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...

"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...

Doechii 's "Denial Is A River" is a sharply written story of her deeply personal struggles she has faced throughout her life, especially over the past few years. All while doing so, she also incorporates so much of her signature humor within it too. She is such a dynamic and captivating storyteller, one that is simultaneously very funny and clever, but also very real and honest.  In an interview with  Rolling Stone , Doechii opened up about the time in her life that inspired this song. "With 'Denial Is a River,' I felt some fear there because it's really me being extremely literal and vulnerable about my situation. It is a very vulnerable thing, especially as an artist," she said. "Just a little backstory, I went through a period where I was afraid to be vulnerable in my music, which is odd for me because that’s all I usually do. I was saying to my engineer, 'I don't want to talk about my feelings because right now all I feel is negativi...

"That's So True" by Gracie Abrams is so cheeky and fun to listen to, but also so sharply written. I love how endlessly catchy it is too, so many lyrics from this song have been stuck in my head ever since I first heard it. It was released in late 2024 as one of the four bonus tracks on the deluxe edition of her album,  The Secret of Us . She had been working on this song for about a year at that point, but didn't end up finishing it until after she already turned in the final version of the standard album. Prior to "That's So True" being released, Gracie performed it several times on her tour, which gained a lot of traction on social media leading up to its official release. Eventually when The Secret of Us (Deluxe) came out, "That's So True" was an immediate fan favorite and even marked her very first time topping the UK charts. It's no wonder why it has become such a massive viral hit, as it fits the formula to a perfect pop song, w...

"Love It If We Made It" by The 1975 was written between 2016 and 2018 - undoubtedly one of the most harrowing and chaotic times that many of us have lived through up to that point. George Daniel , the band's drummer and producer, first started the song in 2015, after completing the band's sophomore album . The 1975's lead singer and primary writer, Matty Healy , gathered headlines from newspapers during a two-year period to use in the song's lyrics. He ended up rewriting much of the song to better capture the volatile political landscape we were living through at that time, which unfortunately has not slowed down since. It was released in late 2018 as the lead single of The 1975's third album  A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships . In the song, Matty is laying out a succinct timeline of events over the past few years, one after another for every verse. It basically serves as sort of a newsreel of every major headline and historical event in the cultu...

Joni Mitchell wrote "California" all over the world, each verse was written in a different country and vividly depicts both the physical and emotional place she was at in those moments. From France, to Spain, to Greece, she writes a travelogue of her time in each country, but continuously wishes she were home in California instead. "Sitting in a park in Paris, France, reading the news and it sure looks bad," Joni sings in the opening lines of the song. "They won't give peace a chance, that was just a dream some of us had". She wrote this song in a very conversational, stream-of-consciousness style. Her talent for storytelling is like no other, her writing is so vivid and detailed that allows the listener to be transported right to the setting of the song. "California" was written sometime in the summer of 1970, while she was traveling through Europe. Throughout that journey, she ended up writing much of  Blue , which was released the followi...