Since blowing up in 2015 with their fourth album, *Blurryface*, the duo of Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun have parlayed their high-concept rap-rock-pop hybrid into massive mainstream success. All the while, they’ve built an ornate fictional universe in which the exploits of characters like Clancy and the Torchbearer function as allegories about living with depression, anxiety, and insecurity. *Breach*, the duo’s eighth album, concludes the decade-long narrative that began with *Blurryface* and continued with their next three full-lengths (2018’s *Trench*, 2021’s *Scaled and Icy*, and 2024’s *Clancy*), resolving the cliffhanger of its predecessor’s ending. Through a dense rap-rock dystopia populated by robots and necromancers, the duo fight through bouts of insecurity (“Garbage”) and paranoia (“The Contract,” which recruits YUNGBLUD to continue where last year’s “Paladin Strait” left off). “Did you learn a thing?” Joseph sings on the haunting closing track, looking back on the decade-long journey and concluding: “Intentions will set you free.”
When JADE made her bombastic solo debut with “Angel of My Dreams” in July 2024, her yet to be named album had already been completed. The song, a Mike Sabath production that splices power-ballad theatrics, stomping electro basslines, and sugary, sardonic melodies into a Frankenstein’s monster of a tune, was hailed by fans and critics alike for its bold experimentalism, setting up sky-high expectations for the Little Mix star’s future output. As JADE told Apple Music’s Rebecca Judd, shortly after its release: “There’s a lot of songs on the record that have that same experimental vibe. I have a few of the more straight-down-the-line, poppy songs on there, but peppered in with the chaos that is my brain.” The statement holds water now *THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY!* has landed. Front-loaded with singles, which see JADE navigate shimmering disco sensuality (“Fantasy”), ballroom club (RAYE co-write “Midnight Cowboy”), and no-punches-pulled electropop (“FUFN (Fuck You for Now)”) with consummate ease, the back half of the record pulls her broad spectrum of influence together cohesively without sacrificing any of the originality or left-field choices that have come to shape her sonic identity. “I think \[the reaction to ‘Angel of My Dreams’\] has given me reassurance that I can really be myself,” JADE said. “I can take these risks. I can do something a bit braver…” That confidence extends to the album’s lyrical themes, which examine JADE’s complex feelings about life in the spotlight, love and its maddening effects—see the delightfully unhinged romance of “Plastic Box”—and the relatable feeling of being at war with your own mind, from all angles. She shoulders her own blame for throwing up emotional walls on “Self Saboteur” only to pull back the curtain with skittish midtempo “Glitch,” revealing the distorted inner voice “telling me lies, telling me how it is” and “hijacking all my decisions.” “Unconditional” makes floaty, ethereal promises of love without reservations to someone struggling to love themselves over a chugging, synth-pop beat, while “Natural at Disaster” takes the concept of a torch song and interprets it literally, putting a vocally dramatic match to the gentle, piano-backed memory of a toxic dynamic. “If there are any darker topics that are personal to me that I write about, then I always give it a bit of a humor to it,” JADE said, speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in the week of release. “It’s been fun as a songwriter being able to finally write more personal concepts and explore that and show people exactly who I am.” Unsurprisingly, given JADE’s widespread songwriting contributions during the decade she spent as a member of one of the UK’s most successful girl groups, *THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY!* shares some of its DNA (and its producers, including Sabath, MNEK, and Lostboy) with the sounds of late-career Little Mix. While it’s common for band members striking out on their own for the first time to reinvent themselves entirely—a kickback against the artistic compromise that collective creativity demands—JADE boldly bucks the trend, converging her own unique impetus with echoes of the familiar. *THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY!* feels more grounded in authenticity as a result, allowing her to take ownership of her past as she builds for the future.
Swedish pop phenom Zara Larsson has spent her career steadily building towards a point of pure dance-floor ecstasy, and her fifth album *Midnight Sun* represents the point where she’s seemingly finally reached the summit. Executive-produced by British dance-pop wizard MNEK, the follow-up to 2024’s *VENUS* is bigger, brasher, and more audacious than its predecessor. A clear point of comparison is the total head-rush pop of fellow Swede Tove Lo, only instead of neon-lit clubs, the locale is the sweltering, sandy beach environ evoked in the indelible “Eurosummer.” Hedonism is the name of the game across *Midnight Sun*: Just check out the zippy synths that stomp down the catwalk of “Hot & Sexy” or the low-riding and “Hollaback Girl”-recalling crunk of “Pretty Ugly.” Even the more subtle moments here—the skyscraping pop of “Blue Moon,” the perfectionist’s-lament sweep of “The Ambition”—feel jam-packed with sound, a true reflection of a pop star pushing her music to the limits and then some.
