Wicked has been one of the most talked about films in 2024. Directed by Jon M. Chu, who also directed Crazy Rich Asians, and In the Heights, even became a nominee for Best Director at the 2025 Critics Choice Awards. The film follows Elphaba, a girl who has been misunderstood for her green complexion, and Galinda, a popular girl, who become friends at Shiz University in the Land of Oz. In the wake of their meeting with the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, their friendship comes to an impasse.
Here are the most memorable quotes from Wicked.
Wizard: The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.
Elphaba: [singing] So if you care to find me, look to the western sky! As someone told me lately: “Everyone deserves a chance to fly!”
Fiyero: Why is it you’re always causing some sort of commotion? Elphaba: I don’t cause commotions, I am one.
Glinda: Let’s tell each other a secret that we’ve never told anyone else before. Okay, fine. I’ll go first: Fiyero and I are getting married. Elphaba: He asked you already? Glinda: Oh, he doesn’t know yet.
Elphaba: Fine, let’s get this over with: no, I am not seasick; no, I did not eat grass as a child; and yes, I’ve always been green.
Madame Morrible: Citizens of Oz! There is an enemy who must be found and captured. Believe nothing she says. She has stolen our Grimmerie. She is evil, responsible for the mutilation of these poor innocent monkeys! Her green skin is but an outward manifestorium of her twisted nature. This distortion! This repulsion! This wicked witch! Glinda: Don’t be afraid. Elphaba: I’m not afraid. It’s the Wizard who should be afraid of me.
Glinda: Something is very wrong, I didn’t get my way… I need to lay down.
Elphaba: You have no real power! Wizard: Exactly. That’s why I need you.
Glinda: Elphaba Thropp, listen to me. You can do this. You can do anything.
Glinda: [mocking Elphaba] It seems the artichoke is steamed.
Glinda: Elphie, now that we’re friends, I’ve decided to make you my new project. Elphaba: Oh, you really don’t have to do that. Glinda: I know! That’s what makes me so nice.
Wizard: Follow the road. It’s gonna lead you right… to me.
A new round of playtests has now been conducted for skate., the latest installment in the popular Skate franchise. These tests have been ongoing for skate for some time. The first Skate game in 15 years is now available for Xbox and PlayStation players, who have been limited to just the PC version since mid-2022.
In 2010, Skate 3 was the last game in the Skate franchise. Even though the franchise had a devoted fan base, EA seemed to have indefinitely put it on hold in favor of more FPS, Battle Royale, and live service games. Skate continued to be supported throughout the years, with #Skate4 becoming a hashtag that EA couldn’t ignore, ultimately leading to the announcement of a dedicated development studio.
This past fall, skate was announced as an early access game in 2025. Console testing is certainly a positive step towards the launch of skate in 2025.
There’s so much music coming out all the time that it’s hard to keep track. On those days when the influx of new tracks is particularly overwhelming, we sift through the noise to bring you a curated list of the most interesting new releases (the best of which will be added to our Best New Songs playlist). Below, check out our track roundup for Tuesday, January 14, 2025.
Samia – ‘Bovine Excision’
“I was drawn to the phenomenon of bloodless cattle mutilation as a metaphor for self-extraction – this clinical pursuit of emptiness,” Samia said of ‘Bovine Excision’, which leads her upcoming album Bloodless. “It’s easier to be what someone wants you to be if you give as little as possible.” It’s a grueling metaphor, but it’s no wonder Samia works it into a punchy, emotive indie rock song.
Bartees Strange – ‘Wants Needs’
The latest single from Bartees Strange’s upcoming LP Horror channels career frustration through nervy, soul-baring indie rock. “I realized a couple years ago that if music is really going to work out long-term, I want/need more fans,” Strange said of ‘Wants Needs’ in a press release. “Of course, it’s a timing and numbers game, but race is a powerful component, too. I don’t see a lot of people like me in the indie space making long term livings on their records. I worry people may have a hard time connecting to me because I don’t look/sound like them — that I’m fun to root for, but not actually supported. This song is about how much that worries me, fully understanding that a lot of these neurosis are of my own making.”
