Secretly Canadian 2020s 5 Items

Baby Rose makes healing music for the aimless and heartbroken. The Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter and producer's uniquely rich voice naturally lends itself to her powerful, smoke-filled ballads lamenting lost loves and broken futures. "I make music to help myself get through things," she says. The piercing honesty and vulnerability she brings to her lyrics in turn helps others process their feelings and find a place of healing. For Rose, it's a journey that's still ongoing. "If I'm going to leave anything behind, it's going to be getting people back to themselves," she says. "As I get back to myself, it's a constant reset: Remember who you are, remember who you want to be." You can hear the impact of this approach in Baby Rose's upcoming second album, Through and Through. Take the hypnotic "Fight Club." Over the track's simmering baseline and crashing cymbals, she declares, "I don't need no one else to show me the way." She describes the song as a "breaking of the shell. It encourages me to just go for it and not care about what anyone else thinks." Therein lies Baby Rose's strength: a determination to live, love, and create on her own terms. "I'm not just a singer with a unique voice," she says. "I'm somebody that has something to say." In the years since releasing her last album, To Myself, Rose has been painstakingly piecing together its sequel. Started almost immediately after its release, her new body of work finds her in a state of musical and personal transition. It's a subtle merging of new sounds_stirring rock, upbeat r&b, psychedelic funk, pop, and soulful ballads_, all mastered through analog tape to make the music feel warmer and all-encompassing. It's also a journey inward as she battles past fear and self-doubt to finally discover_and love_who she is, where she is. Finishing an album with such peace and firm resolution is a first for Rose, but she makes it clear: She's nowhere near done writing her story. "I think as long as I'm being raw and trying to push past my comfort zone, it will feel rewarding," she says. "I don't want to be the type that doesn't take risks because I'm afraid. I have to trust that as long as the music is honest and innovative, it'll be timeless."

For polymath artist Wesley Joseph, writing a song is like shooting a film. He sees in terms of scenes and colors, lighting the proper mood, drawing the right emotional arc_far beyond just getting a catchy melody down on tape. Music and filmmaking are Joseph's two great loves. Film came first_he started making DIY videos at age 12 to entertain himself and his friends growing up in a small UK community_but when he moved to London to study it, the energy he discovered in the city demanded to be captured in song, resulting in his 2021 debut Ultramarine, a distinctly cinematic collection of avant-R&B and soulful future-pop shot through with moments of surprising aggression and an intriguingly complex postmillennial aura. Since collaborating with the likes of Jorja Smith and Loyle Carner, he returns with Glow, eight more songs of love, loss, anxiety, and joy about coming of age at a time of unprecedented change. Showcasing his range across songwriting, performing, and production_not to mention his flawless transitions between singing and rapping, between character studies and raw emotional honesty_it's a stunningly beautiful work that makes it clear Joseph's on the path to becoming a worldchanging talent. As on previous projects, Joseph is providing his own visual accompaniments for Glow, creative directing its artwork and directing its first video. "cold Summer" finds Joseph singing from a supervillain's perspective over woozy film-score strings, and the concept bleeds over into its video accompaniment, a cryptic post-post-Tarantino gangster comedy shot in Kazakhstan. It's usually hyperbole to call an artist as young and new as Joseph "visionary," but it's undeniable that he has a vision, one that transcends old ideas of genre and medium, one that seems to get bigger and richer every time he steps into a studio or behind a camera. Glow is one of the deepest and most satisfyingly cinematic listening experiences of the year_and Wesley Joseph is just getting started.

serpentwithfeet is not only imagining, but exploring a world wherein Black love is paramount. His new album, Deacon, is "a study rather than a story," delving into Black, gay love and the tenderness present in the best companionships, romantic or otherwise. Fully self-actualized and more devoted than ever to personal fulfilment, Deacon highlights his growth as a songwriter, which he credits to taking a more straightforward approach to expression. Spending time with pop songwriters and observing how they traverse language encouraged serpent to take more risks lyrically, resulting in more purity. Raised by religious parents in Baltimore, serpent's flair for theatrical themes and gospel sensibilities can be traced to the Black church, a place where the artist had his earliest experiences with glamour and the ornate. Well-executed vocal flourishes and the implementation of a quickening vibrato are just a few of the skills he picked up during his time in a Pentecostal choir. He proudly follows in the tradition of R&B artists whose gifts were helmed in the church, and he approached Deacon with an undeniable passion and reverence for the genre. In his love for love, serpentwithfeet is offering a look into the soul of a man who articulates his passion in a warmer, gentler way. He's become wholly confident in his gift and messaging on Deacon, which is to be expected when one gives vent to maturity. Through his music, he allows compassion to be the backbone of his art, as he communes with his most loving self.

