Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter wins Grammy for Album of the Year

Cowboy Carter Beyoncé

Released: March 29, 2024 Peak: 12 US, 14 CW, 11 UK, 11 CN, 12 AU Sales (in millions): 1.0 US, 0.1 UK, 1.31 world (includes US and UK) Genre: country

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. American Requiem (4/13/24, 30 BB, 7 CW) Blackbiird (4/13/24, 27 BB, 6 CW, 9 DF) 16 Carriages (2/11/24, 38 BB, 9 CW 44 UK) Protector (with Rumi Carter) (4/13/24, 42 BB, 11 CW) My Rose (4/13/24, 54 BB, 17 CW) Smoke Hour (interlude with Willie Nelson) Texas Hold ‘Em (2/11/24, 12 BB, 13 DG, 11 ST, 22 AC, 7 A40, 33 AA, 110 CW, 19 RB, 15 UK, 13 CN, 2 AU, 1 DF) Bodyguard (4/13/24, 26 BB) Dolly P (interlude with Dolly Parton) Jolene (4/10/24, 7 BB, 3 CW, 8 UK, 9 DF) Daughter (4/13/24, 37 BB, 9 CW) Spaghettii (with Linda Martell & Shaboozey) (4/13/24, 31 BB, 12 RB) Alligator Tears (4/13/24, 42 BB, 16 CW) Smoke Hour II (interlude with Willie Nelson) Just for Fun (with Willie Jones) (4/13/24, 59 BB, 20 CW) II Most Wanted (with Miley Cyrus) (4/10/24, 6 BB, 18 A40, 2 CW, 9 UK) Levii’s Jeans (with Post Malone) (4/13/24, 16 BB, 5 CW) Flamenco (4/13/24, 63 BB) The Linda Martell Show (interlude with Linda Martell) Ya Ya (4/13/24, 39 BB) Oh Louisiana (4/13/24, 70 BB, 22 CW) Desert Eagle (4/13/24, 65 BB, 24 RB) Riiverdance (4/13/24, 51 BB, 15 CW) II Hands II Heaven (4/13/24, 60 BB, 21 RB) Tyrant (with Dolly Parton) (4/13/24, 44 BB, 12 CW, 18 RB) Sweet Honey Buckiin (with Shaboozey) (4/13/24, 61 BB, 22 RB) Amen (4/13/24, 87 BB, 23 CW) Total Running Time: 78:21

