Main Pop Girl

Growing up isn’t always easy. Hormones course rampantly through your body like cheap liquor, insignificant issues are morphed into earth-shattering natural disasters, and all the while you walk the floss-fine tightrope between parental expectations and inner desires. If life is merely a series of hurdles established by the gods for mortals to overcome, adolescence is surely the first major challenge that most people would face - and often it offers stumbles that can’t be recovered from. And yet, as soon as the thickets of youth begin to clear and innocent smiles are transformed into wrinkled parchments, its terrors are often forgotten or overlooked, written off as the by-products of a natural chemical imbalance. Thus is the paradox explored in Nicholas Dante’s debut album, Hue (released on April 1st, 2016), which ambitiously strives towards a serious comprehension and acknowledgement of the troubles of teenagehood by distilling them into musical form. Described by Dante as a lyrical “story”, the album narrates the turbulence of growing up in an uncertain world and experiencing the novelty of first love, all while dealing with the loss of innocence that comes from understanding the world around you in a new way. It’s an issue that Dante, who hails from opulent Long Island in New York, has had a long time to consider in his sixteen years of life. Inspired by the idols of his childhood, Dante looked towards such mononyms as Britney, Beyonce and Michael to create what has become as much a tribute to his inspirations as it is an assertion of independence. It is the Gatsby-esque experiences which coloured these sixteen years that culminate in Dante's lead single from the project, 'Make U Weep'. Featuring an absolutely relentless barrage of a bassline and lyrics that read like an entry straight from Heidi Montag's sex diary about going "down on you low/Taking control/Give you some good/Cause ya' know that I could give you what you deserve", the track distills the feeling of drunk sex into a total of three minutes and twenty-three seconds. ‘Make U Weep’, which is written and produced by Luke Gus, is an anomaly on an album which is otherwise entirely self-written and produced by Gryves Martell of Britney Spears' Bare fan-made album fame; but in reality, all eight tracks excel in production and professionalism far beyond what you might expect from a first-time singer and self-professed ATRL star. And despite the five-star calibre of the tracks, they’re all centred around a vulnerability and intimacy which you’d be hard pressed to find in any A-list star. Dante says that his main goal with his music is to relate to people on a visceral level, bonding over the shared experience of first love and the awkwardness of teenage affection. For him, Hue is a realisation of self-worth and confidence as an independent musician making his way in the twenty-first century; but it also marks the end of an era, and the nostalgia for those adolescent days behind him pulses through the album. It’s a feeling that everyone can relate to: the sense of an ending that comes with the final chapter of every book and every final goodbye to a departing friend. But with every ending comes the beginning of something new; and with Hue, we get the sense that Dante’s possibilities are as limitless as the spectrum of colours which inspired its title.

Alt-pop up and comer Halsey has become the subject of controversy today over predictably petty social media happenings. Fans who went to check her official Twitter page today were left perplexed in the face of a message saying that the account "doesn't exist". There was no clear explanation for the deletion, but many are pointing to Instagram drama as the source of all problems. On the second of April, the popstar posted an image of a person kissing a mannequin with text overlaid reading "Everything is changing and I don't know where I fit". The image immediately blew up when it was discovered that Halsey had not made the image herself but had predictably found the image on Tumblr and failed to credit the original artist. The comments became more and more vitriolic after it was said that Halsey had blocked the original artist on Instagram from commenting on the image. However, as it turned out, Instagram had automatically blocked the artists comments after they had commented too many times on the work. While her Twitter account has been closed, the Instagram photo in question is still up with a current count of 157 000 likes and almost 10 000 comments. The hatred is still spreading on the page, with people calling the artist "ugly", a "waste of oxygen" and telling her to kill herself. For her part, Halsey has updated the caption of the image to read "Photo by @affectioms sorry I didn't know." While we're hardly the biggest fans of Halsey in the world, and artists definitely deserve credit for their original work, the amount of spiteful remarks aimed towards Halsey in this case is clearly unjustified. Images are regularly reposted around Instagram and Tumblr without credit, and while Halsey, as a public figure, should expect negativity as her brand becomes larger, the original artist should also expect a lack of credit for their work when they post it to these websites. What are your thoughts on the situation? Are you glad Halsey deactivated her account to avoid the haters, or should she have fought back? Let us know in the comments down below!