Melissa Kacar

"A&W" is one of the greatest songs Lana Del Rey has ever written. It was featured as the fourth track of her incredible 2023 album Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd , which overall is an intimate and diaristic portrait of her life thus far. When talking about the process of writing the album in 2022, she told W Magazine , "I've been practicing meditative automatic singing, where I don’t filter anything. I'll just sing whatever comes to mind into my Voice Notes app. It's not perfect, obviously," she said. "For this new music ... It's more just like: I'm angry. The songs are very conversational ... It's a very wordy album. ... It's almost like I'm typing in my mind." That method is present throughout the entire album, many of the songs are long and often with heavy subject matter at hand, in which she doesn't hold back at all. There is a lot of symbolism and depth in every single track. "A...

Lover: Live From Paris  was recorded in September of 2019 at Olympia Theater in Paris, France - which stands as Taylor Swift 's only full-length concert performance of this album at the time it was released. What a more fitting place than in the City of Love! Lover , which was written as a love letter to love itself, represented a fresh start and the first page in a new chapter of her career. The recording of the performance was released in May 2020 as a Disney+ special called  Taylor Swift: City of Lover , along with the live album on streaming platforms. Only eight of the songs she performed that night are on this album, which excludes every other song she sang from her other albums at the show.  It is such an incredible performance, some of the live versions from this album I actually prefer to the original studio versions. The live version of "Death By A Thousand Cuts" in particular is an all-time career highlight, there is just so much passion and emotion in her...

Brat summer has just been the gift that has kept on giving! Shortly after Charli xcx 's iconic album BRAT   was released in June 2024, Charli put out the deluxe version titled brat and it's the same, but there's three more songs, so it's not - which is possibly one of the best album titles ever. She's nothing if not straightforward! Those three songs were really great additions to the album and I love that she released them so soon after the standard BRAT . For Urban Outfitters' annual Singles Day vinyl event every November, one of the limited edition releases was this special 7" single featuring two of the three bonus tracks on it - "Guess" and "Spring Breakers". I love having this vinyl in my collection to commemorate what a massive year BRAT had in 2024 , especially since it includes two of my favorite songs. It was limited to 5,000 copies and is a classic black pressing, sold exclusively at Urban Outfitters. This is one of many 7...

"Saturn" is an anthem of self-discovery and escapism, which is a recurring theme throughout so much of SZA 's music. It features beautiful and lush instrumentation with an absolutely ethereal vocal performance from her. It has such a dreamy and celestial quality to it, although the lyricism is quite dark and somber at the same time. This song is a testament to SZA's ability to express these very complicated emotions into a song as gorgeous as "Saturn" is. It's existential and possesses an almost otherworldly quality to it.  In a backstage press interview at the 2025 Grammy's , SZA talked about the process of creating this song with her collaborators. "It was such a casually written song, inspired by Stevie Wonder, and his reference to Saturn and how he talks about in that place there is less destruction and death and pollution and all these things, and part of me realizing there's nowhere else to go. There is no Saturn. It's one of the p...

"Espresso" was the first introduction we got into Sabrina Carpenter 's now iconic Short n' Sweet , initially just supposed to be a "little song" for her to perform at Coachella back in April 2024. It actually ended up transforming her entire career and became one of the biggest songs of the entire year. Is it that sweet? I guess so! This song quickly took off and became a phenomenon that I don't think anyone could have expected. It perfectly blends pop, funk and even a little bit of a disco influence. It's truly the definition of a perfect pop song. Sabrina describes the rush of a new relationship in such a cute way, with super fun word-play throughout the song. "That's that me espresso" is probably the most iconic line from the song, but "I'm working late, cause I'm a singer", "I know I Mountain Dew it for ya" and "Switch it up like Nintendo" are just a few more of the most quotable phrases from t...