Latest news with #music
RNZ News
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Lorde on new album Virgin
This audio is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions. Lorde has a kōrero with Tony Stamp about her just-released album Virgin . Lorde's fourth studio album, Virgin, is out now. Photo: Supplied Featuring singles 'What Was That', 'Man of the Year' and 'Hammer', the album comes four years after the release of Solar Power in 2021. Gossamer textures propel the album forwards. 'Current Affairs' samples Dexta Daps' 'Morning Love' amidst cool, lush synth work and layered reverb-drenched backing vocals. The skipping beat and arpeggiated synth of 'Favourite Daughter' lend a playful air to the song, speaking to the the sonic fluidity and versatility of the album. Gender is a significant theme of Virgin , with Lorde describing herself as 'in the middle gender-wise'. The album cover features an X-ray of a pelvis with a belt buckle, zip and IUD visible. The cover's blue colour reinforces a theme of purity, an idea that prevails through lyrical visual snapshots like 'pure and true', 'broken glass' and 'Clearblue', titling the seventh track, an acapella piece just shy of two minutes. Lorde discusses the creative process of making the album and working with producer Jim-E Stack.
CTV News
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Jazz Fest closing out the weekend
Edmonton Watch The Edmonton International Jazz Festival is on until Sunday, showcasing local and international talent.
BBC News
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Doechii's Glastonbury slot is all part of her five-year plan
In 2023, Doechii announced she was three years into her five-year plan for becoming one of the biggest names in music."By year five I want to be at my peak," she told Billboard magazine."I want to be in my Sasha Fierce era, the top of my game with still a long way to go - but I want to reach my prime and never leave it."Back then, it felt like a bold claim. The Florida-born rapper and singer had scored a couple of viral hits - most notably Persuasive, an ode to marijuana that ended up on Barack Obama's summer playlist - but nothing that had crossed over to the mainstream jump-cut to 2025 and Doechii is a Grammy Award-winning "woman of the year", who's about to play one of the most hotly-anticipated sets at Glastonbury hard to identify the turning point. Some people say it was her mesmerising performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last her hair carefully braided to her backing dancers, she delivered a meticulously-choreographed performance of Boiled Peanuts and Denial Is a River - a cartoonish character piece, in which she confides to her therapist that her boyfriend's been cheating on her with another man. Others pinpoint her Tiny Desk Concert, released on YouTube two days later. The 15-minute set bursts with joie de vivre, simultaneously soulful and fiery, as the star rattles through jazzy, full-band recreations of her mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal. She won even more fans at the Grammys in March, where she won best rap album, making her just the third female artist to win in the her speech, she spoke directly to young, black, queer women like her: "Don't allow anybody to project any stereotypes on you, to tell you that you can't be here, that you're too dark or that you're not smart enough or that you're too dramatic or you're too loud."She capped off her win with an ultra-physical performance that referenced Michael Jackson, Missy Elliott and Bob Fosse - and ended with her pulling the splits while being held aloft by five male dancers. With three "star-is-born" performances in just four months, Doechii became the most talked-about new rapper of her generation... just like she planned. So where did it all start? Doechii was born Jaylah Ji'mya Hickmon in Tampa, Florida and raised in a "heavily Christian" single-parent household by her mother, Celesia Moore.A studious kid who loved writing poetry, she invented her alter-ego at the age of 11, after being viciously bullied in school."I was in a position where I thought about killing myself because the bullying was so bad," she told Dazed magazine in February."Then I had this realisation: I'm not gonna do that, because then they're gonna all get a chance to live and I'm gonna be the one dead."Overnight, her attitude shifted."Jaylah might've been getting bullied, but I decided Doechii wouldn't stand for that," she recalled in an interview with Vulture. "And then," she told The Breakfast Club, "I went to school in a tutu and I started doing music." As a teenager, she spent four years at Tampa's Howard W. Blake School of the Arts, after winning a place on the choral programme by performing Etta James' At Last. The school unlocked her creativity, allowing her to take classes in everything from nail design and hair, to ballet, tap, cheerleading and stage production. However, it was gymnastics that left the biggest impression."The way that gymnasts train is really, really tough. It's brutal and hard and difficult," she told Gay Times. "But at some point in my gymnastic career I learnt how to embrace and really love pain. To view pain as me getting stronger and better. That caused a deep discipline that has never left me."The school also helped the teenager accept her