Believe or not, we're half way through 2020! And while this year has been a non-stop cavalcade of horrors, there has been no shortage of good music to dull the pain. It's never easy to pull together a mid-year list (some of these albums will, no doubt, wear out their welcome by December), but I really wanted to celebrate the heroes that were brave enough to kick off new eras in the middle of a global...

Dua Lipa is releasing "Hallucinate" as the fourth single from Future Nostalgia. The UK pop star unveiled the cover art (below) and provided us with a date. Given that the song has already been released as part of the album, I'm guessing that July 10 refers to the video release date or perhaps a new single edit. In any case, something is coming next week! Personally, I prefer "Levitating" — by the...

One of the few fun things to happen in 2020 is the renaissance of Britney Spears' "Mood Ring," a four-year-old Japanese bonus track from Glory. Britney decided to give it a belated streaming release and the song unexpectedly topped iTunes and spawned a club-conquering remix package. That got me thinking about Kylie Minogue's Aphrodite. The dreamy pop opus, which turns 10 this week, houses two of the...

Jessie Ware takes us on a guided tour of club history on What's Your Pleasure? (out now). The much-loved Brit dabbles in dreamy disco, '80s funk and '90s club culture on her 4th album, which isn't an entirely unique approach. Other artists have turned to the dance floors of yore for inspiration with varying degrees of success. What makes this such a triumph is the attention to detail. There isn't an...

Well, here's some exciting news! Dua Lipa's management company is planning to approach Madonna for a collaboration. Tap Music co-founders Ben Mawson and Ed Millett spoke to Music Week about their client's breakout year and long-time obsession with the Queen of Pop. "[Dua's] definitely the complete pop star and obviously [Future Nostalgia] is heavily influenced by Madonna," Mawson said, before dropping...

Remember when Beyoncé blessed us with The Lion King: The Gift, a love letter to Africa inspired by the animated classic, and most of you slept on it? Well, Queen Bey is about to slap the sleep right out of you. The all-conquering hitmaker broke the internet (again) last night by dropping the trailer of BLACK IS KING — a new film premiering exclusively on Disney Plus on July 31. The blockbuster,...

One of the nicest things to happen in 2020 (yes, there have been a couple of not-entirely-horrible moments) is the belated success of Britney Spears' "Mood Ring." Glory's Japanese bonus track reached number one on iTunes and even got a Pride-friendly remix package. That got me thinking about another immaculate Britney bonus track — "Get Back" from 2007's seminal Blackout. Produced by Danja and Jim...

Babyteeth heralds the arrival of a potent, new voice in world cinema. Shannon Murphy's big-screen directorial debut is nuanced and deceptively radical. She takes a familiar trope — a dying teen falling in love — and then molds it into something quite different by removing all of the sap. What remains is a moving snapshot of an already-dysfunctional family crumbling under the weight of pain. Only,...

A slow-burn hit is one thing, going viral with a song first released in 2015 is something else entirely. However, that's the situation Melanie Martinez finds herself in with "Play Date." The punchy pop anthem, which started life as a bonus track on the digital edition of Cry Baby, exploded out of the blue in April after being embraced by TikTok users. "Play Date" has now amassed more than 80 million...

Selena Gomez first started tinkering away at the followup up to Revival in 2016. The superstar converted a tourbus into a mobile studio and invited along a group of songwriters and producers to record demos between concerts. Unfortunately, life got in the way and they were never released (with the exception of "Feel Me"). Since then, Selena has experimented with different sounds on a steady stream...

JoJo is back with the best album of her career, and she made it on her own terms. Good To Know is a throwback not only to the raw emotion of her mixtapes, but also to a time when R&B was more about setting a mood and telling a story than squeezing a couple of singles between studio offcuts. Over the course of 9 songs on the standard edition (there are 11 on the physical release), the 29-year-old takes...

After releasing two albums and half a dozen stand-alone singles in 2019, Kim Petras would be forgiven taking it easy this year. But the German pop star doesn't have an off-switch. Instead, she kicked off 2020 by bidding adieu to the Clarity era with "Reminds Me" and just-released "Malibu" as the first taste of her next project. A bright and breezy pop anthem that evokes vintage Madonna and Prince,...