Sarah

After breaking up for a while, the Jonas Brothers got back together to put out a new album, Happiness Begins. While the band decidedly falls into top 40-pop for the most part, this album does have some fun lyrics and melodies, and interesting harmonies in a few places. The lyrics are fairly simplistic, but they suit the genre perfectly. Perhaps the best thing about this album is that it has a lot of positive, sweet love songs that defy the focus on break-ups, lost love, and internal struggles that seems common in current pop music.

Cage The Elephant put out a new album, Social Cues, this year. I haven’t listened to it yet. So, I’m going to listen to this album for the first time while I write this narrative. Now, I haven’t listened to a lot of this band before, so please bear with me if I don’t totally get one hundred percent of what I’m about to hear. I’ve heard a lot of good things about this band, and I’ve been meaning to listen to more of their music for over a year now. So, without further ado, here’s a first-impression album narrative for Cage The Elephant’s Social Cues.

Sara Bareilles’ poetic lyrics, skillful harmonies and instrumentation, and interesting melodies have long marked her music in the pop genre. Her newest album, Amidst the Chaos, is no exception. Now, I’ve been listening to Sara Bareilles since high school, and she is one of the main artists who inspired my own songwriting, so if this comes across as a bit of a rave-review, I apologize - I just really like her music. In this album, Bareilles gets into all kinds of issues, from break ups, to sexism and female camaraderie, to family.

After the first three official albums, twenty one pilots’ Trench had a lot to live up to. The band has long explored mental illness and personal struggles, which many fans have both related to and found comfort in. This album continues to explore these themes, but includes strong themes of hope, alliance with others, and escape. In addition to being a solid album musically, Trench addresses a new, in-between stage of dealing with personal struggles and explores the artist’s relationships to people in their personal lives, and their audience.