faire” voice. On “Cruise Ship Designer,” she gives voice to a smug pawn of the wealthy, on “Evil Evil Idiot,” she’s a hypochondriac foodie, and on “My
Soul/Half Pint,” she’s a neat freak who loves to organize but hates to clean. “Spoken-word post-punk works best when the band surrounding the vocalist has an acute feel for melody,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. Guitarist Tom Dowse, bassist Lewis Maynard, and drummer Nick Buxton are fully up to the challenge, creating “an album of unusual pleasures.” Each of the 11 tracks “features at least one musical element that lodges in memory even before you’ve bothered to figure out what Shaw is talking about.” Once you begin listening more closely, “Shaw’s uncanny magic takes over.”

‘Locket’ by Madison Beer

★★★

On her third album, Madison Beer can be heard at times “singing with the casual sultriness of someone who eats boys for breakfast,” said Lydia Wei in Paste. It’s a welcome dose of lightness from a talented vocalist who was touted by Justin Bieber as a future star when she was just 13. She crashed before she ever really made it, but at 26, she’s “perhaps finally ready to cut loose” because on Locket, she’s “stepping away from sleepy slo-fi pop,” stringing together “pop confection after pop confection.” The “sonically diverse” 11-song set includes a couple of “dark-siren synth-pop bangers,” a “booty-call yearner reimagined as a ’60s crooner jam,” and a “twinkly” R&B bedroom ballad that has Beer wittily imagining an ex dead—with angel wings. The record “represents a creative breakthrough for Beer,” said. Maura Johnston in Rolling Stone. Her voice is the “candy-colored center” of every treat here, and the album ends with her unleashing “a few dazzling vocal runs” over “an increasingly frenetic dance beat” before her voice dissolves into the surrounding synths, creating “a finish that feels like the culmination of a catharsis.”

Bob Weir was the quiet linchpin of the Grateful Dead. Though he was uninterested in competing with the mythical presence of Jerry Garcia, saying fans’ deification had ultimately killed the frontman, Weir was a fan favorite: the good-looking one in the very short jean shorts. As a rhythm guitarist with precise timing and inventive chord voicing—in live shows he would play notes from a song’s chords in varying octaves or an unconventional order—he bridged Garcia’s long, noodling guitar solos with bassist Phil Lesh’s effervescent countermelodies. Several of Weir’s
compositions, like “Sugar Magnolia,” “Truckin’” and “Playing in the Band,” became standards, helping establish the Dead’s blend of rock, blues, folk, and country. And his constant playfulness onstage helped drive the band’s signature improvisations. We “state a theme and take it for a walk in the woods,” Weir said in 2010. “If I were playing a note-for-note set every night for all these years, I think I would have put a gun to my head.”

Robert Hall Weir was adopted as an infant and raised in the affluent town of Atherton, near San Francisco. His undiagnosed dyslexia “managed to get him kicked out of both preschool and the Cub Scouts,” said Rolling Stone. Instead of school, he devoted himself to piano and guitar, and at age 16 he wandered into a Palo Alto music store where Jerry Garcia was preparing to give banjo lessons. As soon as the two started jamming, they decided to start a jug band. By 1965, it had morphed into the Grateful Dead, the house band for author Ken Kesey’s “Acid Test” LSD parties.

The group became the center of a hippie culture dominated by drugs and the “flower power values of peace, love, and anti-Vietnam war protests,” said The Guardian. While they only had one hit single, “Touch of Grey” (1987), “their devoted live audience made them one of the most successful touring artists” ever. The Dead “proved unusually resistant
to time,” said the San Francisco Chronicle. Even after their 1970s heyday, a “self-sustaining world” of Deadheads continued selling weed and tie-dyes as they followed the group from city to city. The woman who would become Weir’s wife followed him, too: The two met when he was in his 30s and she was a 15-year-old who sneaked backstage. But he maintained they were platonic at first, and they didn’t marry until much later. It was only when he was “edging toward 50,” he said, that he realized he didn’t want to remain “a rock ’n’ roll tomcat.”

After three decades as “Pied Pipers of the hippie movement,” the Grateful Dead broke up when Garcia died in rehab in 1995, said The New York Times. Weir, though, kept touring for the rest of his life, even after getting cancer last year. He founded several other bands, some of them tribute acts like “Dead & Company,” and was a committed collaborator, playing with Willie Nelson, Joan Baez, the Allman Brothers, Sammy Hagar, and myriad other musicians. “I hope I’m remembered for bringing our culture and other cultures together,” Weir said in 2025. “I’m hoping that people of varying persuasions will find something they can agree on in the music that I’ve offered and find each other through it.”

‘The Heritage Foundation blows up’

The Wall Street Journal editorial board

The “debate over the direction of the post-Trump right is underway, and one of the first casualties is the Heritage Foundation,” says The Wall Street Journal editorial board. Some of its “most important conservative scholars and their policy departments said they are leaving.” The foundation “might still play a role under new leadership, but its board has been slow to appreciate the internal dissatisfaction.” It “abandoned its principles, it is losing its people, and soon there might not be much left.”

Read more

‘How Trump’s war on wind reveals a broken government’

Hayes Brown at MS NOW

The Trump administration will “pause leases for ongoing offshore wind farm construction projects,” which is “another example of the administration’s ongoing war on clean energy production,” says Hayes Brown. This has “all the markings of a federal government geared to reverse-engineering justifications for acting on President Donald Trump’s obsessions.” The “scramble to scuttle wind farms at a time like this only serves to underscore how much Trump’s vendettas are costing this country.”

Read more

‘Why holiday music charts are stuck in the past’

Taylor Crumpton at Time

For the “past 30 years, Mariah Carey has dominated the Christmas season,” which “begs the question, is there even room for a new Christmas song, or are we doomed to listen to Mariah Carey year after year?” says Taylor Crumpton. Even though “Billboard changed its criteria to prevent chart stagnation, the annual revival of holiday classics on music streaming services leads to an ongoing monopolization of old Christmas songs at the top of the Billboard Holiday 100 chart.”

Read more

‘When the AI bubble bursts, humans will finally have their chance to take back control’

Rafael Behr at The Guardian

AI represents a “synthetic pseudo-reality mediated by the sycophantic mechanical offspring of narcissist Silicon Valley oligarchs,” says Rafael Behr. The “real bubble is not stock valuations but the inflated ego of an industry that thinks it is just one more data center away from computational divinity.” When the “correction comes, when the US’ Icarus economy hits the cold sea, there will be a chance for other voices to be heard on the subject of risk and regulation.”

Read more

The year is coming to an end, and it has seen some big-name artists drop new albums. From one of the biggest pop superstars of the 21st century to a familiar Beatles face, here are some of 2025’s best LPs.

Counting Crows, ‘Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!’

San Francisco rock band Counting Crows released its eighth studio album, “Butter Miracle, the Complete Sweets!,” marking the band’s first LP in more than ten years. The album is not totally new but an extension of the band’s 2021 EP, “Butter Miracle Suite One.” Four of that recording’s songs are included on the new album. One of the notable singles from the LP, “Spaceman in Tulsa,” is “about metamorphosis — the way music breaks down who we were and spins us into something new,” said frontman Adam Duritz in a statement.

Ed Sheeran, ‘Play’

Ed Sheeran took a break from his mathematical album titles with his latest LP, “Play,” marking his eighth studio album. Unlike his prior few LPs, in which the superstar took on a softer acoustic feel, “Play” represented a moment in which he was “getting back into big pop for the first time in a long time,” Sheeran told Variety. Sheeran isn’t slowing down with accompanying features either, as he also shot several music videos for various tracks on the album. The LP comes as Sheeran was also named one of Pollstar’s 25 most popular touring artists of the millennium.

FKA Twigs, ‘Eusexua’ and ’Eusexua Afterglow’

FKA Twigs has seen a stratospheric rise since her first album was released 11 years ago, and the British singer-dancer has kept her name on the map by releasing both her third and fourth studio albums this year: “Eusexua” and “Eusexua Afterglow,” the pair dropping ten months apart. The latter album was developed as a sequel to “Eusexua,” and like most of her other work, was critically acclaimed. Both LPs feature “glimmering moments of this carefree abandon and commitment to the bit” that has helped make FKA Twigs a household name, said Pitchfork.

Lady Gaga, ‘Mayhem’

Pop music fans have been going gaga for Lady Gaga for years, and the acclaimed artist released “Mayhem” as her sixth studio album. The LP is Gaga’s first solo studio album since 2020, and it also includes her award-winning duet with Bruno Mars, “Die with a Smile.” The album is a “return to those Gothic dreams” and allowed the singer to find her “peak confidence” in its production, Gaga said to Rolling Stone, which called the record “more than just a return to her pop roots” in its review.

The Lemonheads, ‘Love Chant’

After a six-year hiatus, the Lemonheads returned in 2025 with new music and dropped their 11th studio album, “Love Chant.” This is the band’s first LP since 2019 and only the third since 2009. But the last album of all-original material was in 2006, meaning “Love Chant” will be the band’s “first album of all-new original material in almost two decades,’ said Variety. Frontman Evan Dando, an on-and-off member of the band, is also featured here; the LP is a mash-up of “whip-smart, tongue-in-cheek, rollicking rock ‘n’ roll songs that were worth the long wait,” said The Indy Review.

Lorde, ‘Virgin’

In her smash-hit 2013 single “Royals,” Lorde calls herself Queen Bee, and many of her fans feel she has earned that title. The New Zealand pop star stayed in the limelight this year by releasing her fourth studio album, “Virgin.” The album is “like bathwater, windows, ice, spit. Full transparency. The language is plain,” Lorde said in the LP’s announcement, while also revealing that it was partially inspired by singer Charli XCX. The album received mass acclaim, and fans were outraged this year when the LP seemed to be snubbed for major awards by the Recording Academy.

Mac Miller, ‘Balloonerism’

Mac Miller died in 2018, but the celebrated rapper is still providing fans with new gifts. “Balloonerism,” the artist’s second posthumous LP, was recorded in 2014 but wasn’t released after he died. Now, with a number of unofficial versions circulating online, his family decided to release the LP in full. The album is a “project that was of great importance” to Miller, and it “showcases both the breadth of his musical talents and fearlessness as an artist,” Miller’s estate said on Instagram.

Mavis Staples, ‘Sad and Beautiful World’

Legendary singer and activist Mavis Staples is back with a new album, marking the latest entry in a historic career that has spanned seven decades. “Sad and Beautiful World” marked a blend of old and new songs, and “combines original material with covers of songs by Tom Waits, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Frank Ocean, Curtis Mayfield and Leonard Cohen, among others,” said Pitchfork. The album proved that the icon was “still setting the world to rights,” and her voice “continues to stir the soul with one of the best albums of her triumphant second act,” said Mojo magazine.

Ringo Starr, ‘Look Up’

Ringo Starr, the legendary drummer for the Beatles, is continuing to pump out music even at age 85 and released his 21st studio album, “Look Up,” in 2025. However, this album is a bit different than the Scouser’s normal rock classics, as “Look Up” is a country LP — with album art showing Starr dressed as a cowboy. While not normally associated with the genre, Starr is a longtime fan and has “always loved country music,” the drummer said in a press release. And for the avid listener, country influences can be heard in many of his prior songs.

Taylor Swift, ‘The Life of a Showgirl’

You can’t have a list of this year’s most notable albums without including the biggest one: Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” was released to a flurry of anticipation. Swift is at the height of her popularity and showing no signs of diminishing, as “The Life of a Showgirl” marked the singer’s fifth LP in five years (in addition to several rerecorded releases). However, despite Swift’s popularity, some felt that the album didn’t live up to her prior work; Business Insider ranked it her worst LP and said it was “more concerned with gloss than substance.”

The new year is mere weeks away, and while the weather outside may be frightful, there is plenty of new music that isn’t. Check out some fresh albums from your favorite artists this winter.

