(via Shutterstock)
You want music that makes you leap with joy right? Right. But sometimes a little ragey edge, depending on your mood is necessary. Of course.
And that at other times, you wany epic cinematic sensations or club-ready anthems.
We are complicated, contrary and changeable beings and thankfully there are artists for every one of those moments and songs to soundtrack them.
We are very lucky indeed …
“Joy” by RAYE, Amma, Absolutely
(courtesy Wikipedia)
Ever since I heard “Click Clack Symphony” earlier this year and LOVED it, RAYE has been on a near endless high rotation on my playlists.
Her music is a joy as well being lyrically honest and heart-on-sleeve vulnerable, and it’s so exciting that she’s now released an actual song called “Joy”, recorded with her actual sisters Amma and Absolutely and taken from her 2026 album This Album May Contain Hope.
The song more than lives up to its title, a gloriously upbeat slice of exuberantly joyous pop that celebrates the liberatingly giddy sense of feeling happy and content, but it’s also careful to acknowledge what it is like to not feel that too.
It’s the emotional honesty of RAYE that hits home and “Joy” is reassuringly upfront about the fact that dawn is always preceded by the darkness and that the two do in fact go together, something that you will celebrate with a moved soul and dancing feet as you listen repeatedly, and you will listen repeatedly, to this beautifully uplifting and truthful song.
“I LIKE IT” by Sam Quealy + The Bloody Beetroots
(courtesy YouTube)
There’s an exuberant power to all the songs released by Australian singer-songwriter-dancer who office notes “left her home in Australia [at age 18] and relocated to Paris to pursue a career as a professional cabaret dancer”.
Clearly made of talent at a young age, Quealy has used it well, pumping out what office rightly terms “dystopian club bangers” at an impressively rapid rate (see this year’s album Jawbreaker), and her latest get-up-and-dance blockbuster track is “I LIKE IT”, and yes, the capitalization does reflect the intensity and emphatic nature o the song, is very much part of the musical family.
A collaboration with Italian electronic artists The Bloody Beetroots, the song is a powerhouse of intense danceability which ricochets across your brain, bounces into your soul and gets you on the dancefloor before you’re even aware you’re there.
It’s a gloriously muscular piece of pop euphoria that combines grit, stellar vocal acrobats and emotiveness and a willingness to combine dark and light into the one brilliantly listenable song that won’t just leave a mark – it will leave an IMPRESSION.
“Bass Persuades” by MILEY
(courtesy official MILEY Instagram)
If ever there was a posterchild for someone who was a child star and somehow emerged at the other end of a process which has scarred many people looking even more talented and in control of the zeitgeist, it has to be Miley Cyrus, newly known by her capitalised mononym, MILEY.
She has produced a succession of addictively clever, musically sophisticated albums that sound fresh and original and very much the work of a singular focused talent while still possessing the kind of mass appeal that most one-of-a-kind pop stars would (non-lethally, naturally) kill for.
Her latest album, Bass Persuades, is out now, led by the title track itself which is trademark out-there experimentation and seductive fun, though, as has been noted in a number of reviews, it’s not particularly bass heavy.
Whatever the relative merits of the album as a whole, and they are still being hotly debated a mere week after its release, the lead song from MILEY’s new album is a super catchy song that captures your attention, holds it and refuses to let go which frankly, is a pretty good thing to happen with any pop song.
“gloria!” by hemlocke springs
(courtesy Spotify)
Oh good lord but I LOVE the quirky pop of hemlock springs!
She feels like Kate Bush for the 2020s, an artist, who though she is most definitely not British, channels all the glories and eccentricities of pop which refuses to play by the usual rules while being manifestly and repeatedly listenable.
Her latest pop gem is “gloria!”, a cinematically lush, bouncy beat-rich track surges with a lightness of bearing as it lyrically documents what it’s like to face enemies and challenges and emerge triumphant, albeit with a sizeable amount of encouragement and support.
It’s an absolute joy to listen to, full of the singer’s emotionally resonant whimsicality which proves once again that you can playful as hell and still have something truly worthwhile to say.
“Ants” by K.Flay
(courtesy YouTube)
Kristine Meredith Flaherty or K.Flay as she is known to her legion of devoted fans is a singer-songwriter, musician and rapper who delights in making music that has real presence and power.
No gently idling pop for this super talented artist who likes to inject swagger, menace and darkly intense emotions into her gritty pop sings which take no prisoners and apologise not at all for that.
Her latest songs “Ants” is everything you could ask for from K.Flay with Blurred Culture sizing up the gloriously full-bore massiveness of this song quite beautifully.
‘Ants’ is a fucking banger. There’s an almost overwhelming energy to the track, and K.Flay attacks it with the kind of wonderfully spastic intensity that immediately reminded me why I became a fan in the first place. Listening to it brought me back to the first time I saw her perform live years ago, when that same restless physicality and barely contained energy seemed to come pouring out of her.
And ‘Ants’ needs that energy because underneath all of that aggression is a song about power, and what happens to the people unfortunate enough to be standing underneath it.
Aggro meets thoughtfulness meets pure pop bliss in a track that delivers everything you could ask for, and then some.
SONGS, SONGS AND MORE SONGS EXTRA!
Ever wondered how many ways you can party? Wonder no more because Aussie pop wunderkind Troye Sivan has the answer and it’s every bit as much fun as you might imagine …