Lil Nas X has transcended to new levels of queer cowboy greatness with his latest performance, a soulful rendition of Dolly Parton’s 1973 classic song, “Jolene.” In celebration of his debut album, Montero, Lil Nas took over BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge with a small band and a flower-adorned mic stand to work some country magic. His cover of “Jolene” invokes the same Western profundity of his first hit, “Old Town Road,” but with a newfound sense of depth and self-awareness. As he sings “Jolene”’s lyrical tale...

    Becoming a mother has been long identified as a woman’s main “role” amongst patriarchs, but motherhood is certainly not for everyone, nor does it come easy to many. In a video for Vogue, Musician Grimes, 33, challenged the expected role of the “mother” when she revealed that her 16-month-old son X Æ A-Xii, X for short, with Elon Musk, calls her by her first name.    Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, told the camera: Being a mother feels weird to say. For some reason I don’t Identify...

After a year of cancelled music festivals and travel, musicians and attendees of the Bottlerock Napa Valley Music Festival were thrilled to drink wine together, dance together and enjoy a little bit of normalcy for three days from Sept 3-5.  This was the first music festival/live music event I personally attended since before the pandemic and I was not the only one.  I am one of those people who covers live music regularly. For the past couple of years I have had the privilege of covering...

Halsey mastered dreamy indie-pop on their 2015 debut album Badlands, delivered club-ready jams on 2017’s hopeless fountain kingdom, and demonstrated a voracious musical appetite with detours into baroque pop, mainstream rock, and country on 2020’s Manic. Now, bolstered by production from Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Halsey has conquered the murky, haunting terrain of industrial rock in an album reflecting nothing less than the horrors and desperate joys of pregnancy and childbirth on her latest release,  If I Can’t Have Love, I...

With her latest release Lady Gaga has given us new reasons to dance.The artist, known for her techno-pop music released a remixed version of her 6th studio album Chromatica, released in 2020. With the help of many young artists, mainly from hyperpop and electro background, she has reinvented her own universe with this new album Dawn of Chromatica released on September 3rd. In April 2021, producer BloodPop, who had already worked on Chromatica, announced that a remixed version was on the way by asking what artists...

    After her father filed to end her conservatorship, 39 year old Britney Spears, is finally engaged to long-term boyfriend Sam Aghari.  The beloved pop princess revealed her engagement with a video on Instagram of her and Sam flaunting her $70k engagement ring, designed by Forever Diamonds New York, with a hidden message engraved.    The engagement has been responded to with an abundance of joyful congratulations from fans all over Instagram and Twitter.  The 13-year conservatorship, which followed Britney’s infamous public meltdown in 2008, controlled both the singer’s personal...

Since their debut in 2019, Amyl and the Sniffers have embodied everything that it means to be punk. The group is known for their insane live shows, outrageous style and fresh music; they are making waves in the punk scene. Their new album, Comfort to Me, out Sept. 10 is proof that nothing, not even 2020, can hold them back.  BUST sat down with Amy Taylor, the lead singer, and talked about how she found herself in the music industry, how she dealt with the lockdown,...

Janet Jackson took to social media on Monday to tease the release of Janet, a two-part documentary about her life that will air on both Lifetime and A&E. Slated for a January 2022 release, the film will coincide with the 40th anniversary of her first album, Janet Jackson (1982). It also follows the addition of her music to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry earlier this year, an honor bestowed annually to 25 recordings that express the “diversity of American recorded sound heritage.”   “When I was...

L'RAIN Fatigue  (Mexican Summer) On her sophomore album, experimental multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek mixes moods and switches styles with chaotic energy. While spanning different genres, the overarching sound is rich and dense with unexpected tone shifts, sudden stops, layered loops, audio clips, and samples. On “Find It,” fuzzy dreampop fades into traditional gospel and ends in a cacophonic chorus. A child’s handclap game adds rhythmic flourishes to the smooth R&B landscape of “Suck Teeth.” A voicemail from her late mother is tucked away under delicate fingerpicked guitar on “Blame...

Angel Haze is the perfect interview subject — honest, open, and eager to share her thoughts and creations with the world. I start off the interview with one of the first questions I like to ask all the folk I interview: what are your pronouns? “I don't have any, I mean, you can call me anything you fucking want, I really don’t subscribe, you know what I’m saying?” Even through a ZOOM screen, the rapper’s charisma and personality are palpable. Released independently, it’s been almost six...