Pop Spotlight

For years, each new album signaled the pronouncement of a new, more mature Miley Cyrus, and a host of new visual metaphors for said maturity: an asymmetrical haircut, an acoustic guitar, a branded condom, another asymmetrical haircut. […]

New York is always dying, pricing out longtime residents and shuttering beloved haunts. One recent casualty is the iconic Pyramid Club, an East Village night spot that hosted RuPaul, Madonna, and Lydia Lunch in the 1980s and early […]

If Nia Archives is shouldering the weight of expectations, then she’s not letting it show. Over the past 18 months, the Bradford-born, London-based producer has scooped up pretty much every UK industry accolade available to her […]

What is it about a scratchy radio broadcast, encountered out of context, that captivates the senses? Woven into the ambient fabric of a song (this is a nice example, and of course this, and this, and even this), […]

Mach-Hommy isn’t just looking to control his narrative; he keeps it under lock and key. Very little about the Haitian-American rapper’s life is public knowledge, and whatever specifics he offers in songs and interviews usually […]

In the learned vocabulary of pop music, staccato means happy and languorous, sustained notes signify sad. It’s the “Getting Better” vs. “She’s Leaving Home” binary established long ago by McCartney and co. But to wilfully defy […]

Sleaford Mods don’t make music about how terrible things are in hopes that they will get better. Over the past decade, Andrew Fearn and Jason Williamson have channeled public discontent and everyday malaise in the […]

For Godcaster, everything has to be magnified or it’s not worth examining. Every aspect of the Brooklyn collective seems designed to overstimulate: their six eclectic members, their out-of-breath, cosmological lyrics, and their commitment to song […]

By the year 2000, there were no more pages in the pop star rulebook for Madonna to rip up. At no point in her nearly two-decade career had her star begun to dull; 1992’s Erotica was, by Madonna […]

During a triptych of alternate versions and demos appended to Spilt Milk for this reissue, Styvers at last plays the piano on some of these songs. She is less exacting than Parker, but there’s modest charm […]