Arlo Parks has shared a new song called ‘Caroline’. It’s the latest preview from the London artist’s upcoming debut album Collapsed In Sunbeams, following last month’s Clairo-assisted ‘Green Eyes’. Check it out below, alongside an accompanying lyric video.
“‘Caroline’ is an exercise in people watching and seeing situations unfold without context,” Parks said in a statement. “It’s an exploration of how something once full of healthy passion can dissolve in an instant.”
Collapsed In Sunbeams arrives January 29, 2021 via Transgressive. In addition to ‘Caroline’, it also includes the previously released singles ‘Eugene’, ‘Black Dog’, and ‘Hurt’. Earlier this year, Arlo Parks joined Phoebe Bridgers for a cover of Radiohead’s ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ and covered Billie Eilish’s ‘my future’ for BBC Radio 1.
US label Carpark Records has released a new compilation to celebrate its 21st anniversary. Titled No Cover: Carpark’s 21st Anniversary Covers Comp, it features Carpark artists, affiliates, and alumni and covering songs by other musicians on the label. The 21-track collection includes contributions from Sad13, Cloud Nothings, The Beths, Johanna Warren, Dan Deacon, Skylar Spence, Popstrangers, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat, and many more. Take a listen below (via Bandcamp). A 2xLP vinyl edition of No Cover is set for release on March 19, 2021.
Carpark Records was established in New York City in 1999 by Todd Hyman before relocating to the Washington, D.C. area in 2005. Initially focusing mostly on experimental electronic music, the label increasingly expanded and went on to release music from Beach House, Dan Deacon, Toro y Moi, and more. Over the years, the label also established a number of imprints and subsidiary labels including Acute Records, Company Records, and Paw Tracks.
Dua Lipa was one of the performers at Sunday night’s American Music Awards. Surrounded by a group of dancers, she performed her single ‘Levitating’ while actually levitating, rising up on a wire as glitter showered down. Watch her performance, broadcast from London, below.
Dua was nominated for two awards at this year’s AMAs: Favorite Female Artist – Rock/Pop and Favorite Song – Pop/Rock (‘Don’t Start Now’). She won in the latter category. The ceremony, broadcast live from the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles with Taraji P. Henson serving as host, also featured performances from Billie Eilish, Megan Thee Stallion, BTS, Shawn Mendes, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Jennifer Lopez and Maluma, the Weeknd with Kenny G, and more.
Dua Lipa released her last studio album, Future Nostalgia, back in March. A remix edition of the LP titled Club Future Nostalgia dropped in August, featuring guest contributions from Gwen Stefani, Mark Ronson, BLACKPINK, and more. She recently enlisted Belgian singer-songwriter Angèle for a new song called ‘Fever’ and joined Miley Cyrus on her new single ‘Prisoner’.
Billie Eilish was one of the performers at Sunday night’s American Music Awards. Joined by her brother and close collaborator FINNEAS, she performed her new single ‘Therefore I Am’ live for the first time. Watch their performance below.
Eilish was nominated for two awards at this year’s AMAs: Favorite Artist – Alternative Rock, and Favorite Social Artist. The ceremony, broadcast live from the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles with Taraji P. Henson serving as host, also featured performances from Megan Thee Stallion, BTS, Shawn Mendes, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Jennifer Lopez and Maluma, the Weeknd with Kenny G, Dua Lipa, and more. Check out the full list of winners here.
“The song is about the sort of dream world I keep myself in, in order to write,” Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas said in a statement. “Sometimes I wonder if there will be real world costs for staying there too long. I don’t want to pick my head up after a bunch of years go by and see a bunch of songs but nobody to love.”
Charles Grant added: “I’ve loved Mike [Hadreas]’ music for a long time. Marc LeBlanc is the star of the video—he plays the pigman. He’s an amazing actor and his performance in combination with how powerful and emotional Mike’s music is gave this whole project such amazing energy and spirit. Hunter and I are really grateful to have added to Mike’s creative world in a way that feels uniquely true to him, us, and Marc all at once…. We are all pigs.”
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately arrived back in May. On December 1st, Perfume Genius will release a 80-page, limited edition companion book to the album that will feature portraits by French photography Camille Vivier, a foreword from poet, fiction writer, and MacArthur Fellow Ocean Vuong, as well as handwritten lyrics as “vivid conjurings that became songs and tactile byproducts from exercises in world-building.”
While it may seem that gaming is a widespread pursuit practised by pretty much everyone, there are certain pockets of society that have no knowledge of Red Dead Redemption or what a Master Chief is! But then there are those who are firmly in the era of Sonic the Hedgehog and retro gaming. If you have made the most of your lockdown effectively you have, no doubt, expanded your gaming horizons. But with various lockdowns coming in and out of force, now is the perfect opportunity for everybody to expand their gaming horizons. For those retro gamers, how can you guide them in the right direction?