Jason Isbell – ‘Bury Me’
Jason Isbell used an all-mahogany 1940 Martin 0-17 acoustic guitar to record every song on Foxes in the Snow, his new solo LP arriving in March. Naturally, the stripped-back production is a great fit for Isbell’s songwriting, and lead single ‘Bury Me’ is a fantastic introduction.
Rusty Williams – ‘Knocking (At Your Door)’
Rusty Williams, the 78-year-old grandfather of Paramore’s Hayley Williams, is releasing his debut album, Grand Man, via Zac Farro’s Congrats Records. It’s an interesting story: Williams recorded the album in the ’70s, but it never saw the light of day, and his granddaugher hadn’t heard it – or realized it actually existed – until recently. It’s set to come out on Valentine’s Day, and the appropriately lovestruck lead single ‘Knocking (At Your Door)’ is out now.
Miki Berenyi Trio – ‘8th Deadly Sin’
Miki Berenyi Trio, the new project helmed by Lush singer Miki Berenyi, has announced its first album, Tripla, with the entrancing ‘8th Deadly Sin’. “Simon Raymonde instantly picked this out as a single and it immediately went down a storm when we played it live,” Berenyi explained in a statement. “I can’t pretend that I am in a position to lecture others over their green credentials but there’s a broader philosophy in the song that I can relate to — humanity hurtling toward its own destruction, which (to me) applies as much to wars and social intolerance as it does environmental issues.”
Kathryn Mohr – ‘Take It’
Ahead of the release of her debut LP this Friday, Oakland musician Kathryn Mohr has released the intricate, free-associative ‘Take It’. “I rarely know what I’m talking about until way after a song is done,” Mohr explained. “Lyrics are the result of emotional vomit and blind scribblings, understanding comes when I get as close as I can to being a listener rather than a creator. ‘Take It,’ now that it’s in the rear view mirror, is about abusive relationships, dream logic, dehumanization, superstition, power imbalances, and paradoxes. It’s about getting dragged through ruble while holding on to a thread of hope and finally letting go of your own will because of your own growth. It’s one of my favorite songs on the record.”
The Weather Station – ‘Mirror’
The Weather Station’s new LP Humanhood arrives on Friday, and final single ‘Mirror’ is a groovy and luminous highlight. “The confrontation is gentle, because I’ve been there too,” Tamara Lindeman explained in a statement. “But life and nature is a giant biofeedback machine. What you put out there responds. And you respond; you can’t help it. That’s what is always happening. That’s one of the many things I meant when I said ‘god is a Mirror.’” She continued, “I wanted the song to warp and disintegrate; to come in and out of being like the imaginary scaffold that holds up a fantasy or cognitive dissonance. In the end, the band grows garbled and comes apart, giving way to a suspension of synth and string textures. I wanted it to feel like being bathed in light; maybe the light I was talking about in the song.”
Richard Dawson – ‘Gondola’
‘Gondola’, the latest single from Richard Dawson’s upcoming album End Of The Middle, is sung from the perspective of a grandma reflecting on her life. The point of view is richly rendered and affecting, especially when paired with the CLUMP Collective-directed video.
Swervedriver – ‘Volume Control’
Swervedriver are returning with their first new music in five years, The World’s Fair EP, on March 7 via Outer Battery Records. The shoegaze greats recorded it with Ride’s Mark Gardener, TJ Doherty, and Rick Beato, with contributions from Will Foster, Calina De La Mare, and Sarah Willson. Lead single ‘Volume Control’, premiered via Brooklyn Vegan, is fiery and intoxicating.
Patterson Hood – ‘The Pool House’
Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood has offered another taste of his upcoming LP Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams with the ominous ‘The Pool House’, which features Nate Query (The Decemberists) on upright bass, Dan Hunt (Neko Case) on drums, Kyleen King on viola and strings, and Steve Berlin (Los Lobos) on flute. “The Pool House” was originally inspired by a night I spent at a creepy rental,” Hood said. “A literal pool house for an apartment complex that I rented cheap for the night during a solo tour. It was off-season and the pool was dark green and filled with algae. The whole thing was creepy and as I’d had a couple of drinks, my mind was definitely wandering, conjuring up some macabre shit. I wrote most of it during lockdown and demoed it then on my home rig.”
lots of hands – ‘barnyard’
UK duo lots of hands are releasing their latest album into a pretty room on Friday, and latest offering ‘barnyard’ sounds idyllic yet punctured by grief. “I’ll brush your hair through a nightmare, breathing in the country air,” goes the mesmerizing refrain.
