#38 - The Canadian Backcountry 🌞

Happy Sunlighter Sunday and Happy Mother’s Day to all the baby’s mamas, mamas’ mamas, and baby mama’s mamas. This week, we’re extending our stay in the ten-year town to embrace a bucolic lifestyle that gives rise to some of the best women country artists. For those surprised that we cover country, here’s a friendly reminder that we focus on genre-agnostic artist discovery, spending more time on exposing artists we think are on the trajectory to mainstream music-market fit. So better dust off those boots, ‘cause we’re going for a ride.

Here's what we have queued up this week:

1. 🌶️ Review of - by Ed Sheeran.

2. 💿 This Week in Music: WizKid makes history, Google launches MusicLM, and Billie Eilish covers “Hotline Bling."

3. 🔀 Playlist Updates: Rosie Darling, Parker McCollum and Austin City Limits.

4. 🎙️ MacKenzie Porter is our artist of the week.

Chris: Ed, an expert lyrical mathematician, approaches - (Subtract) with great delicateness and a yearning for bucolic nostalgia. He’s purposefully calculated in branding his final “mathematics” album as one that’s minimal to allow his lyricism to shine by verbally intertwining imaginative landscapes with emotional moments. It’s deeply personal and a reminder of where it all started, the equally vivid and emotive + (Plus). Ed has covered a spectrum of emotions with his five albums, in his unique order of operations. Ending with - (Subtract) is bittersweet. “Dusty,” “Spark,” and “Sycamore” stand out to me.

Donya: Ed is back with the grand finale of his Mathematics decade-long era, - (Subtract), and it’s Ed in his classic, singer-songwriter form. Written over the span of one month, the album explores the many layers of overarching grief through soul-baring lyricism. After a friendly nudge from Taylor Swift, he worked closely with producer Aaron Dessner (The National) on the record. Ed describes taking 7 instrumentals from Aaron and sending them back fully formed with lyrics within two and a half hours 🤯 My favorites are “Colourblind,” “Sycamore,” and “Hills of Aberfeldy.”

This Week in Music 💿

💿💿💿 Platinum Three-peat: Wizkid becomes the first African artist to achieve triple RIAA platinum status with “Come Closer,” “Essence,” and “One Dance” all selling over one million units.

📣 Cheers to Ed: Off the heels of a copyright court case win, Ed Sheeran is now on his way to achieving his sixth #1 album with his latest release (and today’s UV Index), surpassing Lana Del Rey’s record of becoming the fastest selling album of the year.

🎰 Concrete Jungle of Casinos: Pending a winning bid, Jay-Z and Roc Nation have big plans to open up the first casino in Times Square, with promises to commit $115 million to the Broadway community.

💪 If you’re going to be a dreamer, you better be a doer: Wise words from Lainey Wilson after her ACM Awards wins for Album of the Year and Female Artist of the Year. Chris Stapleton paid homage to the artist on an Instagram post after he won Entertainer of the Year.

🎡 Austin City Limits: Our hometown music festival announces its 2023 lineup with a promise that what you see is what you get for ticket prices. The lineup is stacked with headliners (more than a few recycled ones, too) like Foo Fighters, Alanis Morissette, Mumford & Sons, Odesza, Shania Twain, Kendrick Lamar, The 1975, The Lumineers, and Hozier.

👀 9 Years: Tory Lanez’s request for a new trial was denied after he was found guilty of shooting Megan Thee Stallion. He’s expected to serve at least 9 years in prison.

💸 UMG Payday: Not for artists, though. UMG shareholders approved a $150 million compensation package for Sir Lucian Grainge, who recently extended his contract as CEO & Chairman of the company. Still waiting on him to make moves on how he plans to change the music streaming economy for the better…

🤖 Google AI x Music: This week, Google officially launched MusicLM, an experimental artificial intelligence tool that opens up the world of music creation to everyone. Researchers describe it as an exciting inflection point as Google works to become an “AI-first” company.

🤝 Fans rule: With a continued mission to strengthen the relationship between artists and their fans, SoundCloud announced a “Fans tool” that will help artists identify their top monthly listeners and send messages to them directly.

💰 Do the AudioShake: The music-focused AI company we covered in #11 announced it has raised up to $5 million from its most recent seed round. Notable investors include Crush Music’s venture capital group (Miley Cyrus, Lorde, Sia).

🆕 New Music on TikTok: TikTok remains dedicated to its mission of artist discovery with the launch of #NewMusic, allowing artists like the Jonas Brothers, Miguel, and Niall Horan to share snippets of their new songs and better engage with fans.

🌙 We’re up all night for AR: Daft Punk launched a series of three new AR activations on Snapchat to celebrate ten years of Random Access Memories.

🔊 Do you hear the sound?: Sound.xyz, a platform designed to build web3 tools for artists, will be launching a mobile app for 10,000 users with the goal of making music discovery and consumption a more personalized experience.

