A God-awful Small Affair

Usurping the title of 'queen of the gays' back in 2015 was most likely going to be a feat accomplished by either Lady Gaga or Miley Cyrus, but instead it was the girl who irritated us in 2012 with Call Me Maybe . That year's E•MO•TION was the sort of pop masterclass that is usually left to the Swedes, and spawned a stream of overzealous adulation from pockets of the LGBT community, along with a string of memes tied to the saxophone hook from the monster single ' Run Away With Me '. Since 2015, though, Jepsen has managed thus far to follow it all up with material of equal strength: 2017 saw the release of the single Cut to the Feeling , a song so immediately brilliant that it was thrown on the season of RuPaul's Drag Race currently being filmed despite neither of the drag queens forced to battle over it knowing its lyrics. Just last year, she performed the ultimate service of featuring a group of fans in the music video for Party for One , a joyous anthem celeb

There are few bands so reliable as Vampire Weekend, but since those heady days of 2008 where indie clubs around the world were dancing awkwardly to Oxford Comma and A-Punk , the band have matured into this eclectic, world-music sampling enigma and Father of the Bride may prove to be their most divisive of their four LPs yet. It's been an excruciating wait since 2013's Modern Vampires of the City , and that wait for fans may have been appeased by this swollen selection of eighteen tracks. Behind the scenes, though, everyone's been busy. The departure of band member Rostam Batmanglij in 2016 would've been enough to shake things up, but Ezra Koenig and co. have also been busy phoning in some new guests and producers that're new to the Vampire Weekend lexicon: three tracks here feature Danielle from HAIM, and there are also credits for Mark Ronson, ILoveMakonnen and long-term Childish Gambino producer, Ludwig Göransson. There are constants, however - Batmanglij ret