Summer is a yawning, bright valley of possibility. The sun has an extended curfew, the moon seems brighter, and a sudden feeling of newness arrives after the raininess of spring and hardness of winter. But the warm days of June and July can also mark an uncertain departure from routine. After months of work, after filing taxes, after attending graduations, we find ourselves with hours of unburdened time.
As The Interlude draws to a close, I find myself reflecting on the two years of love and labor this magazine inspired from myself and fellow contributors. But I also want to take a fucking nap! On a hammock!! In full view of the midday sun!!! With a homemade cranberry pomegranate spritz at the ready!!!!
In my mind, this playlist is the overlap in the Venn diagram of reflection and restfulness. It’s writing H.A.G.S. in everyone’s middle school yearbooks and really meaning it. It’s the ache in your thighs from swimming for hours on end. It’s a loved one making you a plate of fruit. It’s coming to terms with your mortality while bleaching your hair.
From Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” to Jensen McRae’s “Immune,” these songs will meet you in 7-Eleven with a Slurpee and lyrics to last all season long.
Scroll to the end to listen to Rest + Reflect on Spotify.
Listen to the entire playlist and follow The Interlude on Spotify.
Say goodbye to staying up all night, because it’s once again time for school. As much as I disliked waking up at 6:30 a.m. every morning for a 15-minute commute convoluted by traffic, listening to an over-the-top rap lyric or ostentatious ballad always made the transition from summer to fall more bearable for me. Though I’ve graduated high school, I continue to make exuberant playlists any chance I get.
As you head back to university, pick up a new hobby from TikTok, or reinvent yourself entirely, those classic back-to-school jitters might be resurfacing. To ease your switch into studying mode, I’ve curated this playlist with fun bops like “Be Sweet” and “Dans la Hess,” alongside soothing melodies like “Look At Me Now” and “Are You With That?” Enjoy Educational Earworms before you log into online lectures, during your real-world commute, or anywhere in-between!
Scroll to the end to listen to Educational Earworms on Spotify.
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As the August sun sets sooner each day and tips us into fall, Lorde is back with Solar Power, a summery album overflowing with acoustic guitar, wistful vocals, and inviting natural landscapes. Another collaboration with producer Jack Antonoff, the album boasts 12 songs (14 on the deluxe version) and an earthier, more organic tone than her previous chart-toppers.
Three days prior to releasing the full album on Friday, Aug. 20, Lorde dropped the track “Mood Ring” and its accompanying music video. The video follows a platinum blonde Lorde as she reclines in a massive tent (think glamping), does a dry-run of synchronized swimming with similarly dressed disciples, and tries “to get well from the inside.” Listeners either immediately asked how to join Lorde’s serene “cult” or wondered if the whole thing was a joke.
Clarity only came from reading “Solar Institute Bulletin No. 5,” an edition of Lorde’s newsletter about the album and the inspiration for “Mood Ring.” She quickly explained that the blonde woman in “Mood Ring” is a character she’s playing. In the email, Lorde wrote, “I’ll say it once and then never again: this is satire. She is not me. :-).”
Further down, she elaborates. Lorde feels “tons of empathy” for this Gwyneth Paltrow knockoff. The singer-songwriter claims not to “let her off the hook,” but at the same time doesn’t want “to fully flame her.” The desire to examine the ways white women mindlessly appropriate indigenous cultures in a quest for spirituality is apparent, as is a reminder to treat people seeking betterment with humanity. She also links to a Yoga Journal story about the ethics of sourcing Palo Santo to smudge, burn, or infuse in oils.
Even with the newsletter at hand, it’s hard not to cringe at the undertones of Orientalism in the lyrics, “Let’s fly somewhere eastern, they’ll have what I need.” Lorde’s satire is barely evident in the lyrics or music video to “Mood Ring,” only hinted at through direct eye-contact with the camera as her character flips languidly through an indistinguishable book.
This is a common dilemma for any artist: when do you allow art to stand on its own and when do you qualify its intentions? The art world regularly runs into this problem when writing wall placards to address controversial exhibits or explaining the acquisition of art stolen by colonizers, Nazis, or Hobby Lobby. If you need multiple paragraphs to clarify your art’s point, maybe your art isn’t getting the point across in the first place. Listeners who don’t subscribe to Lorde’s newsletter may miss her deeper meaning.
Solar Power’s shortcomings feel parallel to trends aimed at reengaging with the natural world. Popular aesthetics — like cottagecore and fairycore, as well as a brief revival of folksy sea shanties — are siren calls for young people overwhelmed by the internet-heavy and highly-surveilled present. Lorde throws her “cellular device in the water,” we use ours to watch TikToks about making snail-shaped teapots, find whimsical linen dresses, and yes, listen to Solar Power. It’s hard to escape the contradiction of consuming more stuff to achieve a “simpler” life. Marie Antoinette even had a fake peasant village built to unwind from the stresses of court (All of the whimsy, none of the actual poverty of pre-revolutionary France!). Lorde isn’t outright selling chia seeds or sage sticks, but neither is she bringing the same skepticism to “Mood Ring” as she directed at rich excess in the lyrics of “Royals.”
For the most part, Solar Power is a lyrical successor to Lorde’s first two albums. At the end of “Liability,” she promised we would watch her “disappear into the sun.” And sure enough, across “Oceanic Feeling,” “Stoned at the Nail Salon,” and other new songs, Lorde basks in the sun, its rays, heat, fire, and the sultry summer season as she replaces “teenage millionaire” stardom with a more laid back life at home. Sonically, these songs roll into one another with little interruption, like waves meeting the coast of her beloved New Zealand. It’s a shame they don’t have more to say.
“Dominoes,” the album’s eighth track, does to toxic men who think they can rebrand as softer, earthier, and more feminine what “Mood Ring” wants to do to wellness aficionados. The song’s “Mr. Start Again” is derided for replacing cocaine with weed and outrunning his blues by going “all New Age.” He gets “fifty gleaming chances in a row” despite hurting women, a harsh reality that persists post-#MeToo. His do-overs allow for continued cruelty and he flicks them “down like dominoes.” In a recording filmed on the rooftop of Electric Lady Studios, Lorde trades the breathy vocals dominating the album for a shout when she tells the man, “Don’t get up!”