🎸 Good golly, Miss Rock n’ Roll Dolly: Dolly Parton announced her 49th (!!!) studio album is going in a new direction as the beloved artist taps into the rock genre with collaborators such as Joan Jett, Sting, and Steven Tyler, among many others.

🎤 Features Era: It was a busy week for Phoebe Bridgers, who kicked off her month of performances as the opening act on the Eras Tour (and singing “Nothing New,” from Red (Taylor’s Version)), and released two new songs with Arlo Parks and Rob Moose.

📱 You used to call me on my cell phone: Real ones know this ukulele cover from 2018, but Billie Eilish dropped the instrumental track on YouTube. The full cover with vocals is on SoundCloud, check it here.

🪩 Tensions Rise: Kylie Minogue revealed the tracklist for her 16th studio album, Tension, due later this year.

🤠 Easy come, hard go: Ed Sheeran and Luke Combs joined forces to deliver a soulful, heart-wrenching performance of “Life Goes On” at the ACM Awards.

🙅‍♀️ Like, ever: Blink-182 performed a cover of “We Are Never Getting Back Together” by Taylor Swift at a show in Detroit, Michigan earlier this week.

🌊 Joni Jam: Thirteen songs from Joni Mitchell’s set at last year’s Newport Folk Festival are being released as a live studio album this July–this was the artist’s first performance in nearly ten years.

💖 The Best Day: To fit this week’s country theme, we’re highlighting new songs from Sam Hunt and Tenille Arts to celebrate Mother’s Day.

The Sunlighter Playlist 🔀

🍳 Bear with us. We made another branding change to our primary playlist, this time to make it more descriptive of what the playlist is about—everyone knows breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

We’re also native Texans so it’s only right that we have a playlist devoted to our annual music retreat to Austin.

Artist of the Week: MacKenzie Porter🎙️

Primer: She’s the next big country pop artist from Canada, following in Shania Twain’s footsteps.

A Family Band: MacKenzie was raised on a bison and cattle ranch in Alberta, Canada by parents with a lineage devoted to music – her mother grew up playing the piano, and both her father and grandmother were instrumentalists in their respective bands. Unsurprisingly, both parents encouraged MacKenzie and her siblings to learn and read music at an early age, which ultimately resulted in all three siblings (MacKenzie, her sister, and her brother) choosing a career in music. MacKenzie learned to sing and play both classical piano and violin at the age of four, allowing her to participate in her family’s band at community events. Her brother Kalan would go on to win Canadian Idol, a moment that helped MacKenzie realize that pursuing a music career was in the realm of possibility.

Performing, then Acting: Although MacKenzie disliked practicing music as a child (didn’t we all?), she yearned to perform on stage, whether it was with her family’s band or through musical theater. Her first major theatrical role in school was being cast as the lead character “Annie” in the musical, Annie. This helped solidify her interest in becoming an actress, and at the age of 16, MacKenzie began acting professionally. However, in 2009, after a year-and-a-half of limited acting gigs, she began to shift her focus towards songwriting.

The Black Boots: MacKenzie’s first foray into her professional music career was teaming up with a fellow actor to form the music dyad, The Black Boots, which released “These Black Boots” and a cover of “Mean” by Taylor Swift. However, The Black Boots were short-lived as MacKenzie ultimately wanted more creative control and subsequently chose to go solo in 2010.

Nashville & Big Loud: In 2014, MacKenzie took her dream leap and moved to Nashville. Shortly after releasing her self-titled, independent record, she met producer Joey Moi while working on a duet with Dallas Smith. This became the catalyst of her eventually signing with Big Loud Records in 2018. Since then, Joey has become MacKenzie’s primary producer (produced her first label-associated EP Drinkin’ Songs: The Collection) and one of her biggest supporters at the label.

Accolades: She’s been nominated for multiple JUNO Awards (the Canadian GRAMMYs) for Country Album of the Year, multiple Canadian Country Music Association awards for Female Artist of the Year, and is the only Canadian artist to receive five number #1 songs on Canadian Country Radio charts.

Current Label: Big Loud Records, a Nashville-based country label that rose to prominence within the past few years after signing artists like Morgan Wallen and HARDY.

Genre: Country pop, with great balance.

Influences: Fellow Canadian country pop star Shania Twain, The Chicks, Martina McBride, Deana Carter, Kacey Musgraves, and Julia Michaels.

Year Ten: MacKenzie candidly believes that Nashville is a ten-year town, and we (and MusicRow) agree - it's finally her time. Last week, she released her single, “Chasing Tornados,” and this week, she dropped an accompanying music video:

Wrap Up 👏

Because we’re still in our Nashville feels, we’re closing the newsletter this week with a song from The Marfa Tapes.

Check out our other articles and give us a follow on Twitter!

See ya next Sunday 😎

Chris and Donya