Bring Out the Big Guns
You can choose to acclimatize the individual or you can just get them a PS5 right away! We all know that keeping abreast of changes in the gaming world is all about the latest and greatest. And why don’t you bring out the big guns right away? But a word of caution for the retro gamer who thinks they can easily plug in a control pad and get going; it’s about so much more than a modest cartridge. It is all about expansion packs and external hard drives. And this means for those retro gamers that want to improve their experience, they’ve got to continue to purchase the additional extensions and hard drives if they want to get the most out of it. You can purchase plenty of external hard drives, and the great thing about most of these external hard drives is that they are compatible with PS5. The PS5 is the latest and greatest, so if you want to bring them firmly into the present, purchase this for them as a present!
Using Benchmarks That They Know
A retro gamer has a very limited frame of reference. For those gamers who are over the age of 45, their knowledge may only go up to 1995. There are people who didn’t even have a PlayStation One! If you want to get a retro gamer into the modern world of gaming, it is important to use retro references to ignite their understanding. Modern gaming can be a very cliquey endeavour, so make sure that they can use their old knowledge to their advantage. If they spent their childhood on the NES or the SNES, the Nintendo Switch is still repackaging the old formats. And any retro gamer will always tell you that the old ones are the best. With Mario being repurposed every few years and even when you start to look at something like the DS, for all of its faults, the Mario packages on there feel exactly the same as the Mario All-Stars and original Mario games back in the 80s and early 90s! In fact, if you look at the contemporary versions, they are so much easier. This is, arguably, one of the biggest benefits to the retro gamer. We don’t know we were born! We have so many save options and yes, while the difficulty has increased somewhat, think about the poor retro gamer who was always burdened by having to pause their game when they were so close to the end to have their tea, or even worse, a power cut meant they had to start all over again!
There’s Plenty of Great Games on Mobile Devices
You can play great games online and for the retro gamer that’s not got much time on their hands to get into modern gaming, this is probably the best way to retrain their senses. There are plenty of fantastic packages on mobile devices these days. And even the basic games can be a gateway to a whole new world. For the retro gamer, the Sonic packages are just as good as their retro counterparts, if not better! It is the stepping stone from a mobile device to a Nintendo Switch. So even games that have a massive impact from your Candy Crush type games as well as Pokémon Go, these can turn your phone into a super machine. Any might be worth reminding the retro gamer that they can get a controller for their phone. The touch screen experience is incredibly limited.
The Human Factor of Modern Games
Something that retro gamers will have no knowledge of in the modern world is the wide variety of RPGs that go beyond Final Fantasy 1, 2, and 3 on the Mega Drive. Games are now a more immersive experience in comparison to 25 years ago! A game like Perception is an amazing experience that isn’t just an RPG with some scares, but it’s a visceral horror. Playing the part of a blind woman navigating through a mansion using echolocation is something that was unheard of 30 years ago! Speak to anyoine that grew up in the heyday of the 1990s and they will still tell you how amazing Flashback was! And in fact, if you’ve never played Flashback, now is your time! But now we have to look at the human qualities of any game, in conjunction with its playability and plot points. And while we can be very snobbish and talk about the gaming world now in comparison to a few decades ago, we can learn from retro games as well. Look at the classics like Mario 64. It was absolutely mind-blowing at the time! And it still makes many people’s top 5. It’s as much a lesson for us as it is for the retro gamer. So if you want to create a symbiotic relationship with a retro gamer, it’s so important to remember that they had it much harder than us! So whether you are looking to get your parents into modern gaming or they need brushing up on their knowledge, there is plenty to get involved in. And no doubt they will tell you that the 8-bit experience is better and mind-blowing. And while realism in modern games is improving all of the time, we’ve got to tip our hats to the older generations. 8-bit gaming is rough around the edges, but it laid the foundations for everything that we know of today.
First, she sets the record straight. On the opening track of her debut album, Megan Thee Stallion builds off an ingenious sample of the Notorious B.I.G.’s ‘Who Shot Ya?’ to address the fallout from the recent incident involving rapper Tory Lanez, who allegedly shot her in the foot last July. Lanez had to release a whole album to make his case, but all Meg needs is one song, aptly titled ‘Shots Fired’, and it’s not even three minutes long – she pulls no punches here, each attack rendered all the more scathing by the fact that she doesn’t even mention the assailant by name, yet humiliates not just him but also his supporters: “They hate me, but watch my videos beatin’ their dicks.” It’s a show, but rather than feeding off the drama, Meg instead uses it as an opportunity to condemn the systemic violence perpetrated against black women: “Now here we are, 2020, eight months later/And we still ain’t got no fuckin’ justice for Breonna Taylor.” It sure is a chilling way to start off an album that bears the title Good News.
But throughout her new project, the Houston rapper manages to handle it all with an infectious mix of playfulness and defiance, channelling the kind of unblinking self-assurance that’s defined her already formidable output. Good News is billed as Meg’s debut full-length album, and though that’s mostly a technicality, it certainly feels like the right time to capitalize on her momentum; she was already a rising star in the world of hip-hop, but 2020 saw her become a cultural phenomenon, first with ‘Savage’ achieving viral ubiquity on TikTok and then her hit collaboration with Cardi B, ‘WAP’, becoming a belated song of the summer. It’s only natural that her first proper full-length feels like not just an event but also a victory lap. Once again in top form, Meg keeps the punchlines coming, her delivery as sharp and forceful as ever: “Invest in this pussy, boy – support black business,” she quips on ‘Sugar Baby’; follow-up ‘Movie’ includes the hilarious line, “I’m talkin’ ASMR, let me hear you chew it, nigga.”
