My first desire after listening to Chromatica, aside from wishing it were still safe to head to a dance floor, was for a button I could press on my phone so that I would respond to messages with Lady Gaga’s specific, exaggerated delivery of “that’s gos-sip” from “Babylon.” On the last track of the album, […]
Last night online I tried to think of a bad song about rain, and I couldn’t come up with one, and no one else who tried to come up with one in the Twitter thread could do it either. That’s because rain is a rich topic for songwriters. You can roll it out as melodramatic […]
The 6ix9ine saga jumped through the looking glass last fall when he escaped federal racketeering and firearm charges by pleading guilty and appearing as the star witness for the prosecution during the trial against the Nine Trey Bloods — the set he shouted out throughout his meteoric rise to rap stardom, fueled by the thunderous […]
What’s Beyoncé’s Finsta? She’s been too quiet on main. She’s only popped up on Instagram a few times this year, to show off her New Years fits, to honor Kobe and Gianna Bryant, to advertise her Ivy Park line, to plug Kelly Rowland’s latest single, to catch fans up on her Disney Family Singalong spot, […]
I didn’t think it was possible to have nostalgia for a city I currently reside in, but reducing travel to the five-block radius around my building has made me miss places and people situated only two or three miles away. I haven’t seen grass in six weeks. I’ve been looking at the same six trees […]
March has been illuminating. We’re learning what we’re made of and what we can and can’t do without. A pandemic is the rare situation that requires governments and citizens to act in concert in order to ensure each other’s well-being. But we live in a bifurcated nation. One half supposes it can live without the […]
I’ve been playing Bayonetta a bunch this month. …How to even describe it? You’re a gun-wielding witch who awakens from a several-hundred-year slumber stripped of your memories but not your weaponry. You tear through a sepia-toned landscape causing all kinds of psychedelic gore, I guess to restore the balance between light and darkness, or whatever. […]
James Bond is Old Hollywood’s last man standing, the rare film franchise from the ’60s that can still do numbers in the 21st century. People will always show up for a meticulous crime thriller, for a hero who never seems to sweat or worry. A character as adept at cheating death as 007 needs a […]
Paramore’s journey from the beefy pop-punk of “Emergency” and “That’s What You Get” to the soul and pop-rock moves of “Ain’t It Fun” and “Hard Times” is a surprising turn, but not an unlikely one. You could sort of see a singer with the immense chops of a Hayley Williams not wanting to be confined […]
R&Bieber’s back. After genre excursions into pure pop, country, EDM, and airport reggae on records with Billie Eilish, Dan + Shay, BloodPop, and Ed Sheeran, the Canadian singer shifts gears again on his first solo single since 2015’s Purpose. “Yummy” is a torrent of sexual innuendoes set to muted keys and trap drums. The beat […]