MUSIC PREMIERES
Maren Morris can speak from experience: No other concert crowd holds a candle to Taylor Swift‘s.
While on The Jennifer Hudson Show Wednesday (May 7), the Texas-born singer-songwriter opened up about performing her Fearless (Taylor’s Version) collaboration, “You All Over Me,” with Swift at one of the pop superstar’s 2023 Eras Tour shows in Chicago. “I’ve never seen a crowd like that, and there’s not a crowd like hers,” Morris raved.
“They’re so supportive, they’re listening to all the lyrics, they want to hear every nuance and breath between words,” she continued. “They’re truly locked in. It was a real treat to experience on that plane.”
The duo sang together at the “Fortnight” musician’s second of three Soldier Field shows in June 2023, which came two years after they first teamed up for the re-release of Swift’s blockbuster 2008 sophomore album. The performance marked the first time they’d ever played “You All Over Me” — a From the Vault bonus track on the revamped Fearless — live.
But Morris and Swift had been friends long before that, performing the former’s smash “The Middle” together in Arlington, Texas, on the latter’s Reputation Tour in 2018. In November 2023, the “Circles Around This Town” singer told Jimmy Fallon that her onetime collaborator has “been so supportive of me and my career over the years,” adding, “We’re the same age, but looking up to her since I was a teenager, and watching her navigate her country music to pop career so gracefully, and the way she treats her fans is so kind and generous … she’s setting a high bar.”
Morris echoed those sentiments on Hudson’s talk show, telling the host, “I fell in love with [Swift’s] songwriting back in high school, and I just turned 35, so I feel like even before I met Taylor, I had this friendship in my mind with her.”
The interview comes two days ahead of Morris’ fourth studio album, Dreamsicle, which features the five tracks she previously dropped in August on EP Intermission. The new project is also preceded by two singles, “Carry Me Through” and “Bed No Breakfast,” released in March and April, respectively.
Watch Morris gush about Swift on The Jennifer Hudson Show below.
MUSIC PREMIERES
Lykke Li didn’t hold back when speaking about the making of her sixth studio album, ‘The Afterparty’, during a listening session in Los Angeles earlier this year. “Let’s talk about the album. It was a motherfucker to make,” she admitted to the crowd. While balancing motherhood, the chaos of modern culture shaped by Trump and AI, and her own desire to create something more “extroverted, impulsive and chaotic” than ‘EYEYE’, as she previously shared with NME, the Swedish alt pop star arrived at a headspace that “feels like it’s 4am and the sun is going to rise”. The record captures that blurry final moment before regret, exhaustion and reality settle in, which makes it even more emotional considering she has hinted this could potentially be her final album.
There is something fitting about how brief the project feels. With only nine tracks running across 24 minutes, it never overstays its welcome. Lykke immediately drops listeners into the atmosphere with opener ‘Not Gon Cry’, painting a picture of those lonely early morning hours with the line, “No angels here tonight, no dancing queens.” Alongside the shadowy pulse of ‘Happy Now’ and the twisted disco energy of ‘Lucky Now’, she revisits the emotional yet dance driven spirit of her earlier material while blending in the sharper, more confident attitude heard on ‘So Sad, So Sexy’ and the shimmering influence of her 2019 Mark Ronson collaboration ‘Late Night Feelings’.
The emotional fallout begins to settle in quickly. ‘Famous Last Words’ carries a lush orchestral sadness as Lykke reflects on lessons that only came after years of chaos and late nights, confessing, “I had to crash and burn to tell the tale.” Then comes ‘Future Fear’, a delicate acoustic track with robotic textures that stares directly into anxiety and uncertainty with the chilling question, “I’m going to a dark place, do you need anything?” Meanwhile, ‘So Happy I Could Die’ glows like sunrise after a sleepless night, holding onto fleeting moments as she sings about “slipping through the hourglass”.
Throughout the album, Lykke Li vividly captures the beauty and wreckage of reckless nights with the vulnerability that has always defined her music. On ‘Sick Of Love’, she channels heartbreak into revenge, wanting to “make you beg for it” after rejection in a way that feels spiritually connected to Robyn’s ‘Dancing On My Own’. One of the strongest moments arrives with ‘Knife In The Heart’, a track that fully embraces her desire to become the “rock god” and “fuck boy” she spoke about, firing back at anyone who tries to tear her down with the words “you can spit, you can walk on me” while delivering one of the catchiest songs she has created in years.
Closing track ‘Euphoria’ leaves behind the same bittersweet feeling that runs through the rest of the album. With sweeping strings, pulsing beats and emotional intensity, Lykke Li reminds listeners that nothing lasts forever as she sings, “Player play your song, waste the night away”. Like the fading energy of the perfect night out, ‘The Afterparty’ ends in a haze of beauty and uncertainty. If this truly is her farewell, she leaves with one final intoxicating statement, though it still feels like there could be another chapter waiting.
