Zeros

Curls, Reconsidered Curls are having a moment again, and the current wave — sorry — owes more to hairdressing history than most trend pieces let on. Before diffusers and curl creams, there was the permanent wave, and before that, the finger wave. Both are worth understanding if you want to know what today's curl revival is actually reviving. The Permanent, Properly Explained A classic perm restructures the hair's internal bonds rather than just shaping it temporarily. Stylists section damp hair around rollers of a chosen diameter, then apply an alkaline lotion — historically ammonium thioglycolate — that softens the hair's protein bonds. After processing under heat or time, a neutralizer resets those bonds around the new curled shape. The roller size determines the curl: small rods produce tight coils, while larger ones create loose waves. Done professionally, it's a chemistry lesson as much as a styling appointment. Finger Waves, the Origi...

There are songs that sound like summer, and then there are songs that feel like summer. Tucker Wetmore's Sunburn falls into that second category. From the opening moments, the track creates the atmosphere of warm beaches, ocean breezes, and unforgettable vacation memories. It's the kind of song that makes you want to roll the windows down, turn the volume up, and take the long way home. What makes Sunburn especially interesting is its musical style. While Tucker Wetmore sings with a distinctly country music voice, the production leans into smooth R&B rhythms, shimmering electronic textures, and modern pop influences. The result is a fresh combination that doesn't abandon country music— it expands it. Instead of relying on traditional guitars and fiddles, the song uses a laid-back groove that feels equally at home on country radio and a summertime playlist. That crossover appeal may be exactly what helps Sunburn become one of Wetmore's biggest ...

Ruined. Completely, Irreparably Ruined. Let us observe a moment of silence, gentle reader , for the woman formerly known as pop music's last great mystery. As of Friday night at Madison Square Garden — under Adam Sandler's officiating hand, as though the universe required one final absurdist flourish — Taylor Alison Swift became Mrs. Kelce , and with that single vow, by all reasonable accounts, torched the entire architecture of her existence to the ground! Consider what she has thrown away. The mystique! The mythology! An entire cottage industry of Easter-egg theorists, bracelet-code cryptographers, and Wembley-adjacent conspiracy boards — gone , replaced overnight by the crushing banality of a marriage certificate. She could have kept us guessing forever!  Instead she chose certainty, that most unforgivable of celebrity sins. She had the whole world convinced she was unknowable, and then she went and let everyone watch her do the electric slide at her own rece...

Nobody Warned the Guests Taylor Swift married Travis Kelce on the South Lawn of the White House . The halftime show was a UFC bout. The guests found out when the octagon rose from under the garden. At approximately 3:47 p.m. last Saturday, a string quartet finished Pachelbel's Canon , the flower girl sat down, and the floor of the South Lawn of the White House quietly split open. What emerged — hydraulically, unhurriedly , with the serene confidence of something engineered months in advance — was a regulation UFC octagon, cage and all, already lit from below in a warm championship gold . The assembled guests, who had believed themselves to be attending a wedding, looked at one another. Nobody moved. The string quartet packed their instruments. The ceremony had gone beautifully. Taylor Swift, in a custom gown that sources describe as, "ivory, architectural, and definitely not for sitting," had said her vows to Travis Kelce under a floral arch sourced entire...

Tonight's Big Match: Punch the Macaque Takes the Field If you thought the excitement surrounding every  World Cup match is intense, clearly you haven't been following the rise of Punch , the Japanese macaque, who has become the most unlikely sports hero, since someone convinced the world that a goldfish could predict soccer scores. For older pop music fans, think of Punch as the monkey equivalent of a superstar crossing genres . One minute he's a curious macaque trying to fit in, and the next he's the primate version of Pelé , Michael Jackson , and a reality television contestant all rolled into one furry package . Punch's story has all the ingredients of a classic underdog tale —except he's not actually the underdog anymore. Originally rejected by one troop , Punch found acceptance in another group. The monkey social scene can be ruthless . One day you're sitting at the cool kids' table. The next day you're eating cabbage alone and que...

