A&R Factory

You couldn’t get much of a starker sign of the times than the popularity of the phrase “make it make sense”, which K. Sparks and Jazzy ran with for the title of their woozy-with-soul hip-hop collab single. The American hip-hop musician and ghostwriter brought years of heavyweight experience into the release, while Jazzy’s vocals drift through like a sticky-sweet echo from the...

Emma Driver exhibits how devastating self-awareness can be in her debut EP, Ashamed to Admit This. Written in the aftermath of a breakup that also meant losing her band, her home and the shape of the life she knew, the Nashville artist turns the year that brought a cancer diagnosis at 27 into a reckoning with shame, survival and the uglier side of emotional honesty. The off-k...

Somebody is standing in a bar, halfway through a conversation, when a song cuts through whatever else is happening around them. Their phone comes out. Shazam opens. Within seconds, an artist they had never heard of has acquired one of the most interesting pieces of audience data available to them. Streaming figures tell musicians what people played. Shazam tells them that som...

In the quirkier corners of synth-pop lies the helter-skelter ride through romance-triggered dissonance of Jack Rush’slatest single, Stranger in My Mind. The Swiss-based recording artist sent a feverish dream of indie rock into orbit through a cosmically dusted, 80s-entrenched production, carrying an arsenal of accessibility while keeping the track deliciously askew. Jack Rush...

Being torn away from your best friend in slow motion, as you watch their world find less and less space for you, cuts deeper than most people would ever admit. There is almost a stigma attached to the emotion, but North East singer-songwriter Lauren Armour breaks through the shame with her latest single, Best Friend, a cinematic pop ballad that hits like razor blades to the h...