On ATEEZ’s *Ashes to Light*, evolution is earned, but sometimes still fought against. The nine-track effort represents the second full-length Japanese album released by the K-pop octet since their 2018 debut under KQ Entertainment, and it’s an expansion of the group’s music further past swashbuckling swagger to sentimental sensuality. It brings together four previously released J-pop tracks (“NOT OKAY,” “Days,” “Birthday,” and “Forevermore”) and five new ones (“Ash,” “12 Midnight,” “Tippy Toes,” “FACE,” and “Crescendo”), giving the album a temporal scope broader than the group’s prolific output might suggest is possible. The album brings in more of ATEEZ’s signature rap in “12 Midnight,” a song about fighting through anxieties in the middle of the night. “Tippy Toes” keeps things low-key before ATEEZ erupts into the J-rock-fueled frenzy of “FACE” and the unbridled sentiment of “Crescendo,” the latter asking fans (known as ATINY) to stay “together, forever” with the group. “Let\'s hide away, like the setting sun/So that we won\'t be found in this ever-changing world,” members Seonghwa, Hongjoong, Yunho, Yeosang, San, Mingi, Wooyoung, and Jongho suggest on the album-ending ballad “Forevermore.” The song is an emotional tribute to a time that must pass—though not just yet.
Harlem raised and Brooklyn based, Liim boasts the exact sort of genre-porous sound that could conceivably land an artist a Tyler, The Creator co-sign. In this case, it actually did, a fact that adds to the veritable buzz surrounding the 21-year-old’s full-length debut *Liim Lasalle Loves You*. Swerving and gliding between sounds that include—but aren’t at all limited to—hip-hop, R&B, and indie pop, he seems an altogether logical fit for the current moment. His youthful concerns transition to more grown-up ones throughout the album, as he humbles himself for the throbbing “For the Both of Us” and gets reflective at the bottom of a shot glass on “Mezcal.” His growing pains eminently relatable, he grapples with the minutia of a romantic split on “Break” and demands to be valued on “Important to Ya.” By the time the closing title track floats along, it’s hard not to feel what he feels.
While writing the songs for their ’80s-indebted third album, G Flip (aka Melbourne-born artist Georgia Flipo) created a character to describe the essence of what they were striving for. “I would continuously say, ‘This song’s almost there, it just needs a little more Butch Springsteen in it,’” they tell Apple Music. “And it was my version of Bruce Springsteen—my lesbian queerness merged with a Bruce Springsteen delivery. It ended up being how I would describe what the record sounds like.” *Dream Ride* was born out of a fascination with the ’80s output of artists such as Springsteen, Madonna, Prince, Guns N’ Roses, and Whitney Houston, with G Flip reveling in the musicality, instrumentation (they bought a keytar and learned to play saxophone), and drum sounds of the era. “I wanted to build a world,” they explain. “I wanted to think about if I was in the ’80s what would I look like? What would I drive? Where would I go? Where would I work? So it was all a bit of this fantasy dream of me in the ’80s. And throughout every song I’d mention a lot of references to cars. I like how that filtered into the writing, ’cause it meant that I got to drive this really sick, 1970s hot pink Barracuda around in the music videos.” Though there is an element of fantasy and storytelling to songs like “Disco Cowgirl,” the album also draws on very real themes of loss (“In Another Life”) and the queer experience (“Bed on Fire”), set to a soundtrack of high-powered anthems (“I Don’t Wanna Regret”), dramatic power ballads (“Baby, I’m a Winner”), and skewed synth-pop (“Exactly What I Like”). Here, G Flip takes Apple Music back to the ’80s and through each track on *Dream Ride*. **“Disco Cowgirl”** “It felt like the perfect introduction to this new, ’80s-esque world. This song has got that fun drama of ‘Will I ever see my disco cowgirl again? Is she going to ride off into the sunset without me?’ This also shaped the color of the record. The song to me is that hot pink, neon, driving-through-Hollywood kind of vibe. I was making the record and driving between the studio and where I live \[in LA\], so there were a lot of late-night, 2 am drives. But this always felt like, ‘Let’s open the record with it.’ You hear the car pulling up right at the start, so the dream ride begins.” **“I Don’t Wanna Regret”** “This song is Butch Springsteen to a tee. Sometimes, I forget during a show, or just in my life, to take a moment to say, ‘Hey, G, you’ve done a lot of cool shit and you should be proud of yourself.’ And I wanted a song that everyone in the crowd could also feel like, ‘Hey, I need to celebrate as well—I bought that car and I got that job and I got the girl I was in love with.’ I wanted to shout out every single person in the room, and you can hear it lyrically from the get-go. I’m trying to include everyone to have this celebration moment during the show.” **“In Another Life”** “It’s the most deep and emotional song on the record. I really wanted a song about loss, but that has this edge of hopefulness that we’ll be together in another life, and I’ll be there with open arms and I’ll see you then. I didn’t want to make this emotional in a way that doesn’t have hope.” **“Bed on Fire”** “When I first slept with a woman it was such a bookmark in my life. There was this euphoria and this power like, ‘This is who I am and I’m going to shout it from the rooftops.’ There was also a little bit of anger \[that\] I’ve had to suppress so much of my life because I was taught it was wrong, or I’ll go to Hell, and so there was a bit of fire to it.” **“Cut His Dick Off”** “It’s so cruise-y and it’s such a vibe-y song and it doesn’t give off any aggression like the title does. I’ve grown up with friends who are dating someone who fucking sucks. And he’s bad. I find, with me and my mates, that if we’re talking about a friend we’re like, ‘I swear to God, if he ever does that to her again, I will cut his dick off.’ And it’s just this relatable saying that you say off the cuff, but I wanted to put it in a song and make it a title.” **“Baby, I’m a Winner”** “When we were making the record I was listening to a lot of hair-metal bands, but their ballads. It was such an era of these absolute rock-star-dressed men but they’re screaming in a slower tempo with a piano, and they’re doing these guitar solos that are long, and I thought it was so cool. I really wanted to make a record like that. It’s about fighting in a relationship. Baby, I’m a winner but I’ll lose to you. I’ll let you take this one. We don’t need to argue anymore. You win this fight.” **“Big Ol’ Hammer”** “This is the queerest song I’ve ever written. When we’d get tired or wouldn’t be having the best of ideas, we’d write a silly song. And me and \[songwriter\] Jesse Thomas were dancing around the lounge room and singing, ‘You make me feel like a man, goddamn, woo!’ And we were having fun and not thinking too much. But then we realized we couldn’t get it out of our heads. And when you’re writing three to four songs a day, if you can remember a song three weeks later, it made me be like, ‘Maybe there’s something in this song.’” **“Exactly What I Like”** “Definitely a Devo vibe. At the time, I was listening to a lot of Prince, and he would go into falsetto and do a lot of rhythmic stuff. I never do that, but I was a few drinks deep and thought it was funny, so I started going \[sings the verse\]. We were all like, ‘This is so fun.’ Instead of crash cymbals we used samples of fireworks going off; we got little dogs going ‘woof’ in the song. It’s a little batshit crazy. It’s just about, baby girl, that’s exactly what I like. You’re trying all this stuff and you don’t think I like it but it’s exactly what I like. It’s this cheeky, fun, playful, sexy song.” **“Lush”** “This is a very intimate, sexy, candlelight, bedroom kind of song. I was very inspired by Mk.gee and Dijon, who are not ’80s artists, but if you listen to Mk.gee’s records, he uses a lot of textures and guitar tones that are quite ’80s-inspired. This is the slow sex jam of the album.” **“Let’s Take This Show on the Road”** “I was trying to get a song that could be a wedding song on the record. We wanted warm, cruise-y, falling in love; timeless love. This song also reminds me of my parents. They’ve separated but they’ve fallen in love with new people and are growing old together. It feels like a song like you’ll grow old and be in love and you’ll find your person. It felt like the perfect way to end the record. You can hear at the end of the song the car drives away. And you’ve just finished the dream ride.”