Immersion & SUSS – ‘State of Motion’
Immersion, the electronic duo of Colin Newman from Wire and Malka Spigel from Minimal Compact, have teamed up with ambient country trio SUSS for the new single ‘State of Motion. Taken from their upcoming collaborative LP Nanocluster Vol. 3, the track is wide-eyed and propulsive. “The title reflects the piece as it matches Immersion’s hypnotic propulsion to SUSS’ open-skies atmospherics, and the video renders a visual interpretation of the stop/start nature of the music and life itself,” Immersion commented.
Whatever the Weather – ’12°C’
On Loraine James’ first album as Whatever the Weather, the London producer’s ambient-focused project, every track was named after temperatures. The same is true of its just-announced follow-up, Whatever the Weather II, which is due March 14 and is described as “a warmer outing than its predecessor.” The lead single is titled ’12°C’, and I wish it were that warm where I am right now.
Califone – ‘every amnesia movie’
Califone have announced a new album, The Villagers Companion, a companion to 2023’s Villagers, arriving February 21. It’s led by the single ‘every amnesia movie’, which finds Tim Rutili asking, “When have I ever given anyone what they want?”
The Tubs – ‘Narcissist’
The Tubs vocalist Owen “O” Williams wrote ‘Freak Mode’, the previous single from the band’s new album Cotton Crown, “about dating while grieving the death of my mother.” The subject matter of new single ‘Narcissist’ is similar, but the tune, which is excellent, strikes a different tone altogether. “It’s about hearing someone’s a sociopathic nightmare and wanting to be manipulated or abused as a distraction from the larger nightmare of death,” Williams explained. “It’s also about noticing a kind of sociopathic aspect of yourself in which you see your life as an interesting plot rather than something real and emotionally consequential. So it’s fitting that Nicholls does some of his most Marr-like guitar work, but we also wanted to create a kind of sad crooner atmosphere.”
The Mayflies USA – ‘Calling the Bad Ones Home’
Chapel Hill indie rockers The Mayflies USA are back with ‘Calling the Bad Ones Home’, their first new song in 23 years. “‘Calling the Bad Ones Home’ is about a night in my teenage years when I may have consumed a little bit too much of a certain substance, and I found myself on the phone — an old school landline with a curly cord, to paint the picture — with a girl I did not know,” bassist Adam Price explained. “Maybe the sister of a friend I’d called, then forgotten who I was calling? But I vividly remember, decades later, the feeling of being trapped on the line for eternity with this person, who started to warn me about the Bad Ones, who were coming. ‘The Bad Ones are coming home,’ she said. A terrible experience, but it provided inspiration for this song, which we approached with a somewhat counterintuitive upbeat ’70s Steely Dan/Stones feel, including slap bass and a funk clavinet.”
lilo – ‘It’s Not the Same in Winter’
Following a pair of EPs, London indie folk duo lilo are beginning to roll out their debut album, Blood Ties, which is out March 28. Of the achingly delicate lead single, Helen Dixon said, “‘It’s Not The Same In Winter’ comes from being in the full throes of a breakup. I’d gone away to do some writing, hoping to channel my woes into something brilliant. The trip was terrible, I didn’t write a thing and actually started to feel like whole sections of my brain had gone missing.” She added, “I phoned Christie. I said: it’s so weird, I can’t remember a single thing about my ex. I can’t picture what he looked like, and all the memories I have feel like they belong to someone else. I tried looking at photos to trigger something and nothing happened, I felt like I was looking at a stranger.”
Canty – ‘St Marks’
East London artist Canty has previewed their forthcoming mixtape Dim Binge. with a mesmerizing new song called St Marks’. “The track describes a feeling of impending inevitability, a situation you can’t turn away from,” they explained. “Patience and perseverance through hardship whether external or internal, pushing forward, ‘coming through the pouring rain.’ The title could be just the street name of a doomed love affair or some oblique reference to the biblical figure led through the streets with a rope around its neck.”