Like Maya Kosoff in her essay, “Get In Losers, We’re Listening to ‘Ribs’ by Lorde,” I keep coming back to the singer-songwriter because she knows how to capture an incredibly specific but remarkably universal mood. Pure Heroine featured jaded teens fed up with pop music’s ideal of fame, while Melodrama balanced enduring loneliness (“So they pull back, make other plans, I understand, I’m a liability”) and a god complex (“Bet you rue the day you kissed a writer in the dark”). Meanwhile, the overarching message of Solar Power is to slow down, a la Stevie Nicks reminding us, “Even children get older. I’m getting older too,” and Billy Joel’s insistence that “Vienna waits for you.”
The album has divided music critics based on its supposed basicness — indulging in spa days, liking the beach, lamenting the early 2000s. Some see it as a refreshing departure from the gloominess of Melodrama, Lorde’s sophomore album. “On Solar Power, Lorde surrenders to normalcy — and finds transcendence,” Spencer Kornhaber wrote in his review for The Atlantic. At The Cut, writer Marianne Eloise saw the album as “deeply uncool,” but in a way that’s true to the 24 year old. Others, like me, wish it offered a sharper analysis of the topics it engages. Cat Zhang, assistant editor at Pitchfork, called the titular track “eerily sanitized and optimistic” and described “Mood Ring” as a trite critique of wellness culture.
Fast fashion stores, Peloton classes, and Goop-endorsed wellness retreats alike will pump Solar Power through their speakers. And it would come as no shock if “Mood Ring” made a cameo on Nine Perfect Strangers, the new Hulu series where Nicole Kidman plays an ethereal and terrifying cult leader who promises (threatens?) to “get you well.”
As people strive for any source of serotonin in the midst of the climate crisis, coronavirus pandemic, or insert other modern disaster here, the album offers hope for brighter days. Along the way, the self-implicating satire outlined in Lorde’s newsletter gets lost between matching silk dresses and sun salutations.
2021 looks bright for Tinashe, especially with her new album, 333: a genre-disrupting, utopian fantasy. But we can’t forget it took her forever to get here.
After Tinashe’s girl group, the Stunners, disbanded in 2011, she released a series of singles that drew the attention of the record label RCA, which signed her in 2012. Her 2014 release, Aquarius, proved to be one of the best R&B debuts in years, showing her immense talent and versatility. The following three years, however, were a stalemate, leaving her fans wondering what had happened to the Tinashe they knew. During that time, subsequent albums felt like a departure from her previous artistic vision. Joyride and Nightride, her sophomore album and an unexpected mixtape, suffered a series of delays. Tinashe shamed her label in a Twitter group message with fans and privately refuted RCA’s suggestions.
Finally, in 2019, Tinashe’s contract with RCA Records ended. Later that year, she released Songs For You, her first album as an independent artist. That body of work reflected the positive outcome of attaining creative freedom. With 333, Tinashe’s songs continue to reflect her newfound stamina, spirituality, and daring personality. Even the album’s name hints at that spirituality; 333 is an angel number symbolizing you’re on the right path, despite your fears, anxieties, mislaid plans, or wrong turns.
Sonically, Tinashe is forging her own path on this album, refusing to limit herself to one genre. One of the best examples of this philosophy is the personal affirmation turned romantic quandary, “Small Reminders.” At first the song starts with sultry R&B aided by simplistic piano chords. Suddenly, Tinashe raps loudly about being “lit up/lit up, uh” and “dodgin’ police, gotta duck tonight/tonight,” over a 70s style guitar rift. Towards the end her voice gains a meditative ring with the sole soulful moment during the phrase, “when you look in the mirror.”
“Unconditional,” a saga about the struggles of unwavering love, carries the same concept at a much shorter pace. At the beginning, the song sounds more like contemporary alternative R&B, while the second half imitates a 2000s anthem with soft guitar riffs in the background. Both songs demonstrate Tinashe’s ability to effortlessly transition between multiple genres and styles she hasn’t displayed in the past. In the earlier half of Tinashe’s career, the people around her were more focused on creating hits than actually furthering her wild ideas.
Tinashe exhibits bountiful amounts of raw talent in this album. And other featured artists on 333 match her vibes. On the third track, “X,” Jeremih reciprocates Tinashe’s energy in this boastful R&B track, occasionally hitting some notes an octave higher than the melody. Kaash Paige, a rising R&B star from Dallas, Texas, manages to stand out on “Angels,” an unapologetic ballad enumerating an emotionally off-and-on situationship. Her voice is sweet and soft, complementing Tinashe’s lower melodic tone.
Besides the impeccable instrumentation, 333 has a tang of raunchiness. In the futuristic trap-like track, “I Can See The Future,” Tinashe brags about her wealth, style, and swagger while mentioning that her “kitty in your mouth, got your tongue-tongue” and boasts that “you know I’m one of a kind, got that one of on.” In “Bouncin,” an upbeat summer bop with hyperpop bleeps, Tinashe lightly sings in the chorus that “I been sending dirty pics/hope they make it to the cloud.” These moments don’t draw attention away from the overarching message. Instead, they reveal Tinashe’s multidimensionality. Sure, Tinashe is a very spiritual person, as the title of the album suggests, but that doesn’t mean she can’t also be in tune with her sexuality.
Being carefree is Tinashe’s greatest weapon in 333. Rather than confine herself to a specific genre, she opens herself up to new possibilities. She showcases her eclectic and eccentric sounds that are neither abrasive or repetitive, creating her best project yet in the process. The featured artists on this album add their own unique sound and perspective without overshadowing Tinashe and her objective. 333 is testament to how Tinashe can creatively flourish and express herself in multitudes without the restrictiveness of her label and the music industry as whole.
