Pop singer/songwriter and actress Noah Cyrus has a lot to be proud of.

In the 10 months since her debut single "Make Me (Cry)," featuring Labrinth, was released, she's garnered more than 123 million Spotify streams, the track has been certified platinum by the RIAA and, in less than a week, the 17-year-old will serve as the opening act on 21 dates of Katy Perry's 2017 Witness Tour.

Cyrus' forthcoming debut album, NC-17, is hotly anticipated, and she's even teased that her father, Billy Ray, a country singer/songwriter best known for his hit "Achy Breaky Heart," is a surprise co-writer on one of the album's tracks.

With her career having kick-started at such a frenetic pace, it's safe to say Cyrus has already encountered and had to overcome some big hurdles in the past year: namely dealing with constant questions about her older, and extremely successful older sister, Miley Cyrus.

"Getting over the questions about Miley, and pushing pride aside," she admits. "Not that I don't want to talk about her, because I love her! But that was kinda the time where I had to accept it, and not let it bother me, because that's what comes with it."

For my part, I kept questions about Miley to a minimum and light-hearted — I wanted to know which number she thought was higher: the number of streams she'd gotten to date on her debut single, or the number of questions interviewers have asked her about Miley.

"(Laughing) I get asked a lot of questions … but not, like, every single day, so it's definitely the streams on 'Make Me (Cry).'"

However, at first, Cyrus felt a sense of nervousness and vulnerability prior to sharing her music with the world for the first time, especially given the fast success of the single. But this also became "the best part."

"I was so nervous, but it was probably the best time I've has so far," says Cyrus. "['Make Me (Cry)'] came out, and I went right on to Jimmy Fallon. And then to 'Ellen,' and then to James Corden, and [the] iHeart Awards. It was all the things I wasn't used to, and those were all in the first couple weeks. That was definitely the best part for me."

What helped prepare Cyrus for sharing her most personal music in a big way was her collaboration with multitalented artist and producer Labrinth, with whom she was able to give her own sound a test run in a place she felt comfortable before heading to these huge, public stages.

"I played him all this music that I was uncomfortable playing [for] people, because I didn't know what they'd think of it," she reveals. "I was only really comfortable with him. He really accepted it, and made me feel so much more confident about it. It was instant when we clicked."

While performing your music live in front of massive TV and live audiences may be nerve-wracking at first, given Cyrus was a competitive equestrian rider when she was younger, the pre-show jim-jams she may have felt before a horse show have prepared her for high-pressure situations.

"Oh my God, nothing compares to the pre-horse show jitters!" she gushes. "It's like going on 'American Idol' or 'The Voice' all the time, because you're just going and getting judged for your entire show. [The judges] are there to tell you, 'You did a bad job (laughing).'"

Luckily, it sounds like Cyrus is well prepared for the next major leg of her career, her upcoming tour dates with Perry, along with other openers Purity Ring and Carly Rae Jepsen. Cyrus will be joining the Witness tour for the North American leg from Sept. 19 through Nov. 1, including cities such as Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York.  

"I'm so excited, I've loved Katy since I was super little," she exclaims. "I've always looked up to her and she's such a sweetheart. I feel like I'm not going on the road with a complete stranger, so I'm not going to be quite so nervous and scared."

Being around celebrities such as Perry is likely second nature to Cyrus, but there is one artist who might stop her in her tracks: Lady Gaga. Cyrus credited her favorite track as the GRAMMY winner's piano ballad "Speechless," calling it "an artist's song."

"It's very true to her, and very honest," she adds. 

She counts Ben Howard as another of her inspirations. In Howard's case, however, Cyrus found herself unable to narrow down a single favorite song, instead picking the entirety of the British crooner's 2014 album, I Forget Where We Were.

While Cyrus admitted that she rarely gets starstruck, she said Howard is most likely the one person who would leave her speechless upon meeting.

"I don't think I would say anything. I think I would just stare and be like, 'Oh my goodness, the words I've been listening to actually come out of your mouth!'" she says. "Or I would just be like, ' I love you so much, thank for starting all of this for me,' because really, I don't know if I ever would have gone into a session if I hadn't fallen in love with music, and I really fell in love with his music first."

Cyrus' NC-17 is slated for release this fall, though no release date is set as of this writing. In the meantime, you can catch her on tour with Perry starting Sept. 19.

