LGBTQ Literature and Film: Music

The debut album from LA-based Korean American artist NoSo (real name, Abby Hwong - they/them/theirs). Their stage name is shorthand for North/South: a nod to their Korean heritage, and the inane origin question ("Which Korea are you from?") that so many Korean Americans inevitably face at some point in their lives. Across ten tracks, NoSo indirectly grapples with the insecurities and frustrations that can arise from the Asian American experience, with the result feeling like a balm for the alienated. This album offers a deeply earnest coming-of-age story, a nuanced introduction to NoSo's universe and Hwong's rapidly expanding musical abilities. The marriage of their lyrics and captivating guitar performance feels magical, as if NoSo can open portals to fantastic new realms, guided by an emotional honesty that breaks you down in one moment and fills you with joy in the next.

Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus formed Boygenius after booking a tour together, but the trio had subconsciously been in the works for longer than that. Through a series of tours and performances together, and chance encounters that led to friendships including Bridgers' and Dacus' first in-person meeting backstage at a Philadelphia festival, greenroom hangouts that felt instantly comfortable and compatible, a couple of long email chains, and even a secret handshake between Baker and Dacus the lyrically and musically arresting singer-songwriters and kindred spirits got to know each other on their terms.

Sonically, it has been described as a more ambitious, mature, and developed continuation of the musician's previous bedroom pop and indie rock musical style established in the early EPs Chapter 1 (2018) and Chapter 2 (2019). Lyrically, the singer has described the record as an "emotional recap" of the year 2020 in which she explores her personal mental health experiences as well as "the different sides of love".

Following the release of her critically acclaimed album, Nashville-based singer-songwriter and producer Joy Oladokun unveils the 'complete' installment of her album series. The timeless body of work eloquently exudes Joy's deep emotions and confessional leanings as a black woman living in America.

The second album to come from the young and very promising alternative rock artist Brandi Carlile. Her natural talent and pure sound are illustrated throughout the course of 13 tracks. This dark, roiling collection fulfills the promise of her remarkable debut, offering resounding confirmation that Carlile is a singular talent.

As a title, Skeletons suggests a bare-bones album, but that's hardly what Brothers Osborne deliver here. Now on their third album, the duo feel comfortable in their skin, which means they're happy to ratchet up both the rock and disco without losing their down-home identity. While blending all these different sounds is a delicate balancing act, Brothers Osborne make it sound easy, blurring the distinctions between styles within the songs themselves. It's varied but subtle, tied together by the band's laid-back yet idiosyncratic charm. Maybe it's true that Brothers Osborne aren't quite for everyone, an admission they shrug off early on the album, but the great thing about Skeletons is how it sounds like they're appealing to wide quadrants of rock, pop, country, and Americana audiences without sounding like anything but themselves.

Mary Gauthier has quietly and consistently raised the aesthetic bar for herself. She has been favorably (and accurately) compared to Townes Van Zandt for her literate American gothic songs about wasted lives, desolate characters who roam the highways like ghosts, shattered dreams, and frustrated expectations. But Gauthier never exploits her characters; she views them with a piercing tenderness and empathy, painting them with dignity and humanity. On Mercy Now, Gauthier digs a little deeper; she comes down on the side of the song itself. The protagonists whose tales she relates are given rich musical voices, adding depth, dimension, and flesh and blood as related by her keen-eyed observations, unflinching poetic language, and willingness to be subtle and not intrude.

Binary finds DiFranco as confident as ever, blending a myriad of musical styles from folk to jazz to experimental rock, usually delivered in her signature percussive style. Notable contributions from New Orleans staple Ivan Neville, saxophone icon Maceo Parker, and Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon add additional sonic depth and texture to this varied set. Released in a year of deep social unrest and political division, DiFranco's musical missives of strength and resolve are timely and welcome, although it's some of Binary's more personal and introspective tracks that really stand out emotionally.

Forced off the road by the COVID-19 pandemic, Elton John kept himself busy by collaborating with friends, peers, admirers, and new guns. Those collaborations form the core of The Lockdown Sessions, a determinedly eclectic album that touches upon nearly every side of John's musical personality. Occasionally, John specifically dredges up the past, as on "Cold Heart," where Pnau remixes three Elton oldies while Dua Lipa sings the chorus to "Rocket Man," or he makes a sly wink at an old favorite as when he and Eddie Vedder stir up some "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" vibes on "E-Ticket." The fact that The Lockdown Sessions features the Pearl Jam singer along with the British pop sensation Lipa just scratches the surface of the eclecticism. Elton finds space for everyone from hip-hop sensation Lil Nas X to Americana stalwart Brandi Carlile, even resurrecting Glen Campbell for a posthumous duet on "I'm Not Gonna Miss You." Part of the appeal is that it sounds like a shape-shifting, genre-bending playlist, an hour of snazzy modern pop where Elton John is the center of gravity.