Drone music, in all its timeless forms, can be a great comfort. It would be natural to view Perverts, the daring follow-up to Ethel Cain’s 2022 breakout Preacher’s Daughter, as a response to, and rejection of, everything about success that might register as noise, not least because it was accompanied by a Tumblr post entitled ‘The Consequence of Audience’. Preacher’s Daughter amassed a fervent following, and Perverts no doubt poses a challenge to the segment of Cain’s audience that has trouble engaging with the artist’s persona in the absence of unambiguous lore and soaring melodies. Yet the 90-minute project – promotional materials variously refer to it as a “body of work” or even an “EP,” so yes, technically not an album – does not feel like a departure so much as an opportunity for Hayden Anhedönia to home in on the esoteric darkness she holds a deep reverence for, the eerie dissonance and muffled silences that were seen tangential rather than core to her songwriting. More than just provocative, it is an ode to the drone music that reverberates and thrives everywhere and every day, that has naturally followed her down the side of the highway, her favorite field, her home studio: “I love you, sound, you have always been there for me,” she wrote in another post.
Like its predecessor, Perverts digs into religious shame, sexual violence, and irrepressible desire, but it remains thematically impenetrable in part because it requires you, in turn, to be there for it. If Preacher’s Daughter was the first in a planned trilogy about three generations of a family, this is a wilful diversion from the “Ethel Cain universe,” a record where the narrative is inconsequential and the music secondary to sound – one reason why it probably disqualifies as an album. (“But I will not tell you the visceral details, as you already know them,” Cain’s short story reads, “You all do. It’s happening to every-body.”) That’s not to say the music it collects is discountable – from the dark ambient pieces to the more conventional, by Cain’s standards, songs, it is towering both in its claustrophobia and gravitational pull. Originally conceived as a record about different kinds of deviants, some of those perspectives have made it through, but sink into the background. Without the cast of characters Preacher’s Daughter was eager to properly introduce, the horror Cain drawls out gradually blurs into your own.
Catharsis, previously a touchstone of Cain’s music, offers no path out here. Instead, Perverts often treasures (self-)disintegration. ‘Houseofpyschoticwomn’, which takes its name from Kier-La Janisse’s seminal book examining the portrayal of mentally ill women in horror films, beats the refrain of “I love you” into the ground, distorting its purity as Cain does her own voice; ‘Pulldrone’, the longest track on the record at 15:14, delivers its treatise over an actual hurdy gurdy, which continues its ominous hum for ten full minutes after the language runs dry. The atmosphere does shift on the last two instrumental tracks, the first of which, ‘Etienne’, lets air, dust, and melody into its wide expanse of acoustic guitar and lo-fi piano. ‘Thatorchia’, whose title alludes to the album’s twin themes of death and masturbation – as part of her NTS Radio show, she defined the word as “the bitter acceptance of the knowledge that god will let you near but he won’t let you stay” – ushers in a wall of electric guitar that’s the closest Perverts comes to a kind of apotheosis.
Save for ‘Punish’, the harrowing lead single that remains a standout as the second track on the album, the rest of the tracks that feature Cain’s singing voice seem, at first, to offer solace. But the pillowy vocals and Matthew Tomasi’s minimal drumming on ‘Vacillator’ suggest not freedom but a glistening numbness, curiously contradicting the exasperating love that precedes it: “If you love me, keep it to yourself.” The softness, the shame it beckons, is more punishing than anything. But closer ‘Amber Waves’, which features Midwife’s Madeline Johnston on guitar and Vyva Melinkolya’s Angel Diaz on lap steel and electric piano, coasts on the melancholy of succumbing to a love marked by toxic cycles, but also absence, an empty space the narrator can comfortably, even ecstatically, dissolve into. It is the most delicately beautiful song on the album, even if it provides no real escape. “I will dislocate my jaw to fit it all in,” Cain intones on ‘Pulldrone’ – the torture, the beauty, the darkness, all of it. If you’re scared to let so much as a shiver crawl through your body, that’s your loss.
