Rina Sawayama: The Pop Star Who Rewrote British Music Rules
Rina Sawayama made one of the most acclaimed British albums of its year, yet was told she was not British enough to be nominated for the Mercury Prize or the Brit Awards, despite living in the UK sinc...
2 Jul 21min
Rihanna: From Barbados Street Stall to Billionaire Fenty Empire
As a teenager in St. Michael, Barbados, Robyn Rihanna Fenty suffered headaches so severe doctors suspected a brain tumor, symptoms that vanished when her parents divorced and the volatility at home en...
2 Jul 20min
Rosalía: The Flamenco Student Who Broke Pop's Rules
Rosalía Vila Tobella risked personal bankruptcy to record her college graduation project in a small apartment, a concept album built on a 13th-century Occitan novel. That record, El Mal Querer, won a ...
2 Jul 20min
SZA's Kill Bill: How Intrusive Thoughts Became a Global Hit
SZA's 2023 mega-hit Kill Bill sounds like a soothing retro lullaby until you realize you are humming along to a detailed confession of a double homicide. Coming off her villain era on the album SOS, s...
2 Jul 19min
SZA's SOS: The Distress Signal That Rewired the Industry
After the generation-defining success of her 2017 debut Ctrl, SZA faced a five-year void, public disputes with her label, and a fan-driven campaign before finally releasing SOS in December 2022. The a...
2 Jul 19min
Sabrina Carpenter: How Short n' Sweet Matched the Beatles
Sabrina Carpenter's 2024 album Short n' Sweet runs a breezy 36 minutes yet matched a chart record held by the Beatles, with three top-five hits charting in the same week. This deep dive frames the rec...
2 Jul 21min
Cher: The Ultimate Comeback and Seven Decades of Hits
Cher was rejected by radio DJs who thought she sounded like a man, lost her fortune to a husband who secretly owned 95 percent of her career, and later sold hair products on infomercials while battlin...
2 Jul 17min
Sabrina Carpenter: Turning Unsent Emails Into Pop Confession
For her fifth album, Emails I Can't Send, Sabrina Carpenter took the raw, unsent messages she wrote to herself at 2 a.m. and turned them into a global release, reclaiming her own narrative in the proc...
2 Jul 17min