Rosalía, ‘Lux’ 

Spanish singer Rosalía has made a name for herself by performing music in a variety of genres from pop to folk. Now the popular artist is back with her fourth studio album, “Lux,” marking her second LP in three years following the success of 2022’s highly acclaimed “Motomami.” The album features guest appearances from a number of notable artists including famed Icelandic singer Bjork. The new album is a “heartfelt offering of avant-garde classical pop that roars through genre, romance and religion,” said Pitchfork in its review. (out now)

Orville Peck, ‘Appaloosa’ 

Orville Peck is known for often wearing a mask in public, but his fans aren’t hiding their excitement about his new EP, “Appaloosa,” which comes a year after Peck released his third studio album, “Stampede.” The country rock singer, whose deep voice and booming vocals put him on the map, wants people to hear the “other side of country that is a more traditional, referenced type of country that’s more about the songwriting,” Peck told Billboard, saying it is “more open culturally to anyone who wants to express themselves in that.” (out now)

Jessie J, ‘Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time’

One of the most prominent English pop singers of the last 15 years, Jessie J is coming out of a health-related hiatus to release her sixth studio album, “Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time.” The album, Jessie J’s first since a Christmas LP released in 2018, was made “over five years as she worked through both the joy and pain in her life,” said Riff magazine. She “brought her sound back to basics, away from the pomp of past hits like ‘Bang Bang,’ reuniting with her original management team and opting to self-release her music.” (out now)

Jeremy Allen White, ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)’

Critics were abuzz about Jeremy Allen White’s performance as the legendary Bruce Springsteen in 20th Century Studios’ “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” The film depicts Springsteen’s struggles to pen his 1982 album “Nebraska” and features original covers from White. Now, fans of the film can grab the official soundtrack as an LP, which contains “12 new recordings by Jeremy Allen White and the cast of the critically acclaimed film,” said the official Bruce Springsteen website. This includes iconic Springsteen songs such as “Born in the USA,” “Atlantic City” and “Reason to Believe.” (out now)

Sam Fender, ‘People Watching (Deluxe Edition)’

Sam Fender’s third studio album, “People Watching,” was originally released in February 2025, but there is good news for fans: The English musician is releasing an updated version of the LP that includes eight new tracks. The new songs will include collaborations with another rising star, singer Olivia Dean, as well as a new single, “Talk to You,” which will feature the icon Elton John. These songs “weren’t included in the lineup of the first record but deserved to be out there,” Fender said on Instagram. (out now)

Pink Floyd, ‘Wish You Were Here 50’

Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” is often considered one of the greatest albums of all time, and it remains popular half a century after its release. Now, fans of the legendary group can revisit the LP with “Wish You Were Here 50,” which “gives fans an exciting new perspective into one of Pink Floyd’s most iconic and best-loved records,” said the band’s website. The 50th anniversary album “features the original album plus two discs of studio rarities, including previously unreleased alternate versions and demos presenting Pink Floyd’s eighth studio album in a brand-new way.” (out now)

Zach Bryan, ‘With Heaven on Top’

Country star Zach Bryan released a live album one year ago, and now he is following that up by dropping a new EP, “With Heaven on Top.” The offering is “expected to include previously hinted tracks like ‘In Dreams’ and ‘Plastic Cigarette,’” said Country Central. It also seems to mark a big moment in the singer’s career, as Bryan has “previously billed this project as his ‘final major label album.’” However, he has since renewed his most recent contract, meaning it “would seem that he still has a few more records left in him.” The project’s eponymous single is out now. (Jan. 9)

Geologist, ‘Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?’

Despite his name, Geologist doesn’t play rock music, but rather has become known as a member of the experimental pop group Animal Collective. Now, Geologist, whose real name is Brian Weitz, is getting ready to drop “Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?,” which is set to be his first solo LP. The studio album is the “first step into a rippling songscape in which his hurdy-gurdy gives and takes multiple forms, an epic electro-acoustic textile of many colors,” said the band’s website. A single from the album, “Tonic,” is out now. (Jan. 30)

Mandy, Indiana, ‘Urgh’

Head to the Hoosier State with Mandy, Indiana’s upcoming second studio album, “Urgh.” The English-French rock band, whose name is a play on the city of Gary, Indiana, is releasing this album three years after their debut LP, “I’ve Seen a Way,” burst onto the scene with positive reviews. The album will also feature a “primal, screaming call for retribution” from vocalist Valentine Caulfield about a prior sexual assault, part of an effort to “channel my anger into something productive,” Caulfield said in a statement. A single from the album, “Magazine,” is out now. (Feb. 6)

Charli XCX, ‘Wuthering Heights’

Charli XCX helped everyone have a Brat summer with her 2024 album, and now the pop superstar is getting ready to hit the music world again with her LP “Wuthering Heights.” The album is the official soundtrack for the upcoming film of the same name starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. The LP comes as Charli XCX has “been in a state of overwhelming creativity of late, so much so that I feel like I’m running on the spot in a dream,” the singer wrote on Substack. A single from the album, “Chains of Love,” is out now. (Feb. 13)

The year is about to wrap up, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t enjoy some live music as 2025 comes to an end. There are still plenty of concert tours to feast your eyes and ears on this winter.

Bad Bunny

Bad Bunny is arguably the biggest star in the world right now, so it should come as no surprise that people are clamoring for tickets to his ongoing concert tour, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.” The tour, based on the singer’s album of the same name released to critical acclaim earlier this year, is being held at some major venues, including stadiums across the Americas and Europe. But if you can’t get in to see this tour, don’t fret: You’ll be able to catch Bad Bunny when he headlines the halftime show at next year’s Super Bowl. (through July 2026)

Blackpink

If you’re looking for more than one artist to see, how about four? The quartet Blackpink has helped to make K-pop a worldwide phenomenon, rising from the group’s roots in Seoul to attract a fanbase of millions. Their popularity is evident as part of their ongoing “Deadline” world tour, which has been afoot since this summer and is being pushed as the group’s first all-stadium tour. This also marks the band’s second global tour in as many years and represents a “high-voltage homecoming,” said Rolling Stone. (through January 2026)

Calvin Harris

Since hopping onto the electronic dance music scene with his debut album in 2007, Calvin Harris has made a huge name for himself in the DJ space. The Scottish artist tours fairly regularly, and his latest venture will see him crisscross the globe with shows in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the U.S. He has also been adding tour dates to his schedule, and his tour comes on the heels of his 2024 album “96 Months,” which “encapsulates the essence of his work over the past eight years,” said edm.com. (through August 2026)

Chris Stapleton

Singer Chris Stapleton is staying close to his roots for his upcoming tour, remaining in the United States to showcase some of his signature country tunes. This comes on the heels of Stapleton’s massive eight-year “All-American Road Show” tour that officially concluded in October 2025 — but the Kentucky native won’t put his microphone down for long, with shows set to resume this winter. Notably, his concerts feature “no flash or gimmicks, nothing pre-recorded. It's live music — in its purest form,” said CBS News. (through July 2026)

Doja Cat

Doja Cat is one of the most well-known artists blending pop and rap music, and she’s no stranger to globetrotting tours, having just come off her last concert series in 2024. Now she has embarked on her next outing, the “Tour Ma Vie” world tour, which will see her performing shows on five continents. The tour is in support of her album “Vie.” But it got off to a rocky start when fans “were quick to point out the show lacked visuals, structure and outfits,” said BBC News, with the artist replying, “I make music for people who enjoy music.” (through December 2026)

Ed Sheeran

With over 200 million records sold globally, Ed Sheeran is one of the world’s best-selling singer-songwriters, and now he’s back on the global stage with his sixth concert tour, “Loop.” Like most of Sheeran’s world tours, this one is in support of a new album release — his eighth LP, “Play.” The tour will run, with some breaks, through nearly all of 2026 and is being performed with an “understanding that it’s not about me, it’s about the community and about the couples that are coming to the gig,” Sheeran said to iHeart Radio. (through November 2026)

Lady Gaga

If you didn’t catch Lady Gaga’s latest concert tour when it premiered this summer, don’t worry. The pop star will be hitting stages on her “Mayhem Ball” tour well into the coming year. The tour, in support of her sixth LP, “Mayhem,” was announced after a slew of praise for the album; it was originally only going to be a limited series of concerts. For Lady Gaga, the show is a “celebration of everything that’s her: weird love, blood-gushing broken heart, newfound tattoo amour and sublime nightmarish dreams,” said Deadline. (through April 2026)

Laufey

Since her appearance a decade ago on a pair of talent shows, Icelandic singer Laufey has seen a stratospheric rise, and if you want to hear her unique blend of pop and jazz live, you’re in luck: Laufey is embarking on her “A Matter of Time” tour in support of her album of the same name. The tour will mark her first all-arena endeavor and featured opener Suki Waterhouse during the now-completed North American leg. Laufey’s music — and the tour — represents a “masterclass in sentimental whimsy,” said The Harvard Crimson. (through April 2026)

OneRepublic

If you’re looking to get away this winter, you can do it with OneRepublic, whose ongoing “Escape To” tour currently has the rock band appearing in various European venues. Since bursting onto the scene with early-to-mid-2000s hits like “Apologize,” “Counting Stars” and “Good Life,” OneRepublic has made concert tours a staple of their band and collaborated with groups like Maroon 5, U2 and the Zac Brown Band. Their latest tour, the group’s third in as many years, is largely in support of their 2024 studio album, “Artificial Paradise.” (through July 2026)

Pitbull

Pitbull certainly lives up to his “Mr. Worldwide” nickname, as the Miami-born rapper and singer has embarked on an astonishing five concert tours in four years. But he’s not done yet: Pitbull is currently performing shows in the United States before heading to the Middle East and Europe as part of his “I’m Back” tour. He will be performing at iconic venues including the Hard Rock Live in Atlantic City and the Stagecoach Music Festival in Indio, California, once he returns to the States. He will also be collaborating with rapper Lil Jon for the tour’s European leg. (through July 2026)

Playing calming instrumental music during surgery can help patients recover more quickly, according to a new study.

“Music seemed to quieten the internal storm”, according to researchers who tested 56 people, said the BBC, and the results “could reshape how hospitals think about surgical wellbeing”.

Lower stress

Experts at the Lok Nayak Hospital and Maulana Azad Medical College in India studied patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy surgery, the standard keyhole operation to remove the gallbladder.

Patients undergoing this procedure are generally given the anaesthetic propofol, which brings on a loss of consciousness within seconds and produces a swifter and more clear-headed awakening.

All 56 patients were given the same anaesthetic regimen and all wore noise-cancelling headphones, but only one group listened to music. The patients who listened to music required substantially less propofol – on average, 6.7mg per kg of body weight per hour compared with 7.86mg for the control group.

There were further positive outcomes for the music-listening group. They also required fewer additional doses of fentanyl, the opioid painkiller used to control spikes in blood pressure or heart rate during surgery.

“Crucially, the physiological stress response to surgery”, which is measured through serum cortisol, the level of the stress hormone cortisol in the blood, was “markedly lower” in patients listening to music, said The Independent.

Humming truth

Using music therapy during medical treatment is “not new”, said the website – it’s long been used to reduce stress, anxiety and pain before and after various procedures, including in cancer care, mental health, palliative care, physiotherapy, and post-operative recovery.

Medics aim for “early discharge after surgery”, Dr Farah Husain, senior specialist in anaesthesia and certified music therapist for the Indian study, told the BBC. “Patients need to wake up clear-headed, alert and oriented, and ideally pain-free,” and music could soon be used for this end in hospitals around the world.

The research team is preparing a further study which will build on the earlier findings, but “one truth is already humming through the data”, said the broadcaster: “even when the body is still and the mind asleep, it appears a few gentle notes can help the healing begin”.

The song “Walk My Walk” by country group Breaking Rust recently reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart. However, the raspy cowboy singing the song is nothing but a series of code. Breaking Rust is a product of artificial intelligence, and “Walk the Walk” is now the first AI-generated song to top this particular chart in U.S. music history. The song’s success raises questions about the effect of AI slop on art and how its use will affect creatives everywhere.