Plastic Hearts' mix of polished pop, country heart, and 1980s rock edge builds on her image instead of taking a wrecking ball to it. Since the beginning of her career, Cyrus' rock-tinged moments have been among her strongest, and Plastic Hearts is no exception. Passionate and self-aware, Plastic Hearts is easily the finest incarnation of Cyrus' music yet.

If Younger Now seems slightly scattered as it flits from song to song, it nevertheless adds up to a portrait of a pop star so confident of her swagger, she doesn't bother with such niceties as old-fashioned flow. She knows she's got style for miles and miles, enough to keep her afloat when the time comes that she delivers her country tunes with acoustic guitars, not digital instruments, and she has the wisdom to know that snappy sheen is precisely what this particular album needs.

With this release, it was the first time since the mid-1990s that a sober George had taken the time to complete a full-length album. It gained positive reviews, with The Guardian calling it "the best comeback of the year". It was Boy George's first solo album to reach the UK Top 40 since his 1987 debut Sold.

Recollection paints a portrait of lang the modern-day torch singer. Nothing about Recollection is camp: this is all smooth and assured, accentuating lang’s nuance if not her range, and if this winds up being a little too streamlined, at least it offers a better overall introduction to lang’s music than her previous compilation.

Includes the current hit single Transparent Soul featuring Travis Barker, plus new single Lipstick and Grow featuring Avril Lavigne.

The eighth studio album from Grammy-nominated global superstar Demi Lovato via Island Records. The 16-track album is a sonic journey grounded in Demi's rock and pop-punk roots, an earnest yet tongue-in-cheek retrospective of their life experiences. Illustrated by its leading single, Skin of My Teeth, Demi explores finding their inner strength to overpower the demons within.

Following up her critically acclaimed debut, Rina Sawayama's highly anticipated new record sees her once again juxtapose intimate storytelling with arena-sized songs, creating another ambitious and original album to excite fans and critics alike.

Twenty-year-old London-based musician and poet Arlo Parks has been steadily climbing the ranks as an artist to watch since the release of her confessional debut single Cola in 2018. Arlo has received praise from artists such as Billie Eilish, Wyclef Jean, Clairo, Florence Welsh, and Phoebe Bridgers during the past year while growing her fan base exponentially. Arlo's debut album is a series of vignettes and intimate portraits surrounding her adolescence and the people that shaped it.

On his full-length debut, 2020's Kid Krow, YouTuber turned pop auteur Conan Gray offers a coming-of-age album that showcases his knack for turning melancholy feelings of loneliness into buoyant pop confections.

Canadian artist Kaytranada is widely regarded as one of the most important new producers in the musical landscape today. His debut album features fifteen tracks and guest vocals from Craig David, Little Dragon, Anderson.Paak, and more.

Conan Gray has emerged as one of the preeminent pop superstars of his generation. After the commercial success of the global multiplatinum hits Heather and Maniac, his music maintains its unflinching authenticity and originality

MUNA's first album About U is a homegrown affair that's at odds with the production-line style most modern pop employs. The trio's sound is influenced by slick '80s pop and synth-heavy new wave, and the album is split evenly between heartbreak beats ("Crying on the Bathroom Floor,) moody, danceable jams ("Around U"), and darkly emotional ballads ("Everything"), with the occasional straightforward pop song mixed in. Any or all the tracks would fit in nicely next to the work of their contemporaries like Shura, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Tegan and Sara.

the Seattle singer/songwriter delivers another heartfelt and emotional collection with Bold. Once again, Lambert draws upon influences like Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan and merges their styles with those of contemporaries like Sara Bareilles and Colbie Caillat. The mounting emotions and vulnerability make Bold at once comforting and overwhelming, depending on the listener's emotional state.

Hit album by Bright Light Bright Light (Rod Thomas) inspired by dance sequences in 80s and 90s cinema featuring Elton John, Scissor Sisters and Alan Cumming.

