#78 - Check your blindspot 🌞

Happy Sunlighter Sunday! We want to take a moment to pay homage to Cat Janice, a viral TikTok singer who passed away from a rare form of cancer this week at the age of 31. Recently, she has been releasing music, including “Dance You Outta My Head,” in support of her seven-year-old son Loren. Her family will continue to posthumously release her music. You can support Cat and her family by listening here.

Rating Rationale: The enigmatic hip-hop artist known as Yeat has not only been the face of a balaclava-wearing rap subculture, but we’ll go out on a limb and assert that he’s taken the baton from Future and Playboi Carti to breed his hybrid of staccato lyricism and dark, low-fi production. His style of music, immaculately presented in his fourth album, 2093, interestingly only has two credited features from Lil Wayne and Future (even though Childish Gambino is also featured in “Power Trip,”) a stark contrast from many hip-hop albums that are ridden with accompanying artists. Many will be quick to compare Yeat’s half-rage, half-disillusioned sound to that of Playboi Carti’s understudies, Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely. While there is some truth to that due to overlap in producers (like KP Beatz), we think Yeat is more multi-faceted and will find a permanent lane in hip-hop.

St. Vincent and Cigarettes After Sex announce new albums, PJ Harvey will tour the U.S.

It was a busy week for indie artists. St. Vincent and Cigarettes After Sex both announced new albums. This will mark St. Vincent’s seventh LP, but it will be her first time producing a record. For Cigarettes After Sex, frontman Greg Gonzalez has promised two things on the upcoming album, X’s: a more upbeat tempo inspired by his Tejano roots, and the brutality of a singular relationship that lasted four years.

On the other side of the pond, English singer-songwriter, PJ Harvey, announced her first North American tour in seven years.

Machine Gun Kelly rebrands to “mgk,” Hoobastank performing the entirety of The Reason, Power Trip reunites

Something doesn’t feel right about categorizing Machine Gun Kelly in this genre. Anyway, he decided to change his stage name to mgk.

Hoobastank is planning to perform the entirety of their formative album, The Reason, at a one-off show at O2 Academy Islington on June 17th. Good excuse to travel to London?

After frontman Riley Gale’s tragic death in 2020 from an overdose of fentanyl, Dallas thrash metal band, Power Trip, is reuniting with new frontman, Seth Gilmore, to celebrate Riley at two reunion shows. This news comes after they revealed their placement at No Values Festival.

Firefly not returning, so long Flavortown, Jack Harlow hosts Gazebo Festival

Unfortunately, Firefly Festival, a mainstay of the “music festival circuit,” will not be returning to The Woodlands in Delaware this year. This comes after its cancellation last year and capacity reduction since the pandemic. AEG is likely the loser here after purchasing Firefly in 2018.

We were excited to head to Flavortown, aka Columbus, Ohio, but it seems that Guy Fieri’s inaugural festival has been canceled due to “unforeseen circumstances.” So much for seeing Greta Van Fleet and Kane Brown perform live while eating diner food - guess we’ll stick to watching Triple D.

As some festivals have experienced operational challenges and slowing ticket sales, that hasn’t stopped Jack Harlow from hosting Gazebo Festival in his hometown of Louisville. Jack will be co-headlining the festival with SZA and bringing in performances from James Blake, Omar Apollo, PinkPantheress, Vince Staples, and others.

Charlotte Sands

Primer: They don’t make music like they did in the 2000s anymore, but this week’s artist comes close. The early 2000s was a new era that introduced listeners to another level of heavy punk-rock production and deeply introspective lyricism. Charlotte Sands was heavily inspired throughout that era, motivating her to create music and ultimately accept a spot at Berklee. When she decided to take a gap year, she perhaps leaned into that early 2000s persona further when she stole her mom’s car, drove to Nashville, and never looked back. An early Sunlighter favorite from her Harry Styles-inspired song, “dress,” Charlotte released her debut album earlier this year. With help from collaborators including Matthew Marino (blackbear, Sueco), and Nick Furlong (5SOS, All Time Low), the sound is reminiscent of that early era so much that Charlotte describes it as her “entire personality wrapped in an album.”