Seventeen albums into their storied career, UK death-doom pioneers Paradise Lost have written some of their finest material. Anyone who finds that difficult to believe needs only to hear *Ascension*. Powerful tracks like “Tyrants Serenade,” “Silence Like the Grave,” and opener “Serpent on the Cross” stand up to the beloved songs on PL’s classic ’90s trifecta of *Gothic*, *Icon*, and *Draconian Times*. “We had quite a bit of time to write it, so I think that helped,” singer Nick Holmes tells Apple Music. “We usually do albums in three-year cycles, but this time we had two years extra because of the pandemic. That helped make the songs more varied because we had space to tweak them again and again.” Melodic, mournful, and fully steeped in guitarist Greg Mackintosh’s icy tone, *Ascension* explores both the idea of going to a better place when we pass and the process of striving to better ourselves while we’re here. “As we’re getting a bit older now, you go through life and you don’t know what’s around the corner,” Holmes says. “Some of the nicest people in the world have the worst luck, and some of the nastiest people in the world have the best luck. So I guess the album is really about trying to do the best you can.” Below, Holmes comments on each song, including the two bonus tracks, “This Stark Town” and “A Life Unknown.” **“Serpent on the Cross”** “As soon as it starts, it’s undeniably a PL track. And it’s the most PL song on the album. It’s got the hallmark sound of Greg’s guitar, ‘the chilling lead,’ as we used to call it back in the day. I just think it’s great. It wasn’t originally going to open the album, but I managed to convince everyone that it should, so that was a little triumph for me. When we’re trying to choose a track listing, we always think about songs as side A and B for the vinyl, even though most people probably just put it on shuffle. But we’re old-school; we still think like that.” **“Tyrants Serenade”** “The first few years after a very close bereavement is a weird state to be in. Nothing prepares you for it, and everyone’s different with it. Everyone has their own experience of it. The original title of the song was ‘The God of Malevolence,’ which refers to an internal voice that reminds you that someone is actually dead, and it brings back the sadness you felt initially. We changed it to ‘Tyrants Serenade’ because we just thought it was a bit more poetic-sounding. But lyrically it’s about when that sadness and pain comes back with a melancholic vengeance.” **“Salvation”** “When we wrote the song ‘Beneath Broken Earth’ \[released in 2015\], we found our footing in the massive doom song. I mean, we’ve been doing these kinds of songs since the ’90s, when we did ‘Rotting Misery,’ but ‘Beneath Broken Earth’ was one that we felt really worked. So we wanted to do an even more over-the-top version of that. We’ve also got Alan Averill from Primordial singing in the middle of this one. People thought it was me, like, ‘I’m surprised Nick has this range. He should sing like that more often.’ But I fucking can’t, which is why I asked Alan to do it. And he’s done a really good job with it.” **“Silence Like the Grave”** “When we rerecorded the *Icon* album \[for its 30th anniversary in 2023\], it was interesting to revisit those songs. Some of these songs are off the back of that in a way, because I wanted to get that kind of vibey singing that I did around that mid-’90s era. I think it helps break up the album a bit and put more variety in there. So, this song has a really nice old-school PL feel, which I really think people picked up on when we released it as the first single. It actually ended up being quite beneficial for us because we wrote songs very differently back then. To look back on what you did in the past can be very inspirational.” **“Lay a Wreath Upon the World”** “I think this is the first song we wrote for the album, almost five years ago now. I came up with the title—it’s so grim, I just loved it. I love dour titles, like when something’s so miserable it’s almost laughable. Lyrically, it’s about man destroying the world and not listening to nature’s warning. I’m not going on about global warming—it’s a bit more about man destroying himself.” **“Diluvium”** “This song is very reminiscent of something we would’ve done in ’92 around the *Shades of God* album. We’ve always felt that album was a little bit overlooked, and it’s probably one of our heaviest albums as well. At that time, we were experimenting with coming out of the growling into a cleaner voice, and I was doing a strange hybrid growl/clean voice that I can’t even do anymore. But the kind of phrasing I do on this song is very reminiscent of how I used to write on that album. Lyrically, it’s about a flood wiping everything out so we have to start over again.” **“Savage Days”** “When you experience loss or any kind of significant event in your life that’s tragic, you never really get over