MUSIC

Now and then, new music listeners can become complacent and search for the same kind of sound we already love. When this happens, we need artists like Hurray for the Riff Raff to shake us awake and remind listeners to stay vitally connected to the world around them. This American band led by Alynda Segarra had to eliminate the folk elements from their music to get the world’s attention, and their push into the spotlight is thoroughly refreshing to see. As their new album Life On Earth addresses the unrest of humanity with a radical cry for the necessary steps towards survival, Segarra demonstrates the potential power of meaningful music, resulting in a record that should be heard by all who have experienced life on this planet.

March 2022 shows rapper Joey Bada$$ in a more reflective mood than usual. On his new song “Head High,” Joey Bada$$ (real name Jo-Vaughn Scott) returns, precluding an upcoming full-length album by wandering through the slow track with a laidback style and sincere lyrics. To highlight his seriousness on this new song, Scott mentions the names of a few significant losses to his life and the rap community, with one of those names being XXXTentacion. This tribute comes almost four years after XXXTentacion’s death; in 2018, assailants shot and killed the 20-year-old Florida rapper.

Seventeen years after the last album, the world finally has more Tears for Fears music. The English new-wave band has operated on a non-traditional schedule since the massive success of their first two albums, always sounding like their signature brand of ethereal pop. Expanding and improving on their last reunion album from 2004, The Tipping Point instantly quells any worries of staleness by staying intimately inward and dramatically gripping.

As the world expresses disapproval of Russia’s actions, the music community around the globe loudly decries the decisions of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Here are the different ways in which the rest of Planet Earth has musically expressed their mind regarding the current war.

On February 18, 2022, Beach House, the modern masters of dream-pop, completed the full release of their eighth album, Once Twice Melody, after separating it over four chapters and four months. With the spread-out crawl to the final date, this unique marketing strategy left no clear sign of how Once Twice Melody would fare with album sales. After a few weeks, intriguing developments in the Billboard chart placements for the new Beach House album have illuminated a trend for 2022 as to whose fans are still buying albums. Reaching #1 this week on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart, Beach House and the other chart-toppers of the year confirm that a variety of music fans are stepping up their game in purchasing albums from their favorite artists.

In February, Foals released an album announcement and second single for Life Is Yours, the British band’s seventh studio album. The band is co-producing their upcoming album with three new producers who have shown recent promise. This time around, only three band members receive credit on this Foals album, as they lost their fourth member in 2018 and fifth member in 2021.

After seven albums, Metronomy’s indie electronica has developed from the more challenging experiments of The English Riviera into more streamlined pop music. The level of focus on good-time songs throughout Small World makes for a cohesive if unsurprising listen, but it’s hard to blame the pop songsmiths for staring at the darkness of the world and trying to inject some pure happiness into it. With dynamic energy, Metronomy say with complete earnestness that 'things will be fine' and fervently announce that 'it's good to be back.'

Though only confirmed so far by Conway the Machine himself, it appears that Griselda as a hip-hop collective is now disbanded, at least in its original form. Conway the Machine, whose real name is Demond Price, said in a February 2022 interview that he is no longer a part of Griselda, referring to the record company he started with his brother Westside Gunn. In terms of the rap group of the same name, which released its debut full-length album WWCD in 2019, the future of Griselda remains undetermined.

It’s understandably difficult for a nearly-70-year-old British man to keep things fresh in his music. That’s probably why Elvis Costello’s 21-century musical output has alternated between a classic approach and sounding completely different than before. 2020’s Hey Clockface was the latter, chaotic and unable to decide which direction the mercurial songwriter wants to go. Thankfully, The Boy Named If rights the ship just a bit despite being a similarly messy record, and while it's not as cohesive as Look Now (2018), Costello's newfound energy and passion on the album is undeniably praiseworthy.

It’s hard to believe these classics are now entering their 25th year! Each has cemented its status as required listening for lovers of classic albums, with generation-defining songs and legendary 90s angst distilled to its most potent form. Here are a few albums from 1997 that have earned their reputation.

The genre of art-pop continues to impress into the 2020s, developing into one of the most surprising, colorful, and all-encompassing songwriting approaches of the modern era. When a master songwriter values both individuality and the art of writing a good melody, the results have limitless potential, as evident in the output of Moses Sumney and St. Vincent. Welsh singer Cate Le Bon has slowly grown into the adventurous pop songsmith she has aspired to be since her first album, with her marvelous new album Pompeii marking her most distinctive recording to date.

While underground rap has thrived recently with the rise of Griselda and Armand Hammer, the albums in the mainstream for this decade have reached outside of the tight-knit rap circles and affected many lives. Here are those meaningful, fun, exciting, and devastating albums that have shaped the 2020s so far.

An influx of collaborative tracks is flooding Spotify Release Radars as artists release new music in preparation for the rollout of their 2022 albums. Whether seeing some familiar names or discovering new ones, hip-hop listeners will find each artist below playing to each other's strengths in thrilling ways in their roles as close collaborators or guests.

Since joining J. Cole’s imprint Dreamville Records leading up to their major-label debut Mirrorland released in September 2019, the duo known as EarthGang have had a creatively fruitful time by themselves as well as collaborating with others. Since the signing, they have a trilogy of EPs released with J. Cole as executive producer, their 2019 full-length, a collaborative record with EarthGang affiliates Spillage Village and rapper JID, and inclusion on the Revenge of the Dreamers III compilation. On February 25, 2022, an older, wiser EarthGang released the album Ghetto Gods, fully establishing their sudden fame with contributions from J. Cole, JID, and Future.

Beginning in March 2021, the unstoppable rollout of Silk Sonic dominated the rest of the year, leading up to the release of the group’s debut full-length studio album, An Evening with Silk Sonic. The album received glowing praise from critics and audiences, and the lead single “Leave the Door Open” now has almost 750 million plays on Spotify alone. Even though the album came out in November 2021, the duo already has another single available: a cover of Con Funk Shun's 'Love's Train.' With this release, we can only hope that the promise of more music is soon to follow.