Category Music

Some girls want to be known, while others prefer to remain obscure. Scottish-born singer and producer Sophie was for the girls who wanted to hide behind the mixer board while still crafting their own magic—and Sophie, her posthumous record, attempts to reconcile both of those ideals.

Known for the crunchy, glitchy production on her hard-hitting songs, Sophie cultivated an intensely private public profile, remaining all but unknown beyond her stage name before she came out as trans in 2017. She was a producer, in charge of her own image and sound, yet what she emanated more than anything was a kind of angelic alienism. Sophie only released one studio album—the highly acclaimed, Grammy-nominated Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides (2018)—and a mixtape during her lifetime, and both were heavily instrumental, with several songs featuring a single phrase repeated over and over, stretched almost to its linguistic limits, until robotic clamor and distortion took over. Her very earliest releases, like 2015’s “BIPP” and “Lemonade,” just floated in the ether for a while, with no one quite knowing their context or creator. (In 2021, Vince Staples recalled that some speculated Sophie was just another A.G. Cook project.) The 2017 visual for “It’s Okay to Cry”—which marked the first time most fans saw Sophie’s face—placed her before an ever-changing backdrop of clouds, rainbows, and a night sky full of stars, embracing a neither here-nor-there-ness, while the viciously playful video for “Faceshopping” from 2018 revels in wild manipulations of her visage. Harron Walker has previously written about the “dissociative” element in Sophie’s music, the way that it crystallizes being both present and absent at the same time, in the same body. Sophie channeled a more angelic plane, where bodies move in and out of visibility under the flashing club lights.

Liam Payne, the singer and songwriter who drew international fame as a member of British boy band One Direction, died on Wednesday at the age of 31 after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The circumstances of Payne‘s fall have not yet been confirmed, but an outpouring of grief from fellow celebrities and fans alike has already met the news of his passing on social media.

Occasionally, when Remi Wolf talks about her new album, Big Ideas, she lulls herself into autopilot, her body operating with no input from her brain. During a recent meeting, as she discusses studio logistics in her syrupy alto (“We worked at Electric Lady in New York, we worked at Conway in LA…”), she reaches across the table and snags a french fry off my plate.

“Do you want any ketchup?” I ask her.

Immediately, the spell is broken, leaving Wolf in a state of pure shock. She shrieks with laughter. “I’m sorry, I’m just, like, talking and eating your fries!” she says. “I was just…mind empty.”

There is a funny dissonance between 28-year-old Wolf’s cherubic face—with a halo of dark curls to match—and her tendency to pepper her sentences with “fucking” and “dude.” (She also has a wonderfully eclectic sense of style: for our lunch, she wears a long-sleeve tie-dyed shirt, a pearl choker with a large silver pendant, and mini platform Uggs.) It’s eminently likable: Striding into the Hollywood diner where we sat down together, she’s greeted with a wide grin and a warm “Welcome back!” from our waitress. Wolf has turned this unassuming restaurant into her office recently, taking meetings with various label executives ahead of her album’s release on July 12. “I wish she was here for this interview,” she says of one waitress who, unprompted, told Wolf—and a table full of execs—about her handmade “Lorena Bobbitt Rules!” T-shirt. “She was like, ‘Do you guys want more coffee? Also, I made this shirt. She chopped off her boyfriend’s penis.’ And we were just like, ‘Cool.’”

Big Ideas continues Wolf’s strong track record of clear-as-a-bell vocals, funky production, and vibrant lyricism. While her first LP, Juno, was produced entirely in a bedroom at the height of the COVID pademic, Wolf jumped at the chance to record Big Ideas in hallowed studios like Electric Lady, whose rich history she hoped would bleed into the music. On the new album, she paints vivid scenes of coughing up frogs and spending a loved-up Halloween in Chicago over zany guitar riffs and synths. Also present are pronounced jazz and disco influences, dialed up to match the album’s energetic spirit.