it. It’s about living with that and realizing you’re not going to heal. It’s just another knock on the head that’s going to make you who you are, basically.” **“Sirens”** “It’s about watching someone fade away and not be themselves anymore. I remember my grandfather often forgot who I was towards the end of his years, and a lot of friends have relatives they just don’t recognize anymore. You remember how they were, and then they’re gone—the siren being something that reminds you of the past.” **“Deceivers”** “I always find false prophets fascinating. I also find cults fascinating—and how anyone can be sucked in. Obviously, they get people at the lowest ebb of life, and they rebuild them.” **“The Precipice”** “For this, I just wanted a song that made me feel like crying. The piano with the singing is really sad, and I can easily cry if I’m in the right mood or I’ve got a hangover. The song is about how you’re born alone and you die alone. Life is your own personal journey, and there’s only so much anyone can do for you once you get to the end of it—the precipice being the edge of death. It’s a nice cheery finish to side B.” **“This Stark Town”** “It’s about a town that’s changed significantly. I’m not saying which because I don’t want it to be specific. If you live long enough, you see places change. Some of them change to a point where you don’t recognize them anymore. That could be because of an economic reason or whatever. I remember when I was a young guy and old men would say, ‘Oh, this place isn’t like it used to be, blah blah blah…’ And now I’m that guy.” **“A Life Unknown”** “This is one of the first two or three songs we wrote for the album. But the chord change that happens at the end is one of the last things we did for the album. There were years between the initial writing and that chord change, but that change really makes the song. I’ve been watching a lot of these TV shows where people go off the grid to live off the land, no internet, and they don’t use money. I find that fascinating, to drop off the map and be completely unknown like that.”
After the rousing success of 2022’s *Pain Remains*, New Jersey deathcore crew Lorna Shore returns with their fifth album. Vocalist Will Ramos made his full-length debut with the band on *Pain Remains*, and felt the pressure to deliver again on *I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me*. “I definitely approached this one with 1,000 percent more anxiety, if you can imagine,” he tells Apple Music. “Everyone’s like, ‘What’s the next Lorna Shore album going to be like? It’s got to be the most incredible thing ever.’ That stuff is always in the back of your mind when you’re writing stuff.” The title *I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me* is taken from a line in the album’s opening track, “Prison of Flesh.” “It’s about my family’s history of dementia,” Ramos says, which creates “a fear inside, like you’re running from something. That line is one of my favorites from the song, but honestly, we were just trying to come up with a sick-ass name.” Musically speaking, Ramos and his bandmates—guitarist Adam De Micco, drummer Austin Archey, bassist Michael Yager, and guitarist Andrew O’Connor—expand Lorna Shore’s crushing sonic palette while stripping back some of their renowned technicality in favor of monster grooves on tracks like “Unbreakable,” “In Darkness,” and the Lamb of God-inspired “War Machine.” “We weren’t too strict on keeping it 100 percent deathcore or 100 percent death metal or whatever other people expect Lorna Shore to put out,” Ramos says. “At the end of the day, we just want to put out good music.” Below, he comments on each song. **“Prison of Flesh”** “My grandma, I don’t know where she is in her head at this point. My aunt is slowly forgetting things. Throughout the song, I personify these demons that are coming to get you, but the demons are the void that’s slowly filling you up. The song ends in this big climax like you’ve just been eaten by whatever this void is, until you don’t even know who you are or who the people around you are. It’s my ode to people with dementia and the families who have to deal with that.” **“Oblivion”** “I think *Interstellar* is the best movie ever. There’s a scene where the astronauts go to a water planet that looks beautiful but is actually hell. They realize that they made the worst decision they could have made, and by doing that they screwed themselves. I thought it was a perfect example of the things that we’re doing to ourselves and to our own planet. We’re going to look back and be like, ‘What the hell did we do?’ The song sounds surreal and angelic but also kind of desolated. And that’s exactly how we felt when we watched *Interstellar*.” **“In Darkness”** “This is one of the band’s favorites because it just sounds freaking huge. It’s basically a song that goes out to all of the outcasts. I think all of us that are metalheads know the feeling. Now it’s cool, but back in the day people were probably looking at you weird because you’re a little bit different than what everybody else wants. So it’s like we were raised in a valley of darkness—that’s the metaphor I think of—but in that darkness we became exactly who we are, and that’s awesome.” **“Unbreakable”** “This is completely out there for Lorna Shore. I wanted a song that people would react to like Queen back in the day, when they played ‘We Will Rock You’ and people are clapping their hands, stomping their feet, and they’re part of the show. I wanted that unity in a room full of people that is so powerful that you have this moment when you feel like you’re on top of the world. So this is supposed to be that unifying type of song. It\'s talking about how we’re almost like diamonds: The pressure of everything has squeezed us together and we became this beautiful thing that is perfect and imperfect at the same time, but unbreakable.” **“Glenwood”** “To me, this is the most important song on the album. It’s about when I fixed my ties with my father. My dad and I had a very strange relationship when I was growing up. We had a lot of moments when we did not talk, and the last time was for a lot of years. I don’t think it was out of any kind of animosity. I think we were just so similar and so incredibly stubborn that we fought a lot about dumb stuff. He had to work a lot, which meant he wasn’t home, and I never really saw him. He was working so we could live in a nice area, but as a kid you don’t really see that. You just think he should be home more. But I’m an adult now, and I get it. I wanted to capture that feeling.” **“Lionheart”** “This song is supposed to feel like you’re going into battle. You don’t know what the world is going to throw at you, but you’re going to face it. It’s supposed to be a super-empowering song, like you’re on a horse galloping into this hellfire, but whatever the trials are that you’re about to face, you’re down to do it. We’ve got ‘Unbreakable’ to bring everyone together, and now we’re gonna go fight some shit. Let’s fucking go.” **“Death Can Take Me”** “It’s a song about being in a position of power. As time goes on, you feel like you have to hide how you are, and in a way, it feels incredibly numbing. I think I\'m trying to describe the way that Lorna Shore was when we finally got big, we finally freaking made it, and it just felt like everything that we did, we were walking on eggshells. And you know there’s people who are knocking on your door, just waiting to pull the rug out from under you and take whatever you have. I think you can only be in that position for so long until you’re like, ‘I don’t want this anymore.’ So the song ends with this person jumping off of a tower and basically just being like, ‘I’m going to splat on the ground, and the whole world can watch this happen and know that it was because of everybody that got me to this point.’” **“War Machine”** “We wanted to write a song that was an ode to all the older bands that we listened to growing up, like Lamb of God. But it took a long time to figure out how to write this one. Like on ‘Unbreakable,’ we wanted to pull back a little bit on vocals and rather than shredding the fretboard into oblivion, we wanted to write something that was groovy, heavy, and angry. So we made it sound like you’re in the fucking trenches, the world has been taking from you, you’re pissed, and now it’s time for you to take back from the world.” **“A Nameless Hymn”** “This is basically our anti-religion song. All of us in Lorna Shore were raised Christian but as we got older, we started to stray from our beliefs. We started to realize there’s so much hypocrisy and cruelty involved, and nobody does anything about it. If you’re into metal, there’s probably a good chance that you gave up on the Christian world, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So I wrote this from the perspective of a pious Christian who’s dying. He’s sacrificed so much for something that never came through for him. In his last moments, he looks for redemption but never gets it. He’s angry and resentful and he ends up unseen, unheard.” **“Forevermore”** “When we were writing this, we were describing it as a Viking shooting a flaming arrow at a wooden ship floating off into the sunset. Me and Adam had two big losses in our immediate families, and for me it was my first loss of somebody that was very close to me. It got me all fucked up and it was hard for me grieve because when it happened, I went on tour the next day. This was a young dude who passed away, and it was very unexpected. So I wanted to write a song that was an ode to him. One of my favorite lines in the song is, ‘This isn\'t goodbye, we\'ll meet again on the other side.’ It’s about finally having acceptance of that loss. I’m sad he died, but I’m also happy that I got to live at the same time as him, in some of the same moments with him.”
