#26 - When the sun shine, we shine together 🌞

Your cure for the Sunday scaries is here, folks. Happy Sunlighter (and Super Bowl) Sunday! Hope y’all are just as excited to watch the Rihanna Halftime Show.

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Here's what we have queued up this week:

1. 🌶️ Review of AudioLust & HigherLove by SG Lewis.

2. 🎹 Songs we're currently listening to.

3. 🎙️ Novo Amor is our artist of the week.

4. 💿 Industry takeover by HYBE and Super Bowl LVII.

5. 🎡 Parklife and tour announcements.

Chris: This week, we’re covering SG Lewis’ sophomore album, and it’s a vibe. The groovy, disco-influenced production showcases versatility across his album while maintaining strong cohesion across songs. It’s truly the definition of "same but different," and it’s exactly what you want out of an album. Collaborators Lucky Daye and Channel Tres are back for round two, while new collaborators Tove Lo and Ty Dolla $ign are featured for the first time.

Donya: This album made me feel like I was simultaneously in a club and a time vortex. You’ll understand what I mean when you listen to it. SG Lewis’s sophomore album is the epitome of lo-fi, easy listening. While I usually crave good songwriting, I’ll be returning to this one time and time again for the production value alone because it’s stellar. Standout tracks for me are “Infatuation,” “Lifetime,” and the duet with Tove Lo, “Call On Me.”

The Sunlighter Playlist 🔀

Songs we’re currently listening to 🎹

Artist of the Week: Novo Amor 🎙️

If you’re looking for this generation’s Bon Iver, you’ve come to the right place.

Ali John Meredith-Lacey is a Welsh musician and singer-songwriter whose stage name translates to “new love,” which is perfect because we are absolutely in love with listening to him. He blends instruments together beautifully and marries those instruments with a tenor voice that is ethereal, distinct, and pure. His profound music allows you to transport to another time and place, and along the way, you gather feelings of hope in hopelessness.

Lords of Aberystwyth

Lacey grew up in Aberystwyth, a coastal town on the west coast of Wales in UK. Around the age of 9, he picked up skateboarding as a hobby, which inevitably exposed him to skate VHS tapes. Though his skateboarding hobby fell to the wayside, the musical influences of Placebo and Bad Religion from the tapes stayed near and dear to his heart. After his father bought him a drum kit at the age of 12, Lacey began recording himself on cassette tapes–he would record his percussive beats onto the cassette player, then play it back while he played melodies on guitar–as a way to create his own makeshift band. By the age of 14, he was learning LogicPro, allowing him to dive deeper into the world of music production.

Lacey’s fascination with music production was so influential that he decided to make it his primary concentration in college. While his original goal was to become a film score composer, his experiences in Woodgate, New York during the summer of 2011 inspired him to take up songwriting. That summer, he taught music at an overnight camp and went through a major breakup–both of which inspired the early days of Novo Amor.

Music & Philanthropy

After Brilliance Records caught wind of his song “Holland” on SoundCloud, Lacey partnered with them to release his debut EP, Woodgate, NY. In the years that followed, Novo Amor completed his first tour, a collaborative album with Ed Tullett, signed a publishing deal with BDi Music, and released a series of EPs and singles before dropping his first full-length solo album in the fall of 2018 entitled Birthplace. The title track’s music video ironically set the precedent for his commitment to philanthropy and sustainability throughout his career–stressing the importance of taking care of our oceans. Since then, he’s released two new albums, Cannot Be, Whatsoever and Antarctican Dream Machine, all while partnering with organizations like the Green Peace Oceans (with whom he sailed around Antarctica for three weeks, inspiring his latest instrumental album), Worldwide Fund for Nature, Julie’s Bicycle, and Ecolibrium to bring the social causes he’s passionate about to center stage. He even launched the 565 Fund with a mission of helping five filmmakers create a film depicting humanity and the environment from their corner of the world.

Novo Amor is set to return on tour this spring in the UK and Ireland. Until he returns to the United States, here are our favorite tracks to hold you over:

Industry Updates 💿

🏆 Last week, we gave our predictions on the GRAMMYs (for its unpredictability this year, 1 of 4 is good with us). Here’s our quick update: Beyoncé broke the record for most GRAMMY wins. Harry Styles’ dancers had to improv a reverse choreography of their set due to the turntable stage spinning the wrong way. Viola Davis is now in the exclusive EGOT club. Finally, Chris Brown was a sore loser to Robert Glasper. Last night was all about the BRITs, and Harry Styles took home the most awards of the night with a clean sweep.

