Melissa Kacar

Did you know that one out of every 15 vinyl albums sold in the United States in 2023 was by Taylor Swift ? She was also the top selling vinyl artist in the U.S., making up 7% of the total vinyl sales of the year with nearly 3.5 million copies sold. For the third year in a row, the majority of her music catalog  topped the vinyl charts and I think this is such an interesting look at the direction the music industry is headed in for the coming years. While vinyl never really went away, it has definitely made a big resurgence in the past five years or so, seemingly ushering in a new generation of collectors. So why now? Of course, these numbers also have a lot to do with the immense rise in popularity Taylor has experienced since the pandemic. Although she has always been a massive, high-selling artist for nearly two decades, the hold she currently has on the culture right now is unprecedented. There are a lot of reasons for that, but specifically after the release of her groundbreak...

"Give peace a chance, let the fear you have fall away" "Say Yes To Heaven" by Lana Del Rey was originally written in the 2013 recording sessions for her second album, Ultraviolence . It didn't end up making the final cut for the album, as the record ended up going in a different sonic direction, but a few different versions of the track ended up leaking through the years, starting as early as 2016. Ten years after it was first recorded, the song finally got an official release in early 2023 following the leaked demo going viral on TikTok. The song has had a cult following for many years, so it was surprising that it was actually officially released. There are many other demos and unreleased songs that have leaked online over the past decade, which have also garnered unexpected virality in the years that followed, but this is a rare instance of her officially putting out a song in its original form.  It is such a wistfully romantic song, one that reminds me a lo...

Silence Between Songs   is the stunning sophomore album by Madison Beer that incorporates pop and jazz music with a wistful orchestration. It sounds so grand and cinematic, much like Lana Del Rey 's signature style, which is an artist that she cited as an inspiration many times. Madison has such a beautifully lush voice, which is on full display throughout this record. I first heard of Madison sometime around 2013 through Justin Bieber posting a link to one of her covers on YouTube. Soon after, she signed a contract with his manager, Scooter Braun, and Justin personally signed her to his label, Island Records. She was only about 12 years old at the time, which is quite a unique origin story to have! Her music career has been through some ebbs and flows over the past decade or so, but in the past couple of years she has released some really great music and her evolution since that time is so apparent. Aside from releasing a few singles and EPs through the years, it wasn't unti...

Billie Eilish 's "No Time To Die" beautifully echoes the themes of the 2021 film of the same name, which served as the 25th iteration of James Bond franchise. Billie and Finneas took a very intimate approach to creating the song, while still incorporating the elements of grandeur that made the  Bond  themes of the past so memorable. They were approached to write the song early in their career, following the release of Billie's generation-defining debut album  WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP WHERE DO WE GO?  in early 2019. The release of that album was a major shift in the industry and completely shaped what the future of music was going to be.  At the time the time they wrote "No Time To Die", Billie was just 17 years old, making her the youngest artist in history to record a  Bond  theme song. "We wrote and recorded the Bond song on a tour bus in Texas," Finneas said in an interview with  BBC Breakfast  in 2020. "We did certain songs on the album in...

Lana Del Rey's ninth album, Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd , is an intimate, diaristic portrait of her life and journey so far. In many ways, it is her most personal release yet, as if she is writing these songs for nobody but herself and her own healing. When talking about the process of writing the album in 2022, she told W Magazine, "I’ve been practicing meditative automatic singing, where I don’t filter anything. I’ll just sing whatever comes to mind into my Voice Notes app. It’s not perfect, obviously," she said. "For this new music ... It’s more just like: I’m angry. The songs are very conversational ... It’s a very wordy album. ... It’s almost like I’m typing in my mind." That method is present throughout the entire album, many of the songs are long and often with heavy subject matter at hand, in which she doesn't hold back at all. There is a lot of symbolism and depth in every single track. While all of her albums have been ...