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Too Early 2024 Grammy Predictions

The end of the year calls for reflection — hence our 2023 Popdust Music Awards, celebrating all of the terrific music we reveled in last year. And now, the beginning of the year is a time of anticipation. For that, they are 2024 Artists to Watch, which also means that Awards Season is right around the corner.

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Did anyone wake up today with a heightened sense of purpose? Did it almost feel like the most boujee Christmas morning there was? Yep, the 2023 Met Gala is upon us and I'm convinced Anna Wintour sprinkles something in the air every year to make it feel so special.

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Phoebe Bridgers Kyoto

Slouching in front of a lo-fi green screen image of a temple in Japan, a platinum-blonde white woman in a skeleton suit sings the opening lines to her song: "Day off in Kyoto / Got bored at the temple / Looked around at the 7-11."

A dear friend of mine once described "Kyoto" by Phoebe Bridgers as a "millennial indie song remake" of Sofia Coppola's 2003 film entitled Lost in Translation. A "hallmark of American indie cinema" that portrays Japan through the white gaze and imagination, Lost in Translation is essentially about two white people (played by Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson) who fortuitously cross paths and navigate their feelings together in Tokyo. Despite the film's non-American setting and backdrop, the entire film is centered around the pair's (white, American) feelings and interiority.

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CULTURE

We Need to Talk About John Mayer

The legacy of misogyny and racism was alive and well at the Grammys, and his name was John Mayer

John Mayer at the Grammys 2021. Gross.

This year's Grammy Awards felt like a desperate attempt to modernize in the face of criticism and the fear of irrelevance.

While most of those attempts felt placating and performative rather than substantive, somehow this year's show was its best in years.

Summer 2020 saw the Grammys finally change the names of their "Urban" categories, which have long garnered criticism for Black artists for feeling segregated and secondary to the bigger (read: whiter), categories. However, the nominations revealed the same patterns and biases; and major artists like The Weeknd announced plans to boycott the ceremony and no longer submit their songs for consideration — joining artists like Frank Ocean, who have long voiced their disdain for the show.

Amidst the controversy surrounding the ceremony and other award shows struggling to keep viewers' attention this season, the Grammys' main bet this year was on its live performances and their ability to distract from the drama, keep its reputation, and entice fans to actually tune in.

And it kind of worked.

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Music Lists

So, You Like Phoebe Bridgers? Here Are 9 Up-and-Coming Folk Artists You'll Love

Get acquainted with these musicians now before they make it big.

Phoebe Bridgers

RMV/Shutterstock

Now that she has a Grammy nomination, a viral TikTok dance, and a (literally) smashing Saturday Night Live performance to her name, everyone's eyes have been on Phoebe Bridgers lately.

On the heels of her highly-acclaimed sophomore album, last year's Punisher, Bridgers has gone from an angel-voiced industry darling to a full-blown household name. With her whip-smart sense of humor, trademark all-black outfits, and immense talent at just 26, indieheads and normies alike are boarding the Phoebe Bridger bandwagon like it's the only route to a vaccine.

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Eternal Atake - Lil Uzi Vert

A great album is like a little world.

Some worlds are more fun to live in than others, and these albums were worlds we all wanted to move to forever in 2020. It was the year of the quarantine album—but what that album looked like varied from artist to artist. From maximalist relics of 2019 to housebound 2020 offerings, here, in no particular order, are our top 14 albums of 2020.

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