My name is Tara Van and I am a Toronto-based singer-songwriter. I started writing little songs when I was the ripe old age of four. Art, music, and songwriting have been constants in my life through all the good and bad. I grew up in a very artistic, eccentric, multi-talented family, comprised of photographers, philosophers, models, actors, singers, visual artists, writers, marketers, musicians and filmmakers. Then there’s me.
I was born somehow missing the rhythm, dancing to my own beat. I had a lust for performance immediately and was always putting on shows and trying to entertain people. I showed aptitude in music and in elementary school performed three original Christmas carols, won the music award, and was selected for a special evening with Bobby McFerrin.
However, I always felt that I was different. Never fully fitting in, I quickly became the target of school bullies. Bullied from Grades 4-8, I became a bit of a shadow self, shying away from everything I loved. I decided to go to Rosedale Heights School of the Performing Arts and found my island of lost toys. There I started to break down some of the walls which I had built.
Bullying has life-long impacts and I found myself jumping from one toxic relationship to the next. With terrible self-worth, I chose partners who made me feel small and criticized me at every turn. Again, I shied away from the spotlight.
I went to the University of Toronto and quickly dropped out. In 2013, I decided to travel to Panama for six months and there my aunt, uncle, and I started writing a musical.
HelloBeautiful, a digital content property owned by iONE digital has released its latest cover featuring the unparalleled Taraji P. Henson. In this HelloBeautiful digital cover feature, Henson opens about her personal journey in motherhood and how being a mom has translated throughout her career. The Golden Globe winning Actress sat with HelloBeautiful to share details about being a single mom to a 28- year-old son all while navigating her career. Henson states “No one can prepare you for that. I don’t care who talks to you, no one can prepare you, you just got to jump in and get your feet and your hands dirty. You learn as you go because there is no book that can teach you. There is no book that can prepare you, really, because everybody’s story and circumstances are different.”
While giving us a front row seat to her life as a mother, she also provided an inside look on starring beside Quinta Brunson in the popular sitcom, Abbot Elementary, and how being a mom has finally come full circle in her acting career. Henson states “At first it was like, ah, mom? Why can’t I be her sister?,” Henson says. “Then I looked at her age and I said, Bitch, because you old enough to be her mother. Like, stop playing,” she says with a laugh. “I’m not going to fight age. I’m going to age gracefully.”
With a career that keeps her moving and a successful hair care line, the Academy Award Winning actress makes sure that she is prioritizing her health and setting a stellar example for Black Women everywhere. Henson states” I think we are under the misconception that just because someone is small that means they’re healthy,” she says. “Or just because someone is on the heavier side, that they’re not healthy, and that couldn’t be furthest from the truth. I was small, I was within my weight from my height and my age, and I was unhealthy.” Untangling fact from fiction is essential to the future of Black women’s wellness. Maybe one day society, and by proxy, the entertainment world, will deprioritize aesthetics and embrace vitality. I’ll bow my head, but should I hold my breath?
Swizz Beatz is Grammy-Award Winning music producer, entrepreneur and visionary, producing for some of the biggest musicians in the world including Jay-Z, Beyonce, and Kanye West (contributing to more than 350 million records sold). Over the years, Swizz has worked closely with various global brands from Bacardi, to Aston Martin and Reebok (to name a few) and most recently American Express.
Recent graduate of Harvard Business School’s OPM program, Swizz began collecting art in his twenties, and in 2014 launched The Dean Collection, which began as his personal art collection and has since grown into a global discovery zone for art enthusiasts. Swizz later launched No Commission – a live art and music festival where artists retain 100% of their sales. In 2019, Swizz and Timbaland launched the global digital series VERZUZ which has become a powerhouse in programming for artists and music catalogs. With millions of viewers each show, the brand continues to push boundaries and “give artists their flowers.
While highly accomplished, Swizz remains authentic, and humble. According to him, “The sky is not the limit; it’s just the view.” With a true passion for business, no matter the industry, Swizz hopes that his success will continue to inspire others.
Avant-garde pop songstress CLAY (she/they) continues her journey of self-discovery and self-healing via her latest offering ‘holy silence ‘fore the spring,’ which serves as the second installment of her three-part EP series and is highlighted by her lead single “jaemie”.