Slop of the charts

AI music is “no longer a fantasy or niche curiosity,” said Billboard. It is “already beginning to have an impact” on music charts. Breaking Rust has amassed more than two million listeners on Spotify, with multiple songs that have been streamed over one million times. The platform lists someone named Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor as the composer and lyricist of the group, though that name “appears connected only to Breaking Rust and a separate AI music project called Defbeatsai,” said the San Francisco Chronicle. Many question whether Taylor is a real person at all.

Even on the same chart, another AI-generated musician, Cain Walker, holds the third, ninth and eleventh spots. Over the summer, a number of songs by the indie band Velvet Sundown, another AI-generated group, surpassed one million streams on Spotify. As technology is advancing, much of the AI slop is “nearly indistinguishable from the real thing,” said Whiskey Riff. This “poses a risk to actual artists, songwriters and fans who value real art.” The problem is likely to get worse. The streaming platform Deezer receives over 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks every day, according to a report by the company.

High volume

Currently, “at least six AI or AI-assisted artists have debuted on various Billboard rankings,” said Billboard. That figure could also be higher, as it has become “increasingly difficult to tell who or what is powered by AI — and to what extent.” A large majority of people would want AI-generated music and artists to be labeled as such, per the Deezer report. However, AI music has not found success just because of people’s inability to distinguish it. There is a “set of tools and platforms out there that enable AI music to spread easily,” said The Guardian. There are also “sub-communities of users eager to share tips to game the system.”

While “Walk my Walk” topped the Country Digital Song Sales chart, the song is “currently nowhere to be found on updated daily streaming country charts on Spotify or Apple Music,” said Time. This is because “very few people actually buy digital songs anymore,” and it only “takes a few thousand purchases” to hit number one. But that doesn't mean AI music won’t grow in popularity, especially with the sheer volume of output.

The real harm being done is to artists creating music the old-fashioned way. AI-made music is “creating more noise and integrating tracks to listeners,” said Josh Antonuccio, the director of Ohio University’s School of Media Arts and Studies, to Newsweek. “The only thing that will continue to distinguish human artists is those that have remarkable music, a compelling perspective and a story that draws fans to them.”

“Lux” by Rosalía

★★★★

Rosalía’s first album in three years “sounds like absolutely nothing else in music right now,” said Julyssa Lopez in Rolling Stone. Already, the 33-year-old Spanish singer, songwriter, and producer had established herself as “pop’s most provocative chaos agent,” proving with 2018’s El Mal Querer and 2022’s Motomami how much pop and reggaeton could be stretched and expanded by an adventurous conservatory-trained flamenco vocalist. Even so, Lux is the two-time Grammy winner’s “most astonishing offer yet,” a “gorgeous, gutting” record that “feels like a timeless work of art” and finds Rosalía singing in 14 languages, tying together opera references, classical flourishes, and the lives of numerous Catholic saints. The album is “not a dopamine machine like Motomami,” said Gio Santiago in Pitchfork. “But it rewards listeners who ache for more from pop artists: more feeling, more risk.” For inspiration, Rosalía studied feminist theory and historical accounts of female saints, then constructed a personal creed that imagines a more equal human relationship with the almighty. “When God descends, I ascend, and we’ll meet halfway,” she sings on “Magnolia.”

“Lux demands the listener submit themselves to its author,” said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. It sounds “closer to classical music” than anything else riding in the upper echelons of the pop album charts, and it includes guest appearances from both the London Symphony Orchestra and Björk, an apparent inspiration. Despite the record’s complexity, “you don’t need to know what’s going on” to find striking moments among its “uniformly beautiful” songs, especially because Rosalía’s vocal performances are “spectacular firework displays of talent.” Albums this intense require resetting expectations, said Kelefa Sanneh in The New Yorker. “Lux wants to make us stop whatever we’re doing and listen.” There are moments, as in “Yugular,” when the music is “easier to admire than to enjoy.” But if Lux is less broadly appealing than albums that ask less, “it’s also much harder to forget.”

“Sad and Beautiful World” by Mavis Staples

★★★

“Even if we don’t always deserve Mavis Staples, we need her,” said Andrew Gulden in Americana Highways. As has been true for more than seven decades, the 86-year-old gospel, soul, and rock icon is singing with hope on her latest album, but she’s “not sugarcoating a damn thing about the backward mess we somehow find ourselves in.” The opening track, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan’s “Chicago,” finds Staples’ voice “grittier than it’s ever been, but still just as beautiful.” Backed by guitarists Derek Trucks and Buddy Guy, she transforms the song into her own family’s story of migrating from the South to the Windy City. Kevin Morby’s “Beautiful Strangers” catalogs tragic gun violence and police brutality, but the track here also extends the album’s “beyond stellar” guest list by way of MJ Lenderman’s subtle guitar riffs. “Staples has always used her faith as a light,” said David Hutcheon in Mojo. Whether singing a new song, “Human Mind,” written for her by Hozier and Allison Russell, or revisiting Curtis Mayfield’s “We Got to Have Peace,” she “reaches not for retribution but for the hope that we will be able to start anew tomorrow.”

Music is blending into an algorithm-generated playlist, cinema is dominated by blockbuster movies from decades-old franchises, and the rest of the cultural scene is as flat and bland as a pancake.

That's according to a new book, the “lucid and entertaining – yet despairing” “Blank Space”, by W. David Marx. In it, he argues that 21st-century culture has become an “enthusiastic embrace of selling out”, said The Minnesota Star Tribune. But has he missed the point?

‘Slurry of stagnation’

“Omnivorism” is “one of the primary culprits” that Marx identifies. When “country, R&B, hip-hop and classic rock become interchangeable bits to sample, rather than distinct musical styles”, then “nothing stands out”. He thinks “the understandable desire to cross musical boundaries in once-unthinkable ways has turned into a slurry of stagnation”.

Marx’s “key point about the bland sameness” of today’s art “will resonate with anybody who has a hard time remembering when a new song made them perk up, pay attention and realise they have never heard anything like that before”.

This century “looks likely to go down in history as the least innovative, least transformative, least pioneering” one for culture since “the invention of the printing press”, said The New York Times Magazine in 2023. “Shockingly few works of art in any medium” have been “created that are unassimilable to the cultural and critical standards that audiences accepted in 1999”.

Misguided and oversimplified

Yes, it feels like there’s a “confounding glut of art”, but “little of the original, startling kind that matters”, said The Economist. Instead there’s “music without instruments and lyrics without meaning”, plus “endless reboots, sequels and superheroes in the cinema”.

But Marx’s “sweeping book oversimplifies a dizzyingly messy picture”, because some of his criticisms “could have been made in the past, and were”. So even if today’s “means of self-publicity are new”, the “attention-seeking grifters are not” and “there has always been more dross than gold”.

Marx’s argument is a “dated, misguided understanding of how history works”, said Art in America. It is “rooted in a 19th-century fallacy called positivism: the belief that history moves in a clean, linear progression of successive innovations”.

But “if history is any indicator”, those “still insisting culture is dead” will “go down” as “conservative curmudgeons very much on the wrong side of history”. You might “think writers so obsessed with the past would have learned as much”.

The Spanish prime minister and a Catalan bishop are both fans of avant-garde singer Rosalía’s new album “Lux”, “perhaps surprisingly for an artist who sings an ode to the Berlin techno club Berghain”, said The Times.

Featuring an image of the Catalan singer adorned with a white nun’s veil and a rosary, the album exudes “religiosity”, despite its sometimes explicit lyrics. It is also part of a wider trend across Spain: a “growing return to the Catholic faith”.

What’s more, the new release “has already made Spotify history”, said Rolling Stone. With more than 42 million streams in just one day, “Lux” broke the platform’s record for a female Spanish-language artist. The magazine’s review said the album “sounds like absolutely nothing else in music right now”.

‘Fusion of faith, flamenco, and rock opera’

Rosalía fans think she is “somewhat of a saint, worthy of candlelit ‘altars’”, said The Times, and “Lux” has quickly become a smash hit. A “fusion of faith, flamenco, and rock opera”, with lyrics from 14 languages, it has “cemented Rosalía’s place among innovators in contemporary pop music”. The album includes collaborations with the likes Björk, Yves Tumor and Escolanía de Montserrat – a choir “regarded as the region’s beacon of Catholic faith”.

Ahead of the album’s release, Rosalía put on a “show of promotional power”, said El País. “In her handling of fan anticipation and the industry’s promotional wheel”, she bears some artistic resemblance to Madonna, another star who “came of age musically and produced her first masterpiece when she abandoned ‘the material world’ and embraced spirituality”.

“Lux” “seems to be making everything related to nuns trendy… even the wimple”. Rosalía “is neither the first nor the only celebrity to seek answers to the modern world within the walls of the convent”. But the album does coincide with many other signs that nuns are “making a comeback”.

Spain ‘is having a nun moment’

In pop culture, nuns are typically relegated to “the sadistic school teacher” or an “evil spirit”. But more recently “Instagram has been filled with accounts of young (and not so young) religious women” from all sorts of religious backgrounds who are “using social media to vindicate the role of nuns in modern life”.

Spain is “having a nun moment”, said The Times, and Rosalía’s “aesthetic leap from motorbikes to mysticism” has only amplified the nunmania (or monjamania). A celebrated film about modern life in the convent and a “cult podcast devoted to 16th-century nuns” gaining popularity at the same time prove the point.

Sociologists have also identified a “parallel revival of the Catholic faith” among those under 35. Though the number of those attending “regular Sunday worship” has stayed relatively low, young people are participating more and more in “faith-based festivals and retreats”.

The craze may just be a “seasonal spike”, but for now Spain – “long caught between its Catholic heritage and a secular present” – seems to be “enthralled” by all things nun.

Peter Doig is “probably the single most influential painter in the world today”, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. Born in Scotland in 1959, but resident for many years in Trinidad, he is known for blending “different styles of painting and diverse forms of imagery – from Old Master paintings and random found photographs to horror movies”. His approach to painting has been likened to a DJ mixing other people’s records to create something new. So it’s hardly surprising to learn that Doig is “obsessed with music”.

This show sees him bring his “twin passions” together, scattering a representative selection of his paintings through the rooms of the Serpentine Gallery, soundtracked by programmed highlights from the artist’s enormous record collection. Each day of the exhibition’s run, the choice of music will be different, meaning that “no two experiences of the show will be the same”. The result is an “eccentric and entrancing experience”.

The show feels “oddly like a house party where you don’t mind being sober”, said Martin Robinson in The London Standard. There’s an “immediate intimacy” to it, with “easy chairs” scattered throughout, and tables provided for visitors to sit and chat: it’s about “the communal stimulus created when art and music mix”.

The musical set-up itself is a sight to behold, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. Doig’s records – from Aretha Franklin to Kraftwerk – are played through “immense” cinema speakers, designed in the 1920s and 1930s. These objects are “sculptures in themselves, with gaping mouths of wood and metal that once boomed behind the screens of British picture houses”. They find a mirror in Doig’s painting “Maracas”, in which a vast sound system towers over a jungle scene, a tiny figure at its edge revealing its “monstrous scale”. Doig’s “eerie” paintings repeatedly evoke “misty musical dreams”: one sees an old musician plucking at a guitar; another is “a more than three-metre-wide vision of a lakeside party venue at night”, filled with “people and lights, clubhouses and umbrellas”.

It’s more of an installation than a painting exhibition, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. Indeed, amid the “atmospheric feng shui” of the gallery set-up, Doig’s canvases can initially feel “incidental”. Yet eventually, they work their magic on you. Doig’s magpie approach injects old-fashioned artistic traditions with his interest in Black culture. This is particularly evident in a suite of paintings that features lions – a ubiquitous symbol in Rastafarianism – stalking past prisons in Venice and in Port of Spain. Without explicitly mentioning slavery and captivity, Doig’s paintings evoke “historical darkness”. Despite these themes, the show is “a joy to wander through”, combining music and art to create “a transportive gallery moment that feels like a Caribbean journey”.

