Hearing Things

1 week ago | hearingthings.co | Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

I love big pop stars, in part, because of the spectacle. I’ll go to shows in dank warehouses or dusty basements until the day is long, but given the opportunity (read: a ticket that is cheap or free), I will even see massive pop tours by artists whose music I don’t particularly like. I’m like a baby or a bird, simply enamored with big-ass productions and flashing lights.

1 week ago | hearingthings.co | Dylan Green

Credit History is an interview series where we ask our favorite artists to comb through their credit card statements and tell us about what they bought, from the necessary to the frivolous to the outlandish. “I’m Mr. HaveMyWay, and you can’t do nothin’ ‘bout it!,” Niontay says in his thick Florida twang near the beginning of his latest album Fada<3of$ (pronounced “For the love of money”). For the Brooklyn-based rapper-producer, that’s as much a statement about his musical range as it is his luck.

1 week ago | hearingthings.co | Andy Cush

Hello and welcome to the latest installment of Five Albums, the weekly feature for paid Hearing Things subscribers in which we recommend you the new records from across genres that you need to hear. As music journalists, the question we get most often from friends is how to stay on top of what’s new and cool. This is our attempt to provide a practical answer.

2 weeks ago | hearingthings.co | Ryan Dombal

Yes, the current Brat arena tour is a well-earned victory lap. But because we’re talking about Charli XCX, one of the most self-aware pop stars of the last 15 years, it’s also more than a victory lap. It’s an interrogation of what a victory lap can mean in the culture at large. It’s a show that both contemplates and shakes its ass at the idea of oversaturation, of something being played out.

2 weeks ago | hearingthings.co | Jill Mapes |Jillian Mapes

Back in October, the Nashville-based musician Sophie Allison—who makes beautiful and brooding indie rock as Soccer Mommy—became the envy of every Stardew Valley fan when she got her own avatar in the video game’s signature SNES style. It was a must if she was going to release “Abigail,” a writing-exercise-turned-single inspired by her preferred love interest—a purple-haired weeb hottie—in the wildly popular farm sim.