Rating: 4.319 out of 5.00 (average of 25 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: For Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé “strapped on her boots for a crash course in overlooked American history and her place in it.” AM This is “a direct claim to her own Southern roots.” AM “She’s lassoed country – and folk, gospel, Americana, and more” AM as she ventures “into Louisiana Cajun country, the rivers of Alabama, the streets of Memphis, the great Oklahoma plans, and within her memories of multiracial Texas rodeos to create yet another world in her image.” PF The album partially owes its existence to the less-than-stellar response to Beyoncé’s performance at the 2016 appearance at the Country Music Association Awards. She performed her song “Daddy Lessons” from her Lemonade album with the Chicks and was “met with reactions that ranged from cool sneers to racist vitriol, both in the crowd and online.” PF She wrote that “because of that experience I did a deeper dive into the history of country music and studied our rich musical archive.” PF This is her “crusade to reclaim genres no longer associated with the Black artistic tradition that invented them.” AM “It must be underlined that in the grand scheme of things, Beyoncé is still a megastar with a billion in the bank as she kicks through the swinging saloon doors. She may be bringing a small posse of lesser-known artists with her, but as she noted, this is more about ‘challenging’ herself, not an altruistic endeavor.” PF The album “plays like a classic country murder ballad, the wronged townsgal returning to her dusty outpost to pop off her vengenance.” PM She’s aided on the album by country legends Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton. Beyoncé delivers “a feisty cover of her classic Jolene, which finds Beyoncé dragging ol’ ‘Becky with the good hair" back into the crosshairs, making it her own with personal lyrics.” AM The cover was “requested and cosigned by Dolly herself,” PF who also guests on “the equally saucy Tyrant, a hip-hop-infused standout.” AM Nelson delivers interludes for “his fictional Smoke Hour show, introducing…the string-washed Just for Fun” AM and “the catchy hoedown Texas Hold ‘Em.” AM The former is “a gospel-inflected meditation on journeying through your troubles” PF that features Black country artist Willie Jones. The the latter was the lead single for the album and gave Beyoncé the distinction of being the first Black woman to top the country chart. That song also features Rhiannon Giddens on banjo and viola. She’s one of the many Black country artists who Queen Bey celebrates throughout the album. Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, and Tiera Kennedy guest on the cover of the Beatles’ Blackbiird. Linda Martell, “the first Black female artist to grace the stage at the Grand Ole Opry,” AM “ushers in album highlight Ya Ya, which samples ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’’ and interpolates ‘Good Vibrations’ on a Tina Turner-esque romp.” AM The “electrified live band is in funky mule mode while Bey kicks, shimmies, snaps, and twerks her way through a working person’s lifetime of bullshit.” PF In a voice-over opening on “the brutal Spaghettii,” AM Martell also offers up a message to the haters, saying, “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’ they? In theory, they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand. But in pactice, well, some may feel confined.” PF That song, and “the Pharrell-produced throbber Sweet Honey Buckiin,” AM in which Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” “gets the Jersey club treatment,” PF both feature feature “Virginia country hip-hop musician Shaboozey,” PF who would make his own statement on the country and pop charts with “A Bar Song (Tipsy).” The song knocked “Texas Hold ‘Em” from the top of the country chart, making it the first time the chart had been topped by two consecutive Black artists. Beyoncé also enlists other well-known artists who’ve made their own genre-defying leaps into the country world with “fellow Texan Post Malone duetting on a playfully naughty Leviis Jeans” AM and Miley Cyrus on “the ride-or-die track II Most Wanted.” PF The song won the Grammy for Best Country Duo/Group Performance. On “the epic opener Ameriican Requiem, she presents her Southern bona fides to critics.” AM “On the sweeping 16 Carriages she mourns the loss of youth and innocence after spending a lifetime on the road.” AM My Rose “alternately recalls baroque vocal arrangements, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and ’60s psychedelia on a song about mother-love.” PF Desert Eagle “is an unlikely slap-bass strip-club anthem.” PF Beyoncé “ushers in another horse-gallop trap beat and raps about her shooters” PF on Daughter. On that song and Protector, “her high notes occasionally modulate down like a slide guitar, a breathy technique that’s distinctly country, but only sounds natural when a vocalist is in total control, as Beyoncé always is.” PF “The looseness of the acoustic instruments suits her, particularly when she lets herself be languid in the humidity of a song like Alliigator Tears.” PF She “returns to the dancefloor on Riiverdance to remind listeners (and haters) that this is still a Beyoncé album.” AM The song “interpolates finger-picked bluegrass guitar with a house piano and four-on-the-floor percussion.” PF “On the gospel album closer Amen, a companion to ‘Ameriican Requiem,’ she alludes to the fact that the United States was built by enslaved Black people…and circles back to the inciting incident of Cowboy Carter: that what she experienced at the CMAs is part of an America that, you may have heard, has a problem. Though lyrics like ‘Can we stand for something?’ might be vague, her message is quite clear. Beyoncé, too, is an American, so do-si-do on that.” PF “Cowboy Carter is such a grand statement of intent that it feels like it could be her ultimate say on identity and purpose. The fact that it’s coming from outside her usual wheelhouse makes it even more impressive. While it won’t be able to please everyone, that’s not the point: this is an intensely personal statement about reclamation, belonging, and legacy, celebrating the past with hopes of changing the future.” AG

Reviews: AM AllMusic.com review by Neil Z. Yeung PF Pitchfork.com album review by Julianne Escobedo Shepherd Related DMDB Links: First posted 2/5/2025.