Interview: Odesza On Growing As Artists And Reaching "Higher Ground"

In the past year, artists in the LGBTQIA+ community have continued to create change and make history — specifically, GRAMMY history. Last November, Liniker became the first trans artist to win a Latin GRAMMY Award when she took home Best MPB Album for Indigo Borboleta Anil; three months later, Sam Smith and Kim Petras became the first nonbinary and trans artists, respectively, to win the GRAMMY Award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for their sinful collab "Unholy."

Just those two feats alone prove that the LGBTQIA+ community is making more and more of an impact every year. So this Pride Month, GRAMMY.com celebrates those strides with a playlist of hits and timeless classics that are driving conversations around equality and fairness for the LGBTQIA+ community.

Below, take a listen to 50 songs by artists across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum — including "Unholy" and Liniker's "Baby 95" — on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora.

Before Rihanna, Billy Joel and Jay-Z became some of the biggest names in music, they were students just like the rest of us. Without some particularly special teachers, they might not be the superstars they are today, and they all remember who first encouraged them.

Within the past few years, Rihanna made a special trip to a cricket match in England to reunite with her old P.E. teacher from Barbados, who she calls her "MVP"; Joel traveled back to his New York hometown to honor the teacher who said he should be a professional musician; and Jay-Z told David Letterman that his sixth grade English teacher made him fall in love with words. 

In honor of Music In Our Schools Month — which raises awareness for supporting and cultivating worthwhile music programs in K-12 — GRAMMY.com highlights eight artists who have praised their teachers for making a lifelong impact.

Billy Joel

After watching Joel tackle Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 23, his high school music appreciation teacher Chuck Arnold suggested that he consider music as a career.

"He said to me, you should be a professional musician," Joel recalled of his Hicksville High School mentor during a 1996 event at C.W. Post College. "Now, for a teacher to say that, it's like condemning someone to a life of poverty, drug taking, alcoholism and failure.

"A teacher is telling me this," he added seriously. "It had a huge influence on me."

In 2022, Joel was on hand to congratulate Arnold during the dedication of the Charles "Chuck" Arnold Theatre at the school. "This is for the coolest teacher there ever was," he praised.

Lizzo

.@CBSSunday surprised Lizzo with her high school band director, who encouraged her to apply herself when she was learning to play the flute — and her reaction was priceless: “Wow, I did it, didn't I?” https://t.co/dwffNvYzpb pic.twitter.com/xp5kDK5pWB

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 6, 2019

In 2019, CBS Sunday arranged a surprise visit with the singer and Manny Gonzales, the former band director at her alma mater, Elsik High School in Houston. She told the network that Gonzales helped her get a scholarship to study classical flute at University of Houston.

"You told my ass!" Lizzo exclaimed as she squeezed him. "You were like, 'Get it together, girl, 'cause you are special. Apply yourself!' Those moments meant so much to me."

Lil Jon

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The Atlanta DJ/producer and king of crunk has done more than take parties to the next level — he has invested in the educational future of children in Africa by building two schools in Ghana with the non-profit organization Pencils of Promise. He credits a mentor at Frederick Douglass High School in Atlanta for sparking his brain when he was a teenager.

"It was my music teacher [who inspired me to dream bigger]," he said in a 2019 interview with Yahoo! "I wanted to play drums, and if I didn't play drums, I wouldn't make music, and drums are the foundation for what I do."

Rihanna

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Roddy Estwick was Rihanna's P.E. teacher in Barbados and is now the assistant coach of the West Indies cricket team. The two had an emotional reunion at the 2019 Cricket World Cup in England.

"He made a lasting impact on my life and he really offered great advice to me and many others when we were at school at Combermere," she told Barbados Today amid their reunion. "I just wanted to let everyone know what he meant to me in my development and what he did for us back at school in Barbados." Essence reported that Rihanna described him as, "My mentor, my champ, my MVP" on her Instagram stories.

John Legend

The Ohio native credits his English teacher Mrs. Bodey at North High School in Springfield for setting him on the path that culminated in his music career.

"Until her class, I hadn't believed in my ability as a writer," Legend shared in a 2017 op-ed for Huffington Post. "She recognized my potential and showed me that I could write with creativity, with clarity, with passion."

He continued, "Mrs. Bodey, along with a few other teachers, helped me gain confidence in my skills and pushed me to challenge myself. They pushed me to graduate second in my class. They pushed me to deliver the speech at our graduation. They pushed me to earn a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, to hone my writing as an English Major and, ultimately, toward a successful career as a songwriter."