I stumbled onto Jessie Ware’s latest album “What’s Your Pleasure?” with glee this January. As a connoisseur of all things disco, I was transfixed by Ware’s electric voice and the sound she created. Her music transformed my bare living room into a sparkling dance floor reminiscent of the gay prom I attended in college. Suddenly, I wasn’t alone listening to Ware’s album through my headphones — I was dancing among my gay friends to the intensity and thrill of her songs.
For those 53 minutes, Ware’s music embodied the core purpose of disco: it reminded me of a moment when I felt most liberated and connected to other gay folks of color. But knowing the history of this genre complicates my admiration for Ware’s album, because it’s one more instance of a white artist profiting from something created by marginalized communities.
Disco emerged from Black (including Afro-Latinxs) and LGBTQ nightlife in New York City in the late 1960s. It was in clubs and on the dance floor where these communities could feel united with one another and authentically express themselves, historian Hadley Meares wrote for Aeon in 2017. But during its heyday, disco also received backlash from white people. Slogans and events were riddled with racism and anti-LGBTQ sentiments, like “Disco Sucks” and the Chicago White Sox’ infamous Disco Demolition Night.
I have a hard time reconciling my love for Ware’s album and my identity as a Latinx gay femme. I can see why she leaned into this genre of music. It’s fun and euphoric and engulfs every part of you in a sea of glittering lights. In fact, Ware dropped “The Platinum Pleasure Edition” of her album in June this year, which includes more disco hits such as “Please” and “Hot N Heavy.” Other white musicians, like Kylie Minogue and Lady Gaga, produced similar albums in 2020 that recall the height of the disco era. Perhaps the musician that garnered the most fame was Dua Lipa, whose album “Future Nostalgia” was praised for being the best disco-inspired album during a year where we were unable to physically be on a dance floor but could vividly imagine it through her lush tunes.
What was once a hated genre of music is now being celebrated because mainstream white musicians are at the center of its revival. In the process, white celebrities perpetuate the erasure of LGBTQ cultures in popular media.
I’m instantly reminded of Madonna’s “Vogue” single and music video that globally broadcasted voguing in the year 1990. She was hailed — and still is to this day — as an innovator for bringing this dance move by the same name into mainstream media and mastering its precise movements. However, voguing was a staple of the Harlem ball scene comprised largely of Black (including Afro-Latinx), gay, and trans folks three decades before “Vogue” hit the top of the charts. Vogue is a styled form of dance that takes poses from “high fashion and ancient Egyptian art [and] adds exaggerated hand gestures to tell a story and imitate various gender performances in categorized drag genres,” wrote Tsione Wolde-Michael in a piece for the National Museum of African American History & Culture.
These marginalized communities carved a world of their own where they could express themselves as loudly and extravagantly as they wanted. The rightful innovators are the LGBTQ folks of color that so beautifully took up space in this world by existing and living, even when straight white people spewed unrelenting vitriol towards them. Not to mention the terror they faced in the form of hate crimes and police violence.
To Madonna’s credit, the “Vogue” music video was choreographed by and featured Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza and Luis Xtravaganza, from the ballroom House of Xtravaganza. Both eventually went on to choreograph Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour. It’s great that people from the ball scene were involved in popularizing voguing. But Madonna profited the most, not the communities she used for inspiration.
The LGBTQ folks of color responsible for voguing gained little recognition in comparison. When someone mentions “Vogue,” most people don’t automatically think of Jose and Luis’ contributions and the Harlem ball scene. To the public, they are merely secondary characters to Madonna’s main role.
“What was once a hated genre of music is now being celebrated because mainstream white musicians are at the center of its revival.”
FX’s show “Pose” documented this well throughout season two, showing the impact “Vogue’s” popularity had not just on music charts, but in the ballroom community itself. In the show, dancer and member of the Evangelista house Damon Richards, played by actor Ryan Jamaal Swain, teaches voguing classes at the YMCA and is even scouted to be a dancer on Madonna’s Blonde Ambition Tour as the single surged in popularity across the country. But after no call-backs, a decrease in enrollment for his classes and the song no longer topping music charts, Richards becomes aware of the stark reality that is as his co-worker put it, “White folks [visiting] but never [moving] in.” He, like so many other Black (including Afro-Latinx) LGBTQ dancers, was left in the dust.
The mainstreaming of disco and ball culture are part of a larger trend of LGBTQ culture being appropriated. When this happens, the original history of these cultures is overshadowed by the celebration of white artists. Furthermore, the LGBTQ communities of color who create major cultural trends, fashion, and language rarely receive proper recognition.
Even popular phrases like “yass bitch,” “throwing shade,” “slay” etc. have been appropriated into the mainstream from Black LGBTQ culture. Many of these are rooted in the language of ball scenes. To see the obvious influence of these Black queer communities on culture today, one need only watch the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning. Elsewhere, you can find these phrases — along others like “fierce,” “werk,” and “spilling tea” — in RuPaul’s drag race, which has brought this language further into the mainstream since it debuted in 2009.
Today, white people who (attempt to) use this language are often seen as charming, whereas Black (including Afro-Latinx) folks can face discrimination for reclaiming terms coined by community members who came before them. When white people co-opt Black queer language, they effectively render it a cultural asset to be plucked and used when needed. LGBTQ folks of color are not valued for who they are as humans, but for what they can contribute to mainstream culture.
This erasure is so persistent that in an interview with Gay Times, Jessie Ware admitted she “didn’t fully understand the significance of [disco] as a genre for the [these communities]” when she started working on her album. Knowing this frustrates me. It makes listening to her music more complex because although she acknowledges the history, it feels secondary to her use of disco as an aesthetic.
I still listen to her album periodically; it’s hard not to when it holds sentimental value for me. However, I’m critical of her success and intentions regarding disco. The same goes for Madonna, Dua Lipa, and Lady Gaga. However, I believe that by learning history about the origins of disco and ballroom culture, we can begin to properly acknowledge and give LGBTQ communities of color the credit they deserve. Though it’s not enough, it is a start. Additionally, we need to give Black and Latinx LGBTQ artists honoring disco and ball culture a platform so they get recognition.
