New Music: Blake Shelton, Olivia Rodrigo, Pink, Twenty One Pilots and Mat Kearney

5 hot releases you need to check out now

From the LifeMinute.TV Team

May 21, 2021

With many restrictions from the pandemic slowly loosening up, the music industry is doing their part to pick up the pace with both new music and live shows.

Here are 5 hot releases that you need to check out now. 

The Voice coach Blake Shelton's latest record Body Language is his 12th studio album. It contains 12 songs, including the No. 1 country duet with fiancé Gwen Stefani, entitled "Happy Anywhere." He also brought along The Swon Brothers, his former protégés from the show to sing along on the title track. 

The younger set may know Olivia Rodrigo from her acting gigs on Disney shows like Bizaardvak and High School Musical, but others will recognize her for the three hit singles she dropped earlier this year. Two of those singles hit the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, the first of which is "Drivers License.” It went all the way to number 1, making her the first artist in the charts history to have two debut singles appear in the top 10. Her debut full-length album Sour on Geffen Records has all three hits plus an additional eight tracks. Rodrigo wants the album to be super versatile. “My dream is to have it be an intersection between mainstream pop, folk music, and alternative rock,” she says. “I love the songwriting and the lyricism and the melodies of folk music. I love the tonality of alt-rock. Obviously, I'm obsessed with pop and pop artists.”

Pink has a new tour documentary on Amazon Prime and a sister album to go along with it, both of which are titled All I Know So Far: Setlist. The bulk CD is comprised of tracks from the 2019 Beautiful Trauma World Tour. The title track is a new song produced by the famed Greg Kurstin, and there is a duet with her daughter Willow, entitled "Color Me Sunshine." She also has the All I Know So Far Limited Edition Zine Set that includes 80 pages of photographs from the tour, that's available on her website.

Twenty One Pilots, the duo from Columbus, OH, are back with their first new record since 2018. Scaled and Icy is a tricky play on words from frontman Tyler Joseph who associates the phrase "scaled back and isolated" with the conditions brought on by the worldwide pandemic. It is also an anagram for "Clancy Is Dead,” which refers to the hero of their previous album Trench. The record was primarily written and produced while the two members were in lockdown in their respective home studios during the pandemic. They would record sections of music and send it back and forth to each other until it was completed. Get it on Elektra Records anywhere music is sold.

January Flower is the latest album from Nashville-based recording artist Mat Kearney. It is his sixth full-length album, and it pretty much stays true to form with past releases. Kearney has a deft touch for combining hip-hop and guitar-based folk music to create an unusual and pleasing amalgam. This latest release also showcases his skills as a producer by highlighting much of the percussion and layered house music as an undercurrent. Kearney has already released a string of music videos to accompany the first singles from the album. Based on the positive response the videos have received, January Flower is bound for great things.