Adele

The singer was reunited with the most pivotal teacher in her life during her "An Audience with Adele" concert special in 2021. While the singer took questions from the crowd, actress Emma Thompson asked Adele if she had a supporter or protector in the past.

"I had a teacher at [south London high school] Chestnut Grove, who taught me English. That was Miss McDonald," Adele said. "She got me really into English literature. Like, I've always been obsessed with English and obviously now I write lyrics… She really made us care, and we knew that she cared about us."

Miss McDonald then surprised Adele on stage, and the singer was brought to tears — a touching highlight of the special. She even told her former teacher that she still has the books from her class!

Katy Perry

While Perry has admitted that she wishes she had a better overall education, her former music school teacher gave her confidence to pursue singing seriously.

"I'm kind of bummed at this stage that I didn't have a great education because I could really use that these days," she said in a 2014 interview with Yahoo! "There was a teacher named Agatha Danoff who was my vocal teacher and music teacher at the Music Academy of the West. It was very fancy and I didn't come from any money… and she always used to give me a break on my lessons. I owe her a lot of credit and I appreciate that she looked out for me when I didn't have enough money to pay."

Jay-Z

Picture a young Shawn Carter — now better known as Jay-Z —  with his head stuck in a dictionary.

"I had a sixth grade teacher, her name was Ms. Lowden and I just loved the class so much," Jay-Z said during his appearance on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman in 2018. 

He later realized how much Renee Rosenblum-Lowden, who taught him at Intermediate School 318 in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, had an influence on his passion for language. "Like, reading the dictionary and just my love of words," he explained. "I just connected with her."

"I knew he was extremely bright, but he was quiet," Rosenblum-Lowden told Brut in 2019, sharing that he scored at the 12th-grade level on a sixth-grade reading test.

"He's been very kind," she added. "Every famous person has a teacher who probably influenced them, and I wish they would all shout out the way Jay-Z did."

Meet Me @ The Altar Reveal The 4 "Badass" Female Artists Who Inspired Their Debut Album, 'Past // Present // Future'

In the frigid depths of January, Miley Cyrus pronounced an Endless Summer Vacation was on its way. But it wasn't just the promise of perennial sunshine and lazy days by the pool in the near future — it was the title of her eighth studio album.

Cyrus has always been a musical shapeshifter, dating all the way back to her days as a Disney star. In fact, to call her a chameleon is something of an understatement. More than any of her contemporaries in the Disney Channel class of the late 2000s, the superstar has zigzagged wildly from genre to genre, and aesthetic to aesthetic, across more than 15 years in the business. 

Of course, before Cyrus became a pop star in her own right, she was known to an entire generation as Hannah Montana, the titular character of the hit Disney Channel sitcom that ran from 2006 to 2011. Portraying Hannah gave the then-child star her first taste of life as a (fictional) music sensation, one who lived in the "Best of Both Worlds" and could put her fame on like a costume by adopting a stage persona and new look. 

When looking at Cyrus' wide-spanning career, it could be argued that the foundational experience of playing Hannah Montana informed the way a young Miley approached her own identity as a pop star, shifting from one style to the next — and yet, having each of them feel entirely authentic to her talent and point of view.

Despite the sometimes drastic stylistic changes from one album to the next, Cyrus has always insisted her music is rooted in personal truth and reflective of her current moment. "Everyone that I've been — whether you are thinking about Hannah Montana or the music I made in the past — all of it has always been the truth," she said in a 2017 interview with NPR. "So I think people are saying 'the new Miley' or 'the more honest Miley' — I've always been that. But I've been honest for who that person was then."

The singer first started breaking away from her Hannah Montana character long before the kid-friendly series finished airing in 2011. Establishing her own identity happened in fits and starts, even as her persona as Hannah grew larger than life. In 2007, she released Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus — a part soundtrack/part double album to introduce fans to the budding artist underneath Hannah's blonde wig. The project earned Cyrus her very first top 10 hit in the form of "See You Again."

In the years that followed, she essentially lived parallel lives as both Miley and Hannah. Breakout, her second studio album, arrived in 2008 with singles "7 Things" and "Fly on the Wall," and yet Hannah was still making appearances on her Best Of Both Worlds Tour. "I think having Hannah come up on stage gives it a cool vibe," she explained to MTV News at the time. "And it shows, like, one girl but definitely two sides and I like that you get both tastes of music, and I think it's just really fun."

