Tag Archives: music-album-reviews

Luke Combs wants you to know one thing: He’s a regular guy. He might be playing songs that immediately become playlist staples, but those ballads and rockers are, he maintains, the same ones he’d be playing if he were only outfitted with, as he croons on the opening track of …

Calling an album Superache is about as subtle as slapping a “Feelings Ahead” sign on its cover, but Conan Gray reached the vanguard of twentysomething pop by always putting his emotions right up front. On his second album, the 23-year-old YouTuber turned pop star reveals himself to be an astute …

Drake announced and released his seventh studio album, Honestly, Nevermind, within the span of a few hours. As the latest addition to the trinity of projects from rap juggernauts in 2022 — following Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers and Kanye West’s Donda 2 —it might be the …

You’d be forgiven for being surprised that Twelve Carat Toothache is the first studio album in three years for 26-year-old Austin Post. Putting aside the way the pandemic turned time into taffy, the tattoo-studded pop star known as Post Malone kept busy since the release of 2019’s blockbuster Hollywood’s Bleeding, …

In cheekiest post-punk form, the first album by Horsegirl, a trio from Chicago, sports a title (Versions of Modern Performance) that sounds like a dry textbook and contains an instrumental titled “The Guitar Is Dead 3.” Even more sardonically, that track is built around solemn piano chords — because, after …

Wilco’s first big gesture when they formed in the Nineties was to leave behind the sound of co-founder Jeff Tweedy’s first band, Midwestern alt-country icons Uncle Tupelo. It was a smart move, since at the time even the kind of people who liked iconic Midwestern alt-country were starting to get …

Before Tate McRae was trying to take the pop world by storm, she was a former finalist on So You Think You Can Dance? who had a vlog series where she flaunted her singer-songwriter skills. In 2019, one of the videos she recorded — a piano ballad called “One Day” …

When Harry Styles left the U.K. boy band One Direction he was eager to prove his musical ambition and historical knowledge. His debut 2017 single was the brazenly enormous Bowie/Queen-style ballad “Sign of the Times.” An artist in his position could’ve come off as insecure or overreaching, but Styles has …

When Florence + the Machine made their debut a little more than a decade ago, the U.K. music scene was awash in the retro-soul typified by Amy Winehouse and Adele. Florence Welch looked backward, too. But her influences were at once more ancient and more modern, marrying a goth melodrama …

What does Jack Harlow want to say? It’s an unresolved question at the heart of his second major-label album, Come Home the Kids Miss You, a 50-minute affair that unfurls with buffered surfaces and seductive vibes. He imagines himself as the Most Interesting Man Alive, frequently touts his appeal with …