Olivia Dean 于 2025 年推出的专辑《The Art of Loving》一反她 2023 年专辑《Messy》的风格：从适合电台播放、轻快振奋的《Nice to Each Other》，到充满 60 年代末 Dionne Warwick 式灵魂乐风格的《So Easy (To Fall In Love)》，Dean 在《The Art of Loving》中自如地游走于 R&B 和流行乐之间，散发出笃定与从容。“你可以随心所欲地创作，没有任何规则，这是感觉非常自由。”她告诉 Apple Music。

正如 Dean 所形容的那样，《The Art of Loving》中的创作“真实、新鲜又坦诚”，听起来简单纯粹。专辑的核心主题“多重形态的爱”也顺其自然地浮现：“我很快就定下了专辑标题。我一直对爱很着迷。每个人在生活中都会追寻爱，无论是友情、亲情还是爱情。但其实我们从未被教导如何去爱，学校里没有关于爱的课程，这很神奇，似乎我们天生就应该知道如何去爱。所以我想更仔细地审视它，思考它对我的意义以及爱的艺术，也就是如何真正地去爱一个人。”

专辑以热门单曲《Nice to Each Other》开场，这首歌是 Dean 的不二之选：“完成它的那一刻，我就知道它会是开场曲。它带有 Fleetwood Mac 式的吉他氛围，俏皮又暧昧。”专辑中或许也有心碎和伤感的瞬间，但 Dean 留给听众的始终是她快乐的心境。“我怎么可能不快乐呢？”她说。“我最近在思考巡演的事，包括我要在现场唱什么，我希望它是轻松愉快的。所以我一直在朝着快乐的方向前进。”

承接“时代”巡演的光辉余韵，为台前幕后的双轨生活抽丝剥茧。

Mariah Carey is Here For It All. The pop icon announced the title and release date of her 16th album on Monday morning (July 21), revealing that the LP fans have been calling “MC16” will drop on Sept. 26. The news came in a brief Instagram video in which MC flipped her hair back and walked slowly in shiny black leather high-heeled boots and black cat suit in front of a giant mural of herself, with the album title spelled out over and over in black and white behind her.
“Featuring the singles "Type Dangerous," and "Sugar Sweet," the album marks Mariah's first studio album in 7 years. The project is a rich, genre-blending body of work that pays tribute to every era of Mariah that fans know and love, while introducing new collaborators and modern influences that allow the music to seamlessly span generations.”

“我相信怪人才能生存”（I believe the weirdest ones survive），Doja Cat 在《Stranger》中唱道。这句话既概括了她难以捉摸的音乐轨迹，也为那些在爱情中格格不入的人注入了一支强心剂。凭借 2021 年风靡全球的第三张专辑《Planet Her》，Doja Cat 完成了从怪咖网红到流行说唱明星的华丽进化。某种程度上，这位本名为 Amala Dlamini 的音乐人一向喜欢逆风而行：她在 2023 年初宣布将告别流行音乐，几个月后的第四张专辑《Scarlet》带来了锋利硬朗的作品，展示了她强大的说唱功底，也摆脱了她曾取得主流成功的既定模式。然而，2024 年她开始构思第五张专辑时，又转变了思路。“我发现我喜欢谈论爱。”Doja 告诉 Apple Music，“而且我也认为，音乐是表达各种形式的爱的绝佳方式。”

在这张《Vie》（法语意为“生活”，也谐音罗马数字“五”）中，Doja 驾着 DeLorean 汽车带来了全新的声音和风格。她巧妙地投身于 80 年代的颓废美学，用跳跃的鼓机、强劲的贝斯线条和萨克斯独奏片段，为讲述爱意与迷恋的歌曲添彩。她在《AAAHH MEN!》中向 Queen 致敬，歌颂男人所带来的令人疯狂、沮丧又难以抗拒的快感；主打单曲《Jealous Type》则将新杰克摇摆曲风带入 2020 年代。此外，她所说的“80 年代俗气浪漫旋律”也促成了她与流行乐坛复古制作大师 Jack Antonoff 的首次合作。“这张专辑既探讨了私人话题，又创造了新事物，还让我认识了新朋友。这一切都水到渠成。”

与前作相比，《Vie》更加俏皮，沉浸在夸张有趣的氛围与辛辣的主题中。歌曲《Silly! Fun!》回归迷离晕眩的 R&B 氛围，谈论对浪漫的想象，而歌词写道“我知道生个孩子会很开心/我们太傻了 在拉斯维加斯结婚”（I know it could be a blast to just pop out a baby/We’re so very silly, getting married in Vegas），蜜月几乎在开始时就结束了。不过，这并不意味着这张专辑缺乏深度。“其实它的灵感源于我每周两次的心理治疗，我了解了人类的各种生存体验，以及大脑如何无意识、有意识地运作。”与此同时，她也精进了歌唱技术，《Jealous Type》结尾的处理便证明了这一点。“我觉得自己可以做到许多以前做不到的事情。无论我最初是从什么起步的，这张专辑展现了我如今更进化、更成熟的状态。”

除了光鲜亮丽的浪漫，爱还以其他方式呈现。“我认为创造力本身就是爱。”Doja 说道，“为爱你会承担很多风险。当音乐人热爱自己的工作时，有时会经历不适甚至恐惧。但没关系，因为你的热爱胜过一切。”

Man's Best Friend is the latest album from multi-hyphenate global popstar Sabrina Carpenter. Coming off her GRAMMY winning project Short n' Sweet & numerous multi-platinum singles added to her resume.