The second album by French singer Christine and the Queens (Héloïse Letissier); Pitchfork said the album "bounces from horny consumerism to melancholic machismo to stark vulnerability".Letissier later elaborated: "The first album was born out of the frustration of being an aberration in society, because I was a young queer woman. The second was really born out of the aberration I was becoming, which was a powerful woman—being lustful and horny and sometimes angry, and craving for this will to just own everything a bit more and apologise a bit less."

Phoebe Bridgers doesn't write love songs as much as songs about the impact love can have on her life, personality, and priorities. Her fourth release and second solo album is concerned with that subject. To say she writes about heartbreak is to undersell her blue wisdom, to say she writes about pain erases all the strange joy her music emanates. This cements Phoebe Bridgers as one of the most clever, tender and prolific songwriters of our era.

Debut solo album from Memphis, Tennessee's Julien Baker. Her release has been seen on NPR and Stereogum. Features songs Blacktop; Brittle Boned; Something; and more. Share in her passion and sorrow in these poignant, emotive songs.

What offers stronger enticement for repeat listens are relatable, heart-on-one's-sleeve lyrics about disappointment, heartbreak, and burgeoning love, combined with a youthful charm that makes memorable mini-anthems of "That's Mr. Bitch to you" and "Don't let your guard down." In that spirit, over half of the tracks here come in under the three-minute mark. Meanwhile, production touches like varied vocal distortion, warped and woozy delay, and the pull-tab sound effect on "Pepsi" have the potential to keep listeners alternately hypnotized and playfully provoked. The takeaway is a debut that's sweet and full of winsome promise.

Supported with the simultaneous release of a 46-minute short film of the same name, dubbed an "emotion picture" by Monáe. It follows Monáe's character, Jane 57821, as she attempts to break free from the constraints of "a totalitarian society [that] forcibly makes Jane comply with its homophobic beliefs... In the film, Monáe's character is trying to assert her individuality, which makes her the enemy of a soulless regime – a common tension in dystopian sci-fi." Actress Tessa Thompson and actor Jayson Aaron co-star as Zen and Ché respectively, lovers with whom Jane escapes "the clutches of this repressive society." The film features little dialogue outside of the overlay of the album's songs that function as the narrative's main driving force. Tim Grierson of Rolling Stone described that, in the film, "Monáe plays with the conventions and totems of dystopian sci-fi to speak her truth and promote a cultural shift toward a more inclusive and loving society – no matter what repressive government (whether real or fictional) is trying to crush that spirit. Monáe is speaking to the present, but for her, the future is now."

Chromatica is a comeback album from an artist who has never gone away and never experienced a dip in popularity. By dedicating the entirety of her sixth proper studio set to club music, she's effectively declaring that she's come in from the cold, but the old-school show biz moves that made her beloved of old-timers like Bennett and Hollywood alike can be heard by how she slyly finds cameo space for her spiritual godfather Elton John and Ariana Grande, the biggest star in dance-pop in 2020. Gaga stands proudly between these two poles, hipper than Elton John but sounding down-right old-fashioned when compared to Grande. Gaga leans into her status as a veteran on Chromatica, making only the mildest attempts to sound modern. The emotional urgency driving a good chunk of the songs means Chromatica doesn't feel stiff or fusty even if it rejects the present, and there's also a lot to be said for the show biz razzle-dazzle Gaga has absorbed in the years since Artpop. Maybe she's lost her appetite to be a weird provocateur, but she has learned how to sharpen and stylize her attack, and that focus makes Chromatica one of her most consistent and satisfying albums.

WILLOW's new album features It's My Fault; Hover Like a Goddess; and more. She's on tour with MGK and international festivals, plus appearances on NPR, SNL, and more through 2022.

Channeling boundless self-confidence through a downright earth-quaking voice, colorful persona, and undeniable star power, Lizzo struts into the spotlight and steps up with a whole lot of sass, spirit, and soul. Embracing her vocal range like never before and celebrating herself to the fullest, she speaks her mind, censors nothing, and delivers an enviable level of honesty, pure passion, and fresh fire.

It's been just over a decade since the moniker Mykki Blanco was created, first as a video art project portraying a teenage female character (inspired by Lil Kim's Kimmy Blanco alter ego) posting vlogs and raps on social media, but it inevitably evolved into a vehicle of self-discovery in the artist's journey of forming their personal self-identity. They have pushed hip-hop to some of it's most untethered bounds, melding noise and experimental elements with club and trap sounds, whilst also forging a uniquely subversive path within a genre historically entangled in a problematic ideological web of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia. And while Blanco has been widely recognized as leading the charge as a pioneering trailblazer in the so-called 'queer rap' sub-genre, the music on this album and Beauty Sleep represents such significant musical evolution toward eradicating the confines of genre categories and smashing the previous perception of the ceiling of their potential reach.

