TRACK OF THE WEEK: "Waking Up Slow" by Gabrielle Aplin – We called it with I Miss You last year, and now there's further proof. It's a new era of bangers for erstwhile warbler Gabrielle Aplin! Waking Up Slow opens up with Ray of Light vibes before cascading into shimmering synths. But she's kept the best bits of her singer-songwriter past, like the throwaway magic of the line "It's like I never had a doubt/ I love you like the sun came out".
Hero of the week is Kesha, who opened up in an essay for Refinery 29. "I feel like I've gone through some things that have felt like a storm in my life. This was my way of telling myself that I was going to make it through. I made the decision to take the dollar sign out of my name. I did away with my cynical self-deprecating "I don't give a fuck" attitude and the matching Twitter name @keshasuxx. I let myself be 100 per cent genuine, vulnerable, and honest in my music. I used to be very mean to myself. Rainbow is my letter of encouragement, a promise that I want to start a new dialogue and be more supportive and nicer to myself."
Meanwhile, Alana Haim told BuzzFeed that she didn’t help with the choreo in their newest video. “I’m going to be truthful, because this is truth or dare. I’m not a choreographer, I leave it up to these two. We had some help, cause we also need someone to bounce ideas off of. Francis and the Lights helped us – we love you Francis. And our friend Ian helped us. It was a collab, if you will.”
Zero of the week is Gabrielle Aplin of the past (stick with us). She told Popjustice: "I actually was selling out by trying to be cool. So I just decided to stop trying. I stopped being scared of pop. I love a pop song! I was just scared it might frighten people a bit, but I enjoy writing these songs so much, and I find them so easy to write that I've just stopped thinking about it. So I didn't try to change, I just stopped trying not to."
Now click here and read Kesha's heartfelt essay in full.