sexuality."Even though I was aware [that I was queer], I didn't feel as comfortable until I started surrounding myself with more gay friends at my school. "Once I had gay friends it was like, 'OK, I can be myself, I'm good, I can feel safe, this is normal, I'm fine.' I have those same friends today and will have them for life."That's not all they gave her: Those same friends convinced Doechii to give up her ambitions of becoming a chorister, and start writing and releasing her own music. Initially called iamdoechii, she uploaded her first song to Soundcloud in 2016, and released her debut single Girls two years later. It already bore the hallmarks of her best work: Rhythmically and lyrically dextrous, and chock full of personality. "Taking nudes / None of them for you," she chided over a mellow electric piano, before the beat switched up and her rapping became more frenetic. By the closing bars, she barely had time catch breath as she listed her accomplishments. "Making money from my phone, huh / Doechii finally in her zone."The lines were more prophecy than reality. Doechii had a solid following on YouTube, but she was still working at Zara to make ends meet. In 2019, she was booked for a showcase in New York City and hopped on a bus - without the money for her return trip. "The night after, I slept at a McDonald's," she recalled in a 2022 interview. "And then I had to call one of my mom's friends... and, like, beg her to let me sleep at her house. And I ended up living there until I got back on my feet." 'Drowning in vices' Things started to turn around with the release of 2020's Yucky Blucky Fruitcake, named after Junie B. Jones's children's book, in which Doechii sketched out her own to the lyrics, she was precocious ("I try to act smart 'cause I want a lot of friends"), competitive ("I get a little violent when I play the game of tag") and frequently broke ("My momma used stamps 'cause she need a little help").The song marked a breakthrough in her writing."I was lacking this sense of vulnerability and honesty in my music," she told Billboard, until "I learned accuracy and just saying exactly what it is, like on Lucky Blucky Fruitcake".The song went viral, winning her a record deal with Top Dawg Entertainment - the label that launched Kendrick Lamar and SZA. She followed it up with the effortlessly hooky Persuasive, earning praise from SZA (who jumped on a remix) and former President Barack Obama."I can't imagine Obama just jamming my song," she exclaimed. "I just don't believe it, but if he really does – that's crazy." Doechii next collaborated with Kodak Black on the 2023 single What It Is (Block Boy), earning her first Top 40 hit. Then, everything stalled. Subsequent singles flopped, and Doechii was, as she later wrote on social media, "drowning in my own vices, battling differences with my label and a creative numbness that broke me".Initially, her Alligator Bites Never Heal mixtape looked set to repeat the pattern. Released last August, it entered the US charts at number 117 and vanished a week reviews were ecstatic. Critics loved the acerbic, funny lyrics, that saw Doechii unpack the trials and tribulations of the last two years; and heaped praise on bars that recalled greats such as Q-Tip, Lauryn Hill and Slick Rick, while keeping pace with contemporaries like Kendrick Lamar. After a period dominated by the mumbled bars of Souncloud rap, her precision was a breath of fresh air."One of the year's most fully-realized breakout albums," wrote Rolling Stone. "If this is the sound of Doechii pushing against constraints, a little friction might not be the worst thing," added Pitchfork. As word spread, she was booked to play the Colbert show and Tiny Desk. Those performances lit a rocket under her career. By April, Alligator had chomped into the US Top 10, and the UK Top 40. Around the same time, she bowed to fan pressure by releasing her 2019 YouTube song, Anxiety, a pop-rap crossover based on a sample of Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know. With an eye-catching video that recreated a full-on panic attack, it hit number three in the UK, and even earned Doechii a citation in medical journal Psychology Today."The song and accompanying video work so well in showing exactly how anxiety feels in our bodies and minds," wrote Professor Sandra Chafouleas. "Think about quick and short breaths, racing thoughts, and worrying about things that haven't happened yet. Anxiety feels like 'Anxiety' sounds, with brilliant mirroring of how the experience can hijack us."Since then, Doechii's been hard at work on her debut album. There'd been rumours she'd release it in time for her Glastonbury slot on Saturday night, but perfectionists have got to perfect. At the time of writing, she's still in the to Dazed, she dropped a few hints of what's in store. "In Alligator Bites Never Heals, the archetype was a student of hip-hop. For this next project, I'm thinking about how this student develops. "Who does she develop into? What has she learned? I'm still unpacking how that character develops into this next project."Despite the delay, Doechii's headline set remains one of Glastonbury's biggest draws. She might only be performing for 45 minutes, but she'll make every one of them the star boasted on her single Nosebleeds: "Will she ever lose? Man, I guess we'll never know."