“In this latest body of work, I write from a place in time when the days are short and the air is still crisp, but the sun is starting to peak through the clouds, the time I call the ‘holy silence ‘fore the spring,’” – CLAY
CLAY premiered the first EP of the trio in 2022, ‘Breathing into Bloom’,which featured collaborators including Alessia Cara, Stint, and Yakob, where she opens up about her acceptance of healing as a process. On the new 6-track EP out today, ‘holy silence ‘fore the spring,’ CLAY dives deeper into more melancholy themes that came to her during reflection, when the air was brisk and the gray clouds sagged, heavy with rain.
“I have such a deep reverence for nature and often find myself drawn to write about it. We as human beings are so deeply connected to nature,” CLAY expresses.
“I find that the more I delve within my depths, into hidden memories, that bring me pain or shame or joy, musings or new ways of thinking that make me pause and ask questions, I continually find nature reflected back to me. I revel in the way my body changes with the phase of the moon, my mood lifts with the sun, how cloud cover, rain, snow, makes me feel lethargic and heavy.”
CLAY hasamassed over 20m+ streams across platforms and will be headlining a US tour this year.
Born and raised in the flower-child city of San Francisco, as well as a proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community, her diverse and politically potent upbringing has guided her work as a multidisciplinary artist into powerful new realms. The historic social justice movements of the Bay Area laid the groundwork for the work she does today to create liberation through music. Unafraid to get political in songwriting, her past work has seen her take on Trump at the height of his crippling power (“Orange”), and more. CLAY cares deeply about advocacy, community, integrity, and unity and you can always hear that in her art.
From the very beginning, she knew that using her voice was her true calling in life. At seven years old, CLAY joined the San Francisco Girls Chorus. Long feeling like an outsider, it was the first place she made friends and finally fit in. She was in the touring ensemble of the chorus until age 16 – performing at former President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration and winning three GRAMMYs along the way.
As a young adult, she cultivated her songwriting skills at a contemporary music school and began making music of her own. Calling herself a “neurodivergent pop star,” she approaches songwriting with deep reverence for storytelling and views it as a spiritual experience. She often isolates to pull from within, listening closely for the whispers of truth longing to escape her in the form of a song.
This year, she was featured in a worldwide brand partnership campaign with Tinder that highlighted queer love. CLAY’s songs have also been featured in shows like The L Word and The Chi.
Experimental rock group CarbonWorks, led by guitarist/composer Neal Barnard, announce the upcoming release of their second album, Vanishing Act, available now on all music streaming platforms.
Vanishing Act is the second album by CarbonWorks, the follow up to their debut self-titled album, which came out in 2017. As with their debut album, Vanishing Act uniquely pushes musical boundaries, combining various genres to create a signature sound that Barnard calls “a jolt between the ears.” Singles from the 10-track album have included an alt-rock song (“Training That Works”), a jazz fusion song (“Athena”) and a punk song, “Marie Osmole,” that rolls in a jazzy saxophone riff, a slower bluesy beat and a sultry French lyric.
Music critic John Apice described the new album as “quirky, interesting & challenging” but also “beautifully atmospheric,” “infectious” and “imaginative.” Apice also commented that “what it achieves with class is taking bits of music from other sources & re-animating it with the CarbonWorks originality.”
MadameNoire.com and CassiusLife.com, two digital content properties owned by iONE Digital, have launched the first season of LISTEN TO BLACK MEN (LTBM). ‘Listen to Black Men’ is a new iOne Digital series that centers the stories and experiences of some of today’s most influential Black men. Hosted by Media Personality and Hip-Hop Commentator Mouse Jones, the series jumps straight into cultural topics and discussions the world rarely has a chance to witness amongst Black men. ‘Listen to Black Men’ is a 7-episode series featuring father, rapper and actor, Dave East, hip-hop legend Jim Jones, comedian, writer and actor Tyler Chronicles, and rapper Papoose or “Husband of the Century” according to Jessie Woo. From reactions to watching the births of their children, to the importance of therapy, and putting their women on pedestals, no topic is too raw or honest for these men.