That dichotomy continued the following year when her alter ego made the leap to to the big screen in Hannah Montana: The Movie. And yet, Hannah's big break also gave Miley the perfect platform to debut "The Climb," the soundtrack offering that rose all the way to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became her highest-charting single at the time. 

As with many child stars before her, the time eventually came for Cyrus to grow up, and as she pushed against the constraints of her kid-friendly image, controversy came calling. First, there was the pearl-clutching over "Party in the U.S.A.," with Miley's short shorts and playful pole dancing at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards; nearly a year later, her cheekily titled third album, 2010's Can't Be Tamed, sparked minor outrage over the themes and title, as well as the slight raciness of the title track's music video.

However, if the road to autonomy started out a tad bit bumpy, Cyrus burned the bridge to her tween idol past to cinders with her fourth album, 2013's Bangerz.

As its brash title suggests, the studio set is indeed a collection of banger after banger — and a provocative swerve into party-ready hip-hop and electro-pop, including a tracklist filled with all-star guest features like Britney Spears (the fan favorite "SMS (Bangerz)"), Nelly (the country-fried stomp of "4x4"), Big Sean (the blurred-out "Love Money Party"), Future (Ben E. King-sampling highlight "My Darlin'") and more. And stylistically, Miley had traded in both her long brunette waves and Hannah's signature blonde wig for a platinum pixie cut, bold red lip and rotating wardrobe of barely-there bodysuits made from latex and the pelts of abandoned teddy bears.

In retrospect, the album is unequivocally part of the defining soundtrack to the early 2010s. While the most indelible image from the Bangerz era was Miley swinging naked and free atop a giant wrecking ball, lead single "We Can't Stop" became the hedonistic anthem for a then-rising generation of young millennials coming of age in the post-recession years of Obama's second term — Cyrus included. 

And for as much scandal as Miley gleefully courted during the era — whether over her appropriation of hip-hop and Black culture, that unforgettable VMAs performance with Robin Thicke, all the twerking, or the constantly stuck-out tongue of it all — the album also earned the singer her first, and so far lone, solo GRAMMY nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album. Still, even Miley can admit all these years later that she'll pretty much "never live down that I licked a sledgehammer."

Following a project like Bangerz, most pop stars might perform something of a label exec-encouraged course correction into less provocative territory. But Miley isn't just any pop star. So, instead, she took her antics, and her music, even further down the rabbit hole with Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz in 2015.

Enlisting a trusted pair of Bangerz producers, Mike WiLL Made-It and Oren Yoel, the singer added a psychedelic bent to her existing oeuvre by teaming with Wayne Coyne and the rest of the Flaming Lips. The resulting project — which opened with the discordant declaration, "Yeah I smoke pot, yeah I love peace/ But I don't give a f—, I ain't no hippie!" — was so experimental and decidedly noncommercial that it was originally released independently, available to stream for free on Soundcloud. (While it didn't count towards her multi-album deal with RCA, the album was later added to traditional streaming services by the label, but never made a mark on the Billboard 200 or any other official chart.)

"I created my surroundings, my own world. What seems like fantasy or trippy, it's not to me. It's my actual reality," the star explained in a profile in the New York Times about the oddball release, and argued that despite its lack of traditional, well, bangers, it was actually an innate progression from its pop-heavy predecessor.

"When I made Bangerz, it was as true to me then as this record is now," she told the NYT. "It just happened naturally in my head. It's like anything — styles just change…I literally can do whatever I want. It's insane. This music was not meant to be a rebellion. It was meant to be a gift."

For his part, Miley's trusty right-hand man Mike WiLL Made-It saw her evolution through much the same lens, declaring to the NYT, "Why would she drop another Bangerz? Miley is the new Madonna."

Of course, there's only so far off the yellow brick road you can go before risking losing your fanbase to woozy fields of poppies. No matter how delayed, the course correction was bound to come — "what goes up must come down," as the saying goes and all that — but like every other step of her evolution, Miley veered back to the middle of the road entirely on her own terms.