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Critics call Lorde's ‘Virgin' both a ‘reinvention' and ‘a return to bangers'
Four years after her pandemic-induced pivot to sunshine and acoustic guitars on Solar Power, Lorde has returned with her fourth album, Virgin. Behind the scenes, the Kiwi pop star changed up producers, leaving behind recent collaborator Jack Antonoff, but the first reviews for Virgin are heralding the return of the old Lorde (in some ways, at least). Vulture's Craig Jenkins frames the album as a response to the release of Solar Power and celebrates its understanding of the singer's audience. More from Gold Derby Marge lives! Here are 3 other 'Simpsons' characters that returned from the grave - and 3 who stayed dead Fast cars vs. killer dolls: 'F1,' 'M3GAN 2.0' gear up for box-office showdown "Everything about Virgin, Lorde's fourth album, feels like a reaction to trials preceding and following Solar Power," he writes. "Virgin is rife with epiphanies earned in tussles with one's own established persona. But these cerebral dispatches realize their audience often experiences the work communally and tends to enjoy it most when accompanied by flowing synths and insistent drums. Pure Heroine and Melodrama left indelible marks on mainstream music; Lorde is instrumental to the 21st-century whisper-singer epidemic. Heroine's lean minimalism is one of many sonic precursors to the commercial breakthrough of Taylor Swift's 1989 and thus kin to its many scion. Virgin is a return to bangers." And while the sound may be something more akin to the tracks off of Pure Heroine and Melodrama, there's a strong consensus that Virgin represents a lyrics and sonic evolution for Lorde. "The result is nearly 40 minutes of undeniable pop bangers and jagged synth flashes where Lorde wipes parts of her past clean and makes room for the adult she has crystallized into," writes Rolling Stone's Maya Georgi. "Since [Solar Power], fans have clamored for Lorde to return to the swooping, alternative synth-pop that defined her early career, which means the stakes are particularly high for Virgin. She has answered the call with an album that isn't trying to capture something from the past, but instead leans into the chaos of reinvention." A significant element of the changes present in Virgin's lyrical content seems to be the natural passage of time. Lorde broke onto the scene with "Royals" at the age of 16. For those keeping track at home, that was 12 years ago. "You could call Virgin a coming-of-age album for Lorde's late 20s. It's as if she's finally realized that to come of age is actually a messy, lifelong process — that as sturdy as you think your sense of self is, it'll keep snagging on things that unravel it," writes NPR's Hazel Cillis. "As familiar as Virgin might sound at first play, the Lorde here isn't — and that's a good thing. 'Who's gon' love me like this?' Lorde sings on 'Man of the Year,' in the throes of a breakup. 'Now I'm broken open?' The old Lorde would never sing that. The old Lorde would never even let us see her break." While some critics, like Paste's Matt Mitchell, find the return to bangers as somewhat of a step down in ambition, the move doesn't keep Virgin from being a major piece of work. "Musically, it's the least-ambitious album Lorde has ever made, thanks to her avoidance of the big hooks and explosive resolutions that pop orthodoxy demands," he writes. "But, in an undeniably personal collection of songs full of clichés and gestures toward conversations around earthly desires, gender, and habitual living, it's Ella Yelich O'Connor's most important statement yet." And since this is a Lorde album — which is to say that it's influential — there's a utility in digging through Virgin to see where it will inevitably lead pop music for the next few years. "Obviously, Virgin is very autobiographical and a bit of an elaborate self-cleanse, but it's also the sound of a person in the second half of their twenties finding wisdom and themselves," writes Variety's Jem Aswad. "And judging by how often in the past few years she's been cited as a major influence by young female artists, it will be interesting to see how far this album reaches." Best of Gold Derby Billboard 200: Chart-topping albums of 2025 Billboard Hot 100: Every No. 1 song of 2025 The B-52s' Kate Pierson talks Rock Hall snub, influencing John Lennon, and fears a solo album would be a 'betrayal' to her band Click here to read the full article.
ABC News
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Lorde reborn
Lorde's fourth studio album Virgin is a rebirth for a generational artist still in her 20s. Ella Yelich-O'Connor became a household name as a teenager after her debut album Pure Heroine delivered a new minimalist art-pop sound with hip hop production and a persona of magnetic self-assurance. The albums that followed represented two very different coming of age moments – 2017's Melodrama and 2021's Solar Power – for a young artist confronted with fame. Now, after over a decade in the public eye, Virgin walks the tightrope between experimentation and hitmaking pop, metaphorical obscurity and confessional sincerity. Ella joins Andy via zoom. Composer Christine Pan's new song cycle The Parts We Give has already had multiple lives. It's being performed live this weekend with two singers (Megan Kim and Wesley Yu) who perform the roles of Jiejie and Didi ('sister' and 'brother'). But it's also a DIY video game. Producer Ce talks to Christine about how operatic vocals, glitchy hyperpop, and 8-bit gameplay can tell the story of love in a Chinese-Australian home. The Parts We Give is at ESCAC by Brand X in Sydney, 27-28 June You can play the game via Fable Arts here Music heard in the show: Title: Royals Artist: Lorde Composer: Ella Yelich O'Connor, Joel Little Album: Pure Heroine Label: Sony Title: Man of the Year, Shapeshifter, Clearblue, Hammer Artist: Lorde Composer: Ella Yelich O'Connor, James Harmon Stack Album: Virgin Label: Universal Title: Ribs Artist: Lorde Composer: Ella Yelich O'Connor, Joel Little Album: Pure Heroine Label: Sony Title: Barangaroo Baby, Jiejie (extracts from The Parts We Give) Artist: Megan Kim, Wesley Yu Composer: Christine Pan Development recording courtesy of the composer Title: Carpet Artist: Brian Campeau Composer: Brian Campeau Album: Brian Campeau Presents Jo Dellin and the Bone Spurs Label: Art As Catharsis The Music Show is made on Gadigal, Gundungurra, Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Yuggera and Turrbal land Technical production by Dylan Prins, Brendan O'Neill, and Roi Huberman