Serpentine South Gallery, London SW7. Until 8 February

Lily Allen has always been known for her candour but the “radical level of sharing” in her latest album “West End Girl” makes you feel as if you are “eavesdropping on a private conversation”, said Louis Staples in Harper’s Bazaar. Through her raw lyrics, she delivers something so unfiltered that it sets a “new benchmark for what it means to be vulnerable”.

Allen leaves no room for ambiguity in this retelling of how her relationship with ex-husband David Harbour unravelled. She tackles the “taboo” topic of open relationships in “searing detail”, breaking down their “progressive facade” and revealing how hers left her feeling like a “desexualised, disempowered wife”. Despite the “very specific story” she tells, the album is still “littered with relatable moments”. “West End Girl” demonstrates that “vulnerability has become pop’s most valuable currency”.

“It’s not just what she says from moment to moment but how she says it that keeps you riveted,” said Chris Willman in Variety. The album plays out like a “suspense movie” despite the end of the story being no surprise. Allen is a “master storyteller” and the jaw-dropping details keep you “on the edge” of your seat. Most divorce albums will give listeners “occasional time-outs from the trauma” but there are no “commercial breaks” here. Allen suggested in an interview that there is a “little fiction mixed in” but the “vividly delineated” lyrics make you question how it could be anything but the truth.

Allen has “shape-shifted through genres”, said Maura Johnston in Rolling Stone, but her strength has always been her voice. Her distinct “airy soprano” is what makes her so unique. When you combine her singing with the album’s “fluffy synth-pop” sound, it adds a sort of “gauziness that makes its lyrical swipes land more sharply”.

It’s easy to get “wrapped up” in the lyrics during the first listen but the music’s “stylistic pastiche” is also worth paying attention to, said Willman in Variety. From “finger-picking guitar and orchestra” to “wildly up-tempo” beats, the sound is very dynamic. Despite its largely “avenging spirit”, “West End Girl” is a “tremendously touching” album.

D’Angelo left everyone wanting more. An acclaimed neo-soul singer, guitarist, and producer in the 1990s and 2000s, he reimagined R&B, armed with a falsetto that grew into a euphoric shriek. Hits like “Lady,” “Brown Sugar,” and “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” mixed hip-hop beats with soothing melodies and reached the Top 10 on Billboard’s R&B chart. Voodoo, released in 2000, won the Grammy for best R&B album, and “Untitled” won best male R&B vocal performance. The video for the song, which lingered over the singer’s nude, sweat-drenched body, turned him into an instant sex symbol, a role he hadn’t sought and didn’t know how to handle. He coped with drugs and alcohol, releasing just three albums in two decades. “Sometimes, you know, I feel uncomfortable,” he said in 2000. “To be onstage and trying to do your music and people going, ‘Take it off! Take it off!’”

A Pentecostal minister’s son, Michael Archer grew up in Richmond, Va., where he sang in church. The nickname D’Angelo, short for Michelangelo, was acquired in his teens, when he was a local singing sensation. He won an amateur competition in New York at 17 and signed a record deal at 19, in 1993. His first album, 1995’s Brown Sugar, drew from soul and gospel. He then took his time meticulously crafting Voo-doo, and critics and fans greeted it rapturously in 2000. Alongside friends like Questlove and Erykah Badu, “he was at the forefront of a movement that charted new paths in soul, R&B, and hip-hop while maintaining a deep admiration for the past,” said Rolling Stone.

As the ogling and attention generated by the “Untitled” video became too much, D’Angelo retreated to Virginia and was charged with cocaine possession in 2005. His passion for music and distaste for the spotlight created “an internal tug-of-war,” said The Guardian, that resulted “in much of his material either failing to make it into the public domain or languishing for years until it emerged.” When he finally released another album, 2014’s Black Messiah, it won two Grammys. He was working on a fourth album when he died of pancreatic cancer at 51. Despite his limited output, D’Angelo was “one of the greatest R&B singers and musical talents of his generation,” said The Washington Post. Yet he resisted categorization. “I never claimed I do neo-soul,” he said. “I do Black music. I make Black music.”

Ace Frehley was 21 in 1972 when his life was changed by a Village Voice ad. “Lead guitarist wanted,” it read, “with flash and ability.” The Bronx native was still living with his parents, and his mom drove him to the audition. But his muscular blues-rock riffing impressed bandleaders Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, and the theatrical glam-metal act Kiss was born. Decked out in platform boots, spandex, and face paint, the foursome (including drummer Peter Criss) were worshiped by teenage boys around the world, selling over 100 million albums. A top concert draw, they lit up arena audiences with fire and smoke, spitting blood and pumping out pop-metal anthems like “Rock and Roll All Nite.” Frehley’s wailing Les Paul solos were a staple of the sound, and he contributed fan favorites “Shock Me,” written after a near electrocution, and “Cold Gin.” That he was anonymous out of his makeup was key, he said in 1977. “Onstage I’m Ace Frehley,” he said, “and offstage I’m a kid from the Bronx.”

Born into a musical family, Paul Daniel Frehley got his first electric guitar at 13 and “never looked back,” said Variety, practicing Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix licks for hours. He started playing in bands in his teens, picking up his nickname for his “ability to score dates.” Once in Kiss, he and his bandmates, inspired by the New York Dolls and Alice Cooper, decided to start “painting their faces and donning outrageous costumes.” After three modest-selling records, they were launched into stardom with 1975’s Alive! and their likenesses “began appearing on jean jackets across the United States.” Dubbed “the Spaceman” for the stars painted on his face, Frehley had the band’s “most spectacular onstage presence,” said The Telegraph (U.K.), “his pyrotechnically rigged guitar shooting out fireworks and lasers to match his blistering solos.”

By the decade’s end, said The Washington Post, Frehley was irritated by the “lack of spontaneity” in the live sets as well as by the relentless marketing—Kiss was everywhere, from action figures to lunch boxes. His prodigious drug use bothered his bandmates, and he left in 1982. In the following decades he played solo and with Frehley’s Comet, and rejoined Kiss in 1996 for a series of lucrative reunion tours. He marveled at having found worldwide fame while “wearing makeup and dressed as a superhero,” he said in 2023. “I still look back on it today and I go, ‘Wow, that was weird.’”

‘It needs to be said again: Leave Britney alone’

Kat Tenbarge at The New York Times

Britney Spears can “finally live on her own terms,” but an “online chorus of onlookers has howled about how she’s displayed that freedom on social media,” says Kat Tenbarge. This “time, it isn’t just the paparazzi following Ms. Spears’ every move,” as on social media “anyone can play the role of gossipmonger.” This “creates a cacophony that is difficult to ignore.” A “large audience’s benevolence” goes “only so far before it curdles into something far more sinister.”

Read more

‘The Lorax’s warning is clear. Will we speak for the trees and our wildlife?’

Jane Davenport at USA Today

President Donald Trump’s “administration is seeking to implement sweeping rollbacks to some of our country’s bedrock wildlife regulations,” and this “would degrade habitat on public lands, undermine decades of recovery efforts and accelerate the extinction crisis we face today,” says Jane Davenport. They “represent the modern-day ax at the base of our Truffula trees. And, unless we act, the ax will keep swinging.” This “unprecedented dismantling of our conservation framework would trade irreplaceable ecosystems for short-term profits.”

Read more

‘How can overworked and disengaged college students still get straight A’s?’

The Dallas Morning News editorial board

Walk “onto a college campus and you’ll hear the same refrain: Students are exhausted,” says The Dallas Morning News editorial board. Students “feel exhausted and anxious, yet they keep delivering on the traditional indicators of success — good grades and impressive résumés flush with clubs and extracurriculars.” They “might be spending less time on their academic work, or turning to tools like ChatGPT to help complete assignments, but their results are stronger than ever.”

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‘The Springsteen movie shows the problem with today’s music biopics’

Carl Wilson at Slate

The “worst thing I can say about writer-director Scott Cooper’s new biopic about the making of ‘Nebraska’ is that I can’t imagine people bothering to love or to hate it that much,” says Carl Wilson. “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” is a “worthy try at the nearly impossible task of depicting cinematically an artist making a deeply interior turn.” But its “only real courage is in that attempt, not in its own content or form.”

Read more

“The Art of Loving” by Olivia Dean

★★★

Olivia Dean’s top-10-selling second album is “a genuinely lovely collection of would-be classic pop songs,” said Walden Green in Pitchfork. On her current single, “So Easy,” the warm-toned British neo-soul singer declares “I’m the perfect mix of Saturday night and the rest of your life,” and that’s about right. She and producer Zach Nahome deftly blend plenty of sounds from the past: “a spare set of bongos from a Laurel Canyon open mic, a buttery Brill Building Rhodes organ, and some well-placed bah-bah-bahs courtesy of Motown girl groups.” But the results sometimes sound like mere background music, and a couple “cross the line from charmingly retro into pastiche.”

Still, The Art of Loving “expunges most of the clichés of Dean’s debut album,” said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian, putting mild twists on familiar sounds and adding “diaristic detail,” such as an aside about not being able to find the cutlery or light switch in a lover’s unfamiliar home. This breezy pop album has made Dean an even bigger star in the U.K., and no wonder: “It’s “exceptionally well made but feels entirely natural” and “every chorus has been polished until it catches the light.”

“Fatal Optimist” by Madi Diaz

★★★

“Madi Diaz has a talent for brief, yet devastating observations,” said Maura Johnston in Rolling Stone. “A songwriter’s songwriter,” the 39-year-old Nashville veteran was Grammy nominated for her previous album, 2024’s Weird Faith, and she has stripped down her sound for this breakup album written after she moved on from exasperation with a failed relationship to acceptance and renewed hope. “Diaz has a rounded, plainly emotional alto that adds pathos to the more downtrodden lyrics,” and though she lets light filter in only on the closing track, the arc of the album and Diaz’s perceptive songwriting “make that movement feel like a victory.”

Across its first 10 tracks, “Fatal Optimist offers occasional philosophical gems,” said Marcy Donelson in All Music. “One day I’ll wake up and I’ll be over you—if time does what it’s supposed to,” she sings in one verse. And even the record’s rousing closing tune, the one that brings in a full band for the first time and talks about the sky clearing and the sun breaking through, tugs at the heart. “I hate being right,” she sings—not once, but over and over again.

“Nested in Tangles” by Hannah Frances

★★★

Hannah Frances “belongs in a wise old souls hall of fame,” said Chris DeVille in Stereogum. Like Sharon Van Etten or Joni Mitchell, the Vermont-based singer-songwriter “can summon tenderness and ferocity, hope and despair” in a single line. On her sixth album, Frances is focused on healing from family dysfunction, and though her voice sounds as old as folk, the music “evokes many generations of proggy, jazzy indie rock.” Many of the songs push forward “with both anxiousness and fluidity, soaring on eagles’ wings and then crashing downward.”

To convey roiling emotions in the song “Surviving You,” Frances combines “noisy, pulled-apart” rock elements and nervous split-screen storytelling, said Matt Mitchell in Paste. “When Frances aches, we ache.” Abandonment and healing are recurring themes, and the words are layered atop “soups of deviating tempos, breathy synths, tinny guitars, and rattling percussion.” The lyrical content “makes for a difficult listen.” Where Frances’ previous album argued that loss prompts growth, Nestled in Tangles “concedes that life-spanning hurt is not to be defeated, only transformed.”