Taylor Swift Midnights hit #1

Midnights Taylor Swift

Released: October 21, 2022 Peak: 16 US, 15 UK, 15 CN, 114 AU Sales (in millions): 2.81 US, 0.6 UK, 4.32 world (includes US and UK) Genre: pop

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Lavender Haze (10/31/22, 2 US, 20 A40, 3 UK, 2 CN, 2 AU) Maroon (10/31/22, 3 US, 4 CN, 4 AU) Anti-Hero (10/21/22, 17 US, 5 AC, 17 A40, 16 UK, 15 CN, 16 AU, 12 DF) Snow on the Beach (with Lana Del Rey) (10/31/22, 4 US, 33 AA, 4 UK, 3 CN, 3 AU) You’re on Your Own, Kid (10/31/22, 8 US, 65 UK, 6 CN, 6 AU) Midnight Rain (10/31/22, 5 US, 5 CN, 5 AU) Question…? (10/31/22, 7 US, 10 CN, 11 AU) Vigilante Shit (10/31/22, 10 US, 9 CN, 10 AU) Bejeweled (10/25/22, 6 US, 63 UK, 7 CN, 7 AU, 26 DF) Labryinth (10/31/22, 14 US, 14 CN, 13 AU) Karma (10/31/22, 2 US, 9 AC, 1 A40, 12 UK, 4 CN, 2 AU) Sweet Nothing (10/31/22, 15 US, 15 CN, 14 AU) Mastermind (10/31/22, 13 US, 12 CN, 12 AU) Total Running Time: 44:02