🏈 No one is preparing for Rihanna’s Super Bowl performance more than Rihanna. She’s already changed it 39 times (😮), so it’s important that you watch football this weekend, if anything for Rih Rih’s sake. You’ll also catch more musicians on commercials this year than ever before, including Cardi B & Offset receiving their own McDonald’s meals. If that isn’t exciting enough, you can also follow Drake’s Super Bowl bets.

🌐 The music industry has changed drastically in one week's time. The MOST IMPORTANT UPDATE this week is HYBE, the South Korean Entertainment company known for managing BTS, just purchased Quality Control (yes, the same QC that manages Migos, Lil Yachty, and Lil Baby). If you weren’t aware, Scooter Braun is the CEO of HYBE America. That’s not all– HYBE also took a 14.8% stake in South Korean rival SM Entertainment (home to Red Velvet, EXO, etc). Back on American soil, DJ Khaled is leaving Sony Music/Epic Records and signing with Def Jam while being named the Global Creative Consultant for Universal Music Group. Def Jam also signed…an NFT virtual rock band known as The Whales.

👟 Some loose ends before we get you to the bullets: Kodak Black is now a student at Arizona State University. Tove Lo dropped a new song that was co-written with Dua Lipa. SZA is Billboard’s 2023 Woman of the Year. The Weeknd is dropping an HBO Max concert special as a way to make it up to his LA fans after losing his voice and ultimately canceling his show last September at SoFi Stadium.

Here’s everything else you missed:

• 🍺 £1 UK Pub Tour: That’s the cost of slowthai and Jägermeister’s “Best Night Of Your Life” pub tour.

• 🎟️ RENAISSANCE Fees: If you thought Taylor Swift tickets were a problem, Beyoncé fans are resorting to GoFundMe campaigns to overcome ticket fees. Ticketmaster revealed that demand for tickets is currently 800% beyond capacity.

• 🩸 Elton & Rina: Elton John tapped Rina Sawayama (a Sunlighter favorite) to headline his annual AIDS Foundation Oscars party next month.

• 💸 Fair Pay at SXSW: The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers penned an open letter to Penske Media/SXSW demanding fair pay for artists who play at SXSW. Today, Artists are only compensated $250 for SXSW showcases.

• ☄️ Meteora Redux: As part of Meteora’s 20th anniversary, Linkin Park released a box set, along with a previously unreleased song, “Lost.”

Festivals & Tour Announcements 🎡

🌳 It’s a Parklife: Today, we’re flying across the pond to Heaton Park, Manchester. Parklife has been a 2-day festival since 2010, and this year, it’s expanding from 8 stages to 10 stages. The lineup is stacked, with artists including The Prodigy (who will be performing for the first time since 2018), Wu-Tang + Nas, local Manchester rapper Aitch, and of course England’s beloved The 1975.

🏄 SEA.HEAR.NOW 2023: Produced by C3, SEA.HEAR.NOW is back for the fifth year of surf, music, and art on the beaches of Asbury Park, a township in New Jersey located not far from New York City. Aside from music and surfing competitions, expect environmentally-conscious programming from a festival providing ocean conservation awareness

Tour Announcements 🤘 Get ready to rock your faces off.

Goldenvoice announces the Re:SET summer concert series featuring LCD Soundsystem, Steve Lacy, and boygenius, James Blake, and Clairo.

Alternative/Rock

• Rock and Roll Hall of Famer James Taylor is going on a summer tour this May through July.

• The Plot In You kick off their Watch the Divide Tour this April.

• Felly embarks on the Goodmorning Broken World Tour this April through May.

• Duran Duran are set to go on their Future Past Tour this May through September.

• CAKE tours 10 dates this June through July.

• Lucius Love So Deep Tour runs March through May 2023.

• Yeah Yeah Yeahs perform 9 shows from May through June 2023.

• Masked Wolf Nothings Free World Tour runs this March through May.

• Whitechapel rock band is set to play their entire seventh studio album from front to back on tour dates this April through May.

• City and Colour stops in 14 cities throughout May 2023.

Pop/Nostalgia

• Big Time Rush starts their Can’t Get Enough Tour this June and it runs through August.

• Skinny Puppy celebrates 40 years with their Final Tour, starting this April through May.

• lovelytheband kicks off their If We’re Being Honest Tour across 14 dates throughout June 2023.

• Hot Chip announced their Freakout/Release Tour, which spans 11 dates from May through June 2023.

Wrap Up 👏

We're closing the newsletter this week the same way Jay-Z and DJ Khaled closed out the Grammys last week.

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

See ya next Sunday 😎

Chris and Donya