One recurring theme in Wolf’s music is her fluid sexuality. Since her first EP, You’re a Dog! (2019), she has referred to both men and women as the subjects of her desire (and, often, frustration). “When I first entered the music industry, it was a fight to be seen,” she says. In the early years of her career, she admits that she was reluctant to be branded as an LGBTQ+ artist. “I’m just trying to be myself. I’m writing a lot about my literal life experiences,” she says. She worried that a label would not only push her into a box but force her to speak for more than just herself. “I have no authority on anything, really—on gender politics, on queer politics. I don’t have anything to say other than you do you, and I’m gonna do me.” In the five years since You’re a Dog!, however, she feels that attitudes toward sexuality—and queerness in particular—have shifted “to a place where it’s like, who gives a fuck?” she says. “We don’t have to make it a big deal—which I love.”

Having reshaped the zeitgeist in her slime-green, that-bitch image (and announced she’ll be kickstarting London Fashion Week with an H&M-sponsored rave), Charli XCX is packing her Parliaments and heading to Hollywood, where she’s joining the cast of Gregg Araki’s contribution to the burgeoning May-December canon, I Want Your Sex.

Penned by Vogue columnist Karley Sciortino (and named after George Michael’s chart-topping 1987 hit), the film will center on Olivia Wilde’s Erika Tracy, a fictional artist with the cultural heft of Marina Abramović, who begins an affair with her much younger employee, Elliot (Cooper Hoffman). (If you’re wondering why you recognize Cooper’s name, he played Gary Valentine opposite Alana Haim in Licorice Pizza—and, yes, he is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son.) For a while, Elliot is thrilled to be Erika’s “gentle lover with a heart of gold,” but their romance soon veers into Adrian Lyne territory as “Erika takes him on a journey more profound than he ever could have imagined, into a world of sex, obsession, power, betrayal and murder.” Baby, you’ve been so unkind, indeed. No word yet on which sort of role Charli will be playing, but I hope she gets to wear a bodysuit as good as Kathy Jeung’s in George’s softporn ’80s music video.

It’s Faces of Death, though, that will mark Charli’s formal screen debut alongside Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, and Josie Totah. Helmed by How to Blow Up a Pipeline’s Daniel Goldhaber, the project is inspired by the wildly controversial 1978 shockumentary of the same name, which opens with an alleged pathologist, Dr. Francis B. Gross (Michael Carr), introducing a series of videos depicting gruesome deaths—some of which were staged, some of which were real. “For the first time in cinema history, the greatest fear of all mankind will be graphically exposed,” boasted the trailer. “Now, a motion picture dares to take you beyond the threshold of the living.” Inevitably, it became a viral hit, with millions of VHS copies sold across the country, making it the defining film of the decade’s “video nasty” craze. Mercifully, Goldhaber has no plans to recreate the mondo movie (whose horrifically graphic imagery saw it banned in dozens of countries, including the UK). Instead, he’s taking a meta approach, with his plot shadowing a content moderator for a YouTube-esque site who stumbles upon a group recreating scenes from the ’70s hit for their followers.

Interestingly, Charli personally reached out to Goldhaber about a role in the movie, and he isn’t the only writer-director she’s approached about a collaboration in recent months. Earlier this (Brat) summer, she also decamped to Poland to shoot yet another film she’s apparently co-written with Slave Play’s Jeremy O Harris. Good thing she already has enough movie-star sunglasses to see her through at least a dozen paparazzi-filled press tours.

Lady Gaga may be an internationally famous pop singer and actress, an Oscar winner and Vogue cover star, but she knows more about scrappy beginnings than anyone. Born and raised in New York City, the 38-year-old star has been performing on both stage and screen since she was a teenager. Not all of her early roles and musical gigs were necessarily glamorous, but now that she’s conquered both Hollywood and the music industry, they’re a delight to revisit.

Below, find our roundup of Lady Gaga’s best early and pre-Gaga-moniker performances:

Year unknown: Featured role in an anti-sexual harassment video

Gaga has spoken out against sexism, misogyny, and rape culture throughout her career, but this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance in the kind of anti-harassment video that is often used to teach high school students about consent proves her values truly go way back. (To spot a young Gaga fending off the unwelcome advances of a creepy guy, head to 0:40.)