Last year in June, Victoria Monét released “Experience,” a disco-inspired breakup tune that was co-written with Khalid and produced by SG Lewis. Monét and Khalid penned in a thoughtful Instagram post that they were hesitant to release the song during a time when protests and action taken in support of racial justice were occurring around the world. But as they noted, June happens to be Black Music Month as well as Pride Month and Monét felt it was necessary to celebrate her queer identity.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBgOoCUjeqP/
Similarly, LGBTQ communities of color created disco and ball culture as a way to honor their multifaceted identities and feel liberated from traditions and norms that dictate they live and be a certain way. The emergence of these two cultures didn’t arise to make a statement to mainstream media or become popular on music charts but rather to build community with other LGBTQ folks of color and create a space where they could simply be. I hope we can honor the legacy of these cultures by remembering and acknowledging that Black (including Afro-Latinx) LGBTQ people deserve recognition for creating them. Disco and ball culture are more than an aesthetic or music meant to be danced to in clubs; it’s a celebration of LGBTQ identity, freedom and life.
While not exclusively a breakup album, Olivia Rodrigo captures the tumultuous rise and fall of a relationship so clearly with her debut, Sour. She dives into the bitterness and resentment of growing up with ease.
Rodrigo’s lyricism shines through with the loss of a relationship that could have been in Sour. The quick turnaround of emotions and surprising virality of her songs enabled the 18-year-old Filipina-American to write a heavily relatable album within a matter of months.
The High School Musical: The Musical: The Series actress released her debut album on May 21 through Geffen Records — unorthodox considering other Disney stars like Miley Cyrus initially signed to Hollywood Records — to much stir and buzz. Her hit song “drivers license” was an overnight success on TikTok and broke records on Billboard and Spotify. But what propelled the song to success was not just the lore behind it (a crazy love triangle between her HSMTMTS co-star Joshua Bassett and fellow Disney alum Sabrina Carpenter), but the relatability and yearning that kept listeners wanting more.
On Sour, Rodrigo threads themes of heartbreak and longing through 11 versatile tracks. In “traitor” and “enough for you,” she sings about the bittersweet existentialism of growing up as a teenager and a relationship that just wasn’t meant to be. For the Gen Z audience, the songs resonate not unlike the work of fellow heartbreak figures Lorde and Billie Eilish. At the same time, millennial fans flocked to Twitter saying that Sour was what they wanted to have in high school. Unexpectedly, Rodrigo brought the older twenty-something-year-old millennials and young Gen Z high schoolers together through the universal themes of devastation. Angst and loss are overwhelming at times but so spread out that it feels like a satisfying release of emotion. Outside of the album’s immediate relatability Sour, as a whole, constantly changes pace from tragic pianos to shredded guitars, revealing the whirlwind process of reflection.
The opening track, “brutal,” expresses the dread of teenage life. At one point she complains,“If someone tells me one more time / ‘Enjoy your youth,’ I’m gonna cry.” On each riff, she drags her voice along in the same tone as an annoyed teenager’s “ugh,” and the catchiness of the downward chord progression only emphasizes the irritation. On “jealousy, jealousy” she exemplifies the classic case of social media envy, singing, “[You] got a pretty face, pretty boyfriend, too / I wanna be you so bad, and I don’t even know you.” Comparison is a major theme in the album, but Rodrigo assures herself and knows her own worth in this daunting world.
Rodrigo emulates her lifelong influence, Taylor Swift, on Sour — who she described to Paper magazine as the “best storyteller of our generation” — with all the common beats of heartache. In “1 step forward, 3 steps back” she interpolates Swift’s melody from “New Year’s Day,” which clings to the same soft pianos and vulnerable melody of the Jack Antonoff staple. Rodrigo is in a tug-of-war with her own emotions and a boy’s elusive attitude: “Like, am I pretty? Am I fun, boy? / I hate that I give you power over that kinda stuff.”
Rodrigo climbs into her earned spotlight by channeling her inner pop-punk angst with songs like “good 4 you.” The song sounds like the favorite Paramore hit “Misery Business,” with the heavy guitars, but instead of blaming the other girl in the situation, Rodrigo directs all those hard feelings at the boy. “Remember when you swore to God I was the only / Person who ever got you? Well, screw that, and screw you / You will never have to hurt the way you know that I do” she yells as she builds up to the infectious chorus.
As a young Filipina woman myself (who’s also had her heart broken by white boys many times), I could intimately relate to the pitiful and long process to get over that white boy. Her pining for Bassett could well translate into the plethora of stories that young women and non-binary people of color have been through. In the aftermath of the break up, you become self-conscious over every interaction you had with them, questioning yourself and your self-worth — especially when they leave you for a white woman. You compare yourself to the surrounding Eurocentric beauty standards such as the blonde girl in “drivers license” or her own friends in “jealousy, jealousy.” Though the topic of identity isn’t so blatant throughout the rest of the album, the surrounding themes are in the same vein as “Your Best American Girl” by Mitski or “Boyish” by Japanese Breakfast, where the object of your affection is distracted and always unattainable.
There’s a big rush when Rodrigo’s singles shine, but the album stagnates when somber songs like “enough for you” and “happier” follow one after the other. They’re placeholders for reflection and longing, but they blend together well enough that these tracks could be mistaken as the same song. Even the delicate finger picked guitar in “enough for you” sounds like a background let-down song in a movie. The soft tunes have luster in the lyrical themes, but they aren’t emotionally charged sonically enough to be stand outs.
The album’s themes may be repetitive at times, but she makes it clear that these emotions and thoughts sincerely stayed on her mind. Overall, Rodrigo achieves a cohesive storyline. It might be because of the artists who paved the way for her, and the fact that relatability impacts a listener’s tolerance for heartbreak and yearning. It could be jolting at times to switch from a soft ballad of an “I could have done better” song to a hard “fuck you” song. But that’s also part of the thrill. While her songs weren’t intentionally made to be viral, they have the perfect formula to resonate with her target audience online. Young love is ruthless and a trip to go through, and to process the inevitable end. Unpredictability makes room for creativity, and Olivia Rodrigo ushers those traits in, even if she wants to be, like, messy in the process.
