Melissa Kacar

"End of Beginning" is a powerful reflection on a time - and even more so, a place - that continues to represent a very specific chapter of Djo 's life. At the heart of it, the song tells a coming‑of‑age story and serves as a love letter to the people and the city that shaped so much of who he is today. For Joe Keery , who has been releasing music under the pseudonym Djo since his debut album in 2019, this song marked a major breakthrough moment for him. Released in 2022, it captured the feeling of being on the precipice of a major life change while simultaneously looking back at how formative living in Chicago was for him. After moving there for college, he spent much of his early twenties auditioning for acting jobs, playing in his band Post Animal, waiting tables, and building a life there as a young adult on his own for the first time.  "And when I'm back in Chicago, I feel it, another version of me, I was in it," he sings in the chorus. "I wave go...

"Camera" by Charli xcx Charli xcx has officially released not one, but two of my very favorite albums of the year - first with the stunning Wuthering Heights concept album / soundtrack, and now with the all‑time career highlight Music Fashion Film . It was also impossible to highlight just one song from this album ("2007" and the closer "No One Lasts Forever" being very close contenders as my monthly favorites too), but "Camera" felt like the most indicative of the entire ethos of what this music represents as a whole. It is such a deeply thought‑provoking examination of what it means to pursue a life of art and stardom in the modern age; while framing the question of legacy and what an artist leaves behind (or doesn't). Closing out the trifecta of singles for music ( "Rock Music" ), fashion ( "SS26" ), and film ("Camera"), it is fully representative of who she is as an artist and what her mission is with this ...

they say people never change is a playlist built around songs that inspire growth and personal reflection, especially when looking at all of the ways we change over time. It is curated in a more personal manner than the conceptual or sonic themes I usually build my song collections around. There is still a particular through line across these 50 songs though, with each one reflecting some facet of growth or self‑reinvention. Some take that idea in a more abstract direction, others more literally, but together they form a portrait of what it means to evolve. I felt inspired to share this playlist today because it officially marks nine years since I first posted on my blog. It's surreal to look back on how much time has passed since my first makeup review all those years ago, along with the hundreds of posts I've written since then for over a million readers ! My writing has changed and evolved so much through those years, and I feel so much more confident in what it means to sh...

The newly expanded version of Djo 's The Crux is more than just a regular deluxe album. As a whole, these additional twelve songs give so much more insight into the journey he took while writing this album and all of the different directions he could've taken with it narratively. The Crux (Deluxe)  is more so a companion project of songs that were written during the same creative period as the rest of The Crux , but didn't make the initial cut. That said, they don't feel like leftovers. Each track is truly like a natural expansion of the time in his life that inspired this music, and collectively, they feel like a culmination of some of the more unhinged parts of himself that he had to work through to arrive at the final version of The Crux . From working through the early aftermath and heartache of a breakup, to navigating some of the darker parts of fame, virality and newfound pressures of the music industry that he experienced when making this album throughout 2024,...