2001: Background role on a Season 3 episode of The Sopranos

Rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs’s history of misconduct dates all the way back to 1999 (when he was charged with assaulting record executive Steve Stoute), but his legal woes reached a new level this week when he was indicted by a federal grand jury in New York. Below, find all the details that have come out so far about the 54-year-old rap mogul’s arrest—and the alleged pattern of abusive behavior that brought him to this point.

When and where was Sean “Diddy” Combs arrested?

Combs was arrested in a Manhattan hotel lobby late on Monday, September 16, after his indictment by a federal grand jury earlier that day. The arrest followed raids of Combs’s homes in Los Angeles and Miami back in March, when Homeland Security Investigations agents discovered multiple AR-15-style guns, large-capacity magazines, and more than a thousand bottles of baby oil and lubricant on his properties.

A judge denied bail for Combs on Tuesday, meaning he will likely remain in custody until his trial.

What charges was Combs indicted on?

The 14-page indictment unsealed on Tuesday includes three counts of sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution. Prosecutors allege Combs “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others” to “fulfill his sexual desires” in a “recurrent and widely known” pattern of abuse that goes back to at least 2009. Many of the current charges being leveled against Combs stem from “freak offs,” Combs’s term for coerced sex acts that he would allegedly orchestrate and record.

Who has spoken out about Combs’s alleged abuse?

Singer Cassie Ventura, a former girlfriend of Combs’s, sued him for sexual abuse in November, alleging that Combs engaged in sex trafficking by “requiring her to engage in forced sexual acts in multiple jurisdictions” and “harboring [and transporting Ventura] for purposes of sex induced by force, fraud, or coercion.” (That lawsuit was settled after just one day, with Combs denying any wrongdoing.) Six months later, video surfaced of Combs punching, kicking, and throwing Ventura to the ground in a hotel hallway in 2016. (Combs apologized for his behavior following the release of that video.) Five women sued Combs for sexual assault after Ventura’s lawsuit—including one who claimed that Combs raped her two decades ago, when she was 17 years old—and three other suits included accusations of sexual misconduct.

Has Combs spoken publicly about the indictment?

No, but his attorney has. “We are disappointed with the decision to pursue what we believe is an unjust prosecution of Mr. Combs by the US Attorney’s Office,” Combs’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo said on Monday, describing his client as a “loving family man” and adding: “He is an imperfect person, but he is not a criminal. Please reserve your judgment until you have all the facts. These are the acts of an innocent man with nothing to hide, and he looks forward to clearing his name in court.”

With this scorching summer nearing its end and fall’s shortening days and cooling breezes following closely behind, musical playlists will likewise turn from sweaty dance hits and catchy pop anthems to moodier, more autumnal fare. Forget “sad-girl summer”—fall is the perfect seasonal backdrop for sadcore music.

Sadcore was first coined in the 1980s to describe the young musicians who turned away from the aggressive sounds of punk and hardcore to embrace melancholic lyrics, bitter-sweet melodies, and more textured and ethereal atmospherics. Labels like 4AD, Postcard Records, Sarah Records, Creation Records, K Records, and others were often associated with this style. Although sadcore was usually characterized by a particular guitar-based aesthetic, the term later became a catch-all encompassing various sub-genres and sub-scenes including dream pop, twee pop, shoegaze, folktronica, slowcore, chillwave, ambient pop, and chamber pop. What all of these styles had in common was an emotive sound best suited for introspective headphone-listening, and that encouraged daydreaming or nostalgic memorializing, dancing alone in the dark or tarrying in bed.

Since 2020, sadcore playlists and mixtapes have gained massive popularity among Generation Z, having exploded on platforms and sites like Spotify and Youtube. Many are intricately curated and include both professional songs and tracks created by anonymous bedsit musicians, or others remixed with tags like “slowed and reverbed” (also known as daycore), “super slowed,” and “corecore,” or songs looped for hours for maximum hypnotic effect.