Following up a global hit like “Messy” is an intimidating job. But Lola Young was never in any doubt about her next move. The South London singer-songwriter took the authenticity she’d shared in the anthem to being your imperfect self and doubled down on it. *I’m Only F\*\*king Myself* finds Young teetering on the brink of superstardom, with her turbulent past still looming large in her memory. Breakups, hookups, and leaving her vices behind are all covered in a raw, straight-talking but playful style that suggests she’s learned her resilience and grit the hard way. “It digs a bit deeper for me, for sure,” Young tells Apple Music. “There are a lot of different genres and influences on there, but I would say it was a reflection of where I was at in my life. It’s very of its time as well.” The album comes little more than a year after 2024’s *This Wasn’t Meant for You Anyway*, but Young felt a sense of urgency. “I was in a weird place mentally, but felt confident, so I needed to get something out,” she says. “It’s bit of a curveball, but there are definitely some hidden gems in there. And there are some songs that people will love if they love ‘Messy.’” Young worked with her long-term collaborators Manuka (Conor Dickinson and Will Brown), who co-wrote “Messy,” and Grammy-winning producer Solomonophonic (SZA, Doja Cat), so there was already a level of trust there. “I’ve been working with them since the very beginning of my career, so I can pass ideas off of them, going back and forth,” she says. “They’re incredible collaborators and people to be around, so they help with energy as well. I get so comfortable, I don’t need to say what I’m feeling.” *I’m Only F\*\*king Myself* comes with a manifesto that’s as bold and complex as Young herself. “I hope it makes people feel less alone. I hope it makes people feel empowered and free,” she says. “Find a piece of themselves that they can cherish. Love themselves or hate themselves, whatever they want to feel while they’re listening to it. And have a good cry at certain points too.” Read on as Young takes you through the album, track by track. **“F\*\*K EVERYONE”** “This captures a moment. I wanted to embody something confident, fun, and free for the first track. My producer Jared \[Solomon, aka Solomonophonic\] was playing the chords, which are kind of punky, early-2000s, but heavily alternative with distorted, crunchy guitars. Then he made a sample out of his voice and started going around with that grating sound that happens throughout the song. Jared is very much a sound person, and he’s incredible at making those little ear-candy moments in a song.” **“One Thing”** “‘One Thing’ is a liberating song about how women shouldn’t feel constricted by social or societal norms around how they should be having sex. It’s about wanting one thing from somebody and not being concerned about what they want, or how you should feel towards a one-night stand or someone in a relationship. When you don’t want to take it further and you don’t want to fall in love. I’m not an activist, but I’m aware that by showing my body and being confident in the way I look and the way I naturally am, I can hopefully bring out a lot of confidence in people.” **“d£aler”** “I do love ‘d£aler.’ I think it’s a hopeful song. A lot of the chords are very uplifting and so is the sentiment, even though there’s a sad undertone. That’s what makes ‘d£aler’ special. It’s not my favorite track on the album at the moment, but that can change day by day and I still love performing it. I love that it’s an uplifting song, but it’s got a sad message. It’s definitely one that goes a bit deeper for me.” **“SPIDERS”** “‘SPIDERS’ is one of my favorite tracks at the moment. I love everything about it. It’s very big and ‘feeling’ and it’s got that kind of ’90s indie influence. I love the line, ‘I’m not a woman if I don’t have you,’ which is about unity and co-existing. Making the video was a really nice experience, actually. I had to hold a tarantula, so I overcame a lot of my fears, which I guess is what this song’s about. It wasn’t easy, but that’s the whole point of it.” **“Penny Out of Nothing”** “I think ‘Penny…’ might surprise people. It’s a different vibe for me, for sure. The chords are kind of bossa nova, but a bit psychedelic. This track was recorded in Rue Boyer, a studio in Paris, but we moved around a bit for the rest of the album. Some of it was recorded in New York and some of it was on my own. The lyrics on this are freestyle, off the top of my head, saying how I felt. I usually work quite freely with that. Sometimes, if I’m writing on my own, it’s a different experience and I write almost subconsciously—getting the first thing that comes to mind down, and then I flesh it out or edit it.” **“Walk All Over You”** “After hearing ‘Penny…’ and going into that darkness, I wanted to bring it back into the light. When I’m writing the sadder songs, I’m often not thinking about an experience, but the feeling in general and how that can manifest itself in different ways in the music. This one’s more uplifting—I wrote it on my own in my bedroom, and I really like that idea of putting