Jason Isbell has announced a new album, Foxes in the Snow, arriving March 7 via his own Southeastern Records. Following 2023’s Weathervanes, the 10-track effort marks his first solo acoustic album. Check out ‘Bury Me’, the lead single and opening track, below.
Isbell laid down Foxes in the Snow during a five-day recording stint at New York City’s Electric Lady Studios in October of last year. He exclusively used an all-mahogany 1940 Martin 0-17 acoustic guitar for each of the tracks.
Foxes in the Snow Cover Artwork:
Foxes in the Snow Tracklist:
1. Bury Me
2. Ride to Roberts
3. Eileen
4. Gravelweed
5. Don’t Be Tough
6. Open and Close
7. Foxes in the Snow
8. Good While It Lasted
9. True Believer
10. Wind Behind the Rain
Samia has announced her third album, Bloodless, which will be out on April 25 via Grand Jury. The follow-up to 2022’s Honey is led by the gritty country-rock song ‘Bovine Excision’, of which the singer-songwriter said, “I was drawn to the phenomenon of bloodless cattle mutilation as a metaphor for self-extraction—this clinical pursuit of emptiness.” Below, check out its Sarah Ritter-directed music video, and scroll down for the album cover and tracklist below.
Samia made the new album with co-producers Caleb Wright and Jake Luppen, as well as frequent songwriting partners Christian Lee Hutson and Raffaela. “It’s easier to be what someone wants you to be if you give as little as possible,” she reflected. “I noticed a pattern in my life of wanting to live up to the person I became in someone’s head; you become a lot bigger with distance.”
“I’ve spent the past two decades unintentionally conflating an abstract idea of men with my understanding of God,” Samia added. “The person I became in order to impress this imagined figure is inseparable from who I am today. A significant part of my personality was built around traits and behaviors I believed — whether through observation or hearsay — men would like. With this album, I’ve tried to confront that head-on.”
Bloodless Cover Artwork:
Bloodless Tracklist:
1. Biscuits Intro
2. Bovine Excision
3. Hole In A Frame
4. Lizard
5. Dare
6. Fair Game
7. Spine Oil
8. Craziest Person
9. Sacred
10. Carousel
11. Proof
12. North Poles
13. Pants
youbet has returned with a new single called ‘Deny’. It’s the first taste of new music from the Nick Llobet-led project since last year’s Way to Be, and it’s exhilaratingly fuzzed-out. Take a listen below.
“Normally, youbet songs start on the nylon string, but this time I was inspired to write on the electric guitar,” Llobet explained in a press release. “While driving around last spring we listened to a ton of Polvo, Autolux, and Boris, just to name a few. ‘Deny’ was written last April after we got home from supporting Mary Timony on tour. I was inspired to create a song that captured the energy of that time. In this way, touring is such a great learning experience. Getting in front of new audiences last year helped us develop a new sound. We fed off of the energy. I would say this song is an experiment- trying to explore some new stylistic terrain. A lot of the new songs we’re writing live in this world – ‘Deny’ is a bridge.”
Horsegirl have previewed their upcoming LP Phonetics On and On with a new single, ‘Switch Over’. Following previous cuts ‘2468’ and ‘Julie’, the track, which hypnotically flicks back and forth between Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein’s vocals, arrives with a music video directed by Guy Kozak. Check it out below.
Phonetics On and On, Horsegirl’s sophomore LP, arrives February 14 via Matador Records.
Animal Collective’s Geologist and Highlife’s Doug Shaw have unveiled ‘Loose Gravel’, a shimmering new single from their upcoming album, A Shaw Deal. It follows lead cut ‘Route 9 Falls’. Check it out below.
A Shaw Deal is set for release on January 31 via Drag City.
Ahead of the release of her sophomore LP DIA on Friday (January 17), Ela Minus has served up one more single, ‘QQQQ’. It follows previous offerings ‘Combat’, ‘Broken’, and ‘Upwards’. “Lately I’ve been feeling/ That we are all agreeing/ This is the end/ But if we are going to give up/ Might as well end it here/ Let the world end now,” Minus sings over a pulsing, distorted beat. Check it out below.
