Melissa Kacar

In celebration of Lana Del Rey 's legendary return to Coachella , this time headlining the first day of the festival, she released a special limited edition vinyl variant of her latest album , Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd . In person, 100 copies were available each weekend of the festival, but it was also widely sold on her webstore for those that couldn't attend the show, like myself. This special edition features alternate album artwork and an exclusive translucent orange vinyl pressing. The design of this festival release is so well done, I love the groovy, psychedelic illustrated effect on the original cover photo, as well as the overlays on the back cover and gatefold. It is so colorful and matches the festival's aesthetic so well. I love having this tangible piece of her artistry in my record collection to celebrate such a major milestone in her career! I have talked about how much I love this album so many times, it was both my top album of...

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...

"A&W" is one of the greatest songs Lana Del Rey has ever written. It was featured as the fourth track of her incredible 2023 album Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd , which overall is an intimate and diaristic portrait of her life thus far. 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. "A...

This special "Party Favor / Hotline Bling" 7" vinyl single by Billie Eilish was originally released in April 2018 for Record Store Day , only being sold at independent record stores in the US. It was only limited to 2000 copies and has always been among the rarest records Billie has ever released. I missed out on the record the first time around all those years ago and have been waiting for the day they would repress this single so I could finally have it in my collection! In 2023, Interscope finally repressed a new variant of it for the first time and sold it exclusively on their website and Billie's webstore.  The new Interscope variant I have is slightly different than the first edition. Instead of the hot pink of the original, the second pressing is more of a pastel baby pink, which perfectly matches the cover art! The cover art with the illustration of Billie compliments the vibe of these two songs so well too.  Side A features the song "party favor"...