Shaad D’Souza

Audrey Hobert’s debut album, Who’s the Clown?, is an unlikely hit full of mundane yet surreal detail that’s weirdly endearing.

In today’s music industry the real money is in live performance – and many of the biggest pop shows are sites of both auteurish experiment and genuinely inspiring spectacle.

The new album from Morgan Wallen, the superstar who has outsold Taylor Swift, is a lengthy ode to shirking culpability that makes for near-perfect pop.

Once a bellwether for new trends in the music industry, Coachella now feels like the last word in establishment thinking.

Over half a century of programming, the galaxy of musicians and singers who appeared on Saturday Night Live have made it an essential part of music history.

The Saturday Paper’s music critic looks at how the technology that’s revolutionising the music industry is accelerating future collapse.

Josh Tillman’s latest album as Father John Misty, Mahashmashana, marries his talent for acerbic zingers with an irresistible gorgeousness.

Some of the most interesting alternative pop of recent years is emerging from a group of ultra-talented Danish women.

Fontaines D.C.’s viscerally exciting new album, Romance, can be morose, but it rarely descends into doomsaying or cynicism.

Teen internet sensation Clairo’s third album, Charm, demonstrates the value of growing up in her own way.

With his latest album, John Cale remains as inquisitive and excited about music as he was when he co-founded The Velvet Underground in 1964.

Experimental British musician Tirzah Mastin, on her first Australian tour for the Vivid and Rising festivals, says her work comes almost directly from the subconscious.

Lives Outgrown, Beth Gibbons’s first solo album, takes the listener beyond the unearthly alchemy of Portishead, to a clearer appreciation of her lyricism.

For their 15th album, Nonetheless, British synth duo Pet Shop Boys return to the epic glamour of their early hits – and they sound as relevant as ever.

The new collaborative album from cult Swedish rappers Bladee and Yung Lean, Psykos, is bleak but endlessly fascinating.

MGMT may be distinctive for their ability to constantly move on, but Loss of Life is their most palpably emotional record yet.

The scaling back of revered music review site Pitchfork reflects a dwindling critical culture that is catastrophic for the future of artistic diversity.

The Saturday Paper’s music critic looks back at the highlights of 2023.

Siblings Lulu and Angel Prost, recording as Frost Children, are among the few who make the historically vague revival ‘indie sleaze’ a real thing.

Sampha’s new album, Lahai, partly inspired by fatherhood, demonstrates a masterly ability to meld different genres into a fascinating new coherence.

Andrew Savage’s second solo album, Several Songs about Fire is an elegant collection that tackles existential questions with a sweeter tone than his earlier work.

Róisín Murphy’s Hit Parade is a masterclass in unfussy pop – her best record yet and maybe the album of the year.

Azealia Banks sparked a controversy about the lack of Australian acts in local music charts – but the American rapper has a point.

Portugal’s scaled-down version of a major European summer music festival offers some bold musical choices and the chance to explore the host town’s incongruous aesthetics.

Jessie Ware’s new album, That! Feels Good!, is her guide to sexual and spiritual liberation.

Despite their witty name, boygenius’s new album is too self-absorbed to rise above the banal.

One of this year’s most satisfying records has emerged, unexpectedly, from the hyperpop bricolage of 100 Gecs.

For feminist punk icon Kathleen Hanna, the re-formation of Bikini Kill after 22 years is an exhilarating vindication of her early career.

Punk-pop icons Paramore grapple with a viper-tongued youthful legacy in their fascinating but uneven sixth album, This Is Why.

If Fred Again’s easy-listening collages on Actual Life 3 are the future, the future looks dull indeed.

Björk’s latest album, to be released this month, is bracingly intimate and deeply concerned with motherhood and legacy.

Amid the relentless individualism of pop music, Lizzo’s new album – for all its blithe tastelessness – comes as a breath of fresh air.

Harry Styles’ latest album demonstrates the tyranny of ‘good taste’.

After a decade of shapeshifting, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Omnium Gatherum opens new ground.

The latest album from Charli XCX sees the British pop sensation at her most volatile and poignant.

The television series Euphoria reinvents the classic teen soundtrack for the 2020s.

As her latest album Pompeii demonstrates, Welsh post-punk musician Cate Le Bon finds wit in even the darkest places.

Mitski’s latest album, Laurel Hell, is her darkest yet – and one of her most beautiful.

Listening to student radio reconnects audiences with the power of niche obsessions.

As one of the simplest Covid-era music funding models, Flash Forward has produced some of the year’s best work.

On the brink of their biggest release yet, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally reflect on what has made Beach House the darling of indie pop.

ABBA’s reunion album Voyage has bizarre, brilliant gems nestling among embarrassing dross.

Stunning new albums from Lala Lala and Hand Habits disprove the adage that dealing with your inner demons is detrimental to art.

Their intense collaboration has seen Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine commingle the sacred and profane.

The joyousness of Kacey Musgraves’ previous album entranced even hardened cynics, but her latest work, Star-Crossed, takes us back to the dark.

Although it has sparkling moments, Lorde’s new album Solar Power is marred by a misjudged emotional loftiness.

Director, podcaster and Succession cast member Dasha Nekrasova’s debut film is a genre mash-up that reflects the hallucinatory age of conspiracy theories.

Pop fans may crave new music, but pop “stans” – the armies of obsessive, starry-eyed teenagers and misguided adults who dedicate their lives to worshipping pop idols and cyberbullying anyone who dares to badmouth them – crave access. Where a layperson …

Rapper Tkay Maidza’s fleet-footed style-hopping has driven her international success.

As Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner made two albums exploring deep loss. Now she steps forward with Jubilee – a richly textured celebration of the music of her adolescence.