Not only was Younger Now, her fifth album from 2017, a sonic shift to rootsy country pop (led by the downtempo, dreamy "Malibu"), it was also the first time Cyrus laid bare her approach to personal and artistic reinvention in song. "Feels like I just woke up/ Like all this time I've been asleep/ Even though it's not who I am/ I'm not afraid of who I used to be," she intoned on the opening title track, decked out in her best rockabilly cosplay before preaching, "No one stays the same/ Know what goes up must come down/ Change is a thing you can count on/ I feel so much younger now."

The album cycle was also marked by seismic changes in Cyrus' personal life. In 2016, she reconciled with longtime on-and-off boyfriend Liam Hemsworth and by the time Younger Now was released into the world, the pair were engaged to be married. The romance had gone through many different stages, breakups and reconciliations since the duo met filming The Last Song in 2009, but Cyrus had no idea at the time just how impactful it would turn out to be in the years to come.

At the time she dropped Younger Now, the superstar actually confessed her enthusiasm had already waned for her singer/songwriter phase — one natural drawback to her need for constant creative reinvention. "I'm over this now," she said during a promotional visit from BBC Radio 1 at her home studio in Malibu two full weeks before the album debuted at a career low of No. 5 on the Billboard 200. "I want to figure out what I want to do next."

If her 2019 EP She Is Coming is any indication, what Miley originally had planned was a full-circle return to her role as pop provocateur. The seven-track sampling came across as a sort of Bangerz 2.0, trading the debauchery of "We Can't Stop" for the unabashed political message of lead single "Mother's Daughter." 

The EP was meant to be the first in a trilogy that would eventually make up a full-length record, but the idea was scrapped when another metaphorical wrecking ball came crashing through the pop star's life: In August of that year, she announced her separation from Hemsworth after just eight months of marriage. Two weeks later, the actor officially filed for divorce. But even before he'd filed the papers, Cyrus had released standalone single "Slide Away" to eloquently and powerfully tell her side of the story.

"Once upon a time it was paradise/ Once upon a time I was paralyzed/ Think I'm gonna miss these harbor lights/ But it's time to let it go," she reflected, cutting her losses before bluntly telling her ex, "Move on, we're not 17/ I'm not who I used to be/ You say that everything's changed/ You're right, we're grown now."

Although it had spanned more than a decade of her life, Miley had never been so autobiographical about her relationship in her music up to that point — and the emotional vulnerability seemed to crack open a door she still has yet to close. 

In fact, it's easy to see the throughline connecting "Slide Away" to cuts like "Midnight Sky," "WTF Do I Know" and "Never Be Me" off her excellent 80s-inspired seventh album Plastic Hearts, even through the glam rock sheen and covers of Blondie, Metallica and the Cranberries. 

By the time Plastic Hearts was ready to be unwrapped in late 2020, Miley had also made peace with all the versions of herself that had come before. "I discredited myself for what I had been almost every step of the way," she said in a Rolling Stone cover story. "During Dead Petz, discrediting Bangerz. During Bangerz, discrediting Hannah Montana. During "Malibu," discrediting Bangerz. It's almost like when I have evolved, I've then become shameful of who I was before. What makes you an adult, I think, is being OK with who you've been before."

That personal reckoning is part of what makes "Flowers," the lead single off Endless Summer Vacation, feel like such a victorious culmination of what makes Miley Cyrus a superstar. The disco-inspired track is a testament of self-determination and hard-won independence, and has already become the biggest hit of her career by a long mile before the rest of the album even drops. She's broken colossal streaming records set by the likes of Adele not just once but twice over and spent six consecutive weeks at No. 1 on charts across the globe. 

The rest of Endless Summer Vacation is divided into two sides — A.M. and P.M. — representing different acts of a complete story. But even before fans heard the new album, it was clear Cyrus had already arrived at the most fully-formed version of herself yet. 

"I hope this show is a representation of you never need[ing] to choose who you want to be. And you don't need to fit into any boundaries or into any boxes," she told the rapt crowd at the 2022 Super Bowl Music Fest, which was recorded for her live album ATTENTION: MILEY LIVE ahead of Endless Summer Vacation's arrival. "You can be anything and everything that you've ever wanted to be all at the same time." 

The singer knows that better than just about anyone. After all, she's just being Miley.

Listen To GRAMMY.com's Women's History Month 2023 Playlist: Swim In The Divine Feminine With These 40 Songs By Rihanna, SZA, Miley Cyrus, BLACKPINK & More

It would be a near-impossibility to cover all the diverse women making art during Women's History Month — and celebrating creators every day, week and month is the goal — but any opportunity to elevate deserving female musicians is one to jump on.