At a pivotal moment in her life and career, Taylor Swift’s singular capacity to connect with her fans is “beginning to falter,” said Amanda Petrusich in The New Yorker. Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, predictably broke some sales records, selling 2.7 million copies on its first day and kicking off a weekend during which a tie-in movie-theater event topped the U.S. box office chart with $33 million in ticket sales. But during her economy-shaking 2023–24 Eras Tour, Swift celebrated artistic reinvention, and a lot of this 12th album, “from the production to the performance to the lyrical themes,” suggests that, at 35, she’s finally gotten herself stuck. She currently sits at the top of the music world. After many failed relationships, she’s about to marry football star Travis Kelce. But she’s more “cloistered” by her wealth and fame than ever, and almost every song she’s written here grouses about celebrity’s pitfalls.

Showgirl isn’t helped by a soft-rock sound that “floats in one ear and out the other,” said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. Swift’s reunion with studio wizards Max Martin and Shellback, who turned her into a pop icon with the albums 1989 and Reputation, yields “just one killer chorus,” on the song “Elizabeth Taylor.” Elsewhere, Swift rehashes her beefs with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West on “Cancelled!” and kneecaps label executive Scott Borchetta on “Father Figure,” which interpolates George Michael’s 1988 hit. On “Actually Romantic,” she apparently targets Charli XCX for insulting her, comparing the Brat singer to a Chihuahua yapping at her from a tiny purse. But eviscerating rivals when you’re as huge as Swift is “by default, punching down.” And then there’s the “clanging misstep” of “Wood,” which aims for playfulness when it likens Kelce’s penis to a magic wand and redwood tree. Showgirl on the whole isn’t terrible; “it’s just nowhere near as good as it should be, and it leaves you wondering why.”

On first listen, at least, it’s “a thrill” to hear more of Swift, Martin, and Shellback’s “lush yet ruthlessly precise ear candy,” said Jon Pareles in The New York Times. “Every track revels in multilayered vocals, deployed in constantly changing ways.” But as you listen more closely a second or third time, the sour lyrics “undermine those pop satisfactions.” Really, “how many scores does Swift still need to settle?” On the final song, which is also the album’s title track, pop’s reigning alpha figure delivers a duet with Sabrina Carpenter that tells the story of a singer who refuses to abandon her career dreams and winds up a wounded, hard-headed star, buried in applause. By including that moment, Swift is establishing both “her distance and her control of the narrative.” As for the rest of us? “We’re in the bleachers.”

Your favorite musician is coming to town, and you can’t wait to buy tickets. Until, that is, you find out the price. Maybe the cost seems swingable at first glance, but by the time you get to checkout and the layers of fees are tacked on, you have some serious sticker shock.

As it turns out, this experience is so prevalent that even the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken notice. In September, the FTC “sued Live Nation, accusing it and Ticketmaster of coordinating with brokers to allow them to use thousands of proxy bot accounts to purchase large ticket blocks, which were then resold at high markups,” said NerdWallet. Additionally, the suit “alleges that prices were advertised at lower amounts than what consumers actually paid.”

It’s possible this lawsuit will bring a price check for tickets to concerts and other live events, especially given that Live Nation and Ticketmaster, “under the joint ownership of Live Nation Entertainment, control roughly 80% of the event ticket sales market,” said NerdWallet. In the meantime, here are some other avenues to saving, so you can see your favorite artist and stay on budget.

Jump on presale opportunities

To avoid missing the initial rollout and having to buy often pricier resale tickets, consider taking advantage of presale, which allows you to purchase tickets before they go on sale to the wider public. There are many ways you may be able to gain access, such as if you “join artist fan clubs, subscribe to newsletters or follow your favorite artists on social media,” said CNET. Your credit card or “concert ticket-distributors, such as Ticketmaster, Live Nation and AXS,” may also offer access.

Tap tools to track prices

Ticket prices can fluctuate. To make sure you do not miss it if they dip, consider using a “ticket marketplace’s mobile app,” which lets you “set a price-drop alert” so you do not have to keep constant tabs yourself, said U.S. News & World Report. You might also consider an option like Event Spy, which sends you “instant notifications when resale ticket prices drop below your target” through either email or WhatsApp.

Buy through the venue instead of a third-party

“Going straight to the source — be it venue, theater, teams or performers — can help you avoid unnecessary markups through secondary resell platforms,” said NerdWallet. If there is a box office and you are willing to swing by in person, that can offer further savings, as “you may not have to pay the convenience fee that many venues charge for online purchases,” said U.S. News & World Report.

Purchase using a rewards credit card

While it will not slash the price of the tickets you are buying, your credit card can return at least a little bit of the cost in the form of credit card rewards. For instance, with an “entertainment rewards credit card, you can save up to 4% on concert tickets, helping offset the cost,” said CNBC Select.

‘Getting Killed’ by Geese

With its fourth album, Geese “has achieved something miraculous,” said Spencer Kornhaber in The Atlantic. Though the young four-piece band from Brooklyn still has room for growth, it has now proved that rock can still move forward in “electrifying ways.” The group’s best LP yet “stages an intense and unpredictable melee between punk and free jazz,” drawing from influences as diverse as Radiohead, Pixies, the Stones, and Frank Zappa to create a record “capable of piercing the most serious cases of burnout.” At times, singer and songwriter Cameron Winter “sounds like Chewbacca doing opera,” but his groggy crooning “captures what it’s like to feel unfulfilled in a land of unlimited convenience and choice: weird and pathetic.” Geese’s “unapologetic oddness” may “put a ceiling on its mainstream success,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. Still, “this band has swagger,” and behind the music’s “meandering song structures” and “dissonant textures,” every track “has a core of catchiness.” Not since the Strokes has a New York City band generated as much hype, yet Getting Killed “easily delivers on its lofty expectations.”

‘Twilight Override’ by Jeff Tweedy

Jeff Tweedy, at 58, “remains a national treasure,” said Chris DeVille in Stereogum. For non-devotees, the idea of a 30-song triple album from the Wilco frontman could be “intimidating, maybe even exhausting.” But Tweedy isn’t on autopilot here. Though his music isn’t as bold or gutting as it once was, “he’s still taking creative risks, leaping around between styles,” and the guy “can still string together a few chords and sentences and make it feel like magic.” Twilight Override mixes “rousing rockers and somber ballads, deep vulnerability and wry humor,” all graced by Tweedy’s “weary rasp” and a backing band featuring two of his sons. And just when a stretch of songs blurs together, “one of the stunners breaks through.” Think of this album as Tweedy’s “epic-scale response” to America’s prevailing malaise, said Mark Deming in AllMusic. There’s little overt reference to the state of the nation in these songs, and they “rarely sound like they’re brimming with joy,” because Tweedy doesn’t do joy. Even so, as manifestations of craft and fecund creativity, “they act as an affirmation of life and hope.” The result is Tweedy’s “best solo album to date.”

‘Here for It All’ by Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey’s first full-length since 2018 is “exactly the type of album she should be making 35 years into her career,” said Tim Chan in Rolling Stone. “After decades of pushing her vocals to the brink and pouring her heart out,” she’s pulled together an 11-song set that feels relaxed and carefree. And while her legendary voice remains “present and powerful,” these jazz-and soul-flavored songs often need no vocal fireworks. They “may not ignite a stadium,” but they’d “play well in a piano lounge.” Yes, you’ll hear “plenty of the kind of creamy, luscious vocals Carey’s known for,” said Rich Juzwiak in Pitchfork. On the other hand, she’s “often hoarse” here, taking a no-secrets approach to the weathering of her pipes. The grit now in her voice teases out the soul in Paul McCartney’s 1973 ballad “My Love” and reminds us of what she’s survived in “Mi,” the coyly self-centered opener. Carey, at 56, is asking her listeners “to be here for it all: the lyrical indulgences, the flaws in her instrument, her endless self-absorption.” And while the album, for her, is a minor work, few minor works by other artists are “so consistently enjoyable.”

In 1972, “The Harder They Come” brought reggae to the world and catapulted Jimmy Cliff – who starred in the film and wrote and performed several of the songs on its soundtrack – to international fame, said Sonny Waheed on What’s on Stage. This glorious adaptation, by Suzan-Lori Parks, honours that cinematic landmark while standing in its own right as a “vibrant, moving and ultimately triumphant piece of musical theatre”.

Set in Jamaica, it tells the story of singer-songwriter Ivan, a “country boy” who arrives in Kingston with the dream of making it as a recording artist, only to encounter corruption and slide into a life of crime. But where the film was a gritty drama, featuring scenes of intense violence, Parks has created for the stage something “altogether more uplifting”. Matthew Xia’s staging “crackles with visceral energy”, while the choreography, by Shelley Maxwell, “gives everything a natural rhythm that permeates” the evening “like a collective heartbeat”.

It’s hard to go far wrong when you are drawing on such uplifting reggae classics as “You Can Get it if You Really Want”, “Israelites”, and “I Can See Clearly Now”, said Anya Ryan in Time Out. But credit to the cast for making sure that the score “roars, cracks and prickles”. As Ivan, Natey Jones is superb, and matching him in both singing and acting chops is Madeline Charlemagne as the devout Elsa, said Gary Naylor on The Arts Desk. The singing across the board is astonishing, though, and never more so than in a bravura “Many Rivers to Cross”. Led by Josie Benson as Ivan’s mother, it “expands to an ensemble work that is operatic in its scale and power”. It is “spine- tingling” – and that is not a “metaphorical flourish, but a literal description”.

“There are only aces in this deck,” said Chris Wiegand in The Guardian. The cast are “uniformly excellent”, set and costume design are impressive – with a “sharp eye for unadorned spiritual and natty secular stylings” – and the eight-piece band is as precise as the stunning choreography. It makes for an irresistible and spectacular show.

Theatre Royal Stratford East, London E15. Until 1 November, stratfordeast.com.

‘Am I the Drama?’ by Cardi B

★★★

It took seven years, but Cardi B’s second album is finally here and counts as “a massive comeback triumph,” said Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. The Grammy-winning Bronx rapper, now 32 and a mother of three, is “out to remind everyone she’s still looser, wilder, just plain funnier than anyone in the game,” and for 23 tracks, she does just that. “Whether she’s celebrating domestic bliss or leaving heel prints on her rivals,” she’s as brash as ever.

Lizzo, Selena Gomez, and Cash Cobain are along for the ride, as are two smash singles, “WAP” and “Up,” that are both more than four years old. “Neither sounds dated,” though, “because everyone else has spent the past four years imitating them.” Still, plenty of critics “have their knives out,” said Tom Breihan in Stereogum. Why include two old tracks? Why tout a Janet Jackson feature that simply samples “The Pleasure Principle”? And how could Cardi make Lizzo sing the “eternally grating” chorus of 4 Non Blondes’ biggest hit? Drama “seems destined to go down as a sophomore slump,” but in truth, it’s “a solid major label rap album” featuring “a handful of great moments.”

‘Bleeds’ by Wednesday

★★★

Karly Hartzman is the rare contemporary songwriter whose lyrics are truly special, said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. The leader of the “alternately twangy and punkish” band Wednesday writes songs that unspool like narrative poems. “One moment you’re enjoying Hartzman’s eye for the comically surreal, and the next she’s describing someone face down in a puddle of blood.”

On the Asheville, N.C., band’s sixth album, it’s unfortunately “becoming an issue” that the music retains “a grimy demo-like quality,” because Hartzman’s writing demands something richer. “A bright red yarn of heartbreak wends its way between these songs,” said Walden Green in Pitchfork. Bleeds was recorded after Hartzman and guitarist MJ Lenderman chose to keep working together but end their relationship. Though Hartzman often writes about other characters, the breakup informs Bleeds, which “takes a relationship that crammed work and life into close quarters and burns down the whole building.” The music is a match. In fact, despite the rupture at the quintet’s heart, “Wednesday has never sounded more like a band you want to be in.”

Mexican music is facing a crackdown. Local authorities are banning public performances of narcocorridos, popular ballads that romanticise drug cartels.

As the country wrestles with the “effects of organized crime” and “pressure from the Trump administration to crack down on cartels”, politicians are keen to show they don’t condone songs that glorify criminal activities, said The New York Times.

