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Red by Taylor Swift // 13 Year Anniversary Review

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Red carries an incredibly impactful legacy, not just one as one of the defining albums of Taylor Swift 's career, but as a turning point that paved the way for so many artists that followed. It truly shaped a new generation of pop and country music in an insurmountable way. Largely seen as one of the most influential and successful country-pop crossovers in modern music, she redefined her signature sound and made a genre-defying statement that marked the beginning of her artistic transformation.  While she would go on fully embrace pop with 1989 two years later, the seeds of that shift were first planted here. During the creation of Red , Taylor worked with longtime collaborators Liz Rose and Nathan Chapman on tracks that leaned into her country and singer-songwriter roots. At the same time, she introduced new collaborators in the mix with pop producing legends Max Martin and Shellback , who ended up helping her craft some of the most iconic hits of her entire career.  R...
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Man's Best Friend by Sabrina Carpenter // Album Review

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Coming just a year after Short n' Sweet , Sabrina Carpenter is already back with a follow-up record and it's clear she's striking while the iron's hot. Man's Best Friend  feels like a playful extension of the persona she's been building, with a level of her signature humor and self-awareness that lies within each song. Much of the inspiration behind this album stems from her on-again-off-again relationship with her ex-boyfriend. It chronicles the emotional highs and lows she was experiencing in real time, and  Man's Best Friend  feels like it was a creative outlet born from that turbulence. It also became a space for her to experiment with sounds she hasn't explored before. Sabrina worked on the entirety of this album with her frequent collaborators, producers John Ryan and Jack Antonoff , as well as songwriter Amy Allen . Her previous releases were made with a much bigger team of songwriters and producers, but it's clear that this was a much more ...
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Inhaler Live in Allentown, PA! // Open Wide Tour 2025

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Irish alternative rock band Inhaler recently performed their first-ever show in Allentown, PA, closing out the Open Wide North American Tour with an unforgettable night. I've been wanting to see Inhaler live ever since I first discovered their music in 2022, and I'm so happy I finally got the chance to experience their show in person. This Fall 2025 leg of the tour focused on cities across the U.S. that the band hadn't visited before, and I was very excited to see my hometown on that list. It was in support of their latest album Open Wide , which has quickly become one of my favorite releases of the year. Hearing those songs brought to life on stage only made me love them even more than I already do! They performed at Archer Music Hall, a brand-new venue that opened earlier this year.  A local band from the Lehigh Valley called Just also opened the show and I loved getting introduced to their music through this show and can't wait to dive into more of their work in the ...
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The Best Songs of September 2025 // New Music Friday!

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"Mr. Mountebank" by Djo The Crux (Deluxe) gives so much more insight into the journey Djo took while writing this album and all of the different directions he could've taken with it narratively. It's more than just a regular deluxe album, it's more so a companion project of twelve songs that were written during the same creative period as The Crux , but didn't make the initial cut. That said, they don't feel like leftovers. Each track truly feels like a natural expansion of the time in his life that inspired this music, and collectively, they feel like a culmination of some of the more unhinged parts of himself that he had to work through to arrive at the final version of The Crux . "Mr. Mountebank" is one of my many favorites, he goes fully Djo XCX on it, diving into a wild and abrasive hyperpop sound that's completely different from anything he's made before. It offers a sharp commentary on fame and virality, especially in the wake of ...
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