Melissa Kacar

looking like an angel on the walls of versailles is a curated playlist inspired by Olivia Rodrigo 's  you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love lead single "drop dead" - an infectious all encompassing love song that perfectly bottles the lightning‑strike first rush of a new crush and the flood of emotions that come along with it. The lyricism of this song has been feeling particularly inspiring since it was released, especially the vivid imagery she threads throughout the verses. With her long‑awaited new album finally out today, it felt like the perfect moment to put together a collection of songs that echo the feeling of "drop dead", the track that opens the album and plays such an integral role in its larger narrative. Even as the song shifts in tone and meaning across the record, "drop dead" is an incredible opener for the flood of emotions she was experiencing at this point in her life. She captures the rollercoaster of this relationship throug...

MAITREYA CORSO feels like Maya Hawke 's most fully realized piece of storytelling yet - a record that is built on the beautiful, intentional writing that allows her talents to shine the brightest. The album's title comes from a persona that Maya created, who she said is a "...magical misfit, whose sheer inability to adapt to the surrounding world allows her to create a world of her own, and to explore the positive and negative power of the ego." Much of the album is rooted in the notion of questioning whether inner happiness and fulfillment is ever something to be fully achieved, or rather a never‑ending goal to persist and reach toward through the different seasons of life. The title itself reflects the duality at the heart of the project; Maitreya is drawn from Buddhist tradition and Corso is derived from the last name of Beat poet Gregory Corso. Together, they frame the album as something deeply personal and artful. It is often existential and easily her strongest...

Olivia Rodrigo 's debut album is such a distinct and realistic depiction of all the sweet and sour parts of what it means to be a young woman growing up and coming of age in the modern world. What was initially meant to be just an EP quickly transformed into a full-length project after the massive success of her debut single "drivers license" surpassed everyone's expectations in early 2021 . Olivia and her core collaborator on this project - and on all of her music thus far - Dan Nigro , put this album together in just a few months. While she would go on to further develop her sound and find herself musically throughout the creation of subsequent releases, this stands as one of the defining debut albums of this generation of pop music.  Olivia has always worn both her influences and her heart on her sleeve, and SOUR feels like a natural extension of that. Each song is deeply personal, yet clearly shaped by the music that raised her. Much of  SOUR feels like modern, u...