Rating: 4.082 out of 5.00 (average of 30 ratings) Quotable: “Midnights is a cohesive and at times stunning development for a songwriter who has made evolution her signature.” – Elamin Abdelmahmoud, BuzzFeed News Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: On Folklore and Evermore, Taylor Swift’s pair of alternative folk albums from 2020, she “stepped away from autobiographical songwriting and found new depths of feeling in fictional narratives.” PF On Midnights, she not only returns to a full-fledged pop endeavor, but one “addressing the central conflict of Taylor Swift, the individual and the persona.” PF She described the snyth-pop-driven concept album as “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life,” WK “a real guided tour throughout all the things I tend to hate about myself.” BZ She explores anxiety, regret, and self-loathing in what Kitty Empire of The Observer describes as “an album of fascinating small-hours contemplation.” WK “Taylor Swift is a gifted wordsmith adept at the art of pop hooks” PM and here she “places herself firmly in the conversation as her generation’s counterpart to luminaries like [Joni] Mitchell and [Carole] King.” PM Musically, “if Swift’s previous recordings were full-blown productions with radically distinct aesthetics, this one would be best staged in a black-box theater.” PF Previous collaborator/co-producer Jack Antonoff “has accentuated Swift’s ambitiously vivid storytelling [in the past] with expressive technicolor syntho pop. Here…they explore moodier, more subdued hues. Built around vocal effects and vintage snyths, it’s an understated sound more interested in setting atmosphere than chasing trends.” PF This is “her messiest and possibly most vulnerable work.” BZ Lucy Harbron of Gigwise praised the album for its reinvention and experimentation. WK American Songwriter’s Alex Hopper described Midnights as “a grungier 1989 with the lyrical proficiency of Folklore and Evermore.” WK Ellen Johnson of Paste said Midnights has some of Swift’s “sleekest pop tunes yet.” WK Elamin Abdelmahmoud of BuzzFeed News says this is Swift’s “best and most ambitious album since her megapop turn” BZ with the aforementioned 1989, released in 2014. The album set the record for the most streams in a day on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. WK It amassed 700 million streams on Spotify within a week, making it the fastest album to reach that mark. WK It became Swift’s eleventh chart-topper on the Billboard 200 and the first album since Swift’s own Reputation in 2017 to reach a million sales in a week. PM It also became the first album in history to lock down the entire top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. The other three songs on the album’s original version reached the top 15. Grammy for Album of the Year Also of note – on February 4, 2024, this album helped Taylor Swift make history again. She won Album of the Year at the Grammys, her fourth time in doing so. As a result she surpassed Paul Simon, Frank Sinatra, and Stevie Wonder to become the artist with more Album of the Year Grammy wins than anyone in history. “Lavender Haze” This “infectiously danceable tune” PM “kicks off with a hazy, drum-machine club beat” PM It is about the tabloid rumors about her relationship with Joe Alwyn. It takes after the phrase “in the lavender haze” from the television drama Mad Men. WK It was the official second single from the album. “Maroon” Here Swift “engages in color wordplay within a moody dream-pop beat.” PM The song explores “missed-chance romance” WK reading “like an ongoing reflection on Red, which in its own deeply confessional singer-songwriter tracks is…itself a nod to Joni Mitchell’s Blue, a glimpse at both Taylor Swift’s influences and her legacy ambitions.” PM “Anti-Hero” The album’s lead single, Anti-Hero, spent seven weeks at #1, tying it with “Blank Space” as her biggest chart-topper. It became the best-selling song of 2022. WK It’s “equal parts perfect earworm and emotional ice pick to the heart,” PM delving into Swift’s “insecurities, such as struggling with not feeling like a person” WK and looking “meaningfully into Swift’s relationship with self-loathing.” BZ The video premiered eight hours after the album’s release. She described it as a depiction of her “nightmare scenarios and intrusive thoughts.” WK “Snow on the Beach” This is a “hazy dream pop ballad” WK that “sketches an image of strange beauty” PF “about falling in love with someone at the same time as they’re falling in love with you.” WK The song is a collaboration with Lana Del Rey, who “is reduced to the background” PM which “leaves the listener wondering what could have been had the full vocal stylings of the two interacted more completely.” PM “You’re on Your Own, Kid” You’re on Your Own, Kid is “an alternative rock song” WK in which Swift “guttingly reframes a time when we thought she had it all” BZ by reflectin on “her struggles during [her] rise to fame, such as her eating disorder.” WK “One imagines the earnest protagonist of ‘You Belong to Me’ from Fearless, whose steadfast longing for completion looks like self-harm in the rearview mirror: ‘I hated parties and starved my body / Like I’d be saved by the perfect kiss.” PM “Midnight Rain” Midnight Rain is about “an old relationship that was forestalled by her professional ambition and ambivalence about settling down.” WK “Exaggerating her natural uptalk, the production morphs her voice into a dramatic slant: ‘He wanted comfortable / I wanted that pain.” PF “Question…?” This song “asks rhetorical questions about ‘blurry’ memories.” WK She even samples herself here, drawing from “Out of the Woods” from 1989. It was released as a promotional single. “Vigilante Shit” Vigilante Shit is “built around bubbling beats, swirling synths, industrial elements, and snare drums. It is a ‘noirish’ vengeance declaration, taking aim at an enemy and encourages other women to do the same.” WK It’s “a throwback to the Reputation era of ‘Look What You Made Me Do.’ But here…she owns her full agency to wreak havoc.” PM “Bejeweled” This is “a disco tune…with lyrics recognizing Swift’s self-worth.” WK She sings about “straining against the frequent tendency of relationships to expect a dulling of one’s self in service to the pair.” PM She “flexes her autonomy” PM and “checks any attempt to clip her wings for the sake of a relationship.” PM “Cue Lesley Gore’s ‘You Don’t Own Me’ and give it some glitter.” PM “Labyrinth” This “is a steady synth-pop song” WK “about the anxiety over falling in love again.” WK “The production mirrors the ice melting around her heart, each synth quiver a pump of new blood.” PF It “stretches Swift’s sound as it exudes some distinctly Phoebe Bridgers’ vibes in the vocals.” PM “Karma” This “is a playful, electroclash and chillwave diss track with elements of new wave, alternative pop and techo.” WK It features “comical lyrics” WK in which Swift “conjures her sassy, shit-stirring alter ego in a less vindictive mood, luxuriating in her rivals’ inevitable comeuppance.” PF “Sweet Nothing” Sweet Nothing “is a relaxed love song driven by saxophone and electric piano, emulating 1970s ballads. It is an ode to Swift’s calm romantic relationship inside her house, as opposed to her hectic stardom outside.” WK Alwyn co-wrote the song under the pseudonym William Bowery. The song also shows how Swift knows “the strengths and limitations of her voice…Swift is not Adele, nor does she attempt to be…Her abilities to enunciate and play with the emphatic accent falls become rhythmic instruments.” PM “Mastermind” On the album closer, Swift satirizes her image as calculating by spinning a tale of “a lover who is aware of her schemes and wants to be part of them anyway.” BZ She confesses the “trauma that often manifests as an obsession with control” PM but makes the listener ask “is she a manipulator, or is she a planner in order to avoid the worst outcomes?” BZ She also addresses “the experience of surviving as a woman in a patriarchal world.” PM Conclusion Ultimately Midnights is Swift’s “attempt to play with what she has already written. Some of these songs scan as precise edits that bolster or challenge stories we already know. Others register as attempts to undo established narratives about Swift and replace them completely.” BZ It “is a cohesive and at times stunning development for a songwriter who has made evolution her signature.” BZ Notes: The Midnights – 3am Edition added the songs “The Great War,” “Bigger Than the Whole Sky,” “Paris,” “High Infidelity,” “Glitch,” “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” and “Dear Reader.”