This March, GRAMMY.com shines a spotlight on female-identifying music-makers. This month's 15 releases include entries from the Phoebe Bridgers-Lucy Dacus-Julien Baker supergroup boygenius, Chloe (of R&B sister duo Chloe x Halle), and indie creators like Lana Del Rabies and Jen Cloher; and Radie Peat of Irish dark folkies Lankum.

From bold returns (Sophie B. Hawkins) and buzzy up-and-comers (Nia Archives) to superstars (Miley Cyrus) to metal groundbreakers (Entheos), GRAMMY.com offers up a guide to the must-hear music from women this March.  

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the new release date for Ellie Goulding’s album.

Kali Uchis - Red Moon in Venus

Release date: March 3

Kali Uchis is clearly universal and boundary-crossing in her collaborations and appeal: She was nominated for a 2017 Latin GRAMMY Award for "El Ratico" (with Juanes); won a GRAMMY for Best Dance Recording for her feature on Kaytranada's single "10%" and was nominated for Best R&B Performance. Uchis (who sings in Spanish and English) has also toured with Lana Del Rey, worked with Diplo, Tyler, the Creator.

On Red Moon in Venus, her third studio album, the Colombian American singer continues her hot streak. Uchis describes her 15-track LP as a " timeless, burning expression of desire, heartbreak, faith, and honesty, reflecting the divine femininity of the moon and Venus."

Jen Cloher – I Am The River the River Is Me

Release date: March 3

On I Am The River the River Is Me, the fifth album from Aussie-born singer/songwriter Jen Cloher digs deep into their Māori roots. The LP features songs about theirancestry, with powerful choruses/phrases in the te reo Māori language. The gently intimate single "Mana Takatāpui" is rife with sweet ‘70s-sounding guitar work, and celebrates queerness as a Māori woman. 

In contrast, the irresistible "Being Human" is delivered with a driving rock ‘n’ roll urgency, dynamics and shimmering and quirky guitar tones.  "My Witch" also mines creative ‘70s guitar sounds, and as Cloher told NPR, "It feels immediately fresh. It feels catchy. It's in your ear straight away." I Am The River the River Is Me arrives via indie label Milk! Records, run by Cloher in part with Courtney Barnett.

Entheos – Time Will Take Us All

Release date: March 3

The progressive metal genre may not be packed with women, but Entheos singer Chaney Crabb is a powerhouse on stage and in the metal scene. Time Will Take Us All, the band’s third release and first for Metal Blade Records, is darker and heavier than previous outings with a wealth of influences.

The dynamic and melodic "I Am The Void" illustrate the album’s concept of "growth and self-reflection that focuses on the true human commonality – that our time on Earth is fleeting," according to a release. Entheos furthers that "what we choose to do with that knowledge is up to each of us as individuals." Entheos, normally a two-piece with drummer and band co-founder Navene Koperweis, will bring an expanded, powerful live lineup on European and American tour dates in 2023.     

Nia Archives – Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against Tha Wall

Release date: March 10

Mining her life for material, Nia Archives told NME that on Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against Tha Wall, she’s "broadly talking about growing up as a person, reaching new levels of maturity, love and loss, rejection, estrangement, the come-up and the comedown… It’s six tracks with six different moods soundtracking the recent chapter in my life." 

The year 2022 was a big one for the English record producer, DJ and songwriter, whose "future classic" sound uses jungle, drum and bass and neo-soul.  Along with European and UK dates, look for Archives, who is a 2023 nominee for a  Brit Award for Rising Star, to perform her new single "Conveniency" — and more — at this year's Coachella.

Miley Cyrus – Endless Summer Vacation

Release date: March 10

Miley Cyrus has clearly empowered legions of listeners with "Flowers,'' its lyrics asserting, "I can take myself dancing / I can hold my own hand / I can love me better than you can." With more than 560 million Spotify streams, it's likely that "Flowers" and the album it’s on, Endless Summer Vacation, will be laurel in Cyrus’ crown. 

According to a release, the music and imagery of Endless Summer Vacation serves as a "reflection of the strength she’s found in focusing on both her physical and mental well-being." Cyrus, who produced her album with Kid Harpoon, Greg Kurstin, Mike WiLL Made-It and Tyler Johnson, describes the album as her love letter to LA, where the album was recorded.  