Corridos about local bandits have been popular since the “early 20th century”, said the Financial Times but, since the 1970s, a hugely successful subgenre – narcocorridos – has celebrated drug runners and ”become a key element of propaganda for cartels”.

Heavy fines, even prison time

At a time when they are “more popular than ever” in Mexico, narcocorridos are “increasingly under attack”, said the Los Angeles Times. “A new generation that came of age during the ongoing drug war has embraced songs that recount and often glamorize both the spoils and perils of organized crime.”

Although there is, as yet, no nationwide law prohibiting narcocorridos, around “a third of Mexico’s states and many of its cities have enacted some kind of ban” on their performance. These mostly take the form of heavy fines, but can also trigger a prison sentence.

When Aguascalientes state “banned songs inciting violence” earlier this year, the well-known band Grupo Firme announced that they would not play narcocorridos any more, said The New York Times.

But fan reactions to artists abiding by state rules have, ironically, led to violence. When Luis R Conriquez – who has over 23 million monthly listeners on Spotify – said on stage that he was joining the “cause of zero corridos”, he was “booed” by the audience, who then “threw punches” at each other and “caused significant damage to the venue”, said Billboard.

Upsetting US authorities

Ignoring the crackdown has already had consequences, said The Times. When the band Los Alegres del Barranco sang a song “dedicated to El Mencho, leader of the Jalisco cartel”, and projected his face “onto a giant screen behind them”, they were not only charged with “promoting crime” by the local attorney general, they also found their American visas revoked, forcing them to “cancel dozens of shows in the US”.

There are increasing signs that, even where there are no local narcocorrido bans in place, bands are starting to “self-censor”, fearing that “upsetting US authorities” could affect their ability to tour”, said CNN.

“The last thing we need is a welcome mat for people who extol criminals and terrorists,” said US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau on X. “I’m a firm believer in freedom of expression but that doesn’t mean that expression should be free of consequences.”

The bans and the visa-revoking may be having the opposite effect to the one intended, however: figures show that Los Alegres del Barranco have “gained over 2 million new listens on streaming services”, said CNN. It seems a genre “that has long romanticised outlaws, outcasts and underdogs” still has an “enduring modern appeal”.

‘Baby!’ by Dijon

★★★★

Four years after his debut album “reimagined what contemporary pop music could sound like,” said Brady Brickner-Wood in The New Yorker, Dijon Duenas isn’t standing pat. The follow-up finds the 33-year-old Los Angeles singer, songwriter, and producer celebrating the family he and his partner, Joanie, are building, yet it’s both a “thrilling” and “demanding” listen. While Prince and Frank Ocean are clear influences, this is R&B in which all 12 tracks sound like Top 40 singles “made by an artist with a kaleidoscopic, post-modernist mind.”

Dijon and his collaborator Mk.gee recently added their signature elastic sound to Justin Bieber’s hit summer album, said Jeff Ihaza in Rolling Stone. But unlike Bieber, Dijon puts strong emotions first. “Lyrics here matter less than feeling,” and throughout the record, “fragments of sounds—fiery ad-libs, Golden Age hip-hop samples, whizzing, inverted vocal riffs—all jut out like beams of light piercing through the pitch black of night.” The final track, which “occupies a space closer to traditional R&B,” sums up the album’s theme in a single line directed at Joanie: “When I need it you shock me with your love!”

‘Double Infinity’ by Big Thief

★★★

“Even great bands aren’t safe from unexpected shake-ups,” said Sam Rosenberg in Paste, but the 2024 departure of bassist Max Oleartchik hasn’t tripped up Big Thief. Lead singer and songwriter Adrianne Lenker “remains peerless in her ability to weave vivid images and intense feelings into a rich, visceral tapestry of lyrics,” and she and her two remaining bandmates seem to have embraced the possibilities that enforced change unlocks, “recalibrating the band’s woodsy, folksy sound into a more percussive, psychedelic direction.” Though Double Infinity consists of only nine songs, it “rarely feels lean or lightweight.”

These are songs “less inclined to tell a story from start to finish than transport you into a space of pure feeling,” said Vrinda Jagota in Pitchfork. Whether looking forward or back, they “endeavor to express the purest kind of love,” love that’s beyond words, and the music follows suit. It “captures the sound of ceding control, of pursuing a kind of emotional truth that can only be experienced, not intellectualized.” Here and there, the effort “leads to songs that float by without direction.” Mostly, the results prove “incredibly worthy.”

“Hard as it is to believe at this late date, not everyone gets yet that Sabrina Carpenter is up to something a lot more wily than just being a sex goddess,” said Chris Willman in Variety. The 26-year-old pop star just scored her second No. 1 album with Man’s Best Friend, whose cover art shows her on hands and knees, playing dog to a man who’s holding a few locks of her blond hair. But understand: The former Disney teen star is “a comedienne at heart,” and “no other star of songland is nearly so dedicated to getting laughs out of the carnage in the battle of the sexes.” The photo spoofs her own readiness to do more for undeserving guys than they’d do for her, and the dozen songs on her “very winning” new album drive home the theme by routinely mocking men’s inadequacies and her inability to stop lusting after them.

But where last year’s Short n’ Sweet established Carpenter as “one of pop’s queens of quirk,” said Jon Caramanica in The New York Times, this album “has all the hallmarks of a rush job.” Almost every song “feels traceable to a very specific ancestor,” echoing hits by Olivia Newton-John, ABBA, Blondie, and others. And the meter of the lyrics often doesn’t even fit the melodies. Yet Man’s Best Friend is still “a bright, effervescent pop record,” said Amanda Petrusich in The New Yorker, and the borrowing Carpenter does fits her approach to music making and modern romance. “I like that she is trying to inject a little messiness into a pop landscape that often feels focus-grouped into oblivion.” Besides, “maybe she’s showing us the sanest way to fall in love.” Namely, “don’t think too much” and “laugh when you can.”

Summer is gone as quickly as it arrived, but that doesn’t mean all the fun has to end. There are still plenty of big-name musicians you can catch on tour this year.

Cheap Trick

Cheap Trick has been a mainstay in rock ‘n’ roll for over half a century, and unlike other bands of the period, it has consistently gone around the world touring. This will continue when the band begins its 2025 concert tour, with remaining tour dates spanning the United States and Asia. Cheap Trick is touring at the same time the band’s latest album, a complete collection of their work, is available to purchase. This album “compiles the band’s work under Epic Records between 1977 and 1990,” said Cheap Trick’s website, and is an accompaniment to the band’s tour. (through December)

Damiano David

Damiano David may not be a mainstream name yet, but his band surely is. David is the frontman for the Italian rock band Maneskin and will soon be headlining his first solo venture, the “Funny Little Fears” world tour. The globetrotting tour will support his solo LP of the same name and will consist of shows on five continents. David was forced to announce “upgrades on his massive 2025 global tour after tickets for the original dates were met with phenomenal demand with sellouts for numerous stops,” said antiMusic.com. (through December)

David Byrne

When it comes to music legends, David Byrne is a big name with or without his iconic band Talking Heads. He has had a significant solo career and continues with his “Who is the Sky?” tour. The tour, in support of his recent studio album of the same name, is a win for fans of the artist, who has promised a big performance. The tour features an “ambitious new show blending visual art, storytelling and music into one compelling live performance,” said Rolling Stone Australia. (through November)

Dua Lipa

Get ready to be optimistic for Dua Lipa’s “Radical Optimism” tour, the latest outing from the global pop superstar. While Lipa’s tour is in support of her third LP of the same name, which came out last year, it’s only in 2025 that the dates really ramped up. For those looking to catch her in concert, Dua Lipa is crisscrossing the United States, Central America and South America throughout the fall. She is rarely alone during these shows; Lipa notably brought out singer Mustafa at a recent show. (through October)

Garbage

Don’t be fooled by the name, because this band is anything but. Garbage has become one of the most recognizable groups out there and is currently out on its third concert tour in as many years with its “Happy Endings’ tour. The tour, which includes 29 dates in the United States and Canada, supports the band’s most recent studio album, “Let All That We Imagine Be The Light.” Get concert tickets while they’re hot. “If the truth be told, it is unlikely we will play many of the cities on this tour ever again,” the band said on Instagram. (through November)

Hozier

After you’re done taking him to church, you can stop by a concert venue for the next performance from Hozier. The Irish singer-songwriter is currently out on a 2025 tour that has taken him to numerous cities, and he often uses this opportunity to sing and speak about social justice issues. It also comes on the heels of his “Unreal Unearth” studio album from 2023, which received its own supporting concert tour. Hozier has been flying high as a result and was also one of the featured artists at this summer’s Gov Ball festival. (through October)

John Legend

See all of John Legend as part of his “Get Lifted” tour, a celebration of his first-ever studio album. The debut LP was released at the end of 2004, and his concert series is an anniversary tour. The concert provides fans with an “unforgettable performance of the entire Get Lifted album — the album that introduced me to the world — plus a few favorites from my career that *all of you* know and love,” Legend said on Instagram. The tour features numerous cities and venues to choose from. (through December)

Keith Urban

There may not be a more iconic country music singer than Keith Urban, and now you have the chance to see him live as he embarks on his “High and Alive” world tour. The tour supports his 2024 studio album “High” and features a number of guest singers, including Chase Matthew and Alana Springsteen. “Playing live is what I live to do,” Urban said in a statement, per Billboard. “Lots of hits, new songs, things we won't even think about until we’re onstage — and loads of guitar. We’re gonna make this tour the best night of your life!” (through October)

Tate McRae

Tate McRae has become a bona fide Canadian pop superstar, with throngs of fans lining up to see her in concert. The latest opportunity to do so comes with McRae’s “Miss Possessive” tour, which began earlier this year and consists of an 83-venue set. The tour supports McRae’s third LP, “So Close to What.” Coming just two years after McRae’s second studio album, “Think Later,” made her a mainstream name, this latest tour saw her bring down the house at iconic venues like Madison Square Garden. (through November)

Twenty One Pilots

If good things come in pairs, Twenty One Pilots definitely fit the description. The musical duo has embarked on their “Clancy World Tour: Breach” endeavor, a globe-spanning tour supporting their prior two LPs: “Clancy” and “Breach,” released in 2024 and 2025, respectively. From Europe to the United States to Australia, the musicians, best known for their hit single “Stressed Out,” will bring their Grammy Award-winning performance to venues around the world. The band has also released a series of videos about the tour on its YouTube channel. (through October)

Say goodbye to beaches and waterparks, because fall is on the horizon — and with it a collection of new albums. This includes highly anticipated LPs from some of the biggest names in show business.

Joni Mitchell, ‘Joni's Jazz’ (Sept. 5)

Joni Mitchell remains one of the most accomplished and well-recognized folk singers of all time, and at age 81 is still performing at concert venues. But if you can’t see her live, don’t fret — Mitchell is releasing a new LP, “Joni’s Jazz,” which will feature songs and demos from throughout her career. The deluxe album is a “passion project years in the making” that will contain “studio recordings, live performances, rare alternate
takes and material drawn from multiple decades and record labels,” said Mitchell’s website. An unreleased demo version of “Be Cool,” included on the new LP, is out now.

Ed Sheeran, ‘Play’ (Sept. 12)

Ed Sheeran is taking a break from his mathematical album titles to drop a new LP, “Play,” which will be his eighth studio album. Unlike his prior few LPs, in which the superstar took on a softer acoustic feel, “Play” will be “getting back into big pop for the first time in a long time,” Sheeran told Variety. Sheeran isn’t slowing down with accompanying features, either, as he has also shot several music videos for various tracks on the album. The lead single, “Azizam,” is out now, as are several other singles.

Mariah Carey, ‘Here for It All’ (Sept. 26)

One of the world’s most popular divas is back, as Mariah Carey is releasing her 16th LP, “Here for It All.” The album is notable, as in the seven years since her prior LP, Carey “hasn't shared much new solo music, though she has dropped anniversary reissues of several classic albums,” said Rolling Stone. So it seems that “Here for It All” will be something of a renaissance for the singer, and the “11-track project includes two collaborations” with, respectively, Anderson .Paak and the Clark Sisters. A single from the album, “Type Dangerous,” is out now.