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Taylor Swift BZ BuzzFeed News review by Elamin Abdelmahmoud (10/24/2022) PF Pitchfork review by Quinn Moreland PM Pop Matters review by Rick Quinn (11/2/2022) WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 2/17/2023; last updated 2/5/2024.

 

Taylor Swift wins third Grammy for Album of the Year with Folklore

Folklore Taylor Swift

Released: July 24, 2020 Peak: 18 US, 13 UK, 13 CN, 14 AU Sales (in millions): 1.04 US, 0.1 UK, 2.05 world (includes US and UK) Genre: pop

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts. The 1 (10/9/20, 4 US, 4 AU, 7 CN, 10 UK) Cardigan (7/27/20, 1 US, 1 AU, 3 CN, 6 UK) The Last Great American Dynasty Exile (with Bon Iver) (8/3/20) (6 US, 3 AU, 6 CN, 8 UK, gold single) My Tears Ricochet Mirrorball Seven August This Is Me Trying Illicit Affairs Invisible String Mad Woman Epiphany Betty (8/17/20, 42 US, 22 AU, 32 CN) Peace Hoax Total Running Time: 63:29

Rating: 4.267 out of 5.00 (average of 27 ratings) Quotable: “The first chapter of Swift’s mature second act.” – Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: Taylor Swift’s eighth studio album been called “the quintessential quarantine album” and the “first great work of art” from the pandemic. WK The surprise release “blindsided the pop music world,” saving listeners from “their tedious lockdown lives.” WK She announced it via social media 16 hours before its release. Supposedly even her record label wasn’t aware of the album until hours before its launch. WK Swift conceived Folklore as “a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness” out of her imagination. WK She departed from her the usual autobiographical references of previous works to craft stories mostly from a third-person perspective, keying in on themes of “escapism, nostalgia, loneliness, and introspection.” WK Some of the narratives included “a ghost finding its murderer at its funeral, a seven-year-old girl with a traumatized friend, an old widow spurned by her town, recovering alcoholics, and a love triangle between three-fictitious characters.” WK As Taylor said, “these images in my head grew faces or names and became characters. I found myself…writing about or from the perspective of people I’ve never met, people I’ve known, or those I wish I hadn’t.” WK All Music Guide’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine said the songs “are recognizably her work, bearing telltale melodic phrases and a reliance on finely honed narratives that turn on exquisitely rendered lyrical details.” AMG He said that the album feels “not like a momentary diversion inspired by isolation but rather the first chapter of Swift’s mature second act.” AMG Folklore was a musical departure from previous more upbeat pop albums, traversing instead in indie-folk territory. Variety’s Chris Willman said the album was a reminder that Swift was one of the few pop stars willing to experiment with different styles. WK The Guardian’s Laura Snapes called it Swift’s most cohesive and experimental album. WK She worked with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, but also Aaron Dessner, guitarist of indie-rock band the National. She’d gone to one of their concerts in 2019 and he’d told her how the band members lived in different parts of the world, but sent instrumental tracks to their singer. During the quarantine in 2020, Swift decided to adopt the idea and she and Antonoff and Dessner sent digital files of instrumentals and vocals to each other to craft the album. WK Folklore came only 11 months after her 2019 Lover album, her fastest turnaround time between albums. It became her seventh album to top the Billboard charts in the United States. It set the Guinness World Record for the biggest opening day on Spotify for an album by a female artist, became the longest-running #1 since 2017, and became the biggest-selling album of 2020. WK The album’s first single, Cardigan, gave Swift the distinction of being the first act to debut atop the Billboard album chart and Hot 100 singles chart simultaneously. The song was also nominated for a Grammy for Song of the Year. Swift described the song as one that explored “lost romance and why young love is often fixed so permanently in our memories.” WK Another of the singles, Exile, hit the top 10 and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. The “sentimental, gospel-flavored, indie folk duet with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver” WK was “an unspoken, argumentative conversation between two former lovers.” WK Notes: The deluxe edition added the song “The Lakes.”