Many pandemic playlists made in 2020 were defined by grief, loneliness, and attempts to escape through music. These playlists leaned into nostalgia as we turned to our favorite artists to make it through each day, hour, and minute of quarantine.
Those bittersweet collections were necessary, but I feel like it’s time for new playlists marked by unadulterated joy as the U.S. continues to distribute COVID-19 vaccines and we imagine a post-pandemic future. I’m trading my favorite mournful crooners for artists like Lizzo and ABBA as I wait to qualify for my state’s vaccine rollout. Instead of songs meant to combat bad moods, I made this playlist with tunes meant only to elevate the good ones. We’re not entirely out of the woods yet, but these jams are for anyone who sees vaccination day(s) as a time of celebration. There’s something here for pre-appointment jitters, yearning for sweaty dance parties, and every emotion in between.
Scroll to the end to listen to Jab Jams on Spotify.
Listen to the entire playlist and follow The Interlude on Spotify.
CORRECTION: 3/19/21
A previous version of this article stated that “Put Your Records On” is by Corinne Bailey. The singer’s name is Corinne Bailey Rae, and the story has been updated.
Chloe x Halle’s slow and steady rise to stardom has been a blessing to witness. Since releasing their second studio album Ungodly Hour last June, the Beyoncé mentees cultivated a greater fanbase by performing new live arrangements and choreography for their latest bops every month for the greater part of a year. Their performances were almost always paired with chic, lavish costuming and entrancing production designs.
Now audiences feast on every scrap of meat the Bailey sisters provide, from stunning selfies to enthralling videos of them dancing. They not only provide content, they out-sing, out-style, and out-perform every single pop performer. The Bailey sisters notably used their home’s tennis court for the majority of their live performances due to the coronavirus. Back in July, Chloe Bailey told The Wall Street Journal that “making the transition to performing at home was natural for us,” adding “it reminded us of our YouTube days.” (Chloe x Halle was discovered by Beyoncé after their cover of “Pretty Hurts” went viral on YouTube in 2011.)
Though the sisters are now an ocean apart (Chloe is in L.A., Halle is filming The Little Mermaid in the U.K.), I decided to commemorate the fabulous time the pair spent together providing fans joy during lockdown. I rewatched all the live performances I could from their Ungodly Hour era to rank them from pretty iconic to most iconic. For the ranking, I considered a few factors, including the live performance’s quality, originality, and choreography. I also took into account each performance’s production design and the pair’s styling since they are known for their aesthetics.
Read on for the rankings of all of Chloe x Halle’s live performances from their Ungodly Hour era, ranked from pretty iconic to most iconic. Trust me, you’ll enjoy them all.
*Flash warning for this performance.
Chloe x Halle rarely miss, but in their first live performance of Ungodly Hour’s closing track “ROYL,” they struck out. The worst part is that it’s not even entirely their fault. The camera work behind this performance is entirely disorientating, as it seldom stops moving. It doesn’t help that they’re backed by incessant strobe lights. While the duo was attempting to channel their inner rock stars, they came off as trying way too hard — with Halle strumming on an electric guitar and Chloe on her knees at one point. Of course, their vocals were entirely on point, but that’s about the only good thing from this performance.
In a clear lip-sync performance, Chloe x Halle performed their classic simple, but cute “Do It” choreography for the class of 2020. Compared to other “Do It” performances on our list, this one lacks their typical charisma, energy, and cutting-edge style.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this performance — it has all the elements that make a signature Chloe x Halle performance. It falls into a formula that works for the sisters, with Chloe holding a microphone and Halle strumming a guitar behind a standing mic. While the performance is abundant in style, it’s lacking in its originality. Their live performance of “Tipsy” doesn’t stray too far from the original track, which makes it a safe play for the pair.
In one of the first major features of the Bailey family’s infamous tennis court, the sisters’ Today Show performance of “Do It” is infectious. Their vibrant contrasting costumes are modern and complimented well with their “pool” backdrop. The singers perform the choreography quite naturally here, which isn’t always the case.
This 90’s inspired performance is nothing short of fabulous. Not only do the pair look stunning sporting electrifying red leather outfits, but they sound other-worldly in this eerie rendition of “Do It.” The only reason why this performance is ranked so low is because both singers are held back. After all, they’re stuck behind instruments.
Throughout Chloe x Halle’s 2020 live performances, we don’t usually get to see the sisters ham it up with anyone other than each other. In their live performance of “Do It” for the GLAAD Awards, the duo played off the energy of three famous Drag Race alums — Naomi Smalls, Mayhem Miller, and Miss Vanjie. They’re all styled like members of Spice Girls, allowing for each performer to embrace and channel a new character — offering a new kind of fun.
Many Chloe x Halle fans are quick to comment on the sisters’ contrasting abilities: Chloe is the sultry powerhouse vocalist, and Halle is the softer, more ethereal vocalist; Chloe is a more natural dancer while Halle is stiffer. In their U.S. Open live performance, Halle truly shines and showcases her versatility as a performer by throwing herself into the choreography and exploring new riffs.
The duo receives extra points for branding their tennis court so well that they were asked to perform for the U.S. Open.
The singers’ recent performance received a lot of attention for its aesthetics and enchanting camera work. The gorgeous garden set design differs from their usual Ungodly Hour looks, which tend to be futuristic and grunge-inspired. Here, the sisters look like Winx Club Members brought to life with their soft, colorful make-up and pastel purple dresses.
The performance’s ethereal production design and costume design enhance the color and magic found in Chloe x Halle’s captivating runs, riffs, and harmonies.
It’s no question that “Do It” makes a frequent appearance in their live performances. After performing Ungodly Hour’s lead single so many times, it’s hard to make the fifth rendition feel new and exciting, but the pair achieve just that in their 2020 VMA Awards performance. The choreography here is electric, and the viewer can tell that the pair is feeding off the production design’s atmosphere. Bright strobe lights enhance the fun performance and allow the duo’s matching silver bodysuits to truly shine.
