Beyoncé, Sasha Fierce, Yoncé, Ms. Carter, Queen B - there are many names and identities by which we’ve come to know one of the most prolific artists of the last few decades. She changed the game with the digital drop, made an arthouse film around her 2016 genre-defying album Lemonade, and while she’s been involved in collaborations like her project The Carters with husband Jay-Z, chart-topping remixes with Ed Sheeran and Megan Thee Stallion, and movie soundtracks, the Queen herself has not released a solo project in six years.

Every couple of years, there is an artist who completely captures popular culture and eclipses everything else in the musical zeitgeist. In 2019, that artist was undoubtedly Lizzo. The release of her major label debut album, Cuz I Love You, that year, was not the beginning of her music career however. Instead, it was the result of years of music making, discovering her sound, honing her rap skills in Houston, then joining various music groups in Minneapolis, and even garnering the attention of Prince himself.

June is Pride Month, and at Feed Media Group we are excited to celebrate and honor the LGBTQ+ community through music! LGBTQ+ artists and allies can be found across all genres of music and visibility has been steadily increasing in today’s music industry. Our Pride Month station is full of positive, fun, and meaningful anthems that will have listeners feeling good, both body and soul. In celebration of Pride Month, we’re spotlighting three artists who have made waves in the music industry while supporting the LGBTQ+ community.

Building off the chart-topping success of 2019’s Fine Line, the new album from Harry Styles, Harry’s House, offers an intimate glimpse of a superstar finding his home sonically while capitalizing on an approachable charisma fans (and soon-to-be fans) have come to know and love.   

Doubts will fly around any ex-boy band member’s solo project, but Styles shook off any labels of unoriginal, commercially driven music with his debut album. Since then, he has been able to ride the wave of pop criticism and forge his own path, caring more about winning over live audiences and their connection to the music he is making. Sure, he started with a built-in teenage fan base coming into young adulthood that would follow him to the ends of the Earth, but it’s Harry’s ability to win over their parents with sophisticated rock grooves that make him a global star. 

Spring is a great time for music discovery. By April, we're typically seeing a steady stream of exciting new releases as artists have dropped new singles and albums in the new year, and are getting ready for festivals and summer touring. The warmer weather also lends itself to sunnier, upbeat tunes that are perfect for businesses looking to engage users in apps. Our Curation Team of music aficionados at Feed Media Group collaborated on this playlist to bring you some of our favorite music discoveries for 2022.

Machine Gun Kelly brought back pop punk in a big way with 2020’s Tickets to My Downfall, and the commercial success and award recognition for that album has been paving the way for a new class of rockers. From new artist collabs with Blink-182’s legendary drummer Travis Barker to the nostalgic line-up of ‘90s/’00s emo-rock heavyweights on the When We Were Young festival line-up, there’s no denying pop punk’s presence in the zeitgeist and its role in defining this new decade of music.

Defining pop music has long been a moving target filled with hyphens in an effort to pin down the sound currently defining a culture. As music production, sounds, and styles evolve, pop tends to be the genre where you can easily hear what’s trending - often taking the most appealing sonic elements of other genres and making them mainstream. Like fashion and other elements of pop culture, it’s easy to observe the cyclical nature of these trends and the heavy reliance on nostalgia.

The award-winning and commercial success of Kacey Musgraves’s genre-fluid third album Golden Hour, and subsequent mainstream recognition, inevitably moved her more firmly into the pop quadrant of the country and pop crossover scatter plot. She has always been acutely aware of her position outside of the country mainstream, and many of her songs acknowledge (and even celebrate) that reality.