Melissa Kacar

"Missing Out". the lead single from Maya Hawke 's 2024 album Chaos Angel, is a sharp and self-aware reflection on her experience visiting a college town as an outsider. She grapples with the feeling that she may be missing out on an important coming-of-age chapter of life despite consciously choosing to take a different path.  Her songwriting is deeply specific and diaristic, not necessarily focused on being too relatable for the listener. Maya doesn't shy away being honest about her privileged, unconventional life and experiences growing up. "But I was born with my foot in thе door and my mind in the gutter and my guts on the floor", she sings.  Despite that, parts of this song are definitely very representative of the universal experience in your 20's and having disorienting feelings of imposter syndrome in a new environment. Lyrically it is self-depricating and funny as she sort of spirals within her own mind about this night. "Didn't think I...

"The Subway" by Chappell Roan The long-awaited official release of "The Subway" is finally here and it is absolutely the best song that Chappell has released thus far. There's so much emotion packed into every lyric. The song is deeply heartfelt and unflinchingly honest as Chappell recalls the kind of specific, intimate details of a love that got away. All of the memories still linger, almost as if she is haunted by them. After performing the song live for the past year, I'm so happy the studio version of it is finally out! "Ice In My OJ" by Hayley Williams Earlier this month Hayley Williams surprise released a seventeen standalone singles, which she later compiled into an official album titled Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party . It's already a very strong contender for my favorite album of the year so far, I'm continuously discovering new aspects of it that I love each time I listen to it. "Ice In My OJ" was one of my initial f...

BADLANDS was born out of necessity and a means of escape for Ashley Frangipane, along with the creation of Halsey as a persona she could disappear into. It wasn't just a world she built for herself, but one that allowed those who saw a piece of themselves within the music to escape into as well. That blurred line between who they are and who they perform as has always been central to Halsey's artistry. The dismantling of the divide between the two sides of herself is something she's explored time and time again, especially on albums like  Manic and The Great Impersonator , but it all traces back to BADLANDS, their 2015 debut album. This music allowed Halsey to create a life devoid of expectation, control, and the limitations of reality. It was a place where she was able to reclaim her agency, and the chaos of her inner world would finally be seen, heard and understood.  To have that kind of confidence and clarity of identity at just nineteen years old was rare. Expressi...

Virgin  is representative of a transformative chapter for Lorde 's artistic evolution. With this album, she explores every facet of her identity with the most raw, unfiltered forms of introspection at the forefront. Themes of femininity, sexuality, body image, and identity are explored in a fully transparent and intimate way. Reemerging only once every four years with new music,  Virgin  feels like a culmination of every chapter in Lorde's life and artistic journey thus far. It's an album that is starkly different from each era that precedes it, yet still honors every version of herself in a way that feels like a retrospective as much as it is an embrace of the person she is still becoming.  She truly bares it all with this music in a way that does come off as if she was trying to also be intentionally divisive with how specific and abrasive so much of it is lyrically. It gives such a clear look into who she is, which is emphasized by the actual x-ray image of her bo...