I don’t know if it was the lazy Texas sunset keeping me company, starting to feel the beautiful monotonous rhythm of feeling settled in a new city, or the overall, universal weighted feeling of being on the precipice of slowly crawling out of this pandemic, but I felt instantly emotional as soon as I turned on Friends In The Corner, the latest EP from Foxes.

I remember when the superstar released 1989—a ground-breaking album that replaced the comfortable image we collectively held of the beach-waved country singer with a sleek-bobbed pop star that took the genre to its most crafted fringes.

Recently featured as Billboard Pride’s Artist of the Month and on Spotify’s physical billboard on 12th Ave as you head into Nashville’s downtown, Joy Oladokun is not only an artist to watch, but one that possesses a voice and perspective that gracefully demands to be listened to. In a time of sleekly-branded pop artists overly focused on image rather than on authenticity, Oladokun is truth cutting through corporate soundwaves.

EDM is simultaneously one of the most popular genres of our time and one of the most difficult genres to gain recognition on playlists. It has partially become synonymous with the wider genre of pop—but why do green and mid-level EDM artists have trouble getting their music placed on these lists? The pandemic hasn’t had a significant impact on the streaming aspect of EDM music positively or negatively. But what can rising EDM artists be doing during this unique, prolonged moment?

[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Monica Moser of Streaming Promotions.] Playlists have evolved from a music lover’s pastime to an essential area of attention for all artists & groups in 2020. Some have even posited in recent years that they are the “new radio,” though their function is different and the strategy to secure them is more elusive. Some fear that they are changing the very way we write songs and that playlists are destroying the album format. But how did we get here?

With a sweat towel in one hand and a mic in the other, LÉON charmingly lamented about “being hungover in this heat though…” in a stuffy, crowded, & sold-out Basement East. NASHVILLE, TN- LÉON ended her ‘You and I’ World Tour in Nashville last week and even though it was hot as can be, it did not affect her performance (or the reception of it) one bit. If anything, it connected her to the audience further as we shared in a sweaty celebration of emotive anthems and vulnerable ballads. Her stage

NASHVILLE, TN- Yoke Lore is a solo project of Adrian Galvin, formerly a member of Walk The Moon. His infectious brand of indie-pop which blends folk, pop and electronic has garnered a lot of attention, including from Taylor Swift herself as he happened to make her “Songs Taylor Loves” playlist. He released his much-anticipated EP Meditations earlier this year, and has also been steadily releasing even more new music including his latest single “Dead Ringer” (which was released alongside a remix

Kate Vogel’s debut “Reasons to Stay” is one of those songs that makes you drop everything. It’s the kind of song that unintentionally becomes universally felt by originating from an individual experience. In the second verse she sings “I don’t wanna die I just don’t wanna live.” No matter what level of heaviness in the past you’ve sunken into, whether it’s a mere dip or you’ve found yourself at the very bottom, you know this feeling of being too tired to keep fighting.

How much of a responsibility do artists have in shaping the lives of their listeners? As an artist, there’s nothing more important than not caging your feelings and expressing authentically what’s inside of you. But artistry is not inward and private. It’s external, effective, and permeating. There has to come a point where your audience’s reception to your work is put into consideration.

“Sometimes I gotta choke back the pain when I’m speaking on the black folks, ’cause I recall a day when it wasn’t such a thing as to be woke….Did God put this burden on me? To be the scarred reflection of the things they can’t see.” In 2018–2019 America we’re experiencing the effects of a previous time period when our acceptance and progressiveness was hasty and, for lack of a better term, half-assed.