This year has seen a range of new and established musicians releasing poignant works that celebrate the sad melodies of life. Here, Vogue has assembled a list of some of the best or most promising of these albums. Together, their oneiric and forlorn sounds offer the perfect weepy soundtrack for the autumn days ahead of us.

Dj Salinger, Voyage Voyage Voyage

On the evening of October 16, it was reported that singer, songwriter, and former One Direction star Liam Payne had died at the age of just 31, after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires. The news was met with shock, with mourners gathering outside the building where the devastating incident took place to light candles in his memory. Meanwhile, on social media, the outpouring of grief continued, with friends, fans, and fellow musicians expressing their condolences and paying tribute to his immense talent.

See some of the messages that have been shared so far:

As per British tradition, more than 200,000 people—A-listers among them—decamped to a dairy farm in Pilton, Somerset, over the weekend for Glastonbury, headlined this year by Dua Lipa, Coldplay, and SZA. Catch up on this year’s highlights here.

Little Simz announced herself as a future headliner

The London rapper and former British Vogue cover star played the Pyramid Stage before headliners Coldplay (and later joined them onstage to debut a new track, “We Pray”), but it’s surely just a matter of time before Simz is topping the bill herself. With little in the way of bells and whistles (no choreo here), the star held the Glastonbury crowd transfixed for the duration of her set. “I need you to understand that you are witnessing greatness,” she said on stage. “And I don’t say that with arrogance; I say that with confidence.” Nobody is arguing with her—least of all the music press.

Michael J. Fox made the ultimate guest cameo

Perhaps the highlight of Coldplay’s undeniably epic set on the Pyramid Stage on Saturday night? An appearance from special guest Michael J. Fox, who joined the band to play guitar on “Fix You.” The 63-year-old star of Back to the Future, who has been battling Parkinson’s disease for more than 30 years, is key to the band’s origin story, according to frontman Chris Martin, who was inspired by watching Fox’s rendition of “Johnny B Goode” in the classic 1985 film. “Thank you so much, our hero,” Martin said on stage. Even the most committed Coldplay haters couldn’t fail to be moved.

Dua Lipa scheduled in some post-Pyramid down-time

Earlier this year, St. Vincent’s Annie Clark released All Born Screaming, an album which managed to capture the absolute clusterfuck of emotions that make up being alive in the year 2024 in a compact 10 songs and 42 minutes. The self-produced record is raw and gritty and sensual and experimental and fun. It also showcases Clark as an artist in her peak, in absolute control.

It’s why the news that she is releasing a Spanish-language version of the album titled Todos Nacen Gritando is so exciting. You see, St. Vincent only speaks un poquito de Español. “I studied Spanish in junior high and high school, and I mean Soy de Tejas, vivo en California,” she said during a recent phone conversation playfully peppered with moments in Spanish, (which worked because Spanish is my first language). “But I’ve always wanted to become fluent. Now I do Duolingo just to keep the muscles working.” She translated the record with the help of her best friend and frequent collaborator Alan del Rio Ortiz, going back and forth to fine tune words so that they could fit in they pre-established melodies, and then re-recorded every single song. The result is exhilarating—Clark has a thick accent and sometimes she mispronounces words, but it only makes the album that much more charming, and meaningful. Here is St. Vincent showing a vulnerable side, indulging in a larger-than-life idea simply because it’s something she desires, and also as an act of love and gratitude to all her Spanish-speaking fans in Latin America, Spain, and the rest of the world. “I was thinking about the places that I love playing the most. I’ve had so many formative experiences playing in Mexico and Latin American and Spain,” she says. “It’s so amazing to see people for whom English is not their first language sing along to every word. You know in a lot of cases English is their second or third or fourth language, who knows? So I thought, if they come to me, why don’t I try to go to them? And it was an excuse for me to jumpstart getting better at Spanish to eventually become fluent in it.” Ahead of the release of “Pulga,” out today, St. Vincent talks about putting the album together and how the translations sometimes gave the songs new meaning.