Jeff Tweedy, ‘Twilight Override’ (Sept. 26)

Jeff Tweedy is best known as the frontman of the rock band Wilco but has also made a significant name for himself as a solo artist. Now he’s ready to continue his career with “Twilight Override,” set to be Tweedy’s fifth solo LP. “Whatever it is out there (or in there) squeezing this ennui into my day, it's f--king overwhelming,” Tweedy said of his album in a press release, per Pitchfork. “It’s difficult to ignore. ‘Twilight Override’ is my effort to overwhelm it right back.” The album’s lead single, “One Tiny Flower,” is out now.

Taylor Swift, ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ (Oct. 3)

Many albums will come out in the fall, but this one will likely overshadow them all: Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” will be released to massive anticipation. Swift is at the height of her popularity and showing no signs of diminishing, as “The Life of a Showgirl” will be her fifth LP in five years (in addition to several re-recorded releases). Fans of Swift will also be able to purchase a “special limited vinyl edition of the album,” as well as a “special cassette edition,” said The Associated Press.

The Antlers, ‘Blight’ (Oct. 10)

The Antlers will release its seventh studio album, “Blight,” which is a look into “adventurous arrangements while touching on themes of wastefulness, environmental devastation and our passive destruction,” said Pitchfork. The new album from the Brooklyn indie band will feature nine songs and is the band’s first LP since 2021. The Antlers also released information about the album’s lead song, “Carnage,” telling Pitchfork it’s a song about “violence not born of cruelty but of convenience.” As the first song on the album, “Carnage” is out now.

Bar Italia, ‘Some Like it Hot’ (Oct. 17)

Since its formation in 2020, Bar Italia has become one of Europe’s most well-known indie bands and is set to jam out again with their upcoming fifth LP, “Some Like It Hot.” The U.K. band has been busy this last half-decade, releasing an album every year over the past five years except for 2022. The band takes inspiration for the LP from a classic movie, as the album is named after the 1959 film of the same name starring Marilyn Monroe. The lead single on the album, “Fundraiser,” is out now.

The Lemonheads, ‘Love Chant’ (Oct. 24)

The band is back: After a six-year hiatus, the Lemonheads are returning with new music and will be dropping their 11th studio album, “Love Chant.” This will be the alternative band’s first LP since 2019 and only the third since 2009. But their last album of all-original material was in 2006, meaning “Love Chant” will be the band’s “first album of all-new original material in almost two decades,’ said Variety. Frontman Evan Dando is also featured on this album; he has been on and off with the band for years. A single from the LP, “In the Margin,” is out now.

Mavis Staples, ‘Sad and Beautiful World’ (Nov. 7)

The legendary singer and activist is back with a new album. “Sad and Beautiful World” will be a blend of old and new, and “combines original material with covers of songs by Tom Waits, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Frank Ocean, Curtis Mayfield and Leonard Cohen, among others,” said Pitchfork. She has also highlighted one of the album’s signature songs: a cover of Kevin Morby’s “Beautiful Strangers.” That song is out now.

Sorry, ‘Cosplay’ (Nov. 7)

If you like indie bands, this fall is the season for you. Sorry, the U.K. rock group, will be releasing its third studio album, “Cosplay.” The LP features a highlighted song, “Echoes,” in which lead singer Asha Lorenz’s “casual yet emotional vocal delivery serves as the centerpiece of the track, but a stunning guitar solo steals the attention during the bridge,” said Stereogum. “Cosplay” marks a long journey to stardom for Sorry, which was formed when Lorenz and bandmate Louis O’Bryen started covering Jimi Hendrix tunes. “Echoes” is out now.

With its poetic lyrics and haunting melodies, contemporary folk music is, at its best, deeply evocative. The elusive genre is hard to pin down, often blending traditional acoustics with elements of everything from punk and pop to country and jazz. These are some of the best folk albums of the year so far.

Big Thief: 'Double Infinity'

"Big Thief have done it again," said Helen Brown in The Independent. The Brooklyn-based band's bassist left last year, but their sixth album "sounds like an instant classic". Combining "solidly crafted, intelligently soul-searching songs" with the group's obvious "alchemical joy in jamming together", it's a wonderful record. Among the album's "many addictive grooves" is "Incomprehensible", a thoughtful reflection on the inevitability of ageing, and "All Night All Day", which "swings along", delivering the catchiest "singalong" chorus. "Heartwarming and mind-warming, this album is a pure pick-me up."

Folk Bitch Trio: 'Now Would Be a Good Time'

"The members of Folk Bitch Trio are not blood-related, but you'd never know on the basis of their magnificent three-part harmonies", said Joe Goggins in NME. The Australian indie-folk band met in high school and are only 23. But their new album, "Now Would Be a Good Time", is infused with a "richness and complexity" that belies their age. "Sprinkled with strangeness", the darkly ironic record spans everything from "wittily drawn portraits of disastrous situationships" to "yearning from the back of the tour van". It's one of those rare debut albums that is "so accomplished that it's as if it's just fallen out of the ether, fully formed".

Zoé Basha: 'Gamble'

This "confident" debut comes from an "exciting new voice", said Jude Rogers in The Guardian. Zoé Basha is a Dublin-based French-American musician "whose folk music swims deftly around country, jazz, French chanson and the blues". Her "nourishing" self-produced record is sung in "eerily bright a cappellas"; she has a voice that swoops "high and low like the Appalachian mountain music she loves". Among the stand-out songs are "Dublin Street Corners", a "great patchwork of failed dreams in a booze-soaked city", and "Traveling Shoes", filled with the careless ruminations of a "fly-by-night lover".

The New Eves: 'The New Eve is Rising'

The Brighton quartet's debut album is a "punk-infused, chaotic mix of experimental folk, rock music and spoken-word poetry", said Dale Maplethorpe in Far Out Magazine. It might sound "messy", but the record comes together "incredibly well" and the result is "spellbinding". Expect "stunning" vocals, carefully chosen instruments that each play a "crucial" role, and the type of music where not a second is wasted. "Wicked and endearing" in equal parts, The New Eves are "something different".

Annahstasia: 'Tether'

Annahstasia's "raw, unmistakable voice" shines on her hotly anticipated debut album, "Tether", said Laura Molloy in NME. The LA-based artist cements her reputation as a "pioneer of modern folk, propelling the genre to greater summits by weaving in moments of tense rock and intoxicating blues" in this exquisite record. "Eclectic yet streamlined", her album effortlessly blends the "poignant lyrical observations" of Joni Mitchell with the "immense vocal power" of Nina Simone. By the time you finish listening, "Annahstasia is transformed into a fully-fledged rock star".

Lisa Knapp and Gerry Diver: 'Hinterland'

Londoner Lisa Knapp has "blazed an impressive trail at the avant garde edge of British folk" since her impressive 2007 debut, said Neil Spencer in The Observer. Her "bravura vocals", coupled with her partner and producer Gerry Diver's "inventive arrangements", helped capture the "wonder and darkness of folklore". Earlier this year, the pair released their first "thrilling" official duo album. The opener, "Hawk & Crow" has Knapp at her "larkish best, giving voice to a cast of birds over a stumbling, broken rhythm", with Diver on the fiddle. This is "folk at its most exalted".

'A Matter of Time' by Laufey

★★★

"The emergence of Laufey is largely attributable to her abundant talent," said Maura Johnston in Rolling Stone. But "Gen Z's chief flag-waver for throwback pop" is also "a product of her time." In the TikTok era, there are many ears seeking out singable period-style tunes, and Laufey has both a "full-bodied alto" and "a knack for marrying 21st-century problems with fishhook melodies that recall standards from previous centuries."

The L.A.-based 26-year-old Icelandic singer-songwriter opens her third album on a bright note with the carefree "ding-dong" refrain of "Clockwork." But she's also exploring modern love's pitfalls, and by the time "Sabotage" closes the album with a touch of chaos, she's calling herself her own worst enemy. "Lyrically, this album is as timely as it gets," said Roisin O'Connor in The Independent (U.K.). With these 15 songs, "Laufey has achieved the kind of confessional storytelling that makes Taylor Swift so relatable." Laufey, though, adds "glamour and glitz." From the "lovely momentum" of "Carousel" to the "shivery, spellbinding flair" of "Forget-Me-Not," this is "sublime" work.

'Private Music' by Deftones

★★★★

"Against all odds," Deftones now rank among rock's elite, said Sadie Sartini Garner in Pitchfork. Once known as "nu-metal B-listers," the Sacramento-born quartet are today "avant-rock heroes" with a sizable Gen Z following. And while the band's 10th album is "unlikely to draw in unconvinced listeners," it shows them "fully in control" of their menacing sound, "able to effortlessly bend it around whatever structures they put in place." Still, the turnaround in Deftones' reputation owes mostly to the rock audience, particularly "the evolution of how people feel about heaviness, romance, and the primacy of our emotional life." A great Deftones song, as always, "can feel like an arduous hike to a stunning vista that reveals a violent storm on the horizon."

Private Music "should please all corners of their wide fandom," said Neil Z.Yeung in AllMusic. The band's "muscular" guitar riffs and Chino Moreno's "primal screams" are tempered by "catchy chord progressions" and "shimmering, melodic programming," producing a "sensual, sexy, and soulful" 11-song set that reaffirms Deftones as "one of the greatest bands of their generation."

'Live Laugh Love' by Earl Sweatshirt

★★★

Surrendering to the "weird logic" of Earl Sweatshirt's sixth solo album is "an enrapturing way to spend 25 minutes," said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. "This is music from deep within hip-hop's 'otherground,' an area in which normal rules don't apply." The songs "unexpectedly short out or crash into each other." On the sixth track, "Live," the "bright-hued" synth backing starts glitching midway through before the beat and the rhythm of Earl's rhymes shift entirely. Yet there are hooks and samples here, including the harpsichord loop on "Forge," that "dig into your brain as they repeat."

Renowned for his bleak outlook, Earl seems to have lightened up, perhaps owing to the arrival of the children he pays tribute to on "Gamma (need the <3)" and "Tourmaline." The quest for self-knowledge has always colored Earl's music, and "he's using Live Laugh Love to catch us up on his hard-earned progress," said Kiana Fitzgerald in Consequence. On "Well Done," a track that's all of 71 seconds long, he raps about being "baptized in the fires of flaw and failures." Blink and you could miss it, but "Earl Sweatshirt might finally be happy."

'Star Line' by Chance the Rapper

★★★

Chance the Rapper's signature shout-out "And we back!" has "never meant more than now," said Cory Woodroof in USA Today. Six years after releasing The Big Day, a genre-crossing album whose "unexpectedly bubbly spirit" turned off many "day-one Chance fans," the 32-year-old Grammy winner has delivered a follow-up that recaptures "the sonic excellence and lyrical ambition" that made him a 2010s sensation. From bar one, we hear "some of the crispest delivery Chance has unleashed," plus the "battle-tested introspection" that comes from a career fumble and the failure of his marriage.

"Star Line is a feast, from start to finish," said Robin Murray in Clash. While The Big Day has become "emblematic of his decline," the new album "contains some career-best work." Early on, we get "No More Old Men," a "superb" collaboration in which he and Jamila Woods unspool "supremely soulful poetry" over a jazz-inflected beat. "The Negro Problem" is "a daring look at Black American identity," tracing the impact of generational trauma. Such moments rival Chance's previous best while "still feeling like the work of an older artist."

'Interior Live Oak' by Cass McCombs

★★★★

Cass McCombs' new album "does little to dispel the illusion that it could have been made by Gordon Lightfoot in 1974," said Brian Howe in Pitchfork. Even so, every well-honed detail of the 47-year-old's throwback folk rock feels "distinctly his." Having now served for more than 20 years as a torchbearer for Boomer greats such as Lightfoot, John Lennon, and Warren Zevon, he has graduated from being quixotic to being simply great, and "greatness makes inherited things seem invented."

