Adagio Apassionato

wave to earth recently released ‘heaven and hell,’ a poignant song with a very emotional and bold message. While the song has multiple interpretations, I see it as a critique of the rigid, binary rules that many impose on others in the name of religion. Upon watching the music video and listening deeply to the song, it featured distinctly queer undertones, and I found it speaking a similar message as Conan Gray’s song ‘Found Heaven’ (which I have reviewed here ). In this post, I’ll examine both religious weaponisation of morality and its suppression of queer identities in my comparison of wave to earth and Conan’s songs!  Both songs are stylistically completely different. Conan takes on this theme openly, boldly and virtuosically in his song. He very explicitly speaks out his critique of religion being used as a weapon against queer people, the forcefulness of his message stemming from his own experience as a queer person. Meanwhile, wave to earth’s take is more contemplative, emot...

CW: Mention of suicidal ideation in the analysis for the song 'Merry Go Round.' If this topic triggers you, please avoid that section! I'll add another CW before it turns up in case anyone wishes to skip. BTS IS BACK! I was so, so happy to hear ARIRANG as BTS’ return to music. It makes me ecstatic as an ARMY to see the band I’ve loved for over 9 years now creating with the same passion, dedication and intention that they always have – and to feel ARMY’s love for them as strong as it has ever been! On the first listen of the entire album, I was really able to appreciate how BTS have revived the hip-hop styles and elements that featured in a lot of their older numbers from around when they first debuted. Everything that characterised albums like ‘O!RUL8,2?,’ ‘2 Cool 4 Skool’ and ‘Dark & Wild’ was blended perfectly into this album! I really loved seeing BTS get back in touch with these sounds from their debut days. I also really liked that many of the songs were in Korean,...

I was super, super excited to listen to and write about Potatoi (John Cha)’s first full-length album – ‘Orange Courage!’ I have really enjoyed listening to his solo works and discovering his persona as an artist beyond the band wave to earth. He started out making mainly instrumental music as ‘obdnce,’ with his only lyrical track ‘With You’ featuring Daniel Kim’s beautiful vocals. As he first began writing lyrics for wave to earth (‘evening glow,’ ‘annie.’), I could clearly see a distinction in Daniel’s lyricism and John’s – where Daniel’s (for wave to earth) are flowery and filled with imagery and metaphors, John’s seem to express emotions as they are.  With the EP ‘Toy,’ we were introduced to John’s solo persona and learned a little about him and his experiences. With ‘Orange Courage,’ though, I feel that John has really come into his own with his creations, and his voice feels truly authentic in these songs. Even the titles of both albums show this transition – John’s ‘Toy’ is p...

August and September of 2025 were the best possible time for any music lover with the amount of wonderful new music that was released! As luck would have it, all my favourite artists released new music and/or albums every week from August until mid-September – being able to absorb so much amazing new art ensured that these were probably the best few weeks of my life! It made it a little difficult to decide which of these albums or songs to write about on this blog since I had so many options – but to me, ‘Prema’ by Fujii Kaze stood out and also challenged me to listen deeply and analyse something unlike what I usually do on this blog. ‘Prema’ as a title itself stood out to me as soon as Kaze announced he would be releasing this album. It felt so special to me as an Indian – ‘prema,’ in Sanskrit, signifies an all-encompassing, unconditional love, often expressed towards the Divine or God. The innate positivity, spirituality and warmth that is so characteristic of Kaze’s music made me fe...