MC’s MUSIC LOUNGE: Khalid’s new album, after the sun goes down, is more daring than any of his previous works

The “coming out” experience is unique to every queer person. Some of us may not even have one, some of us may experience an entire awakening of new horizons beyond our wildest imaginations up until that point. Khalid unfortunately saw the dark side of fame after his own story was hijacked by an ex-fling in what one can only consider to be a game of tit for tat. Instead of retreating from world view however, Khalid has put together a body of work that accurately represents where he is in his life during this crucial period of self-discovery and emancipation. Khalid’s new album after the sun goes down is his fourth studio album, but in many ways serves as a debut without any of the fears or limitations from before.

Complete with a healthy amount of Britney-esque pop bangers, Khalid’s new album is more daring than any of his previous works. Up until this point, many would’ve considered Khalid that artist your mom enjoys hearing on the radio, as his social persona didn’t really hold much weight to it. He made catchy bops, but his personal life was pretty much invisible from the public, which in the age of social media results in you falling under the radar a lot of the time. His songs were getting billions of streams, but that came at the cost of him compromising his true identity. In a recent interview, he talks about playing with his balance of femininity and masculinity and finally feeling comfortable to do so both in his music and in his personal life. When you’re in the closet, there’s a part of you that can feel like you need to hide the side of yourself that you feel society wouldn’t accept. While I experienced this firsthand (not that it ever hindered my loud Mariah obsession), it’s another kind of difficult when you’re a public figure. Especially one who is singing love songs that many heterosexual couples use as their soundtracks. This is the first time that Khalid can record music using the proper pronouns when referring to a lover, which only makes the records more authentic to him. To think of all the young gay boys who will feel just a bit less uneasy about themselves because they’re hearing a man singing about another man on the radio, it makes me happy and hopeful. We may have had gay pop stars for many decades, but they generally kept their private lives private, or just came out years after their radio peaks. Khalid represents a new age of pop where sexual orientation and identity is no longer a dealbreaker. When Whitney Houston was the subject of gay rumours in the late 80s and early 90s, it hindered her and her brand. I’d like to think that in 2025, we’ve moved on from such boring ideologies to focus on what’s actually important – the music.

Next week is the return of Tame Impala, the musical project of singer and artist Kevin Parker. Deadbeat is Parker’s fifth release under the name and the first in five years. This week keeping Khalid company is new music from Amber Mark with Anderson .Paak, Shakira, Yellowcard with Avril Lavigne and an unleashed goodie from the vault of Madonna. Plus, the Black Eyes Peas experience yet another surge of streams due to a viral trend associated with one of their most recognizable hits from the 2000s.

Listen on…

MC’s PICKS OF THE WEEK

“nah” by Khalid

If Tate McRae’s latest album So Close To What is the c-nty yet emotional pop girl album of the year, then the male equivalent is Khalid. His new record alternates between sweaty dance-pop anthems and more vibey emotional tracks. “nah” is the perfect merge between both of those personalities, maintaining a catchy pop melody that opens the door for some sultry choreography, while still singing in an emotional tone, with lyrics that tell the story of being caught in a web of lies and deceit by a lover that you just can’t stop yourself from going back to. Co-written by Khalid, Ilya Salmanzadeh (Ariana Grande), Oscar Görres (Troye Sivan) and Rami Yacoub (Britney Spears, P!nk, Backstreet Boys), the song is one of Khalid’s best pop songs to date with a hook so infectious that it really should be no surprise that it was written by a bunch of Swedish producers. The music video to the song shows Khalid in all his y2k glory, outside of a nightclub and singing into a telephone with a cord. The catch here is that Khalid is merging the old with the new by making the video compatible with VR sets, meaning that if you are one of the few (and I mean very few) who have a VR-enabled headset, then you can truly immerse yourself into the music video in a new way. I never was one for the whole futuristic technology of it all. The extent of my futuristic knowledge is the makeup and design scheme for TLC’s 1999 FanMail album, otherwise I’m pretty much living in a permanent state of 2001. There was a time when virtual reality seemed like it was going to take over, but alas, A.I. had other plans! Maybe now that VR is no longer a “threat” and more of a novelty, I can be open to the idea. In the meantime, when it comes to taking in the new Khalid album, I’ll stick to my traditional headphones.