When the Wild Kingdom Moves Back In If you grew up listening to college radio and football on AM, your childhood wildlife encounters were probably pretty predictable. A squirrel stole some birdseed. A deer wandered across a country road. Maybe a raccoon got into the garbage . Unless you lived on a farm, dangerous wildlife was usually something you saw on television while watching documentaries narrated with British accents. Fast-forward to today, and the story feels different. Headlines about bear encounters, wolf sightings, aggressive coyotes, wild boars, mountain lions, and even overly friendly bison seem to appear every week. Social media is filled with videos of people petting creatures that clearly did not read the same safety manuals . At the same time, governments and conservation groups around the world have spent decades successfully increasing populations of wild animals. That's the part that often gets left out of the conversation. We frequently ...

Are Raccoons Domesticating Themselves? A Backyard Mystery For decades, we were told there were two kinds of animals: pets and wildlife . Dogs slept on the couch. Raccoons stole garbage. The arrangement seemed pretty straightforward . But lately, something strange appears to be happening in America's backyards. Raccoons are acting less like wild animals and more like slightly delinquent neighbors . Scientists have observed that animals living in close proximity to humans often develop traits that resemble those of domesticated animals. Not full domestication, of course. Nobody is taking their raccoon to obedience school . However, certain behavioral changes are emerging. Urban raccoons tend to be less fearful, more curious, and remarkably comfortable around humans. Some have even learned to recognize individual people— the same way your dog recognizes the person most likely to drop food . If this sounds familiar, that's because something similar may have happened ...

Summer Is Here Whether You're Ready or Not Camping, hiking, woodland horror, and the gentle obligation of someone else's happiness The news does not deserve summer . It has been relentless, exhausting, and frankly offensive. Concerts are being canceled. Plans evaporate. The general vibe of the world in 2026 is that you should lower your expectations and keep your receipt . But summer doesn't care about any of that. The fireflies still light up. The days are still long. The woods are still there, waiting — which brings us to the good news and the gently ominous news, depending on your plans! If you are the outdoors type, this season, camping and hiking are having a quiet renaissance among people who want to feel something that isn't a push notification . It's called: touch_grass . You don't have to go far. A state park within driving distance, a trail you've been meaning to try since 2019, a hammock strung between two trees with a pape...

Walk, Walk —  Lady Gaga and Doechii's   Runway is the summer anthem you'll either love without question or spend the rest of the season interrogating. Possibly both. There is a moment in the music video for Runway — the new Lady Gaga and Doechii collaboration from The Devil Wears Prada 2 soundtrack — where the whole thing tips just slightly past spectacle and into something harder to name . The runway is impossibly long. The looks are architecturally absurd. The strut is impeccable. And you cannot quite tell whether these two women are celebrating fashion's theater or quietly eating it alive. On pure sound, the song delivers everything you want from a summer Billboard entry. The track is booming with in-your-face bass and filled with the exact type of rizz anyone about to hit a runway would want to hear . It opens with the spoken command, "No matter what, you better strut," which is simultaneously an instruction, a dare, and a kind of absurdist pe...

Life & Occasions:  Ugly Shoes for Nothing It's a graduation year. The weather didn't get the memo. Neither did my feet. There's a rhythm to adult social life that anybody who lived through the AM radio era understands instinctively. You have your wedding years and your graduation years , and they alternate with the kind of cruel predictability that used to get worked into the bridge of a Dionne Warwick song. This is a graduation year. Which means outdoor events, potluck tables under a canopy that is slightly too small, and a sky that has been threatening since Thursday. You know how it goes. You stand in the closet for twelve minutes trying to thread the needle between festive and waterproof . You land, as you always do, on the shoes that look sensible. Not glamorous — you abandoned that when you saw the forecast — but at least not embarrassing. Except they are embarrassing, because the ones you own that look comfortable are not. The ones that actually are...