Thankfully, she’s learned nothing from critics of ‘WAP’. Good News, as its title suggests, is all about positivity, but it’s also about sex positivity, and the rapper’s sexual politics should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with her work thus far. The record boasts one raunchy anthem after the other, with Meg tapping SZA for the Juicy J-produced ‘Freaky Girls’ as well as City Girls (along with alter-ego Hot Girl Meg) on the cheeky ‘Do It On the Tip’. Not all of it works – ‘Body’ is a glaringly odd choice for a single, its empowering message undercut by a chorus that veers from catchy to downright irritating. It’s also a shame that some of the guest performers don’t do much to elevate the material: Lil Durk’s verse on ‘Movie’ is more underwhelming than anything else, while DaBaby takes up too much space on the throwaway ‘Cry Baby’. The production, too, can come off as surprisingly thin and indistinctive on some of the non-single cuts, especially when paired with Meg’s assertive flow; when the beat does have enough personality to complement her delivery, though, we get hard-hitting bangers like the thumping ‘What’s New’.
On the whole, the album finds Meg stepping away from some of the R&B experimentation that marked this year’s Suga EP and instead rides through a more traditional, club-ready rap sound. It’s when the rapper strays too far from that approach that the record falters: ‘Intercourse’ is a flavourless dancehall collaboration with Mustard and Popcaan, but it’s the synth-pop cut ‘Don’t Rock Me to Sleep’ that’s the biggest misstep here (Meg has certainly written better lyrics than “Blah, blah, blah, la-la-la/ If you wanna leave, then bye, bye, bye.”) Good News doesn’t always go as hard as her 2019 mixtape Fever, either, and it can feel particularly overstuffed at 17 tracks – though ending the record with three previously released singles, including the ‘Savage’ remix with Beyoncé and ‘Don’t Stop’ with Young Thug, ensures it will probably retain the listener’s attention till the very end. But despite its flaws, the album also sees Meg relying less on her various personas, embracing her full self, and taking back control of her own narrative, all while having one hell of a good time.
Phoebe Bridgers has shared a cover of Merle Haggard’s 1974 track ‘If We Make It Through December’. The holiday charity track was produced by Tony Berg, Ethan Gruska, and Bridgers, who is accompanied solely by Gruska on the piano. Listen to it below.
Proceeds from sales and streams of the track will be donated to Downtown Women’s Center, an organization in Los Angeles focused exclusively on serving and empowering women facing homelessness and formerly homeless women. Bridgers chose the same charity for the boygenius demos that were released exclusively on Bandcamp for 24 hours back in July. Last year, the singer-songwriter released ‘7 O’Clock News/ Silent Night’ featuring Fiona Apple and Matt Berninger to benefit Planned Parenthood, which she also supported in a virtual performance earlier this year.
Bridgers issued a new EP last Friday, titled Copycat Killer and featuring orchestral reworkings of four songs from her sophomore album Punisher. Her boygenius bandmate Julien Baker also released a festive cover earlier this month.
BTS performed ‘Life Goes On’ and ‘Dynamite’ at the American Music Awards 2020 last night (November 22). It marked the first time the K-pop group performed their BElead single ‘Life Goes On’; they had previously brought ‘Dynamite’ to the 2020 MTV VMAs. Check out their performance, broadcast from South Korea, below.
BTS were nominated for two AMAs: Favorite Social Artist and Favorite Duo or Group – Pop/Rock. They won both categories. Megan Thee Stallion, Billie Eilish, Shawn Mendes, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Jennifer Lopez and Maluma, the Weeknd with Kenny G, Dua Lipa, and more also performed at the ceremony.
BTS released their first all-English album, BE (Deluxe Edition), last Friday.
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this segment.
Megan Thee Stallion dropped her highly-anticipated debut album Good News last week, and though ‘Body’ might be one of the most irritating songs she could have picked to promote the record, there are plenty of memorable and hard-hitting bangers on the 17-track LP, including the thumping ‘What’s New’. slowthai announced a new album, TYRON, and followed up his James Blake and Mount Kimbie collab with an equally emotive single titled ‘nhs’. You might notice that Will Oldham aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy appears twice on the list this week: first for his beautiful collaborative cover of Steely Dan’s ‘Deacon Blues’ with Bill Callahan and Bill McKay, as well as a new original composition with Superwolf collaborator Matt Sweeney, the eerily hypnotic ‘Make Worry For Me’. Alex Jayne delivered a soaring synth-pop tune with the nostalgic ‘Pictures’, while The Weather Station – whose excellent single ‘Robber’ we missed about a month ago – previewed her upcoming fifth album with another stunningly affecting cut called ‘Tried to Tell You’.