“Right On Time – Original Demo Edit” by Madonna

Madonna is the queen of pop, sure, but she also has dipped her toes into many different genres and experimented with different sounds over the course of her 43+ year professional music career. In the mid-90s, Madonna was fresh off her scandalous Erotica era, and attempting to soften her image after it took such a hit in the public’s view due to her (now iconic) book Sex. The new direction was to be more rhythmic and feature more R&B-inspired production which saw the diva in turn work with the biggest hit makers of the time: Dallas Austin (TLC), Babyface (Toni Braxton, Boyz II Men) and Dave Hall (Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey).

Now for the album’s 30th anniversary, Madonna is digging into the vault and pulling out some unreleased tracks from those studio sessions along with some unheard remixes and updated edits of the singles from the Bedtime Stories album. “Right On Time” is the first release from the new collection, and for fans of the Bedtime Stories era, this is pure gold. The song has the same breezy and lush R&B feel that many of the tracks from that album like “Don’t Stop” and “Survival” possess. The song comes from the Dallas Austin studio sessions from that record so it makes sense that they would have a similar sound. For reference, Austin is the man who co-wrote and produced her lead single from that album “Secret” which hit #3 on the Hot 100 back in the fall of 1994. Madonna recently spilled how she was madly in love with Dallas back then, even trying to get one of her spiritual healers at the time to cast a spell on him to fall in love with her. While that may not have worked, we at least got a ton of incredible songs, which are all finally about to see the light of day.

“You Broke Me Too” by Yellowcard, Avril Lavigne

One of the many things to love and appreciate about Avril Lavigne is her devotion to the 2000s emo-rock genre and how she continues to keep the spirit alive through all her projects and collaborations. In just the last two years she has collaborated with Simple Plan, All Time Low and now she’s added Yellowcard to that list. Their new album is produced by Travis Barker who has a very close working relationship with Avril after her signed her to his label back in 2021. The song is one of those big monster ballads that dominated the radio back in the 2000s, the moment where the rocker gets in touch with their emotions and delivers a song for the audience to scream while crying at the same time. The chorus is big and feels like the soundtrack to an end credits scene of an episode of The OC or One Tree Hill. Imagine a one-stop trip teleporting you back to 2005 for three glorious minutes. Basically, everything I could ever want as a 2000s music junkie. This new album is the first release for Yellowcard in close to a decade with Travis Barker playing drums on every song on the album, making him an honorary Yellowcard member. Avril on the other hand adds a whole layer of greatness to the song with her high notes sounding pitch perfect and her voice feeling like a comforting 2002 blanket, here to shield us from the horror that is the music of today. Maybe not totally horrific, but still there’s some magic missing and Avril is here to bring it back to us. Between her sold out “Greatest Hits Tour” which she completed this summer and multiple collabs, here’s hoping that a new full-length Avril album is being cooked up. It’s time for the motherf*cking princess to reclaim her throne.

“Zoo – From Zootopia 2” by Shakira

Fear not fellow Zootopia fans because Shakira is in fact returning for the upcoming sequel, but better than that, she has also given us another instant classic for the film’s soundtrack. Her hit “Try Everything” from the first film back in 2016 earned her a Grammy nomination and was named as one of the 12 best Disney songs of the 21st century by Billboard. She’s back to do it again with the new song “Zoo” which was co-written alongside Ed Sheeran and Blake Slatkin. The track, while meant for a children’s movie, still has many elements that make it a Shakira song. From the Spanglish lyrics to the world music elements that mix reggaeton, afro beats and pop music, “Zoo” is a celebratory anthem about turning any gloomy day or situation into a celebratory one which in this case is a zoo – fitting. In case you have never seen the original Zootopia, Shakira plays “Gazelle” a Thomson’s gazelle pop music star, because every zoo needs its own pop star. The cover of the single features Gazelle in a purple fur coat complete with shiny sparkles on her outfit and hair, basically the gazelle version of the real-life Shakira who has been lighting up stadium stages all across North and South America all of 2025. Melodically, the song has a very Ed Sheeran tune which should translate well on both Adult Contemporary and Children’s radio stations and earn Shak another Hot 100 hit. In recent years, Shakira has almost entirely shifted her music to Spanish-language songs and it’s been close to a decade since she has had an English-language hit on the chart. Ironically, her last one was “Try Everything” from the first Zootopia which hit #63 in the USA and #1 in Japan and Lebanon – only time will tell if lightning can strike again.