Shoulda Never Left: Usher Lands Back on the Billboard Hot 100 A Babyface -penned duet with Kehlani puts one of R&B's great voices back on the chart. Whether it means anything more than that is the question worth asking. Kehlani dropped her self-titled fifth album on April 24th — her 31st birthday, a date she apparently treats as a gift to the rest of us as well — and buried inside its seventeen tracks is a moment that will register differently depending on your vintage as an R&B fan. Track eight is titled Shoulda Never , featuring Usher . It is penned by Babyface. It is on the Billboard Hot 100. If you are of a certain age, you are permitted a quiet exhale. The collaboration has a backstory worth knowing. Kehlani had originally wanted Usher for the remix of Folded , the breakout single that earned her first two Grammy wins , and became something of a generational anthem for a younger R&B audience. Usher was on the road — his Past Present Future tour had h...

★ DORIAN ELECTRA ★ HIPS DON'T LIE ★ FEEL GOOD INC. ★ MR. TAMBOURINE MAN ★ HELLA GOOD ★ BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE ★ WITHOUT ME ★ YOUNG FOLKS ★ DORIAN ELECTRA ★ HIPS DON'T LIE ★ FEEL GOOD INC. ★ MR. TAMBOURINE MAN ★ HELLA GOOD ★ BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE ★ WITHOUT ME ★ YOUNG FOLKS Dorian Electra Just Turned Your Entire Music Library Into a Runway You know that feeling when someone shows up to the party in an outfit so flashy and so smooth that we have to quietly sit with our own fashion choices? That's what Dorian Electra just did to the entire pop music canon — and yes, we should be excited. Last week, April 22nd, Dorian dropped their fourth studio album, simply titled Dorian Electra . No grand concept. No elaborate mythology. Just an album full of covers — your songs, our songs, the songs that have been floating through radio speakers and grocery stores and dentist office waiting rooms for decades — completely dismantled and reassembled like a vintage car turned space...

I owe you an apology. A real one, not one of those half-hearted, “sorry I missed your call,” messages you send three days later, when the moment has clearly passed . Because somehow— against all logic , all algorithms, all push notifications— I have been late to the latest Madonna comeback . Yes, that Madonna . Again . And before you roll your eyes and say, “She never left,” let me be clear : this is one of those comebacks where she reminds you she never needed to leave in the first place. What took me so long? I wish I had a good excuse. I could blame the endless scroll, the way new music gets swallowed whole by the feed within hours . I could say I was waiting for the right moment to sit down and absorb it properly, like a fine wine or a classic album , from back when we actually played albums all the way through. But the truth is simpler and a little embarrassing: she was already everywhere, and I somehow muted myself. Because while I was over here catching up on yes...

There’s a certain kind of pop star rollout that feels less like promotion and more like… an unfolding situation . And right now, Melanie Martinez is deep in one of those. If you remember her as the wide-eyed, slightly off-center winner from The Voice , you might expect the usual playbook: a single, a few interviews, maybe a glossy performance on a late-night show . Instead, what you’re getting is a steady drip of images, videos, and performances that feel like they’ve been beamed in from a parallel universe where pop music is half fairy tale, half fever dream . And the interesting thing is—none of it is accidental. Scroll past one of her posts and you’ll see elaborate costumes that look like they were designed by a committee of woodland creatures and art school graduates. Watch a performance clip and you’ll notice it’s not just singing— it’s choreography, character work, a full visual language . Even the shorter promo videos feel less like ads and more like fragments of a...

Meet the Fcukers There’s a moment— usually somewhere between your first coffee and the second traffic light —when a song sneaks up on you and refuses to behave. It doesn’t ask permission . It doesn’t care about your carefully curated nostalgia for vinyl crackle and guitar solos that wander like old highways. It just arrives, bright and synthetic , like neon reflected in a rain puddle. That’s where the Fcukers live. They are two people, at least officially. A guy and a gal , arranged in that familiar pop symmetry that once gave us The White Stripes and later something more electrically haunted in Crystal Castles . But the Fcukers don’t feel like two people so much as a signal pinging between mirrors —distorted, multiplied, impossible to pin down. He is rhythm, or maybe interruption. A pulse that feels like it learned how to speak in fragments . She is melody, or maybe gravity. The thing that pulls the fragments back together just long enough for you to recognize a chorus be...