Chloe x Halle achieved here what they were attempting to do in the Global Goal performance. Decked out in temporary tattoos and adorned in black leather, the singers come alive and appear their most energetic in their Triller performance for Rock The Vote. The pair rock out like never before as they’re backed by a live band — an addition only seen in one other live performance on this list.
Yes, there is such a thing as two pretty best friends sitting in the same room. The duo looks as stylish, cool, and confident as ever in their sweatpants for NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert. Backed by a nine-person, all-female band, the sisters harmonize effortlessly on four different songs from Ungodly Hour — all while sitting on a table.
Chloe x Halle exhibits a certain texture in their voices that isn’t present in any other performance on this list. This new rendition of “Forgive Me” features a slower, more intense tempo that inspires the duo to belt with unnerving emotion, to the point where Chloe begins to tear up. There’s nothing playful about this performance — they embody pure rock glamour, draped in billowing black gowns embellished with silver studs, eyeing the viewer while singing directly into the camera. It’s everything you’re used to witnessing in a Chloe x Halle performance, and then some.
Former One Directioner Zayn’s musical journey has been riddled with landmines: racism, Islamophobia, criticism for choosing his mental health over One Direction, and a rocky relationship with his record label. Despite his absence from social media, radio stations, and late night television, Zayn has managed to maintain a loyal fanbase, with some of his fans carrying over from his boy band days and others joining for his solo ventures. I can only guess it’s because of his ambient production, soaring falsettos, and poetic lyricism. And, of course, the creative nods to his desi roots. That’s why I’ve stuck around.
Over the past few years, it became quite a chaotic game on Twitter to try and spot Zayn’s dyed hair, tattoos, or shadow in the background of Gigi Hadid’s photos. So when Nobody Is Listening, Zayn’s third album, was announced a week before it was set to be released, the news gave content-starved fans something to look forward to. Before midnight on Jan. 15, I sat impatiently waiting for Spotify to refresh so I could immerse myself in what I expected would be transcendent music. Too many years ago (in 2018), Zayn’s sophomore album, Icarus Falls, was released. While it was not a commercial success, it was a sentimental success for me. The album was inspired by the myth of Icarus, his melting wings, and his tragic descent. Though the 27-track album kept me sated for a while, I found myself wishing upon any flying object for a new Zayn era.
That’s where Nobody Is Listening comes in. The record comprises 11 breezy songs. The first, “Calamity,” is a hybrid of spoken word poetry and rap. If I focus hard enough, I can almost envision Zayn on stage at the Bowery Poetry Club, laying bare a fraction of his mind for the audience. He speaks of nostalgia, of choice, of the passing of time. He raps, “It’s do or die, I’m not goin’ willing / But when it’s time, wrap in white linen,” referencing the Islamic tradition of enshrouding the dead in white linen before burial. This line hit me more than I suppose it would’ve a non-Muslim listener. He repeats, over steady bass and piano befitting any black and white thriller film, that nobody, indeed, is listening to him.
“Outside” is a standout song for me. Co-written with Khalid, the track boasts Zayn’s sky-high falsetto and harmonized, layered vocals that practically make the listener (more specifically, me) levitate. The guitar and drum production is paired perfectly with lyrics that tell the story of a besotted Zayn who is giving his partner the choice to either finish things or continue where they left off. Possibly offering insight into his on-and-off light switch relationship with partner Gigi Hadid, the track feels intimate enough to where you feel guilty for listening to it but can’t resist. He sings, “Do I keep the dog or do you want him? / When I look at him, I think of you / The t-shirt that you’re wearing, that’s my favorite / Damn, I really thought that we would make it.”
Zayn has a history of producing silky, sensual, and sometimes completely NSFW bops. Exhibits A, B, and C are “Pillowtalk,” “TiO,” and “Let Me,” respectively. He continues this tradition with “Sweat” and “Windowsill” on Nobody Is Listening. With a drum break that hearkens back to Phil Collins’ iconic song “In The Air Tonight,” “Sweat’’ could get anyone’s heart rate going. The bop successfully brings a piece of the 80s into 2021. In “Windowsill,” English rapper Devlin’s verse meshes well with the song’s clock-like ticking and exciting drums, but I found the lyrical depth lacking. Devlin raps, “Your cigarettes on the windowsill / You left here from the night before / I take one, never light it up / Night comes and I want you more.” Even more disappointing, the chorus is absurd and comical. Zayn sings, “Cigarettes and fuckin’ on the windowsill / In my bed, yeah, tell me when you’re gettin’ here / Only thing I wanna know / Is how far away you are.” We all know this isn’t advised with Manhattan windows unless you want an audience. Despite the uninspired lyrics, “Windowsill” makes me want to do a little shimmy. At this rate, Zayn’s golden pipes will single-handedly be responsible for this century’s baby boom.
The short record’s penultimate track “Tightrope” is my favorite. It’s everything a love song should be: gentle, honest, swayable. Zayn doesn’t know what his future holds but he knows that his love for his partner will be a constant force in his life. The South Asian influences make this track special for me. Zayn samples “Chaudhvin Ka Chand Ho” by Mohammed Rafi — the voice of old Bollywood and my childhood — and creates an atmosphere that feels like a warm hug from an old friend. And what could be more romantic than expressing love in English and Urdu?
Having followed Zayn’s career closely since my teenage years, I care about how his anxiety made performing a nightmarish ritual, how he prefers to keep the lowest of low profiles, and how his life experiences and cultural background inform his artistic choices. I care because I can relate. In a way, I feel a sort of kinship with Zayn; his success as a diasporic desi makes me feel joy and hope and that feeling when you just want the best for someone else. He’s the little brown boy from Bradford who made it. And he makes me wonder if I’ll ever be the little brown girl who makes it.