shoes on and then walking all over someone. It’s got character and it’s sassy.” **“Post Sex Clarity”** “This one is about a brief relationship I had with someone. It’s about that situation when you really felt you were interested and beyond in them, and you feel accepted, wanted, seen, and understood by them. Again, it’s one of my favorites. That line, ‘I still love you and I don’t know why,’ sums up that feeling. Obviously, on the flip of the word, it’s like having that intimate moment with someone and realizing that you still feel really amazingly about them, but you’re not together.” **“SAD SOB STORY! :)”** “The vocal on this is quite theatrical, which I love. It’s a storytelling song about a relationship that I had for a long time—and coming out of it and not wanting to hear that bullshit, not wanting to hear them trying to crawl back to you. As I get further away from these experiences, they do still hit me, but they also feel a bit distant because obviously I’m traveling so much. There’s that physical distance, and I’m looking at it from the situation I’m in now. The lyric ‘Life’s about learning’ is how sometimes it can show you things the hard way or in a really beautiful way. I’m definitely showcasing a different side of my experiences on this record.” **“CAN WE IGNORE IT? :(”** “This just flowed out. It’s about wanting to ignore my feelings and needing other people to do the same—and letting go and wanting to escape. I wanted it to feel very dark and raw, but also energetic and high-tempo. Usually, the first thing that comes out when I’m writing sticks, and the lyrics always flow out of me.” **“why do i feel better when i hurt you?”** “It’s a really soulful and powerful song about a toxic relationship and it’s one of my favorite vocals I’ve done. I wanted a sad, ballad moment on the album as a bit of variation. Putting the tracks in order came quite naturally. I did move them around and try different things, but this is the way that stuck and moved me the most.” **“Not Like That Anymore”** “This track is about me pulling myself out of a really self-destructive time. It’s hopeful because it’s about looking past that and finding new ways to feel happy. For me, that’s spending time with friends, music *always*, poetry, being present, and having small moments with people that I love. Instead of going to substances or something else that’s a quick dopamine release, it’s worth finding subtle moments. Of course, it becomes harder sometimes, but you can find a way of making it feel a little easier. It’s still a process and an ongoing journey for me.” **“who f\*\*king cares?”** “This vocal started out as a voice memo on my phone and the way it was recorded is the way I released it. I didn’t want to change anything about it, so it went straight onto the album. It’s a very sad song, and I wrote it very quickly about where I was in my life and what I was feeling at that moment. There’s a glimmer of hope in there as well, which is a theme running throughout the album.”
Ed Sheeran used his last two albums as a bit of a genre cleanse. Now he’s ready for a full pop revival on his eighth full-length. “I think *-* \[*Subtract*\] and *Autumn Variations* were a really good circuit breaker for me to just be like, ‘I’m a singer-songwriter, I’m going to make singer-songwriter albums and I am going to dip in and out of things when I feel like it,’” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “And I think that *Play* will be one of the last pop hurrahs that I’ll get away with.” *Play* inhabits a familiar but expanding sonic space in Sheeran’s oeuvre. For several songs, he relies heavily on diverse Eastern musical styles like the Bollywood-tinged “Sapphire,” the Persian-influenced “Azizam,” and the Punjabi-inspired “Symmetry.” “I’m just exploring completely new different world and cultures, and there are superstars in the same country with different languages, and that’s super exciting as well,” he says. On tracks like “Old Phone” (a remembrance of lost friends that recalls the storytelling of “Castle on the Hill”) and “The Vow” (which harkens to “Perfect” and “Thinking Out Loud”), he throws back to the traditional Sheeran sound of old. Both deeply personal and *mostly* relatable, many cuts belie his devotion to his family and wife. Two sweetly romantic odes, “In Other Words” and “For Always,” also describe universal emotions. “They’re very human things that you go through with your partner or your kids,” he says. “There’s stuff that I can relate to with my friends going through the same things. I’m very vastly different in other areas of my life and things that I do, but I think when you are a partner and a father and a friend, you share many, many, many experiences.” But it’s the album’s first song “Opening” that may be more specific to Sheeran’s particular circumstances, taking a critical eye to his own international fame. “Not the pop star they say they prefer/Kept quiet but I came to be heard/Been a long time up top, but I ain’t complacent/If I look down, I can see replacements.” He’s not worried, though, about those deemed “the next Ed Sheeran”: “I just take them on tour.”
