Jess Ellison (she/her pronouns)
By all accounts, I shouldn’t be a Bad Bunny fan. I am a mid-thirties, white, cis British woman. I grew up listening to The Spice Girls and The Beatles. My Spanish gets me as far as ordering a couple of beers and directions to the local beach. I could not be further from his (huge) fan base. And yet, something has come over me over the last couple of weeks ever since his latest album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, came out. I find myself embracing a newfound love for Latin music with the fiery passion only found in a season finale episode of a telenovela.
The third track on Bad Bunny’s latest release, ‘BAILE INoLVIDABLE’, is one of my standouts of the album. Lyrically, it’s in stark contrast to the opening two tracks (which describe partying, illegal activities and courting members of the opposite sex in explicit detail), whereas ‘BAILE INoLVIDABLE’ is all about how he yearns for an unforgettable past lover. There are threads of vulnerability, grief and loss despite an uplifting and shoulder-shimmying salsa-inspired bass, bongo and horn section (we need more of all three of those in modern pop, I think). It’s a masterclass in juxtaposition.
After several playthroughs of this album and an afternoon lost in a rabbit hole of other major players of Latin music, I’m delighted to have come across the perfect companion to a long, hot summer.
Xavier Farrow-Francis (any/all pronouns)
A couple months ago, I was catching up on some 2024 releases before the year ended when I stumbled upon Swedish musician Thea Gustaffson’s music—acting under the alias Becky and the Birds. From the moment I pressed play on her Only music makes me cry now album and I heard the opening track ‘Star’ for the first time, I knew I’d found something special.
The song starts abruptly, flitteringly, before Gustaffson’s starkly produced vocals and punchy-fast beats kick in. There’s a distinctly glitchy and arty quality to ‘Star’—the percussion sounds like escaping steam, and the vocals are processed seemingly at double time—but despite this, the airy yet charming emotions of the track are palpable. Whisperingly delivering the lines, “Don’t wanna be your sometime / I wanna be your all the time / Care for me like I care for you”, it’s loving, tender, yearning, desperate.
And then that chorus opens up with Gustaffson’s stunning vocal harmonies… “I wanna be your / Star”… it’s 50-something listens later and they still sweep me up every time. She then follows that up with this freaky deconstruction of an 808 cowbell sound effect, which creates a one-of-a-kind nervousness that I’ve simply never felt in a song. Gustaffson returns to the refrain for the final minute and lets out a pleadingly high “Staaaaaaar…”; it’s all so affecting and really sticks with you.
Despite its strangeness and short runtime, ‘Star’ is just such an absorbing song that keeps me coming back, drawing me in to care for it, like it cares for me.
harold coutts (they/them)
Lady Gaga’s decision to return to her pop roots was inspired by the urging of her fiance that she needed to make a pop album, and I for one am glad she listened to him.
‘Abracadabra’ is the second single offered from her new album Mayhem, arriving 7 March 2025. The sonic palette is reminiscent of earlier albums that helped cement her as a pop legend. Finally, it seems she has found inner peace and happiness in her life, which is reflected as always in the music she makes.
The gay people who live in my phone have all harked that ‘Abracadabra’ sounds like a mesh between her second and third albums, Born This Way and ARTPOP, a proud manifesto and an ahead-of-its-time experimental foray into the relationship between the past and future of art. The single’s semi-nonsensical lyrics are designed to be screamed at gay bars all across the globe over the nastiest synths Gaga has touched in a decade. It is dark but upbeat, pulsating and gritty. If you can listen without tapping along to the beat, I am afraid of your willpower.
As always with Gaga’s lyrics, there is deeper meaning with biblical allegories and a direct reference to Phantom of the Opera, all through the lens of losing oneself to a thrumming dancefloor. The message is a common one in Gaga’s discography: keep going, no matter what. Just dance, it’s gonna be okay.