“Don’t Remind Me” by Amber Mark, Anderson .Paak

If you’re a lamb like me, at this point the production of an Anderson .Paak song is about as recognizable as the first note that Mariah coos out on “Vision of Love”. Anderson has been everywhere in the music world this year, and that’s not limited to Mariah’s latest album Here For It All. That old-school 70s R&B groove that he helped bring to the Grammys with Bruno Mars as Silk Sonic earlier this decade has now been forwarded over to the world of divas. Mariah’s new record is filled with that sound, and now Anderson is spreading the joy of those sonics with a diva on the rise, Amber Mark. The song is about a girl who is trying to get over an emotional breakup and begging her ex to not remind her of those incredible times that they shared together. Anderson sings on the second verse and the chorus about relating to this same feeling but still needing to get his girl back and the “dichotomy” of the situation. Side bar: I lost the fifth grade spelling bee because of that word, no that tidbit isn’t relevant to the song but PTSD strikes when it needs to strike I guess; hopefully I spelled it right this time around. Back to the song though, the video is as bright as the song, bouncy in all the right places, eccentric outfits and a cameo by the one and only Carmen Electra. Amber has the goods necessary for a bombshell career in both Pop and R&B, and it’s her duality, seamlessly alternating between both, that is sure to be her ticket to the top of the charts. She is working with R&B geniuses like Anderson, while also serving as the opening act for major pop acts like Sabrina Carpenter. Amber is set to join Ravyn Lenae and Olivia Dean as opening acts for the upcoming fall leg of Sabrina’s Short n’ Sweet Tour, even getting a shout-out from Sabrina on her IG stories last week on her album release day.

MC’s VIRAL PICK

“My Humps” by Black Eyed Peas

Similar to a few weeks ago when I mentioned Kelis’s “Milkshake” going viral for multiple reasons but the main reason was for an interpolation/mash-up with a different track. In Kelis’s case it was both her re-recorded version of “Milkshake” used in the KATSEYE Gap commercial (that version is now available on streaming) and the interpolation of the song in Doja Cat’s “MOOO!” that gave it its viral shine. For the Black Eyed Peas however, they have Tyler the Creator helping make their 2005 hit “My Humps” #2 on TikTok’s Viral 50 this week. The trend is centered around repetitive movements to the beat of Tyler the Creator’s track “Sugar on My Tongue” but over the instrumental of “My Humps”. What started when a teenage TikTok user recording a video in her kitchen as she opens the fridge has turned into a worldwide phenomenon that has people of all ages taking part. On one side of the coin, it’s crazy that a mindless video of yourself opening the fridge and lip synching in a sultry way will amass 80+ million views, but on the other hand, the sheer level of cringe that some of these videos gives me is too much to bear. “My Humps” for one is a very sexual song and when it first came out I was only 10 years old. That of course didn’t stop me and all my friends from choreographing dances to it in our school gym. We never understood why the teachers were so horrified by this, of course as a 30-year-old, not only do I now understand but I have so much second-hand embarrassment. However, now that people of all ages have taken over the TikTok trend and turned it into more of a jokes situation versus weird sensual innuendos from 20 year olds, I can get on board with it. The vast amount of variations you can do in terms of repetitive movements to the word “tongue” is a lot more complex than you might think. Because who wouldn’t laugh at an 8-year-old swooshing his hair repeatedly for no reason at all? Are we all cooked?