Photo Credit: Vincent Haycock Since Kesha sued Dr. Luke in 2014, her reputation has shifted from that of the party girl of pop to the genre’s survivor. In the near-decade that’s ensued, she’s alternately embraced and run away from that title; on 2017’s “Praying,” she offered a direct rebuke to her former producer in the… Read more
Photo Credit: Dennis Leupold Bebe Rexha has always been an artist who straddles different genres and even subverts them, making her a force to be reckoned with in the music industry. And after a year filled with personal and emotional upheavals, it’s no wonder she has finally shed the past almost entirely for her eponymous… Read more
Photo Credit: Jack Grange Could the timing possibly have been worse when Jessie Ware released her disco tribute What’s Your Pleasure? during the COVID-pandemic? Probably, yes. In fact, the album became a big success, giving people an excellent excuse to shake their hips indoors during the lockdowns. The album reached the Top 3 on the… Read more
Photo Credit: Madison Phipps Ellie Goulding has made a point of describing her fifth album Higher Than Heaven as her “least personal album” to date. In an age of pop music geared towards the confessional and emotionally weighty, many fans have welcomed Goulding’s embrace of a pop ethos that prioritizes massive hooks, earworm melodies, and… Read more
Photo Credit: Brianna Capozzi Miley Cyrus has long been one of the 21st century’s most powerful and evocative vocalists, but it wasn’t until recently that she found an appropriate sonic palette for her powerhouse voice – abandoning the Top 40 pop stylings of her early work, the bizarre experiments of Miley Cyrus & Her Dead… Read more
Photo Credit: Marilyn Hue 28-year-old Albanian-American Ava Max has always felt like an oddity in the 2020s mainstream pop landscape. The maximalist pure-pop of her 4x Platinum-certified hit “Sweet But Psycho” stood in stark contrast to her chart-topping peers, who were either throwing it back to the ’80s (The Weeknd, Dua Lipa), penning stripped-back singer-songwriter… Read more
Photo Credit: Johannes Lovund EDM, perhaps more than any other genre, defined the commercial music of the 2010s. When you think about the biggest, most inescapable hits of the decade, you realize a majority of them belong to this genre – the late Avicii’s “Wake Me Up,” Major Lazer, DJ Snake, and MØ’s “Lean On”… Read more
Photo Credit: Black Eye Peas via Facebook In the nearly two decades since they broke through with the 2x Platinum-certified Elephunk, LA trio the Black Eyed Peas have been the butt of many a joke – especially as their star continued to grow throughout the noughties. “What the f**k happened?” was the question on the… Read more
Photo Credit: Meredith Jenks Back in 2012, online dating and sharing cell phone numbers were still relatively new things, so there is no wonder that Carly Rae Jepsen’s ridiculously infectious guilty pleasure “Call Me Maybe” would go on to become the best-selling single of the 21st century by a female artist and one of the… Read more
Photo Credit: Dennis Leupold The existence of A Very Backstreet Christmas shouldn’t surprise anyone. Though the demand for new Christmas music remains low – year after year, more and more people seem to be sticking with the classics (Mariah, Kirsty MacColl, Michael Buble, etc.) over renditions from the stars of the moments – creating a… Read more