Melissa Kacar

Miley Cyrus is the latest member of Spotify's coveted Billions Club , a series which honors some of the highest streamed artists on their platform. As of November 2024, Miley has six songs that surpassed a billion streams on Spotify, which is a rare and impressive accomplishment. These songs were released between 2009 and 2023, which is such a massive span of time for an artist that is still so young. Honestly, these six songs hardly even scratch the surface of her incredible musical legacy. Her extensive catalog is so varied and spans across three different decades. She has reinvented her sound and style countless times, even embodied different characters and personas over the years, but still always found a way to be authentically herself. She started in the industry when she was about fourteen years old and from the very start it was obvious that Miley is a natural born star. Miley has been and always will be one of my favorite artists ever. Looking back on it now, she is the f...

"In my heart is a Christmas tree farm" "Christmas Tree Farm" was inspired by Taylor Swift 's experience growing up on an actual Christmas tree farm in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. As a fellow Pennsylvania girl, I always loved the way she was able to so beautifully capture the energy of this specific setting and the warmth she continues to hold from that time in her life. Growing up in that environment obviously sparked her lifelong love of Christmas and was able to channel all of those special times with her family into this song.  Alongside the release of the song in 2019 Taylor wrote, "I actually did grow up on a Christmas tree farm. In a gingerbread house, deep within the yummy gummy gumdrop forest. Where, funnily enough, this song is their national anthem." Taylor was able to encapsulate so much of the magic and whimsy of the season into this song.  The opening verse of the song starts off a slow piano ballad, just before it picks up into a cheery cla...

Happy Record Store Day! One of the records I was looking forward to the most for this Black Friday event was the deluxe pressing of Djo 's 2022 sophomore album DECIDE . Djo is the alias for actor Joe Keery, who is best known for playing Steve Harrington in Stranger Things , as well as roles in Free Guy and Fargo , among others. He is one of my new favorite artists that I discovered this year, I absolutely love everything about this album.  DECIDE  focuses on Joe's deepest existential thoughts, his perception of life and relationship with fame in the digital age. Much of it was definitely written through the lens of the pandemic as well, which was an isolating and introspective time for many. His prominent influences on this record include artists like Daft Punk, Tame Impala, Devo and The Talking Heads, to name a few. Some of the instrumentals throughout sound straight out of a Nintendo video game too, which is such a cool reference to be drawing inspiration from with an album ...

Happy Record Store Day! To celebrate one of the biggest events of the year for independent record stores, Noah Kahan released a special vinyl EP titled Town Hall: Stick Season Collaborations.  It is a limited edition vinyl that features eight of the bonus tracks from his 2022 album Stick Season , each reimagined two years following it's initial release as duets with different collaborators.  This is the first time it is released as a standalone EP on vinyl, previously it was only ever featured on the deluxe pressing of the complete edition of Stick Season (We'll All Be Here Forever) .  Town Hall  is limited to 15,000 copies and was sold exclusively at indie record stores on Black Friday. It is pressed on what they described as "tiger eye brown", which looks like a beautiful translucent ember brown with black swirl. It perfectly suits the earthy aesthetic of the album artwork. It also comes with a really nice photo insert too, which is designed to look like a newspap...