Melissa Kacar

"Stateside" blends such a fun, infectious mix of Euro‑dance and electronic influences. PinkPantheress worked with The Dare for the first time on the production, and I love seeing her collaborate with artists who push her sound in new directions like this. The energy of the song is incredible, and the lyrics are just so cute and playful. She has such a distinct voice in pop music that is so unique and instantly recognizable, and "Stateside" really highlights that. The song itself is a cheeky recollection of falling for an American guy, and all the longing and excitement that comes with it. "You could be my American, ha, ha, ha, ha," she sings in the chorus. She has talked many times about how this is her personal favorite track from her sophomore mixtape, Fancy That , feeling like it really explored her growth as an artist. It is overall such a clever piece of pop writing, infused with garage and Y2K influences from some of the great UK pop stars who cam...

With The 1975 's sophomore album, I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it , the band stepped into a bright, post-modern pop world. They stripped away the black‑and‑white aesthetic that defined their self‑titled debut era three years prior and moved into something even more vivid and expansive. The hazy, neon-lit aesthetics mirrored the artistic ideals that made up their early work, but refined through an even more ambitious and broader lens.  "I think, as an idea, the conviction that it took to stand by that as an album title is very representative of what the album is like. It's quite bold and unafraid to be sentimental and dramatic and overly romantic," Matty Healy told  NME  in a 2016 interview. "It kind of captures the narrative of our psyche over the past year and a half, which is something like a lot of people who come off a big upward trajectory of success. It's quite a dynamic time, and I think that it's expansive...

Despite being a divisive release by Charli xcx at the time, her 2016 EP,  Vroom Vroom, has gone on to become an experimental pop classic that is largely regarded as one of the defining releases to pioneer the hyperpop movement. Made largely in collaboration with producer SOPHIE in just three days, the EP captured two visionaries who were so far ahead of their time that the rest of pop music spent the next decade catching up. Its quick, four‑track runtime stands as a brief but incredibly impactful chapter in Charli's discography, planting the seeds for so much of the groundbreaking work she would go on to make. This stands as the only full‑length project she and SOPHIE ever officially released together, but it was an undoubtedly formative one as well. While Charli has undoubtedly garnered a significant amount of mainstream success in the decade following  Vroom Vroom 's release - especially in the past couple of years post‑ BRAT -  at this point in 2016 she was still larg...

Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party truly solidifies Hayley Williams as one of the most captivating songwriters and vocalists of her generation, as if the last two decades were not enough already. It also marks the first independent release of her career, her third solo project, and absolutely feels like the start of a new creative era for Hayley. This record is rooted in autonomy, experimentation, and a renewed sense of artistic freedom.  Originally surprise released as a collection of seventeen standalone singles, these songs reintroduced the world to who Hayley is as a solo artist and the life she has lived since her last project. She writes openly about her struggles with fame, ego, and the complicated feelings she carries surrounding the American South, religion, politics, and her own mental health. She also shares the emotional weight of navigating a major breakup, offering an intense yet beautifully captured perspective on that heartache and the process of rediscovering who ...