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Taylor Swift AMG All Music Guide review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 1/12/2021; last updated 4/30/2022.

Billie Eilish wins Grammy for Album of the Year

When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? Billie Eilish

Released: March 29, 2019 Peak: 13 US, 5 UK, 11 CN, 11 AU Sales (in millions): 3.0 US, 0.3 UK, 4.51 world (includes US and UK) Genre: pop/alternative

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts. !!!!!!! (79 CN) Bad Guy (3/29/19, 11 US, 6 A40, 34 AA, 12 MR, 2 UK, 11 CN, 12 AU, worldwide sales: 19.5 million) Xanny (4/13/19, 35 US, 26 CN, 10 AU, worldwide sales: 1.2 million) You Should See Me in a Crown (7/18/18, 41 US, 7 MR, 60 UK, 27 CN, 16 AU, worldwide sales: 2.43 million) All the Good Girls Go to Hell (4/13/19, 46 US, 5 MR, 77 UK, 19 CN, 8 AU, worldwide sales: 1.2 million) Wish You Were Gay (1/30/19, 31 US, 13 UK, 12 CN, 5 AU, worldwide sales: 1.31 million) When the Party’s Over (10/17/18, 29 US, worldwide sales: 5.06 million) 8 (4/13/19, 79 US, 52 CN, 35 AU, sales: ½ million) My Strange Addiction (4/13/19, 43 US, 21 CN, 12 AU, worldwide sales: 1.2 million) Bury a Friend (1/9/19, 14 US, 12 MR, 6 UK, 10 CN, 3 AU, worldwide sales: 3.98 million) Ilomilo (4/13/19, 62 US, 25 MR, 38 CN, 23 AU, worldwide sales: ½ million) Listen Before I Go (4/13/19, 63 US, worldwide sales: 0.7 million) I Love You (4/13/19, 53 US, 35 CN, 20 AU, worldwide sales: 1.2 million) Goodbye (69 CN, 54 AU) Total Running Time: 42:56