Sandé explained that she "felt free to express [her]self more naturally both lyrically and musically in this album and [her] wish is that it will be an uplifting experience for each listener and that they will get to know [her] on a much deeper level". Upon release in September 2021, lead single "Family" was called a departure from Sandé's previous soul sound "more towards pop", while a press release accompanying the album announcement claimed Sandé "explor[es] new sonic territory through shades of classical, disco, [and] nostalgic R&B".

The debut mixtape by American singer and songwriter Kehlani, who released it as a free digital download on August 26, 2014, and is widely recognized as launching her music career.

Kehlani tells it like it is. Whether in conversation or on stage, the Oakland born R & B singer and songwriter gives the straight truth about her life, pain, passion, love, triumph, and everything in between with collected calm and confidence. It's that type of honesty that makes her music resonate with the depth of classic Motown and a vividly confessional lyricism reminiscent of Neo Soul.

Serpentwithfeet is not only imagining, but exploring a world wherein Black love is paramount. His new album is 'a study rather than a story,' delving into Black, gay love and the tenderness present in the best companionships, romantic or otherwise.

On Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine, the wild boys become thoughtful men, digging even deeper into complex, real-life themes such as religion, race, sexuality, mortality, and mental illness on their most focused and mature work to date. Technical precision and introspective lyrics mark this album as their most rap-centric project thus far, inspiring both concentrated head-nodding and the thrill of the rush as each emcee's verse impeccably weaves from one to another.By processing the darkness in their lives together, they find common ground with listeners dealing with their own trials. Roadrunner serves as a masterful group therapy session, picking up the broken pieces of life and uplifting with cautious optimism.

One listen to Channel Orange makes it obvious that he is as free as an artist as he is as a man. The album doesn't have as many slyly powerful hooks as Nostalgia, Ultra, but Ocean's descriptive and subtle storytelling is taken to a higher level.

Contending with a bad breakup and a global pandemic, Los Angeles-based pop singer/songwriter Troye Sivan returned home to Australia. Back in the place where he first started his journey to stardom, he got to writing and emotional bloodletting. The results are found on his fifth EP, In a Dream, a lovely burst of shimmering emotive pop that finds Sivan in the sonic space between his first two studio full-lengths, balancing pure journal reflections with an increasingly carefree, dance-friendly spirit.

Pop futurist Charli XCX has returned with her highly anticipated third studio album, Charli. The album is a collection of 15 songs and features the hit singles 1999 featuring Troye Sivan and Blame It on Your Love featuring Lizzo. The album also features collaborations with Christine and the Queens, Haim, Sky Ferreria, Big Freida, Clairo, and more.

It refines the M.O. of "Stay with Me" and "I'm Not the Only One," as it's stacked from floor to ceiling with ballads, and informed by vintage Southern soul and gospel, all distinguished with Smith's fraught, lump-in-throat outpourings. It wouldn't be a shock to learn that the singer finished each performance by either crawling back to bed or collapsing in the vocal booth.

Sam Smith continues their all-conquering journey to superstardom as they release their third album. This follows an incredible run of global smashes including Dancing with a Stranger and How Do You Sleep? During their career, Sam has sold over 28 million albums worldwide, received four Grammy Awards, three BRITs, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe for Best Original Song (Writing's on the Wall).

Etheridge dials back her emphasis on soul and returns to the roaring arena rock that made her name back in the '80s. That's appropriate. Etheridge designed these 11 songs to be anthems, painting even the quietest moments -- such as the sadly delicate "Here Comes the Pain" -- in broad strokes. These big gestures suit Etheridge's desire to tackle big issues, and the sweep of The Medicine Show does have its charms; in an era of narrowcasting, she throws her net wide, hoping to speak to a vast, diverse audience.

In celebration of Pride Month, Nonesuch Records releases k.d. lang's new collection of classic dance remixes of some of her best-loved songs. The album brings these remixes, made between 1992 and 2000, together for the first time, and includes 'Sexuality,' 'Miss Chatelaine,' 'Theme from the Valley of the Dolls,' 'Summerfling,' and the number one dance chart hits 'Lifted By Love' and 'If I Were You.'