It all starts in a “Sad Dance" and ends with a “Scandal”
To escape in the past has always been a matter of special interest for artists of any generation. Maybe such reflection is indispensable for anyone who tries to define the new reality. Ukrainians, in particular, have been feeling quite nostalgic for 90s music in the last five years or so. The parallel between now and then is not precisely identical but it does have many points of similarities. When The Soviet Union collapsed it was a time of great turbulence for everyone living there but also it had us see the surge of creative energy. …
Have you heard all of them?
It’s almost five years since Adele released “25”. She has been away for so long, and so many things have changed for her along the road. I wonder if it had much of an impact on her storytelling.
Now she’s back, hosting “Saturday Night Live” this week. Does it mean a new album is on the way? Are we getting more powerhouse ballads? Or less? Maybe she made a disco album like her fellow brit Jessie Ware?
Rumour has it she might drop new music this Halloween.
Whatever it is, Adele can surprise us. She did before.
Yes, she might…
Story Spotlight
To believe that age is just a number is so tempting — but it’s not quite as simple as that
Age, in many ways, is an invisible matter. It’s how many winters and springs one has seen throughout her life, how many years of knowledge one has to share with others, how many struggles one has fought on her path to the present. But age is also physical — it’s the wrinkles, wounds, and scars one wears proudly in private but often tries to hide in public. The more years behind you, the more marks your body exhibits.
This is what Caitlin Vestal captures so perceptively in her heartfelt essay “When Dry Skin Is So Much More Than Dry Skin”.
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It’s time we all stop taking the foul awards show seriously.
We have the first contender for the Controversy of the Year Award. Surprise, It’s GRAMMYs! Okay, no one is surprised. No one, probably, even cares.
Still, the awards season has officially begun, and GRAMMYs has just announced nominations for its 63rd trophies' distribution night.
The list this year looks like someone put it through a randomizer of some sort. Beyonce’s leading the pack without even releasing an actual album this year. Coldplay‘s getting an “Album of the Year” despite not being relevant anymore. Why? Maybe it’s a tradition. Like royal privilege, or something. They’re British, for all that.
No Lady…
The only problem — they all look like variations of the same one.
Positions are like fingerprints you leave at a crime scene — they can tell a lot about you. The political you. The social you. The physical you.
Positions can be…no, positions are the basis of your identity.
What’s your position right now?
Mine is me sitting on a couch, listening to Ariana Grande’s new album “positions”, and trying to figure her out. It’s challenging, but it seems that for Grande positions are mostly about sex.
Why?
It’s a guess. 10 out of 14 songs on the album are directly or indirectly related to love-making — so, yes, my guess is…
For her new video, the singer assembles the white house in which everything looks beautiful and nothing feels true.
Ariana Grande is an enviably talented singer, and, seemingly, hardworking one — in the last few years she released two highly-successful albums, and her new long-play is on the way. The pop star has also been quite outspoken about supporting women rights and fighting against social oppression, both in her music and social media posts. Her song “God is a woman” — alongside its music video — is probably the most striking feminist anthem of the decade.
Last week, Grande released the new single “Positions” together with a politically-charged music video in which she appears as the commander-in-chief residing in…
Featuring pearls of wisdom from Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Ray BLK, Jamila Woods and India.Arie
Do you ever feel like half of your life is being spent on reliving past experiences?
I do.
To dwell in the past is, probably, a bad habit to have, but I can’t help it: a tiny curator in my head likes to play old movies for me. Today he’s playing “Teenage Memories” — my coming of age story. The soundtrack to the film features five women. Confident, unapologetic women with a strong sense of self-worth.
These women taught me some important life lessons.
Here are five of them.
1. Your apples are as good as anyone else’s — they’re just different.
“Appletree” by Erykah Badu was the first soul song I’ve ever…
A short note on Angel Olsen’s epic record
On the ride back home from Odessa, I was scrolling through my Spotify to find something cheerful to play to keep me awake but I ended up looping “All Mirrors” by Angel Olsen for two hours.
Not like I’ve never done it before but that night Olsen’s apathetic chanting felt extra-special because that night I was losing beauty together with her.
It’s always quite unpleasant, to be losing beauty. One moment you feel cathartic — on the highest hill of your emotional well-being — but then suddenly the earth starts melting right under your feet. All hills are gone. …
Her latest LP “MAGDALENE” is an interstellar voyage through the dust of the broken heart to the planet of self
During her long-lasting hiatus, the avant-garde pop princess FKA Twigs got crushed by the brutal hands of her troubled relationships — falling in love with the ex-blood sucker Robert Pattinson and splitting with him in a seemingly heart-wrecking manner. Two years following the end of this romance, twigs comes back feeling quite herself and ready to baptise her loyal fanbase in the career-defining shrift.
In the pre-“MAGDALENE” era, British-born singer and songwriter Taliah Barnett took on a cunning challenge to manufacture the new RnB sound — blending her fragile-sounding soprano and the spooky art-house opera inspired imagery with the precision…
Here are three things you should know before it goes viral
Ukrainian music is far from being homogenous — it varies and varies greatly depending on a genre you listen to.
This way, listening to Ukrainian folk and electronic music might feel like discovering a new and vibrant city somewhere in the midst of Western Europe or the US. But once you switch to hip-hop, in an instance you get carried over to a sparsely populated countryside where your dear grandma lives — place vaguely familiar and warming to your heat, but too depressing to stay in for more than a week.