Olivia Dean’s follow-up to 2023’s *Messy* suggests she’s anything but. From the radio-friendly uplifter “Nice to Each Other” to the sweeping, late ’60s Dionne Warwick-esque soul of “So Easy (To Fall in Love),” *The Art of Loving* finds Dean self-assured as she slinks freely through R&B and pop. “You can make whatever you want, there’s no rules and that’s such a freeing feeling,” she tells Apple Music’s Rebecca Judd. Dean describes her songwriting on *The Art of Loving* as “real, fresh, and honest” and she makes it sound so easy. It’s no surprise that the overarching theme—love in its different forms—came naturally. “I had the title quite quickly,” she says. “I’ve also been fascinated by love. It’s the one thing that everybody is looking for in their life in some capacity, whether it be friendship, family, romantic, but it’s something that we’re not taught. There’s not a love module in school. It’s this magic thing we’re supposed to know how to do. So I wanted to take a closer look at it and what it means to me and the art of it, the craft of loving someone properly.” The album opens with the instant hit “Nice to Each Other,” the obvious choice for Dean. “As soon as I wrote it, I knew it was going to be the first song. It’s got a Fleetwood Mac guitary feel and it’s cheeky, it’s flirty,” she says. There might be heartbreaks and wistful moments along the way, but Dean leaves listeners in no doubt she’s in a happy place. “How could I not be?” she says. “I’ve been thinking a lot about touring and what I want to sing live and I want it to be joyful. So I’ve been moving towards joy.”
On his ninth album under the Revocation banner, guitarist, vocalist, and mastermind Dave Davidson explores the worship of technology, the cultish idolatry of tech innovators, and the disturbing outcomes AI may have in store for humanity. Joining Davidson and longtime drummer Ash Pearson on *New Gods, New Masters* are new bassist Alex Weber and new guitarist Harry Lannon, who uphold the band’s high standards of extreme metal proficiency. *New Gods, New Masters* is death metal at its most visceral and complex, as evidenced by songs like the body-horror-themed track “Cronenberged” (featuring Jonny Davy of Job for a Cowboy), the monstrous title track, and lead single “Confines of Infinity” (featuring Travis Ryan of Cattle Decapitation). Elsewhere, Israeli guitar wizard Gilad Hekselman lends some guest shredding to the dizzying instrumental “The All Seeing,” and Gorguts main man Luc Lemay makes a vocal cameo on closer “Buried Epoch.”
The common denominator between the soundtracky Americana of guitarist William Tyler and the club-adjacent sparkle of Four Tet is their quiet quest for a homespun infinity. For shimmering ribbons of sound whose unfurling conjures time-lapse footage of thawing ice or sunrise over a field; for simple, rustic scenes made more vivid—maybe even more natural—through electronic intervention. Hebden has said the pair bonded in part over their love for 1980s country (the album opens with an 11-minute “cover” of Lyle Lovett’s “If I Had a Boat”), though the effect is closer to something like a lost Ry Cooder session filtered through Brian Eno. Instrumental music for light contemplation, refined enough for the museum, grounded enough for the farm.
Taking several pages from fellow Brits Sleep Token’s hype-generating playbook, PRESIDENT is an anonymous UK collective that fuses modern metal with dancey electronics and R&B textures. The title of their debut EP, *King of Terrors*, is a biblical reference (Job 18:14) and an allusion to the death of the wicked that plays out across six songs steeped in programmed beats, industrial textures, and singing styles that range from screamo to modern R&B cadences. The skittering “RAGE” was inspired by Dylan Thomas’ famous poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”; leadoff track “In the Name of the Father” is metalcore electronica that isn’t afraid of Auto-Tune, and “Dionysus” delivers a Deftones-esque guitar crush interspersed with cool-breeze verses and a plaintive chorus.
In 2024, Michigan metalcore troupe I Prevail parted ways with co-lead singer Brian Burkheiser, leaving Eric Vanlerberghe to handle both the clean and harsh vocals. The band’s fourth album, *Violent Nature*, is their first without Burkheiser, who left I Prevail due to a rare and painful medical condition. Luckily, Vanlerberghe and his bandmates rise to the challenge, delivering one of their heaviest records yet. Moody singles “Rain” and “Into Hell” bring anthemic melodies and slick electronic underpinnings, while the short, blistering title track recalls the angriest nu metal of the mid-’90s. “Annihilate Me” splits the difference, bringing angst and atmosphere in equal measure.