Rating: 3.910 out of 5.00 (average of 28 ratings) Quotable: “No teenager I can recall has ever made such an impressive album.” – music critic Robert Christgau Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: “Billie Eilish became a teen folk hero with her blockbuster debut — just your average 17-year-old songwriting prodigy with a head full of nightmares.” RS’20 She became the youngest artist in history to receive nominations for the Big Four Grammys. At the 2020 ceremony, she became only the second artist (after Christopher Cross) to win them all – Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year (both for “Bad Guy”), and Album of the Year. She also won Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Engineered Album. By this time, she was eighteen, but still the youngest to ever take home the prizes for Record of the Year and Album of the Year. LeAnn Rimes was 14 when she won Best New Artist and Lorde was 17 when she landed Song of the Year for “Royals.” Eilish had already released an EP, but When We All Fall Asleep was her official debut album. It debuted at #1 in the U.S. and UK. She became the youngest solo female act ever to top the charts in the United Kingdom. WK Critic Robert Christgau said, “No teenager I can recall has ever made such an impressive album.” WK She “makes a bold entrance into the mainstream, leaving the fringes behind to embrace her role as an anti-pop star for the disaffected Gen Z masses.” AMG She has said the record, which explores climate change, drug addiction, heartbreak, mental health, and suicide, was inspired by lucid dreams and night terrors. WK Eilish largely co-wrote the album with her brother Finneas O’Connell, who produced it from his bedroom studio in the house where they grew up. His production focused on amplified bass, minimalist percussion, and acoustic sounds. Musically, it has been described as “a youthful, hybrid blend that incorporates elements of indie electronic, pop, and hip-hop.” AMG Exclaim!’s Matt Bobkin said the album displayed “a bold artistic vision and a willingness to move beyond the boundaries of pop conventions.” WK Critics described her vocal style “as soft and whispered;” WK The Daily Telegraph’s Neil McCormick said she could “shift from coquettish to threatening, playfully ironic to emotionally sincere in a breath.” WK He said she “sounds modern and old fashioned at the same time.” WK “Like Lorde’s devilish little sister, Eilish delivers her confessional lyrics in hushed bursts of breath, at times dirge-like in their sedateness and otherwise intensely threatening in their creepiness.” AMG Intro/“Bad Guy” The album kicks off with !!!!!!!, a thirty-second “intro in which Eilish slurps saliva from her Invisalign aligners and announces that ‘this is the album,’ before she and her brother descend into laughter.” WK She follows that with “the whispery trap-pop strut of Bad Guy,” RS’20 using “a bass, a kick-drum and amplified finger snaps.” WK Lyrically, she taunts her partner and suggests she is the “bad guy” and not him. The worldwide #1 hit – the fifth single from the album – was released simultaneously with When We All Fall Asleep. “Xanny” Xanny was inspired by a party where Eilish’s friends were drinking and throwing up and becoming “completely not who they were.” WK It was built around “a jazz-inspired loop in order to replicate the feeling of being ‘in secondhand smoke.’” WK “You Should See Me in a Crown” The “trap-influenced electropop song” WK was inspired by an episode of the BBC TV series Sherlock. Eilish sings over “blaring synths and rapid-fire hi-hats.” WK It was the first single, preceding the release of the album by six months. “All the Good Girls Go to Hell” Stereogum described this as a “punchy piano number” and one of the album’s “poppiest tracks.” WK It explores the notion that God and the Devil are observing humans as a meek group of people and pondering, “What are they trying to do here?” WK “Wish You Were Gay”/“When the Party’s Over” On this “jazzy classic pop song” WK Eilish sings about a man she likes who doesn’t show romantic interest in her. She wishes that he was gay so that it would explain his lack of interest in her. WK In a different vein, the “piano ballad” When the Party’s Over was written when her brother left his date’s house “kind of for no reason.” WK Both songs were top-40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. “8”/“My Strange Addiction” The album’s eighth song, appropriately titled 8, “is a ukulele-based lullaby which manipulates Eilish's vocals to make her sound like a small child.” WK the bass-heavy My Strange Addiction follows. She got approval from Steve Carrell, B.J. Novak, John Krasinski, and Mindy Kaling to use samples of their voices as featured in the “Threat Level Midnight” episode of the TV sitcom The Office. “Bury a Friend”/“Ilomilo” This was the second-highest charting song from the album, reaching #14. Eilish wrote this tale of “gothic angst” RS’20 from the perspective of what a monster under a bed feels. Musically, the “minimalist electronica and industrial song” WK contains a vocal line resembling the Doors’ “People Are Strange” and a beat similar to Kanye West’s “Black Skinhead.” WK The beat from the song “leads seamlessly into…Ilomilo, an electropop cut named after the 2010 video game.” WK “Listen Before I Go”/“I Love You”/“Goodbye” Finneas explained that the songs are related because they express “different sentiments about a farwell.” WK Eilish sings Listen Before I Go from the perspective of someone about to commit suicide. Eilish said I Love You, whose chorus has drawn comparisons to “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, was about how “it sucks to be in love sometimes.” WK Goodbye features lines from each of the other songs on the album, except for the intro. Conclusion In the end, this is a remarkable beginning for such a young artist. “She’s a highly relatable kid – not yet of legal voting age at the time of the album’s release – and an avatar for an audience that deals with similar mental health struggles and growing pains.” AMG Notes: The Japanese edition added the tracks “Come Out and Play” and “When I Was Older.” A Japanese limited deluxe edition also added a remix of “Bad Guy” with Justin Bieber and a Japanese complete edition included “Everything I Wanted” as well. A reissue from Target added “When I Was Older,” Bitches Broken Hearts,” and “Everything I Wanted.”

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Billie Eilish AMG All Music Guide review by Neil Z. Yeung RS’20 Rolling Stone (9/22/2020). “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” WK Wikipedia First posted 12/12/2020; last updated 4/25/2022.