Nobody Is Listening is a departure from Zayn’s usual dark, heavily produced pop tunes. It’s soft, vulnerable, and honest. It feels like a gift to everyone who stuck around all these years while Zayn figured out what type of artist he wanted to be and who he was making music for. It seems he’s decided to make music he’s proud of, no matter how long it takes. And that makes the wait worth it.
Laying in bed last night, I contemplated staying up to watch Ariana Grande’s music video for her new single, “Positions.” After clenching my jaw through a less grueling, final presidential debate, I was fatigued (and envious of the smarter people who just didn’t watch for their mental health). I spent the hour after the debate looking at jobs and bookmarking the ones I would apply to in the morning. Then I got ready for bed, ready to collapse. It was 11:48 — could I really make it through another 12 minutes to get a glimpse of Grande’s newest era?
Like most people, I watched TikTok to pass the time. Then, as the countdown began on YouTube, and I waited patiently this time, I wondered what I could possibly see — and then I saw it: The White House. Over the next two-plus minutes, I would watch Ariana Grande play different “positions” throughout the White House — from cook to President, in 1960s fabulous garb. While I saw people tweeting, “This is the president we want!” and “Yes, Jackie Onassis!” I thought to myself, is this really what we want?
Nowadays, I often look forward to content as a form of escapism. Almost any and everything that has been released in the last six months, I’ve enjoyed, including “WAP” by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, a song I didn’t like at first, but made myself enjoy after the tenth listen. Although, having to think about the election for one more second than I had to, made me wince. Grande’s single itself isn’t even political beyond its social politics. In “Positions,” Grande sings about her ability to be everything a lover could desire, someone who is sweet, assertive, and not just sexual, but sexually available. Sure, somewhere in that song is a think-piece about womanhood, but I think the content of the music video speaks to something greater. Grande meanders about the White House, without really doing anything except looking like she’s doing something, such as signing important documents or taking questions at a press briefing. Grande gets to benefit from the association of politics, without even really saying anything, as she cosplays as a woman with even more power. Worst of all, she does so embracing the aesthetics of the ’60s, separating the appearance from the period’s politics.
Ariana Grande has done a lot of good throughout her career, and especially the last few months. Her partnership with HeadCount — a national non-profit organization known to work with musicians to register young voters — during her Sweetener tour gained a lot of attention after breaking the organization’s record, by registering over 33,000 people to vote. Particularly during the pandemic, Grande ensured security for thousands by sending $500 to $1,000 dollars to individual fans, and supporting the COVID-19 fund, Project 100, which provided $1000 payments to 100,000 families greatly impacted by the pandemic. She also donated the net proceeds from her collaboration with Justin Bieber, “Stuck With U,” to the First Responders Children’s Foundation.
Despite all her generosity, she still made the strategic decision to release a music video like this mere hours after the final Presidential debate, indicating she grasps the benefit in capitalizing off this unruly, unrelenting political climate, and still goes for it. Celebrities nowadays are teetering on the line of being political, philanthropic, and capitalistic, but what they’re failing to realize is while they can have it all, their fans can’t afford to. I can’t afford to support a capitalistic system that continuously fails me, as I keep scrolling and re-writing hundreds of cover letters for jobs that often don’t provide benefits. No matter the good Grande’s done, she still greatly gains from the system, and we are all supposed to be happy to bear witness to a music video like “Positions;” one that doesn’t lull me out of reality’s misery, but jolts me right back into it.
I’m tired of pop stars thinking I’ll be content with their quasi-political creations, like we can’t see through the hypocrisy. Periods of turmoil, especially one like this, awaken a deep class divide, and if celebrities aren’t more careful and thoughtful about the content they create, they may need to prepare themselves to be in a better “position.”
The Chicks recently released a new album, Gaslighter, after a 14-year hiatus. A public critique in 2003 of President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq tanked their popularity and chart performance, which — despite the fact their next album won a few Grammys — knocked the band from the limelight. The long-awaited album picks up on much of what made The Chicks so good to begin with: fiddle runs and broken hearts. More than that, though, it connects with the band’s Southern roots while also building on the tension they’ve always had with some of the region’s cultural values.
The Chicks’ return to country music is something I can relate to. In figuring out I was gay, I realized there was something about southern culture that I couldn’t relate to — its fraternity rows filled with prodigal sons dressed in Vineyard Vines and weddings held at plantation houses where lawn jockeys line the aisle. More than that, though, it wasn’t who I wanted to be. In high school I tossed overboard every loose piece of Southern culture I could: style, sports (I even pretended not to like sweet tea and fried chicken for a while) and music, The Chicks included, went right along with it.
I’d loved The Chicks long before they were “The Chicks,” since before I can even remember. My parents told me stories of a toddler-sized me demanding “Tonight the Heartache’s on Me” be played on repeat. Still, my adolescent brain told me throwing them away would somehow correct whatever cognitive dissonance I had between what I truly liked and what I thought would make me feel right. I felt surrounded by people I couldn’t always relate to and decided the best option was to take whatever few things we all had in common and get rid of them. That way, I wouldn’t have to worry about all the nuances — they were them and I was me, and I was different.
Then, I rediscovered The Chicks in college. I’d somehow fully forgotten about them after ousting them from my Spotify back in high school. At school, I was away from home, a little lonely and feeling homesick, which, funnily enough, are the perfect makings of a country song. Playing The Chicks’ album Wide Open Spaces for the first time in years in my cramped little NYU dorm freshman year took me home. It showed me how strongly I was connected with the South and how much I really missed it.
Country music came out of strife. The Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, front porch rocking chairs and hot, unending sun all translated into twangy guitar- and banjo-laden tunes about forlorn lovers and broken hearts. More than that, though, a lot of academic work traces country music back to slavery and slave music. While the aforementioned front porch rocking chair may be the origin of white country music, the music and instruments came from Africa.
This is one of the reasons why country bands changing their names — The Dixie Chicks to The Chicks, Lady Antebellum to Lady A and the controversy that followed — is important. Besides the relatively obvious problems with naming your band after the pre-Civil War South, making money off music that can be traced back to slaves is problematic. The word “Dixie” comes from the song of the same name that functioned as a marching hymn for the Confederate Army. So The Dixie Chicks weren’t just hailing the South, but Confederacy, too. Bands changing their names away from terms rooted in racial injustice isn’t exactly the widespread legal and legislative change that was asked for, but it signals an awareness of how much of our culture originates in racism and slavery and the importance of trying to change that.