Fever Ray – Radical Romantics

Release date: March 10

Swedish singer/songwriter/producer Karin Dreijer, aka Fever Ray, has long earned her music bona fides, kickstarting  a career with guitar band Cool Honey, then electronic music duo the Knife, formed with brother Olof Dreijer. Dreijer released their debut solo album under the alias Fever Ray in 2009, and now, the third Fever Ray album features Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross along with sibling Olof.  

A visual and musical shape-shifter, Dreijer explained the title Radical Romantics: "Everything needs to be dissected and loved and torn and built back up again and we're dreamers aren't we?" On the lead single "Carbon Dioxide," shades of Nina Hagen and ‘80s new wave lead the bubbling, electro-pop tune.

Frankie Rose – Love as Projection

Release date:  March 10

With a lengthy resume that includes Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls and Beverly, Frankie Rose has an impressive legacy, and further cements her status with Love As Projection. 

The drummer/guitarist/singer's sixth solo album melds '80s influences with contemporary electronic pop; the single "Anything" sounding like it could be on the soundtrack of a John Hughes movie. (Fittingly, Rose interpreted the Cure’s iconic Seventeen Seconds LP in 2019.) "This album is about having to focus our collective energies on the small things…we can control to find joy," Rose told the Vinyl Factory. "A distraction from the larger systemic problems that feel so overwhelming and are so very out of our collective hands… for now."

Lankum – False Lankum

Release date: March 24

"Go Dig My Grave" from 2023’s False Lankum is nearly 9 minutes long, featuring singer Radie Peat’s plainspoken singing and ominous, mesmerizing musicality inspired by the Irish tradition of keening (lament). Together, these effects create a marching doom vibe. The dark folk lineup (Cormac Dermody, and brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch), utilize traditional Irish instruments, including uilleann pipes, along with guitars, percussion, fiddle, banjo, piano and double bass. Peat employs bayan, concertina, harmonium, organ, electric organ, harp, mellotron for a sound that mines the traditional for a modern context. 

The end result, as The Guardian described, contains "ambient textures of Sunn O))) and Swans, plus the sonic intensity of Xylouris White and My Bloody Valentine." False Lankum follows the Dublin doom folk quartet’s 2019 breakthrough The Livelong Day, which garnered the band numerous awards in Ireland, including the RTE Choice Music Prize (Ireland’s equivalent to the Album of the Year GRAMMY). 

Sophie B. Hawkins – Free Myself

Release date: March 24

Sophie B. Hawkins' 2023 "anti-Valentine" song "Better Off Without You" features wrenching words about an ex: "We changed the world / Until you took my best friend to bed." The song and sentiment appear on Free Myself, the singer/songwriter’s first album in more than a decade. 

Tracks such as "Love Yourself" and "I’m Tired Of Taking Care Of You" further themes of romantic empowerment. The Free Myself, Hawkin's seventh studio album, shows the multi-instrumentalist in top form:  raw, poetic but accessible and relatable, as inclusion of her tracks in cinematic and moody television shows "Ozark," "Stranger Things" and "Euphoria" have proven.

Lana Del Rabies – STREGA BEATA

Release date: March 17

Lana Del Rabies is the alter-ego of Phoenix-based musician, producer and multimedia artist Sam An. In her Del Rabies guise, as hinted at by the moniker, An seeks to  "re-contextualize  the more ominous aspects of modern pop music made by women," creating what she calls a "dark electronic, genre-bridging solo project." As such, she’s done a spare, industrial take on Tori Amos’ "Cornflake Girl,'' plus two LPs, including the boldly titled In the End I Am a Beast. 

On her third full-length album, STREGA BEATA (loosely translated as "Blessed Witch") Del Rabies delves into dark themes, buoyed by elements of industrial, gothic noise, metal, darkwave and ambient. From opener "Prayers of Consequence" to the final cut, "Forgive," the album, as its creator explains, "is told through the evolving perspective of a cryptic and obscure "Mother" creator figure, specifically echoing the mother and crone goddess archetypes."