Kacey Musgraves' Golden Hour released

Golden Hour Kacey Musgraves

Released: March 30, 2018 Peak: 4 US, 12 CW, 6 UK, 11 CN, 25 AU Sales (in millions): 1.0 US, 0.06 UK Genre: country

Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.) Slow Burn [4:06] (10/16/18, 38 CW, gold single) Lonely Weekend [3:46] Butterflies [3:39] (2/23/18, 32 CW) Oh, What a World [4:01] Mother [1:18] Love Is a Wild Thing [4:16] Space Cowboy [3:36] (2/23/18, 30 CW, gold single) Happy & Sad [4:03] Velvet Elvis [2:34] Wonder Woman [4:00] High Horse [3:33] (6/25/18, 36 CW, gold single) Golden Hour [3:18] Rainbow [3:34] (2/11/19, 98 US, 17 CW, gold single) All songs are co-written by Musgraves. Co-writers include producers Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk as well as Luke Laird, Natalie Hemby, Shane McAnally, Luke Dick, Jesse Frasure, Hillary Lindsey, Amy Wadge, Tommy Schleiter, and Trent Dabbs. Total Running Time: 45:44

Rating: 4.351 out of 5.00 (average of 16 ratings) Quotable: It isn’t “classicist, but perhaps it might be classic.” – Katherine St. Asaph, Spin magazine Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: Kacey Musgraves “became Nashville’s most compelling crossover star since Taylor Swift” RS’20 by winning critics over with three previous albums in which she “enlivened traditional country with her sly synthesis of old sounds” AMG and her “clever wordplay and witty turns of phrase about small-town life.” AZ However, she didn’t “fit the standard archetypes for women in country: not a Southern belle like countless ingenues, not a brash spitfire like Miranda Lambert, not a maternal elder like Dolly or Reba.” SP She sang about “homesickness, and falling wildly in love with the witty precision of her earlier small-town polemics” RS’20 but also about “such un-conservative topics topics as gay rights and marijuana” SP and acid trips. That was never more apparent than when she won a Country Music Association Song of the Year award for “Follow Your Arrow.” That song pointed the way for an unconventional country artist who, on her fourth album, Golden Hour, still turns out “classic country constructions” AMG from a writing standpoint, but with music that “doesn’t scan country.” AMG A song like High Horse “gallops along with a Shania Twain conceit and lite disco licks that sound more like pop-radio Pharrell than what one might think of as country.” SP Throughout this album, Musgraves integrates “the smooth grooves of yacht rock and the glitterball pulse of disco” AMG as well as country pop, electropop, and electronica. WK She cited influences from the Bee Gees to Sade to Neil Young. AZ She said, “I’ve always loved Sade, but I also love Dolly Parton…There’s got to be a world where all these things can live together.” RS’20 As Spin magazine’s Katherine St. Asaph said, it isn’t “classicist, but perhaps it might be classic.” SP “Golden Hour’s lush yacht-country production re-envisioned what millennial pop might sound like.” RS’20 Not only did she explore diverse sounds, but she wrote “some of the most honest and genuine tunes of her career.” AZ The album is “warm and enveloping, pitched halfway between heartbreak and healing – but the album lingers in the mind because the songs are so sharp, buttressed by long, loping melodies and Musgraves’ affectless soul baring.” AMG The songs sway “between casual confessions and songs about faded love.” AMG Musgraves said she wrote more love songs for this album as a result of getting married and finding herself “inspired to write about this person and all these things he brought out in me that weren’t there before.” WK Musgraves’ voice “is reminiscent of folkies like Suzanne Vega or Sheryl Crow…it’s not a belting voice, but it’s a remarkable instrument, capable of imbuing with winsom empathy songs like Lonely Weekend and Happy & Sad that might otherwise be tweenish sap.” SP “Even the druggy tracks” SP like Mother and Oh, What a World “approach Disney levels of earnestness.” SP Not only did Golden Hour take home the Country Music Association’s award for Album of the Year, but she landed Grammy gold with awards for Album of the Year and Best Country Album. She also took home Grammys for Best Country Solo Performance and Best Country Song for her first two singles, Butterflies and Space Cowboy, respectively. Notes: The Japanese version of the album included three bonus tracks – “Merry Go ‘Round” and “Follow Your Arrow” from her 2013 Same Trailer, Different Park album and the Violents Remix of “High Horse.”

Review Sources: DMDB Encyclopedia entry for Kacey Musgraves AZ Amazon AMG All Music Guide review by Stephen Thomas Erelwine RS’20 Rolling Stone (9/22/2020). “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” SP Spin review by Katherine St. Asaph WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 8/17/2020; last updated 4/24/2022.