來自內在的召喚，不為誰的凝視而定義
She is not made to please the gaze.
She is made to echo the voice within.
Sinners in the garden of The Seven Deadly sins,
This is your Mommy!
暌违六年！华语流行天后蔡依林重磅来袭，第15张全新专辑《Pleasure》即将在6月跟大家见面，新专辑同名单曲〈Pleasure〉更将于5/28抢先推出。透过全新专辑中的11首歌曲，探讨各种“欲望”的面貌，蔡依林这回也担纲专辑制作人，参与专辑内大部分的词曲创作。
全新专辑《Pleasure》透过文学戏剧中常探讨的“七宗罪”去挖掘“欲望”的面貌，蔡依林想强调“欲望不是原罪”，并在首波释出的概念视觉中，头顶着赤蛇缠绕的“美杜莎欲望桂冠”搭配直击人心的灵魂凝视，邀请大家加入这场Pleasure探索之旅。在东、西方的神话故事中，女娲、美杜莎皆以蛇做为形象，分别展现不同的女性力量，让Jolin认为非常适合诠释“Pleasure”的主题，也是对自己内在欲望的灵魂提问。
蔡依林这回担纲专辑制作人，参与专辑内大部分的词曲创作，她说：“之前等合适的歌词卡关了两三年，有天突然想说不然我来试试看，写了第一首歌后觉得很有成就感，就愈写愈多首，一写完就发给经纪人看。”她笑称歌词创作犹如自我疗愈，专辑制作过程也因为求好心切的个性，其中一首歌的编曲就改了34个版本，坦言自己是属于不断自我推翻又重建的制作人，最后也分享心情“整个制作过程就是我的Pleasure旅程，愉悦不等于极致的快乐，会先感受到痛苦，获得满足之后又感受到自负，又再回到内心的自我怀疑，不断轮回。”

The cover art for <i>Virgin</i>—an X-ray of a pelvis with a visible IUD—was a far cry from that of Lorde’s bright, beachy third album, 2021’s <i>Solar Power</i>, whose sun-soaked, jasmine-scented songs drew from Laurel Canyon folk and Y2K soft rock. Looking back, that album’s free-spirited imagery was a bit idealistic—a projection of how the New Zealand native turned New Yorker wished she could be. Her fourth album, as she told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, is a portrait of the 28-year-old singer as she is, without edits or apologies: “Kind of like a photo of yourself that you don’t love, but captures something true about you.”

The resulting songs, written between 2023 and 2025, are forthcoming and visceral, trading <i>Solar Power</i>’s New Age-chill for beats you can feel in your gut. (It’s her first album since her 2013 debut not co-written and -produced by Jack Antonoff; instead, she shared production duties with the LA-based electronic musician Jim-E Stack.) Surrealist introspection gives way to throbbing bass on opening track “Hammer,” where a walk down Canal Street ripples with psychedelic visions. “I had just come off my birth control, and I could not believe how I was feeling,” Lorde told Lowe about the song’s inception. “Everything was pure possibility. That first sound feels like it’s coming from a very guttural place in the body. My sister said, ‘It sounds like it’s coming from your womb.’”

Cue the aura readings, 3 am cigarettes, broken mirrors, pregnancy tests, ego death. On “Man of the Year” and “Favourite Daughter,” questions beget more questions on the subject of what it means to be a woman, and moreover, a woman who’s now been famous for nearly half her life. The latter is at once a love letter to her mother and a meditation on being a teenager thrust into global pop stardom. “There’s been this dynamic for the last 10 to 12 years—and then further back—of wanting so badly to be loved, and to get this approval, and to be the favorite,” she told Lowe. “And it was really moving to me how, even as I was singing this song about my foremost idol and the person who I think is the most amazing in the world, I was also singing about what a crazy thing it is to have happened to you, what happened to me at 16.”

Now the superstar finds freedom in the freefall: “I’ve been up on the pedestal/But tonight I just want to fall,” she sings on the shuffling “Shapeshifter.” “I still don’t know what happens when you put out a record that is like this,” she admitted about the unfiltered portrait <i>Virgin</i> presents. But in its full transparency, she arrives at something like peace.