Lana Del Rey - Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd

Release date: March 24

Lana Del Rabies is the alter-ego of Phoenix-based musician, producer and multimedia artist Sam An. In her Del Rabies guise, as hinted at by the moniker, An seeks to  "re-contextualize  the more ominous aspects of modern pop music made by women," creating what she calls a "dark electronic, genre-bridging solo project." As such, she’s done a spare, industrial take on Tori Amos’ "Cornflake Girl,'' plus two LPs, including the boldly titled In the End I Am a Beast. 

On her third full-length album, STREGA BEATA (loosely translated as "Blessed Witch") Del Rabies delves into dark themes, buoyed by elements of industrial, gothic noise, metal, darkwave and ambient. From opener "Prayers of Consequence" to the final cut, "Forgive," the album, as its creator explains, "is told through the evolving perspective of a cryptic and obscure "Mother" creator figure, specifically echoing the mother and crone goddess archetypes."

Boygenius – The Record

Release date: March 31

Boygenius is made up of the girl geniuses Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, together a super-group collective whose debut EP expanded minds in 2017. As Baker told Newsweek, the trio of friends took the tongue-in-cheek band name because of "the archetype of the tortured genius, [a] specifically male artist who has been told since birth that their every thought is not only worthwhile but brilliant." 

The trio’s debut full-length, The Record, offers bright indie rock bounce on "$20," a low-key haunting on "Emily I'm Sorry" and to the straight-ahead fullness on "True Blue." Other intriguing song titles from the full-length include "Leonard Cohen" "Satanist." In addition to a headlining tour, boygenius will appear at Coachella in 2023.  

Deerhoof – Miracle-Level

Release date:  March 31

Deerhoof singer/bassist/songwriter Satomi Matsuzaki’s origin story is the stuff of dreams: She joined Deerhoof within a week of immigrating to the United States from Japan in May 1995 to attend college. And in 2023, the singer and self-taught bassist is front and center on Miracle-Level, Deerhoof’s 19th LP and the first sung in Satomi’s native Japanese. It’s also the influential DIY band’s first to be made totally in a professional recording studio with a producer (Mike Bridavsky). 

Miracle-Level kicks off with the joyful noise of "Sit Down, Let Me Tell You a Story," and contains the delightfully oddball "My Lovely Cat!" plus one song that’s as awkward but interesting as its title: "Phase-Out All Remaining Non-Miracles by 2028."

Critical praise has been near-universal over the lineup’s career, the New Yorker praising an "adventurous compositional style that features complex rhythms, electronica, atonal flourishes, and the pacific singing of Satomi Matsuzaki, whose sonic detachment from the group’s noisier and more aggressive side is curiously affecting." 

Chloe Bailey - In Pieces

Release date: March 31

As half of the GRAMMY-nominated powerhouse R&B duo Chloe x Halle, Chloe debuted as a solo artist in 2021 with platinum single "Have Mercy." The singer/dancer/producer’s full-length solo debut, In Pieces, launches with the sonorous "Pray It Away" before then teaming with Chris Brown for her "How Does It Feel" single. Inspired by naysayers, Chloe posted about In Pieces on her Instagram, writing "My tears are like the water. My heart is like the sun. Through chaos, beauty grows. There’s power in my pain.. It’s me breaking free."

Ellie Goulding – Higher Than Heaven

Release date: April 17 (adjusted)

On the energetic new single "Like a Saviour,"  Ellie Goulding expresses what so many felt during the last several years: "Trying to find my faith in tomorrow" and wishing for a saviour to lead her "out of the dark." The tune, off Higher Than Heaven, the English singer-songwriter’s fifth album, was inspired by the pandemic. But it’s not a wallow in darkness. In short: Expect musical and lyrical celebrations of love and sex, plus the wisdom and power of cutting out when things go bad.

As Goulding teased on Instagram: "‘Let it Die’ is about when a relationship plays out much longer than it needed to. Instead of giving love to yourself you spend it all on someone else and have nothing left, which is when it can become toxic and harmful." "Let It Die," which has notched 13 million streams, preceded the LP, along with  "Easy Lover" (featuring Big Sean) and "All by Myself."  Given the singles’ out-of-the-box success, it’ll be no surprise if  Goulding has another "Love Me Like You Do" (from the  Fifty Shades of Gray soundtrack) on her hands, the hit that  earned Goulding her first GRAMMY nom for Best Pop Solo Performance. 

Listen To GRAMMY.com's Women's History Month 2023 Playlist: Swim In The Divine Feminine With These 40 Songs By Rihanna, SZA, Miley Cyrus, BLACKPINK & More