Loaded with "gorgeous melodies" and "brilliant rhetorical mechanisms," this album comprises 16 songs in all, and there's "not a throwaway among them." You could even imagine Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra singing some of the well-crafted slower tunes here, said Ben Beaumont-Thomas in The Guardian. But all of these songs feel "wonderfully unhurried," affording McCombs room to reminisce about his youth in Northern California or ruminate about a lost love. An album that runs 74 minutes may sound like too much. Yet when the title track's "nervy Dylan-esque fuzz-rock" closes out the set, "74 minutes doesn't feel remotely long enough."

'So Long Little Miss Sunshine' by Molly Tuttle

★★★

Molly Tuttle's new album "may not make her into the next Taylor Swift," said Mark Deming in AllMusic. But "by all rights," it should win her a larger audience. Tuttle, a "superb" guitarist and expressive vocalist, is, at 32, "one of the biggest names in contemporary bluegrass." But she's never been a genre purist, and her fifth solo LP turns out to be "that rarity—an acoustic musician's big pop move that fully succeeds without throwing away the virtues of her previous work."

The addition of drums, keys, and electric bass on tracks such as "Easy" and "The Highway Knows" brings out the songs' "keen melodic hooks," making them sound "radio-ready" while in no way compromising Tuttle's artistry. A couple of the tunes "have a dreamy warmth that recalls Kacey Musgraves," said Amanda Hatfield in Brooklyn Vegan. Meanwhile, "That's Gonna Leave a Mark" and "Story of My So-Called Life" are "as catchy as anything from Swift's earlier country-pop era." The most novel track, though, has to be Tuttle's slow cover of Icona Pop and Charli XCX's "I Love It." While "barely recognizable as the original banger," it's "awesome and distinctive in its own way."

'The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction—and a Search for Relief' by Tom Zeller Jr.

"Roughly 40% of the global population, or 3.1 billion people, suffer some kind of headache disorder," said Brandy Schillace in The Wall Street Journal. Yet because the source is unknown and invisible, the pain is often brushed off, "or worse, considered imaginary." Tom Zeller Jr.'s new book about migraines and other debilitating headaches can't solve the mystery of their cause. But he provides "ample and vivid evidence of the all-consuming pain that headache sufferers endure" and, using a tour through medical history and his own experiences of excruciating cluster headaches, argues powerfully that researchers and their funders must direct more attention to relieving the afflicted.

"Why are migraines such a common part of human experience?" asked physician Jerome Groopman in The New Yorker. Other mammals don't seem to suffer chronic headaches, which suggests that they're produced in the interaction of the most primitive and the more advanced parts of the brain. Headaches were taken seriously by the medical profession up through the 19th century. But even though 40 million of today's Americans suffer from migraines, costing the economy as much as $1 trillion a year, research into the cause has been feeble ever since, leaving doctors divided about whether the root trouble lies in abnormal functioning of blood vessels or in an abnormal flux of ions in the brain, mimicking epilepsy. Like many other migraine sufferers, I now use several medications to manage the challenge, after chasing a medical solution for years. "Reading Zeller's book, I was reminded that there is a kind of uneasy fellowship in this condition—a vast, involuntary community of people mapping out their lives between attacks, haunted by uncertainty but sustained in part by accounts like his."

The reasons that so little progress has been made are "highly contested," said Laura Miller in Slate. Migraines afflict three times as many women as men, suggesting that some blame lies in gender bias. But cluster headaches, which are more painful but far rarer, afflict mostly men. Fortunately, there's been progress in the past 35 years on treatment options, including the one I depend on, sumatriptan, which stimulates serotonin receptors. "While the medical explanations in The Headache occasionally made my eyes glaze over," Zeller's accounts of feuds among headache researchers and potential federal funders "present a delectable blend of dish and substance." And such fights matter. After all, "for millions of people, headaches are a literal torment."

'Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of "Born to Run"' by Peter Ames Carlin

"Born to Run clocks in at just under 40 minutes and has only eight tracks. But what an eight they are," said Bob Ruggiero in the Houston Press. "Thunder Road," "She's the One," the driving title track, and a handful of others remain cornerstones of both Bruce Springsteen's concert sets and his legend, and he recorded it all with his career on the line. Peter Ames Carlin's new book, arriving as the seminal Springsteen album turns 50, revisits the record's creation with the help of fresh interviews with Springsteen, fellow members of the E Street Band, and other key participants. "But what Carlin does here is more than just music journalism. He creates a story, a mood, and triumphs and challenges for its main and supporting characters," resulting in a book that's "almost novelistic."

"Much of Tonight in Jungleland is well-known lore to Springsteen's fans," said Jon Pareles in The New York Times. At 24, the kid from New Jersey who'd been hailed as the new Dylan was in danger of being cut loose by Columbia Records after two acclaimed but poor-selling albums. He was told he needed a hit single and tortured his band across six months of recording sessions at a low-budget studio to deliver "Born to Run." And even that track didn't impress Columbia brass, who found the sound too dense—until Springsteen's manager slipped copies to radio DJs to build enthusiasm. Then it was on to making the album that would surround the first single, and Springsteen, for the next year, "agonized over every sound and every note."

"What emerges is a fascinating portrait of a talented, ambitious, and stubborn young man who needed to get out of his own way to let the genius shine," said Annie Zaleski in the Los Angeles Times. When Springsteen first heard the completed album, he famously threw an acetate copy in a swimming pool. True, the record didn't sound like other things on the radio. But each song told a story about a rebel held back by others' rules who eventually breaks free, and when the album was released, it captured the voice of a disillusioned post-Vietnam generation. "Kind of hard to believe it almost didn't happen."

It's time to face the music. Conservative ideals have made their way back into mainstream pop culture. For the first time in more than 10 years, songs based on faith have been dominating the charts. This aligns with society's shift toward more "traditional values."

The past

Pop culture and music have long been a bellwether of the political climate. Summer 2024 was "defined by the ascendance of boundary-pushing female pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Charli XCX, whose 'brat summer' trend was embraced by Kamala Harris' presidential campaign," said Semafor. However, "rising in a parallel fashion to pop women," country music resonated with "young white people, some who might not even describe themselves as conservative but may have been searching for a watered-down, digestible form of populism," said Rolling Stone.

For some listeners, country music has served as an "art form to latch on to when progressive artists (and their politics) alienated them a little too much," said Rolling Stone. Much of this was attributed to President Donald Trump's campaign, which was "based in part on nostalgia for a formerly 'great' time period in U.S. history when white identity was unthreatened and women held traditional roles." Since Trump's victory, Christian and Christian-adjacent music, especially by men, has broken its way into mainstream culture, capturing the zeitgeist of this political era. "In a time of increased polarization around religion, Christian-coded music has finally broken containment and conquered the airwaves," said Vox.

The present

Summer 2025 has been a "stark cultural contrast from last summer," said Semafor. This summer has been dominated by "tradpop," a term "used to describe a hybrid of traditional pop infused with spiritual and country music elements," said Artistrack. Songs under this umbrella "often include lyrics centered around family, faith, personal values and resilience." Some examples include Benson Boone's "Beautiful Things" and Alex Warren's "Ordinary," which is a "love song that easily doubles as a Christian worship song" and has become one of the biggest hits of 2025, said Vox. Christian artists like Jelly Roll and Brandon Lake have also been featured on the Billboard Hot 100.

"It used to be that Christian music felt like a lesser version of whatever was popular," said Holly Zabka, the president of Provident, a Sony subsidiary dedicated to Christian music, to NPR. In the music scene today, Christian artists "can now simply exist on the same level as all the other artists in the world."

The meaning

Tradpop has found a keen audience in young men. "What unites all of these songs across a broad sonic range is their confessional stance, as well as the performance of raw vulnerability from each male artist," said Vox. This is a "trait that modern men, especially ones steeped in a culture of conservatism, often have difficulty accessing." It also aligns with phenomena such as the male loneliness epidemic, as well as the growing ideological divide between men and women in the U.S. and globally. "So many of them struggle with depression, and what they are finding in Christian music is another way to deal with things," said Zabka. But it is "perhaps ironic that the regressive male codes of stoic masculinity that leave these male artists seeking outlets of expression are frequently heavily reinforced by the same Christian culture they're trying to find themselves within," said Vox.

The shift to tradpop "reflects the broader cultural and political narrative shift toward traditional and conservative ideals" ever since Trump "returned to power," said Semafor. The genre also "lends itself to the participatory nature of today's social media-led marketing," said NPR. "The musicians currently achieving the greatest success position themselves as co-creators with their audience, much like a pastor communing with their congregation."

'Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You' by Ethel Cain

★★★

If Ethel Cain's second album reminds you of the music from TV's Twin Peaks, it's no accident, said Chris Kelly in The Washington Post. Last year, Cain tracked down the same synthesizers that Angelo Badalamenti had used on the 1990 series soundtrack. The result is a stately paced concept album that "drips with the yearning of young love and the pain of your first real heartbreak." It marks the 27-year-old singer-songwriter as "the true heir to Lynch" because she's "the musical artist most capable of capturing the beauty of all-consuming love, the terror of man's capacity for evil, and the traumatic toll taken by both."

While Cain's world is "a landscape of despair," said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal, she presents her Gothic tales with "a tender, almost nostalgic edge." She shows great empathy for her characters, even the self-destructive ones, and uses beautiful arrangements to draw listeners in before "taking them somewhere dark and foreboding." Willoughby Tucker serves as a prequel to Cain's first album, 2022's Preacher's Daughter, but the new music is where new listeners should start. It's "a stunning artistic statement."

'Black Star' by Amaarae

★★★★

Amaarae's "hugely enjoyable" third album "requires a slight resetting of expectations," said Shaad D'Souza in The Guardian. The Ghanaian American singer's previous album, Fountain Baby, was "sensual and musically dense," establishing her as a creative force on a level with Rosalía and Charli XCX. But because that record didn't break through commercially, "this is her take on a club record, weaving elements of house, trance, and EDM into Afrobeats and spiky rap cadences." The new sound comes with a heaping side of hedonism: The songs "exalt drinking, drug‐­taking, and rowdy sex in such an unapologetic way that they would elicit blushes even from the Weeknd, pop's reigning king of smut."

On Black Star, Amaarae is "pursued by hangovers and hangers-on," said Walden Green in Pitchfork. While the album's rave-ups sound "powder-dusted in ketamine and coke," Amaarae the lyricist "has never sounded quite so guarded." The album's "lacquered surface" finally begins to crack on "Dream Scenario," revealing a hint of candor. Otherwise, Black Star is the record you make when you've wallowed in every indulgence and wonder, "Is this all there is?"

'No Rain, No Flowers' by The Black Keys

★★

"The Black Keys' clockwork competence is a durable wonder," said Jon Dolan in Rolling Stone. Sure, the duo's last album, 2024's Ohio Players, and accompanying tour were market flops. But more than a dozen years since they broke through as unlikely retro-rock hitmakers, guitarist-singer Dan Auerbach and drummer Pat Carney didn't mope. Instead, they retreated to their Nashville studio, gathered a few high-profile collaborators, and put together "one of their most precision-tuned LPs yet." The 11-track set evokes the song list of a radio station of yore that leaps from "bubble-funk workouts" to Bee Gees–style falsettos to a "fuzzed-out blues-metal stomp." It's all "seamlessly smooth" and "a poppy far cry from the garage-grind they built their career on, but it's not without heart."

Unfortunately, the title track is "massively cheesy," said Will Hodgkinson in The Times (U.K.), and the disco-inflected groove of "Make You Mine" is "an awkward fit" for these garage revivalists. "Babygirl," at least, "has the mix of pop catchiness and retrograde rock that made their biggest hits so all-conquering." Most else sounds like "a band in crisis, unsure of where to go next."