“When a woman gives birth, it’s a big deal. I think that as a man you gotta understand what your woman just went through and you really gotta be patient and roll out that red carpet,” said Papoose. ”
Maddbayy is a dynamic pop duo comprised of the multitalented Niraj Patel and Nav Ramasamy. Patel’s upbringing in the vibrant city of Los Angeles fueled his passion for music, which he used as an escape from a young age. His musical influences span from the colorful sounds of Bollywood to the energetic beats of 80’s pop. He expertly blends these sounds to create unique and infectious pop and R&B tracks, showcasing his skills on guitar and vocals. Ramasamy’s story is equally captivating. Born in New Orleans and raised in Malaysia until the age of 17, his grandfather’s love for music and his family’s diverse musical tastes played a pivotal role in shaping his unique sound. The melting pot of influences includes old Indian music, 70’s and 80’s rock, and classic R&B and pop. Being complete opposites, the duo thrive on meshing their personalities together to create “MADDNESS.” Blending a variety of genres where EDM meets R&B, electro kisses pop, and Bollywood marries Hollywood, they have made a name for themselves as a duo, while still letting their individuality shine.
Little Fuss, a collection of shy creatives hoping to take their introverted perspectives and write songs that make them loud enough to hear, are using their new single, “Hypothetical Girl,” to turn the male gaze’s lustful, manic pixie dream girl fantasy on its head. The first track off their upcoming Lovely Distraction EP, set to be released later in the spring, is now available to stream and download on all digital platforms.
A sarcastic call to arms that calls for the redemption of women who, all too often, have been objectified by their male observers, “Hypothetical Girl” is a fiery display of resistance to simplistic tropes of femininity that aims to reclaim agency over dull, reductive portrayals of women. Like “A Modern Olympia,” a single from their debut full-length Girls At Parties, which speaks candidly about women’s experiences in a historically patriarchal society and the lack of humanization, “Hypothetical Girl” liberates two-dimensional stock characters from the destiny of being the whimsical, quirky, or eccentric females intended to exist on an unattainable pedestal of the male gaze selflessly.
“I don’t rap, I sell advice,” says North Carolina’s experimental hip hop-rock artist Antion Scales. This statement reflects how his upbringings and experiences contribute to his storytelling as an artist, as well as a conscious approach to making music. Scales is an artist raised in Greensboro, North Carolina. By merging musical elements, such as 90’s Hip Hop, Rhythm & Blues, and Gospel, his style can be viewed as “unorthodox” and “pleasantly versatile”. His music bridges the gap between early 90’s hip-hop lyricism, with today’s melodic, ambient styles
Scales started songwriting at a young age as a form of escape from environmental pressures and situational hardship. Music-making became an enjoyable outlet to express emotions and a form of narration to describe his upbringing and others alike.
Developing in an environment that is immersed with frequent adversity and negative influences one is required to be mentally fortified. This same environment constantly challenges internal commitment to achieving personal goals and aspirations. In a community where it’s easily accessible to make wrong and lasting decisions, Antion Scales uses his songwriting to act as a resource to provide alternatives to battle hardship and environmental pressures. Scales strives to positively reinforce mental attributes such as determination, inner faith, and self-belief. Antion Scales’ music gives power back to those who fail and still try again. Scales represent anyone who has experienced similar adversity.
We encounter potential new loves every day… but how often do we approach them to make a connection?
“We Haven’t Met Yet” is a song about the idea of falling in love with someone new, whether you meet them on the bus, at a bar, or in this particular case, at the library.
Watch the official music video for our imaginative love song, “We Haven’t Met Yet,” from our new album Cruel, on YouTube now!
Hear Cruel in full via your preferred streaming platform.
This album, Cruel, is our unique take on the old sounds of the Motown era, blended with a dancing pop vibe. This is our first full-length bilingual album, recorded live off the floor. It’s all about love. While some songs reflect the pain of heartbreak, others capture the elation of newfound love. In the end, all these songs were crafted with the aim of keeping the listener on their feet and captivated by the music. We hope you enjoy it.
Thanks for listening,
Jérémie & The Delicious Hounds
Like bathrooms and kitchens, careers sometimes need a refresh, even if they’re comfortable and functional. Especially if they’re comfortable and functional. And if a milestone anniversary happens to be looming, tearing up those floorboards seems even more urgent. Just ask Alan Chang.