As with her earlier work, Amy Shark’s new album, Cry Forever, trades on her struggles to succeed – but she’s no longer an underdog.

In a surreal power move against two music executives, Taylor Swift has re-recorded her early mega-hit album Fearless, mimicking the original as closely as possible.

Lana Del Rey’s sixth album, Chemtrails over the Country Club, is an exquisitely rendered journey through a dark night of the soul.

The untimely death of the iconic producer SOPHIE brings to an end a spectacular career that reshaped modern pop.

The bleak and brilliant confessional songs of Sarah Mary Chadwick’s singular repertoire draw on psychoanalysis and her Catholic childhood.

In 2020, the inequities between major-label artists and indie musicians became untenable – and it has led to a surging politicisation of the music industry.

The Avalanches’ third album is their most explicitly spiritual record – and their best yet.

New Zealand Spotify star Benee is preternaturally talented, but her debut album isn’t enough to drag her out of sludgy easy-listening playlists.

The Bull sisters took their gospel-singing Tongan background and perfectly blended harmonies and carved a decades-long career as both quintessential musician’s musicians and popular favourites. “I like the challenge of creating something out of nothing,” says younger sister Linda. “And then what happens at the end of that process is you get a song that you can sing for years.”

Sufjan Stevens’ new album reinvents his aesthetic as he confronts the psychic terror of contemporary America.

Ten years after their previous album, Bright Eyes’ latest release brings a new lightness to their apocalyptic imagining. “Lyrical and generous, it feels like a new beginning for Oberst and co on their own terms, despite the weight of its conception, and despite the pain that it holds.”

The take on a 1998 Europop hit by three artists highlights a contemporary desire to find comfort in nostalgia and the innocence of a bygone age.

The artists formerly known as Dixie Chicks are back with a long-awaited album that eschews their usual truth-speaking on politics and power for much more personal, and poppy, reflection.

We know the power of music to provide comfort and healing. But we also know it can act as a force for change. Here, three releases that have powerful messages in the current cultural moment.

Conceived and executed in isolation, Charli XCX’s latest album, how i’m feeling now, fearlessly charts new terrain while capturing the complex emotions of a stable relationship and the sadness of life away from friends.

During his early career, the music industry was intent on fitting Moses Sumney into boxes. But as his latest album, græ, attests, he is an artist determined to seek his own truths beyond the confines of expectation and identity. “I’m really interested in the collapse of identity politics, increasingly. I want us to get to a place where we can seek equality for ourselves without having to define as anything that’s simple. It feels really petrifying, the idea that you explain yourself to someone in order to gain their respect [and that] in doing that, you’re kind of solidifying your identity in a way that feels quite limiting.”

Singer-songwriter Fiona Apple’s impressive fifth album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, is the culmination of her decades-long quest to ‘feel everything’.

I Feel Alive, the fourth album from Montreal band TOPS, captures their trademark lush soft rock sound while, in a stroke of timeliness, delving into tender explorations of love and loneliness.

While Australian musicians are losing significant income with the cancellation of tours and festivals, they are still making remarkable records to inspire and revitalise us.

With its stark lyrics, hypnotic melodies and unsettling production, Soccer Mommy’s Color Theory captures the anxiety of a generation facing an uncertain future.

After a six-year hiatus, Ezra Koenig’s band Vampire Weekend won a 2020 Grammy for their latest album, Father of the Bride. He reflects on the changing landscape of the music industry and how he handles his new-found fame. “We have a deep connection with a certain group of people, and we’ve grown it a little bit, but at a very sustainable rate.”

No sense of impending tragedy emanates from Mac Miller’s posthumous album, Circles. But it does offer some degree of satisfying closure for fans of the American rapper.

Four recent releases highlight the wealth of talent on the Australian music scene, ranging from rap and R&B to emotional torch songs and shattering destruction.

Electronic musician FKA twigs is at the height of her powers on her new album, Magdalene, which combines formal ingenuity with visceral emotion.

Even though the songs on Hey, I’m Just Like You were written more than two decades ago, Tegan and Sara’s new album feels contemporary and joins a growing canon of queer pop.

On their second album, Run Home Slow, The Teskey Brothers have produced a pale imitation of the ’60s soul greats, stripping the music of its political verve and adding nothing in return.

On his new album, Late Night Feelings, Mark Ronson has put his mega-hit ‘Uptown Funk’ behind him, choosing instead to make a pop album with surprising emotional depth.

Beyond the thrills, the glamour and the sexual tension, Killing Eve’s second season asks viewers to confront their own ambiguous morals – and therein lies the series’ greatest strength.

On Vampire Weekend’s ambitious new album, which contrasts the band’s most upbeat music with some of its darkest lyrics, the New York three-piece has staked its claim to longevity.

Although BTS’s latest album, Map of the Soul: Persona, is a bland attempt to cover all bases, the enormous appeal of this K-pop band is ultimately undeniable.

Popstar Billie Eilish offers moments of macabre brilliance on her uneven debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?

Fremantle psych band Pond’s latest album, Tasmania, acts as a springboard for frontman Nick Allbrook’s piercing take on Australia’s treatment of the environment and First Nations people.

Julia Jacklin’s new album Crushing has moments when her lyrical directness perfectly complements its dark folk-rock sound, which excuse some of the experimental missteps elsewhere.

Pharrell Williams thrust Maggie Rogers and her song ‘Alaska’ into the spotlight. Now, with her debut album, Heard It in a Past Life, she’s taking a more rootsy, spiritual and sedate path to long-lasting success.

The soundtrack to A Star Is Born – featuring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper – unwittingly rebuts the film’s storyline, with the female star’s serious music less compelling than the pure pop she’s meant to have outgrown.