Melissa Kacar

  CINEMA captures so much of the soft and glowing intimacy that has defined so much of The Marías ' music from the very beginning. The gorgeous sonic universe within this album became a signature for them, one that has only grown more fully realized with each subsequent release.  The origins of many of these songs predate the band itself, evolving over years before their official debut. Alongside the announcement of the CINEMA  track list, they wrote in the YouTube description: "A couple of them were written years ago in our bedroom, before we even released our first song. One of them was written at the start of 2020, a grim foreshadowing of the year that followed. Another was written in our tour van in between Washington, D.C. and Boston. All of them were written with everything we had." The entirety of the album was created by frontwoman María Zardoya alongside core producer, co‑writer, and longtime partner Josh Conway . After CINEMA' s release, The Marías nearly di...

I Said I Love You First is Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco 's first joint collaborative record, which depicts an intimate and heartfelt portrait of every stage of their relationship thus far. From both of their perspectives, both Selena and Benny share so much of their love, life, and the journey they each took to get where they are now.  Long before they were ever in a relationship, they have collaborated several times before on some of the biggest hits of Selena's career. Their first song together was the iconic "Same Old Love" in 2015, as well as a few other songs on  Revival   that year. They also collaborated on "I Can't Get Enough" featuring Tainy and J Balvin, which is featured on this album six years after its release in 2019. It now serves as such a symbolic piece of their love story. Most recently, Selena and Benny collaborated on a standalone single called "Single Soon" in 2023, as well. They ended up dating soon after they made tha...

It's that time of year again, the moment to look back on all of the songs that shaped my 2025! My annual favorites posts are something I genuinely look forward to writing every December. Truthfully, I am mentally compiling this list all year long, so I'll probably need to start theorizing about possible contenders for the eventual 2026 list in just a few weeks! It's always interesting to watch how this list evolves as the year goes on and as more artists release music, and which songs manage to stay in rotation despite the constant wave of new releases. I'll admit, this year brought the biggest dilemma I've had yet when it comes to ranking these tracks. While my annual lists are always loosely ranked, I do pay special attention to the placement of the top ten and this year was especially the toughest to narrow down. Sometimes there is a very clear winner in my mind and I can always point out the singular song that defined the year for me, like last year with "...