serpentwithfeet is not only imagining, but exploring a world wherein Black love is paramount. His new album, Deacon, is "a study rather than a story," delving into Black, gay love and the tenderness present in the best companionships, romantic or otherwise. Fully self-actualized and more devoted than ever to personal fulfilment, Deacon highlights his growth as a songwriter, which he credits to taking a more straightforward approach to expression. Spending time with pop songwriters and observing how they traverse language encouraged serpent to take more risks lyrically, resulting in more purity. Raised by religious parents in Baltimore, serpent's flair for theatrical themes and gospel sensibilities can be traced to the Black church, a place where the artist had his earliest experiences with glamour and the ornate. Well-executed vocal flourishes and the implementation of a quickening vibrato are just a few of the skills he picked up during his time in a Pentecostal choir. He proudly follows in the tradition of R&B artists whose gifts were helmed in the church, and he approached Deacon with an undeniable passion and reverence for the genre. In his love for love, serpentwithfeet is offering a look into the soul of a man who articulates his passion in a warmer, gentler way. He's become wholly confident in his gift and messaging on Deacon, which is to be expected when one gives vent to maturity. Through his music, he allows compassion to be the backbone of his art, as he communes with his most loving self.

A viscous embrace, a pulsating pouring out, Anohni's voice is above all else a vessel for political armament. On 2016's Hopelessness, her voice bombarded with explicit illustration of Obama-era atrocities -- of war crimes, of apocalyptic climate change, of patriarchal violence. Now sharing a dual cover set - Bob Dylan's `It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' and Nina Simone's `Be My Husband' - she casts a subtler, but no less powerful incantation towards change. The original tracks dating to 1965, a year marked by the Selma marches, the Watts Rebellion, and the landmark Voting Rights Act, illuminate the eerily parallel struggles of this year. Anohni's rendition of `It's All Over Now_' reads as a hopeful, future goodbye to times dominated by oppression. With `Be My Husband," textually woven with marital submission and want for acceptance, she examines our reliance on the very systems that fail us. In borrowing these songs, Anohni adopts their history along with her contemporary interpretations, respecting the lineage of the people's movement while calling for its continuance today. "When Biden said `Americans don't want revolution, they want a return to decency,' he was wrong," she explained. "We all know deep down that the continuation of our civilizations for much longer will require seismic change." On `It's All Over Now, Baby Blue', Anohni explained: "I recorded It's All Over Now, Baby Blue with Kevin Barker one afternoon a few years ago. I listened to it recently and it reminded me of Now, a nausea of nostalgia for the suffering of the present, or even the future. I did a couple of songs by Bob Dylan at that time, encouraged by Hal Willner, the producer who we lost to Covid 19 in April. I hope that this period, and this repugnant presidency, will be over soon, and that these bigots and apocalyptic capitalists and evangelicals will crawl back into their rotten little holes. But how can this happen unless the American media and social media are forced to tell the truth? I am glad to see the mobilization of Black Lives Matter and the re-emergence of the Occupy movement. When Biden said "Americans don't want revolution, they want a return to decency," he was wrong. We all know deep down that the continuation of our civilizations for much longer will require seismic change." On `Be My Husband', Anohni said: "I saw Nina Simone perform at Carnegie Hall in 1991 while I was still in college. The concert was not properly publicized, and the theater was only half full. I think it may have been her first time back in NYC in many years. She was rumored to be volatile and unpredictable. That night she sang and played with such dignity, so incredibly, and she did 5 or 6 encores. For me, she was the greatest musician of the 20th Century. She didn't write many songs, but the ones she wrote were among the most profound of the era. Be My Husband was one such song. The lyrics spin a paradox of romantic assertion and submission. This live version of the song was recorded at an Antony and the Johnsons concert at the Knitting Factory in NYC in 1999."