With the spring season beginning and many music festivals on the horizon, March is a popular month for artists to start releasing new music. While there were a number of hit tracks released this month, here are the top five.
5) Divide – Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran’s third studio album, Divide, released on March 3, with the deluxe version totaling 16 songs. It includes singles like “Shape of You” and “Castle on the Hill,” both of which broke the Spotify first-day steaming record previously held by One Direction. The album title follows mathematical suit with Sheeran’s previous albums Plus and Multiply, but the style has grown into a new category, branching out into new territory for Sheeran. Divide is stylistically and culturally diverse, calling upon traditional pop, guitar-driven, and heart-wrenching acoustic styles while also experimenting in Irish folk and traditional styles and Ghanaian Twi dialect. The album became the third fastest selling album in the United Kingdom, selling over 672,000 copies in its first week.
Elle King’s “Wild Love,” released March 6, marks her first studio release since her debut album Love Stuff in 2015. Unlike the folksy, southern rock vibe of Love Stuff, “Wild Love” yields a more club pop sound, showing the multiple facets to King’s capabilities while still maintaining her indie rock core. Regardless of genre though, King’s unique vocal sound and writing style is guaranteed to make any track a hit.
3) “Sleepover” – Hayley Kiyoko
Released March 3, “Sleepover” is a real and true song to Hayley Kiyoko. “’Sleepover’ is not an idea for me. It is my life. It defines a part of who I am today. I grew up a dreamer and found comfort through a safe haven in my head. It’s where I was able to find self-love and feel validated,” she stated on her Tumblr page. “Falling in love can be a bittersweet feeling, especially if you know it’ll never be reciprocated. I think we can all relate to that,” she added. The breathy vocals and moderate pop beat combine with thought-out lyrics to create a deep-seated rhythm and sentimentality to “Sleepover,” making it a great song for any mood.
2) “High Enough” – K.Flay
“High Enough” is the second single from K.Flay’s upcoming major-label debut album Every Where is Somewhere, set to release April 7. While she has already amassed a full portfolio of music to her name, prior albums were fan-funded or otherwise not backed by a major label. This then marks K.Flay’s current work as her first step into the official music industry. “High Enough,” released March 10, follows K.Flay’s signature wispy rap style that favors alternative energy over hip-hop beats. “I think a part of me was asking the question… ‘What if I don’t need anything but what I’ve got?’” K.Flay said in an album-reveal interview with Radio.com. “There are many moments in my life – whether it’s because of a person or a place – that I don’t want to feel altered…. I just want to feel exactly what I’m feeling,” she added.
1) “Green Light” and “Liability” – Lorde
Lorde added two more tracks to the plethora of deep-seated music she has under her name this month with “Green Light” and “Liability,” both of which are from her upcoming sophomore album Melodrama that releases June 16. The songs mark her first solo release since her 2013 debut album Pure Heroine, and she performed the songs on the March 11 episode of Saturday Night Live, her first live performance in over two years. “Green Light” was released on March 2 and calls upon a diversified pop style, drawing from general popular, electric pop, slow pop, and dance pop music. “I am so proud of this song. It’s very different and kind of unexpected,” Lorde said via her twitter. “It’s the first chapter of a story I’m going to tell you, the story of the last two wild, fluorescent years of my life. This is where we begin,” she added in another tweet. “Liability” dropped on March 9 and takes Lorde into a new territory stylistically. The ballad is personal, soft, and piano-based, a style that Lorde called “a strange part of myself for a lot of people to look at” on her twitter. “[T]he song kind of ended up turning into a bit of a protective talisman for me,” Lorde told Zane Lowe on Beats 1 Radio. “I’m always going to have myself, so I have to really nurture this relationship and feel good about hanging out with myself and loving myself,” she added.
The McNicholas Milestone 