On their 15th album, German power metal vets Primal Fear hoist their chalices with a revamped lineup. *Domination* marks the studio debuts of new drummer André Hilgers (formerly of German metal mainstays Rage and Bonfire) and new guitarist Thalia Bellazecca, a 25-year-old Italian shredder known for her fleet-fingered online guitar covers. You can hear Primal Fear’s *Painkiller*-era Priest influence on opening track “The Hunter,” a battle-ready anthem that showcases their twin guitar assault and singer Ralf Scheepers’ impressive range in equal measure. On “Far Away,” Bellazecca and fellow ax-slinger Magnus Karlsson carve off a galloping backdrop for Scheepers’ Viking metal cadences before screaming into the moody instrumental “Hallucinations.” The soaring single “Tears of Fire” offers a tale of heroic glory, while Melissa Bonny of Swiss symphonic metallers Ad Infinitum makes a guest vocal appearance on the power ballad “Eden.”
It’s hard to think of another artist from the ’70s classic-rock era who’s aged more gracefully than Robert Plant. Rather than trying of relive past glories, the former Led Zeppelin shrieker has spent much of the 21st century recontextualizing his formative influences—American blues, English folk, early rock ’n’ roll, Middle Eastern classical—into more earthy and ethereal realms. He carries himself less as a rock star than as a student, seeking out players and inspiration from niche scenes—be it bluegrass or indie rock—to bring his roots-music reinventions to life. *Saving Grace* is named for the group of players who’ve supported Plant since 2019, but like his previous crews Band of Joy and The Sensational Shape Shifters, they’re no mere backing band but fully integrated collaborators, with singer Suzi Dian playing his spirited vocal foil. Together, they roam through a collection of covers that effectively serves as a road map to Plant’s lifelong musical journey, connecting the dots between early Zep influence Memphis Minnie (a rollicking “Chevrolet”), his perennial San Fran psych favorites Moby Grape (a delightfully dreamy “It’s a Beautiful Day Today”), and his more recent obsession with Minnesota slocore legends Low (an urgent, Eastern-inflected interpretation of *The Great Destroyer* fuzz bomb “Everybody’s Song”). But even if Plant is now far removed from the proto-metal bombast of Led Zeppelin, *Saving Grace*’s simmering renditions of traditional tunes like “As I Roved Out” and “Gospel Plough” show that he still abides by his former band’s formative philosophy, by reinvigorating age-old musical texts for the modern age.
On their self-titled debut as Verses GT, producers Nosaj Thing and Jacques Greene occupy a space between hazy atmospheres and club-ready rhythms. Recorded largely in person across London, LA, Tokyo, Paris, and Montreal, the album reflects a partnership dating back to 2018, even if their first joint single, “Too Close” with Ouri, didn’t arrive until 2023. Nosaj’s experimental soundscapes merge with Greene’s R&B-inflected club sensibilities to create a shadowy, textured sonic world. From the glowing open of “Fragment,” melancholy chords and spectral vocal chops loom over the album, cloaking the driving UK garage of “Unknown” and wintry, Burial-esque chill of “Left” in an eerie yet strangely serene darkness that feels like walking city streets at night. “Forever” introduces a skeletal hip-hop beat with hard-edged, raspy drums, before “Intention” thaws the chill into a warmer, woozy house groove. Guests George Riley, KUČKA, and TYSON add vibrant bursts of color, their voices cutting through the fog. Rather than chase hooks or big drops, *Verses GT* thrives on subtle shifts, where even small transitions can make an impact.
On *The Dream*, FINNEAS and Ashe’s first album together as The Favors, the duo tries their hand at one of the most difficult formats to replicate: the male-female power duo. Think Sonny & Cher, Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra, Lindsey Buckingham & Stevie Nicks. The album, which was produced by FINNEAS, features the duo harmonizing over lush orchestral pop and folk arrangements, infusing their signature styles with disco, slow-burning balladry, and country music. Though the collection marks their first time working together on an entire album, they collaborated on Ashe’s 2021 track “Till Forever Falls Apart.” Their relationship dates back even further. In an interview with Zane Lowe, the duo revealed that they met about nine years ago and quickly struck up a friendship. That chemistry works its way through the entire album, from the ELO-inspired electropop of the title track to the lounge jazz of “Ordinary People,” which calls to mind another all-time male-female duo: Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga. The exciting restlessness of the album’s genre explorations comes from the way their relationship began to build. “I think that our friendship really has a lot to do with a kind of mutual curiosity,” FINNEAS says. “I think that, over the years, I’ve looked at why I feel super affectionately towards somebody. And obviously, people’s talent or energy is important, but I think people’s curiosity is this big, underrepresented societal thing.”