There’s a certain kind of song you don’t want to like right away. You press play with mild skepticism, maybe even a little resistance, especially when it comes from artists you mentally filed under another era . And yet, here we are. Ever Since You Left Me by French Montana and Max B is exactly that kind of track— the one that sneaks past your defenses and sets up camp in your head before you can object. Let’s be honest: French Montana has always thrived in that melodic gray area between rapping and singing , a style that traces back to groups like Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and carries through the radio-friendly instincts of artists like DJ Khaled and Pitbull . It’s rhythmic, it’s catchy, and if you’re not careful, it’s incredibly effective . On this track , he leans all the way in—floating across the beat with that familiar sing-song delivery that feels engineered for repetition. But the real curveball here is Max B. If you’re not familiar, you’re not alone. Yet somehow, h...

There’s a certain kind of song that doesn’t just arrive —it settles in. It drifts through open car windows, hums quietly under conversation, and somehow becomes part of the season before you even realize it. That’s exactly what BTS has delivered with their latest release, SWIM , a track that has already made a splash, debuting at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in its very first week. For longtime listeners and casual fans alike, SWIM feels instantly familiar in the best possible way. It’s bright without being overwhelming, rhythmic without trying too hard, and built around a beat that seems to move as naturally as water itself. The premise is deceptively simple— a song about a woman swimming —but that simplicity is exactly what gives it staying power. There’s no clutter here, no unnecessary layers. Just a clean, infectious groove and a melody that quietly insists you come back for another listen. And you will come back, probably without even noticing. ...

There’s something quietly thrilling happening on the radio right now, and if you’re an older pop music fan who still believes in the magic of a great hook and an unmistakable voice, you may have felt it too. The crossover buzz around Megan Moroney isn’t just industry hype. It’s that rare moment when a new artist slips into your playlist and you find yourself thinking, “Well, where did she come from?” Moroney’s voice is the first thing that grabs you. It’s raspy without being forced, warm without being syrupy. There’s a lived-in texture there — the kind that makes you believe she’s not just singing about heartbreak and sunshine, but actually standing in both at the same time. For listeners who grew up on distinct vocalists — artists you could identify within three seconds — that alone feels like a small miracle. And then there are the lyrics. Moroney writes and chooses songs that feel sun-soaked but not shallow. You can practically smell sunscreen and gasoline, feel the cr...

Ode to My Fashion Forward Son    Oh, fashion forward child of mine,    With locks as long as dreams that shine ,    In every thread and color bright ,    You weave your world, a pure delight.      Amidst the threads of fabric fine,    You walk the line of art divine ,    A builder in both style and mind ,    Creating bridges, though rare to find.      With fabrics draping, tailored grace ,    You carve a niche , you find your place,    Your shoes, a statement, bold and proud,    In every crowd, you draw a crowd.      A future engineer with skilled hands,    Constructing visions, lofty plans ,    You sketch the blueprints of your fate,    In every detail, we celebrate .      Oh, how the world adores your flair,    The vibrant colors, the flowing hair,    Each strand a s...

Unconventional Approach in a Laundromat Alongside an Untouched Diet Pepsi In the cool light of the laundromat’s glow,   Where cycles spin and chimes of machines ring,   I find a spot, unconventional yet bold,   Amid the whirring hum, my thoughts take flight.   A basket filled with hues , both bright and odd,   While next to me, a bottle, still and sealed,   An untouched Diet Pepsi waits in pause,   Its label glistening, a promise unkept .   The rows of washers stand like sentinels,   Each one a story wrapped in cotton threads,   While water churns, and soap dances in foam,   The mundane blends with magic, soft and sweet .   I watch the clothes, their journeys intertwined,   A bluesy shirt from summer’s fleeting hand,   And pants that grip the memories of fall,   All swaying in this tide of clean regret .   I ponder ...