Genre: Alternative/Rock

Influences: Sheryl Crow, Grace Potter, Harry Styles, Taking Back Sunday, The Maine

Current Label: Independent

Audience: ~1.6 million monthly listeners on Spotify

What’s Next: After supporting 5SOS on tour last year, Charlotte kicks off her 45-date Can We Start Over? World Tour this upcoming Thursday, March 7 at The Parish in Austin, TX, and closes with two sold-out shows at The Key Club and The Garage in England. Scan the tour dates and purchase tickets here.

🅰️ Project Music GenAI Control: Adobe has developed a new generative AI text-to-audio creation tool in partnership with Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon.

😨 When Bad Becomes Worse: After failing to renew its deal with UMG at the end of January due to royalty disputes, TikTok is now seeing its loss of access broadened to songs with compositions controlled by Universal Music Publishing Group. Per TikTok, the loss of UMG’s distribution and composition catalogs amounts to ~30% of the popular music on its platform.

🌐 Web3 Updates: Audius announced a flurry of updates: support for original lossless downloads, the ability for artists to sell stems, an increase in the number of max stem files per track, and overall user interface improvements for users downloading stems. Sound unveiled its mobile app focused on music discovery.

🚧 Record Label Restructuring: Both Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group-owned Atlantic Records confirmed headcount reductions to prioritize cost savings and focus on “artist impact.”

🎟️ Truth Hurts: In response to ongoing antitrust accusations, Live Nation has provided an insightful and logical explanation of how ticket prices are set and what constituents of the music industry are involved.

📊 IFPI Global Charts: The IFPI, which represents the worldwide recording industry, released their top 10 global recording artists, singles, and albums.

🗺️ C3 Publishing: C3 Management and Warner Chappell Music have created a joint publishing label focusing on the development of its signed songwriters.

🌃 An Electric Impact: Night Time Industries Association and Audience Strategies conducted a study aptly titled, “Electronic Beats, Economic Treats,” which revealed how the cultural and community value of electronic music has kept the UK economy thriving, driving £2.5 billion in economic value last year.

💰 Securing the Bag: Artist marketing platform, un:hurd, announced a new six-figure funding round with participation from Dutch DJ, Sam Feldt. Universal Music Group purchased a majority stake in Nigeria-based Afrobeats label, Mavin Global. Pophouse acquired a majority stake in Cyndi Lauper’s catalog.

Hip-hop albums are back on top

📈 For the first time since 2021, hip-hop albums have claimed #1 and #2 on the Billboard 200 thanks to ¥$ and Yeat, respectively. Unfortunately for Jennifer Lopez, her latest album, This Is Me… Now, marks the lowest-charting album of her career. So much for the Super Bowl hype - we blame Ben.

Ariana Grande’s eternal sunshine will be released on Friday

📅 For upcoming albums, tours, and festivals access our comprehensive music calendar here.

🚨 Surprise Drops: Approximately one month after his birthday, That Mexican OT dropped a new mixtape titled, Texas Technician. Meek Mill also made an unexpected release with his new EP, HEATHENISM.

📣 Album Announcements: Both Twenty One Pilots’ seventh album, Clancy, and Cage The Elephant’s new album, Neon Pill, will be released on May 17, Charli XCX announced her upcoming new album, Brat, will be released this summer. Griff will release vert1go vol. 2 on April 5. Bruce Springsteen is dropping a best-of collection on April 19th.

⏩ Here are album releases to look out for this week: 

1. Ariana Grande, eternal sunshine

2. Bleachers, Bleachers

3. ¥$, VULTURE 2

4. Norah Jones, Visions

5. Maggie Lindemann, Headsplit

6. Judas Priest, Invincible Shield

The Merch Table

• ♟️ Tyler, the Designer: Tyler, the Creator collaborated with Louis Vuitton to create an exclusive capsule collection, showcasing his design prowess beyond music, set to be released later this month.

• 📕 Trinity Book: Blink-182's Tom DeLonge is venturing into the realm of literature with the release of a new science fiction novel, set to be published in June.

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See ya next Sunday 😎

Chris and Donya