Ladyhawke
Ladyhawke, or Margaret “Pip” Brown, has been kind to us this year. She served us “Guilty Love,” about shame and discovering your sexual orientation while studying under the Catholic education system, earlier in the year. And then, recently, Ladyhawke followed “Guilty Love” up with another single, “Mixed Emotions.”
The “beloved New Zealand songstress” said to NZ Herald about “Mixed Emotions”: “Mixed Emotions was written with old mates Jono Sloan and Nick Littlemore while I was on a writing trip in LA. Sloan had come up with a really cool bass groove which Nick and I riffed over to get the lyrics and melody. The song is about all the things you can feel with one person, sometimes all in a single day. Ups and downs, confusion, highs, and lows. And everything in between!”
Pip Brown, who’s married to Madeleine Sami, is making a huge comeback after going through a rough patch over the last couple of years. Not only did Pip discover she had cancer, in the form of melanoma, soon after she and Madeleine welcomed their baby girl in 2017, but she also had a bout of postpartum depression.
The survivor isn’t stopping at “Guilty Love” and “Mixed Emotions.” She’s releasing the album Time Flies in October and has announced an Australian tour!
Willow Smith
Having parents like Jada and Will means that the public already thinks they know Willow Smith, but she’s an impactful, thought-provoking artist and musician in her own right. While the bisexual artist has spent time cultivating her own identity separate from her famous folks, Willow also represents her family’s ability to become well-versed in multiple artforms.
Growing up, Willow Smith watched her mother, Jada Pinkett Smith, front the nu-metal band Wicked Wisdom. “My mom got so much hate,” she admits to L’OFFICIEL. “It was intense racism and sexism, just packed on to the tens. People giving her death threats, throwing glass at her onstage. Some crazy stuff went down when she was touring with her band…I got to see that hate firsthand…It was so scary to me, and I think I internalized a little bit.”
Willow takes inspiration from the way Jada handled the threat of violence as her own fan base grows. “Every time I feel that [anxiety] coming on, I just go back to my memories of my mom and how she would deal with actual physical danger—she just rose above it,” she said. “Obviously, she was scared. But she really showed me what ‘womaning up’ really was, by taking a stance and not being afraid of other people’s judgements and perceptions. I really wanted to just go within that place in myself and try something new, regardless of what my insecurities were.”
Like Jada, Willow doesn’t limit herself to one form of art. Just before the world went into lockdown, Willow “locked herself inside a 20-foot box at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art for 24 straight hours,” in the name of performance art. Willow hoped for the exhibition, which coincided with her album The Anxiety, to raise awareness about exactly that – anxiety.
After taking the time to address her own anxiety, Willow has a refreshed vibe in 2021. While announcing her coming album lately I feel EVERYTHING, she also released the single “Lipstick,” which is a Jada-like nu-metal song that’s a lot less dreamy than Willow’s earlier music.
Brandi Carlile
Brandi Carlile, who released her memoir Broken Horses on April 6, has announced a new, “very dramatic,” new album, according to Taste of Country. “The album came quicker than I thought…It’s done,” she says. “I think the book led us to some pretty dramatic places,” she adds, “and unlocked some doors that maybe I didn’t have access to before in my mind.”
While Brandi hasn’t released an album since By the Way, I forgive You, in 2018, she’s been busy releasing a few singles this year. The most recent single, “Speak Your Mind,” appears on the soundtrack for the new Netflix series, We The People, which premiered on July 4th.
We The People was created by Chris Nee and is executively produced by Barack and Michelle Obama. It aims to bring “civic lessons to a new generation through song and amination in the vein of the beloved animated series Schoolhouse Rock!” according to Jam Base.
LP
LP’s newest song “One Last Time” is the third track from the album LP will release later this year. “‘One Last Time’ is about the fleeting nature of relationships, romantic or otherwise, and how every moment is precious. No matter how little or much we get of someone we find ourselves fantasizing about the past with them and the things we wished we’d said or done before our time together was through,” LP is quoted as saying on the iamlp blog.
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