The Chicks were supposed to release Gaslighter in May, but postponed it due to all the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. The postponement gave them time to change their name, something they had wanted to do for a long time, after Black Lives Matter protests started across the country. The release of “March March,” inspired by the 2018 March for Our Lives, reintroduced them as The Chicks and continued the political critiques that hurt their popularity in the early aughts.
A large part of country music I’d never recognized until listening to Gaslighter is how generalized and hypothetical many country songs are, simply because Gaslighter isn’t this way at all. Country music is about love and loss, but in a general way. Patsy Cline sings about her forlorn heart in “Crazy,” Trisha Yearwood wishes she hadn’t mistreated the love of her life in “There Goes My Baby,” but are they really going through all this? Are the singers themselves really suffering all this lovelessness? It’s the spirit of these songs that make them work, their heart, but that doesn’t make them true.
Gaslighter, like the Chicks themselves, does not follow these rules. It’s an album about deep, personal loss, recognition of how many different ways that loss can affect you, and finally moving away from it and back towards a normal, if changed, life. When Natalie Maines, the band’s lead vocalist, sings about two moments in the arc of a now fallen apart relationship in “My Best Friend’s Weddings,” she isn’t just singing about anyone, and you know this. The way the song’s pared-down accompaniment goes with the beat of her voice reveals to the audience how personal it is.
“Set Me Free” isn’t a song about any broken-hearted wife begging for her lover to just let her go, it’s about Maines’ struggles with her divorce, lyrics like “Decency would be for you to sign and release me” referencing her husband’s all but refusal to sign divorce papers. You can hear it in how bare her voice is. She stumbles a bit, she doesn’t enunciate. Her voice ripples at the crescendo of each chorus. Singing this song isn’t about making a record, it’s about processing and releasing emotions. It’s personal, specific, with lyrics aching for her husband to “sign and release” her from their marriage.
More than anything, the truth in Gaslighter comes through in how the album touches on the same subjects many times in slightly changed ways. The way Maines sings to her sons in “Young Man” goes with how she’s disappointed in the example her husband has set for them in “Sleep at Night.” In the song “Gaslighter,” Maines tells her husband she knows “exactly what [he] did on [her] boat”, a topic she goes more into later in “Tights on My Boat.” This is such a 180-degree flip from early, one-off songs like “Cold Day in July,” and “Once You’ve Loved Somebody” that covered similar topics from another standpoint, one of observation as opposed to experience. Gaslighter is an album that looks back on all the subjects the band used to sing on so easily and mulls on the fact that none of these subjects are so easy anymore.
I understand why the Chicks left for so long. They opened the door in the early 2000s for a new kind of country music, a torch carried now by artists like Kacey Musgraves, Yola, Orville Peck, and Lil Nas X. The Chicks make music for people stuck in whatever kind of space there is in knowing you don’t belong in the South and still somehow, inexplicably, knowing you don’t want to leave it behind.
In less than 24 hours, the “WAP” music video — a collaboration between two rap powerhouses Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B — has garnered over ten million views. The song’s virality comes as no surprise with lines like “I spit on his mic and now he’s tryna sign me,” and the numerous celebrity cameos throughout from the likes of Normani and Rosalia. In “WAP,” Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion let you know the cost of pussy power, which includes college tuition and good credit scores. Amazing taste, ladies.
In the music video, the rappers run around in a wacky mansion filled with voluptuous statues — ones that would make the Ancient Greeks’ reconsider their portrayal of beauty in sculptures. In one shot, the platinum-selling entertainers pull the classic girl-on-girl aerial shot as they’re surrounded by snakes of all sizes, shapes, and colors. Beyond a snake’s evident phallic representations which Cardi B gives into as she spits on the third verse, “Not a garter snake, I need a king cobra,” serpents symbolize female sexuality in many cultures. This scene was a cultural reset. It marks the revival of homoerotic visuals between two powerful musicians, most notably last seen in Shakira’s collaborations with Beyoncé and Rihanna in “Beautiful Liar” and “Can’t Remember to Forget You.” The lack of an overt male gaze makes way for fun euphemisms of female desire like the majestic felines curled in every corner whose fur patterns are echoed in Cardi B’s iconic leopard print outfit or Megan Thee Stallion’s beautiful tiger-striped wig.
The WAP video is clearly inspired by Lil Kim’s legacy of talent, hypersexuality, and colorful hair. Cardi B’s golden pasties filling up the frame seems like a visual nod to Lil Kim’s historic 1999 MTV Music Video Awards look or her raunchy “How Many Licks” music video. The Willy Wonka-esque themes of WAP remind me of the effervescent coolness of the neon sets in her 1997 single “Crush On You” where the former Junior M.A.F.I.A. member smoothly declares her sexual affections to the person she desires in revealing color-coordinated outfits.
And although the celebrities featured in WAP didn’t speak, it allowed me to bask in the nostalgia of seeing the “Ladies Night” music video for the first time, which is one of the most legendary female rap collaborations. In a society that constantly likes to pit women against each other for opportunities and men, I thoroughly enjoy seeing the current vanguard of female artists coming together to captivate audiences in a music video that is currently at the top of YouTube’s trending list.
The celebration of successful women in this collaboration is especially refreshing to witness after the public reaction to Megan Thee Stallion’s shooting, which revealed the underlying problems of misogynoir that continue to proliferate not only in the entertainment industry, but in everyday life. After a tearful return to social media, Megan Thee Stallion declared that the incident taught her who to trust and who not to trust, and that she would continue to focus on her music, well-being and her fan base. With a Variety Magazine cover and a new spot as Revlon’s Global Ambassador, and now dropping a single that shot to the top of the US iTunes charts, Megan Thee Stallion is seeing the break of dawn after the darkest hour.