143 Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2024 Katy Perry When she skyrocketed to stardom at the tail end of the 2000s, Katy Perry was a girl-next-door gone wild: dancing on tables, kissing cherry-Chapstick-ed strangers, and shooting whipped cream out of her sparkly bustier. Her trademark hits represented pop as pure escapism—fun and frivolous, with production from the era’s biggest hitmakers (Max Martin, Stargate, Dr. Luke). Sixteen years after her breakthrough with 2008’s “I Kissed a Girl,” the era from which Perry emerged has cycled back into fashion as a nostalgic trend. But on her sixth album (not including her contemporary Christian record as Katy Hudson), named for her angel number—and for how people typed “I love you” back in the pager era—the 39-year-old singer is focused on the present. “When I was going through [2008 debut album] One of the Boys , it was like, ‘Oh my god, hold on to this ride!’” Perry tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, tracing the arc of her career as it pertains to her emotional lif
For Cryin' Out Loud! Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2024 FINNEAS “I think I am a songwriter first, which is always how I’ve felt about myself,” FINNEAS tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. The 27-year-old has already made his name as a producer through his chart-dominating, award-accruing work with his sister Billie Eilish. But when he was finished with his workload for 2023, which included working on Eilish’s blockbuster album HIT ME HARD AND SOFT and scoring the Apple TV+ show Disclaimer , he wanted to, as he put it, “dive back into my stuff.” So he went to work in a new space—a studio outside his home laboratory—surrounded by musicians with whom he felt comfortable feeling out new material, flexing his muscles as a producer while also testing out his songwriting chops. That collaborative ease is audible on For Cryin’ Out Loud! , an inviting album that combines soft rock’s slickness and indie’s choppy guitars with unexpected twists like the jittery epilogue to the chilled-out sophisti-pop f