For 19 years, the California-born Chang served as musical director and pianist to Michael Bublé, a gig that sent the lifelong musician around the world on sold-out tours, performing massive hits like “Home” and “Haven’t Met You Yet” that he co-wrote for the superstar Canuck crooner. Yet as 2019 wound down and Chang’s 40th birthday approached, he began pondering possibilities beyond the orbit he’d occupied nearly half his life.
Now, he is unveiling his latest single, the gently propulsive and arpeggio’d “Love As a Weapon.” Finding its lead piano grafted onto an atypically up-front rhythm section anchored by bass legend Pino Palladio and drummer Tamir Barzilay, the track draws its eccentric lyrical imagery from Chang’s departure from the Bublé camp. Read into it what you will. “I wrote that song a few days after I told Michael I was quitting,” Chang offers. “It was almost like a partner asking for a divorce. Suddenly, all these… different feelings came up. That song is a form of therapy.”
The creation of his new music saw Chang working alongside his fiancé Alex Lilly, a singer-songwriter in her own right, as well as with producers Ryan Lerman (Scary Pockets, Lizzy McAlpine, Buble, Ben Folds, John Legend) and Adam Greenholtz.
This new release marks the beginning of a new era for Alan Chang and it’s one you’re going to want to be a part of.
“When Alan left me after nearly two decades, I swore off half-asian men forever. But after hearing Alan’s seminal track off his new album, I realized that in life, you dim sum, you lose some. I can’t wait for people to hear his music!”
-Michael Buble
The song “It’s Clear To Me” represents losing yourself while clinging to someone who has no interest in you. Toxic attachments become addictive, and their push-and-pull nature makes the relationship more enticing.
Anya Baghina‘s music combines accessible melodies with sometimes nonlinear song structures and progressive arrangements, ranging from shoegazey dream pop to slide guitar-fuelled jangly indie folk to synth-driven ambient soundscapes to distorted indie rock. Her self-titled album is coming soon.
Lipstereo is a young, four-piece Australian indie rock band from Melbourne, Australia. Formed in 2019, this collection of music tragics bonded together over a mutual obsession of The Strokes, Weezer and Arctic Monkeys’ back catalogues. By channeling too much time spent watching worn out Ramones and Blondie VHS tapes as children, Lipstereo creates performances reminiscent of late nights at CBGB, and spilling drinks just a little too cheap on the floor.
Lipstereo is composed of frontman Sam Stranges on vocals and rhythm guitar, Andrew Stainsby on lead guitar, Tage Hosking-Gregory on bass and Jesse Porter on drums. Playing all over pre-lockdown Melbourne in 2019 and 2020 at their high-energy live gigs, Lipstereo fuses loud guitars with a post punk songwriting sensibility to create music that in a parallel universe, would be on Phil Spector’s Spotify playlist.
Lipstereo is one of Melbourne’s most promising alternative bands, having recently released their four track debut EP, Modern Mythology, at Thirty Mill Studios with top Australian record producer, Mark Opitz (AC/DC, INXS, Cold Chisel) and engineer Colin Wynne (INXS, Jeff Lang, The Casanovas). The bandhas since received acclaim from Rolling Stone Australia, NME, ABC Rage and Noise 11 to name a few. Their new EP Live at Bakehouse was recorded and filmed during a worldwide live streamed concert called “Let Me Help – Children Of The World”, presented by Noise11.com. Filmed in the “Scrap Museum” at Bakehouse Studios in Melbourne, Lipstereo premieres three songs live, “You Got The Things”,”Push The Tide” and “Feedback”. This body of work was telecast live from New York City on behalf of children’s charities across the world.
Los Angeles-based soulful pop artist Jackie Lipson releases their latest single “Chemicals.” Perfectly timed to come out during Mental Health Awareness Month, the song lyrically ebbs and flows like the waves of mood changes, and the hit and subsequent withdrawal of a dopamine rush. The song evokes the desperate nature of mental illness and how it can impact your grasp on sense of self. Jackie’s immense command over their voice is on full display in this brooding A-side to their beloved hit single “Someday” – Stream “Chemicals.”
Identifying with an array of marginalized identities – Queer, non-binary, neurodivergent, Jewish, femme, fat – Jackie has countless perspectives on how thin the line of control becomes when the body’s chemistry is in the driver’s seat. The song’s chorus melody and production break open as if to finally release the pain of the mixed emotions and beg for release from this “mix of Chemicals.”
