Music Features

Sunday Selects: Six New Songs to Revive Your Faith in Humanity

This week's best new releases are united by a common theme: tentative optimism.

The best new tracks of this week look to the future, choosing to reflect on possibility rather than languishing in the past.

With empowering anthems by femaley artists Tierra Whack, Sophia Danai, Sigrid, and Dessa in honor of International Women's Day, along with hopeful apologies from Andrew Bird and Khalid, this list is a taste of what should be an amazing next few months of music.

1. Gloria — Tierra Whack

As part of "Whack Month," the rapper-singer has steadily been releasing a song each week. Her latest, Gloria, is a shoutout to her supporters and a renunciation of everything keeping her down.

Tierra Whack – Gloria (Audio)www.youtube.com

Her 2018 debut Whack World featured 15 songs with videos in 15 minutes and won her extensive critical acclaim, and a recent Jimmy Kimmel performance of last week's single "Only Child" proved that she has plenty more boundary-breaking multimedia ideas in store.

Gloria pits her characteristically dextrous bars over an infectious beat, a promise that she's just getting started.

Tierra Whack - Only Child (Live From Jimmy Kimmel Live!/2019)www.youtube.com

2. Manifest — Andrew Bird

"I'm starting to question my manifest destiny / my claim to this frontier," begins Andrew Bird's sonic criticism of manifest destiny—that destructive idea that anyone can own the earth. This song is a tribute to the autonomy and strength of the natural world, wrapped up in an optimistic tangle of strings and snare drums. Bird's new album, My Finest Work Yet, arrives March 22.

Andrew Bird - “Manifest" (Official Audio)www.youtube.com

3. Through the Dark — Sophia Danai

This song checks all the boxes of a typical pop jam but has enough gritty synth and ambient guitar to set it spinning into the realm of the psychedelic. It's about fighting through the toughest parts of a relationship or gritting one's teeth through a personal struggle. "The best way out is always through, and when we run, we are only running from ourselves," Denai said of the song's message. The up-and-coming Vancouver native's EP Real Eyes will be released on April 5th.

Come Thru - Sophia Danai (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com

4. My Bad — Khalid

The fifth single from Khalid's April 5th release, Free Spirit, is a chilled-out apology to a lover who he "didn't text back" cause he "was working." Sounds fake, but the song is so pleasing to the ear—so full of light electric guitar that accents the 22-year-old's velvety vocals, laced together with the best production that modern studios can provide—that the hollowness of the singer's excuses hardly matters. Free Spirit will be released along with a short film of the same title, also about "the beauty and pain of growing up."

Khalid - My Bad (Audio)www.youtube.com

5. In Vain — Sigrid

The Norwegian songstress goes full Janis Joplin on "In Vain," letting her voice break and shatter as she details her fear of taking a plunge into the unknown. It's off her March 8 release, Sucker Punch, an album that sometimes grows too predictable and pop-focused, doing a disservice to Sigrid's incredible pipes. Still, when she leans into the punk-rock edginess and powerful emotions that her voice can convey, she sounds like the unstoppable new presence that she is.

In Vainwww.youtube.com

6. Grade School Games — Dessa

Dessa returns one year after her debut album's release with a surprisingly infectious antidote to pop music's obsession with "sex, drugs and pain"—which she denounces as "grade school games." This song is about how moments that feel like the end of the world in our lives—all the love and the drama and the chaos—have been happening to people all the time; and for better or for worse, none of us are that special. The song itself is far from desolate, though; it's a glittery and climactic celebration of the universality of human experience, layered over exuberant beats and creative orchestral arrangements, and it bodes well for her next release, which is TBD.

Dessa - "Grade School Games" (Official Audio)www.youtube.com


Eden Arielle Gordon is a writer and musician from New York City. Follow her on Twitter @edenarielmusic.


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Rising Star

MUSIC MONDAY | Brynn Elliott is having the Time of her Life

JUNE 4 | Brynn celebrates her "Time of Our Lives" video release

THE MIX | Empowerment and Deep Thought

by Brynn Elliott

06.04.18 | This is my empowerment and deep thinkin' playlist. It inspires me to feel more in control and stronger throughout my day as it is full of INCREDIBLE women singing their stories. Then there are a few songs that inspire me to think deeper about what it means to live in this world, what it means to be nostalgic, and most importantly about what it means to love.

Listen to Brynn's new song "Time of our Lives"

Brynn's initial application to Harvard was not accepted, but she refused to give up. She reapplied a year later, this time submitting her music with the application, and was accepted. When Brynn entered Harvard four years ago, she was the first person in her family to attend college, a huge milestone for the musician. In the past few years, Brynn has gone from writing songs on the bathroom floor to playing over 200 shows and signing with Atlantic Records. The musician, who first discovered songwriting as a teenager when she came across her dad's old guitar in the basement, recently graduated from Harvard University with a mission to share her experiences and philosophical studies through the lens of pop music.

Her debut EP, Time of Our Lives, which arrives later this year, was inspired by Brynn's time at Harvard and the relationships she's fostered there. The classes she's taken for her philosophy major weave their way through the five tracks, each inspired by a different philosopher or set of ideas. Anthemic pop number "Time of Our Lives" draws on Heidegger and existentialism, reminding the listener to be present in the moment, especially when the future remains unknown – as it often does after college. "Might Not Like Me, a buoyant song with an empowering chorus, was penned shortly after a breakup.

www.bostonherald.com

Brynn, who created the EP with producer Nathan Chapman (Taylor Swift), was encouraged by a class on feminist critiques of Descartes. "The reason for the breakup was because I'd been touring a lot throughout college and I was gone a lot on the weekends to play shows," Brynn says. "This guy was pretty intimidated by that. I felt like I had to make myself smaller when I was with him. We were studying this woman who self-published her own philosophy under her own name in a time when women couldn't do that and it stuck with me."

"I reached this breaking point where I could do what I loved or I was going to miss out on that for a boy. I had been living in such fear of what this guy thought of me and that's so much of what the struggle of being a woman is. I wrote this song about letting go of that fear and not worrying so much about being who you are."

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