Melissa Kacar

Happy Record Store Day! One of my most anticipated releases for the Black Friday drop this year was a special version of Billie Eilish 's incredible album HIT ME HARD AND SOFT , which features only her isolated vocals. You can only slightly hear parts of the instrumentals in the background because she recorded the songs without headphones, but this variant of the album puts a major emphasis on only her gorgeous vocals. It's a really cool concept, it almost sounds like you're in the studio with her hearing it recorded live.  There is so much depth to her vocal comps with all of the hidden vocals and ad libs that are hidden underneath the production. There are so many small details that otherwise get buried in each song that now get the chance to fully shine. Billie and Finneas ' creative process is so fascinating, and this record give a glimpse into the way all of these songs came together. An album like HIT ME HARD AND SOFT  is meticulously produced and every layer is s...

"Merry Christmas, Please Don't Call" // Bleachers Is it too soon to say this is one of Bleachers ' best songs yet? Because it is! "Merry Christmas, Please Don't Call" is a song draped in nostalgia and really captures some of the melancholy feelings this season can bring. I never heard a song quite like this though, it evokes such a specific emotion in me that I don't even know if I can fully describe, but just feels like something that I needed to hear. All of the best Bleachers music does that for me though. While it is technically a Christmas song, it isn't overtly festive, which is a genre that is so hard to pull off but Jack and the rest of the band did it perfectly. I have been looking forward to finally hearing this song for a couple of years and it came at the perfect time. I have been listening to it on repeat every single day ever since it was released, I truly cannot get enough of it! "Defying Gravity" // Cynthia Erivo & A...

After many years of waiting, the Wicked film adaptation is finally here and it is everything I ever hoped it would be and more! It was truly the most amazing and magical film, I loved every single second of it. The entire cast was incredible and perfectly cast in their parts, but Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande  were truly born to play these roles. They both manage to find a way to pay homage to all of the Elphaba's and Glinda's that came before them, while still being able to carve out their own spaces in Oz history.  Wicked  details the origin story of the beloved characters from  The Wizard of Oz ,  specifically Elphaba, The Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, the Good Witch of the South. Their origin story is complicated and tragic at times, but it is also filled with so much love. In the very first song of the film, Glinda poses the question that shapes the entire story, "Are people born Wicked? Or do they have Wickedness thrust upon them?" Cynthia and A...