“I want the listener to understand and connect with the feeling of helplessness and the lack of control of untreated mental illness,” says Jackie Lipson. Expanding further, they said, “The pre-chorus ‘call me the pharmacist, I’m making my own medicine. Or just a narcissist, stuck inside my head again’ describes imposter syndrome, a state where it becomes difficult to trust your own experience and, in this case, begin to believe that your anxiety and depression are in fact just narcissism in disguise.”
New York City-based musician and singer Natalie Rose LeBrecht shared “Holy,” a song that deftly brings together ambient, devotional music, spiritual jazz, and cosmic songwriting. It’s the second and final pre-release single from her forthcoming full-length, Holy Prana Open Game, out on June 9th via American Dreams.
Natalie Rose LeBrecht’s recordings, from the teenage 4-track tapes she made as Greenpot Bluepot to the recent albums under her own name, have been fascinating dispatches from her progressively deeper dives into her gorgeous, weird, wildly idiomatic aesthetic. Holy Prana Open Game is a jewel of intensely personal cosmic music, created through a remarkable process of openness, craftiness, addition and subtraction. It belongs to a tradition of albums that document a rich, meditative sound as it rises up to join the world outside its creators’ minds: Alice Coltrane’s Universal Consciousness, Harmonia’s Musik von Harmonia, Philip Glass’s North Star, Talk Talk’s Laughing Stock. “Meditative” is specifically the idea here: Holy Prana Open Game had its origins in the fourteen days LeBrecht spent silently meditating in her home’s small music room in the summer of 2019. “I came out of that bursting with the will to create new music,” she says, and she created it sound-first. LeBrecht taught herself to program an analog synthesizer’s timbres from scratch, and built a new set of glacial, heady compositions out of them, eventually singing to accompany the keyboard parts she was playing. 
This song is trying to make sense of the many hypocrisies we face in today’s world. It’s a song of frustration, but I hope one person can use it as an anthem for awareness, realization and change, however big or small.”
Dublin post-punk alt-rocker Tadgh Billy King wants to try and get through to a society too fixated on cell phones, pop culture, and money to care about humanity in his new single “sit and wait.” Tadgh (pronounced like “Tiger” without the “er”) didn’t set out to re-create the sound of frustrated punk rock, instead he’s unapologetically adding to the conversation through a modern lens with this new release. The result is a blistering, blunt and rousing ride through noisy hardcore, math-y punk and gazy walls of sound. At times brash, at times sublimely ethereal.
Tadgh’s immersive artistry speaks to its conception during times of deep introspection. His cathartic musicality spans post-punk, goth, noisy hardcore, and math-y punk, and is inspired by such artists as Bauhaus, Drive Like Jehu, Fugazi, Joy Division, Nirvana, Radiohead, and contemporary Irish bands such as Fontaines D.C., The Murder Capital, Gilla Band and Just Mustard.
He’s an actor, writer, director, a composer for theatre, and an award-winning classical singer. Previously, Tadgh played in the critically-acclaimed Dublin classic rock power-trio, The Last Boys. He has recently sung on the title track of Vicky, a film about Vicky Phelan that won best Irish documentary at the Irish Films Critics Circle Awards.
Following the release of his highly anticipated record “KILL,” emerging artist Benjamin Lewis is excited to announce the release of his captivating new single, “Broken Hearted.” Guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings, “Broken Hearted” is the third release from Lewis’s upcoming EP, “High in the Sky.”
“Broken Hearted” demonstrates Lewis’s ability to quickly translate his emotions into beautiful, harmonic melodies. The song captures the helpless feeling of heartbreak from toxic relationships, and the suffering, self doubt and self blame that comes with and after it. With poignant lyrics that cut to the core of the human experience, Lewis’s latest single is a testament to his ability to create music that resonates with listeners on a deep, emotional level.
The song’s lyrics can easily translate across different life circumstances and scenarios, as Lewis taps into universal emotions relatable to anyone who has experienced heartbreak.
Last month, Lewis’s single, “KILL,” a powerful track about self-expression, garnered favorable reviews from the media and fans alike. A real showcase of his unique musical style, Lewis uses his songwriting gift as a therapeutic outlet for himself and his listeners.
Email: neill@outloudculture.com
