Devotion runs through the veins of Fontaines D.C.’s music. The Dublin group first crashed onto the post-punk scene with their 2019 debut Dogrel, a nuanced, gripping homage to their homeland; 2022’s guttural Skinty Fia unpacked the guilt they felt after relocating to London. Now, they’re considering devotion through an entirely new lens, introduced on the opening title track of their fourth album Romance. Over brooding, cinematic synths, singer Grian Chatten proclaims, “Maybe romance is a place/For me/And you.”
If there was any takeaway from the 4-single run ahead of songs the band put out before Romance’s release, it’s that Fontaines aren’t to be pigeonholed. From the grungy Nineties rap-rock flow of “Starburster” (one of the best tracks of the year) to the jangly dream-pop charmer “Favourite,” the band quickly melted away any genre confines that might have been previously placed around them. The shift was exciting, it was unpredictable, it was even lightly nerve wracking. But Romance delivers: the record is wildly expansive, and Fontaines’ bullheaded integrity still stands, perhaps with a stronger spine than ever.
The subversion extends beyond the music: a significant talking point surrounding the album’s rollout has been the band’s sudden aesthetic and stylistic shift. The colors are brighter, the outfit choices more bizarre. It may seem drastic, but this is not the business of a band flailing to reinvent their own wheel; it’s a group who has stepped into a new echelon of self-assuredness. And it’s really not too random, after all; there have been foreshadowed hints that this version of Fontaines has always lived in their DNA. In a Reddit AMA the band held five years ago in support of Dogrel, frontman Chatten stated his love of an Arthur Rimbaud poem also titled ‘Romance,’ saying it “does a similar thing to me as some of [Bob] Dylan’s early lyrics.”
It takes a true romantic to be a world-builder, and Fontaines D.C. have mastered the art. Each song on Romance acts as its own fantastical cinematic universe, fleshed out with fictional characters, in-depth monologues, and pristinely-curated sonic elements to match. That’s partially indebted to the band’s decision to work with producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Blur) on this record. The textures of the instruments on Romance sound crisper and more strikingly pinpointable, showcasing drummer Tom Coll, bassist Conor (Deego) Deegan III, and guitarists Carlos O’Connell and Conor Curley at their most harmoniously in-sync.
On tracks like “Desire” and the plunging, Slowdive-like “Sundowner” – which features lead vocals from Curley – heartrending guitar riffs build atop a steady bed of lush strings and ooze into full shoegaze territory. “Death Kink” is a masterclass in edging and restraint, with Chatten gasping for air as a sky-high wave of fuzzy guitars suspends just long enough for him to utter, “I made a promise and I killed it/Shit, shit, shit.”
The band’s vocal performances serve as a storytelling tactic on their own. Chatten outdoes himself here, whether he’s employing his gravelly growl, floating into falsetto, or stepping back from the mic to let his words echo and fall in the negative space. A major strength of Romance are the background vocals sung by Deego and O’Connell – they double as parentheticals, or secondary narrations, telling tiny stories all their own. Take the push-and-pull conversation that occurs on the cascading, Lana Del Rey-esque “In The Modern World,” an orchestral examination of numbness and escapism: “I don’t feel anything, and I don’t feel bad.”
At moments on the record, particularly the string-laden ones, it feels like Fontaines D.C. could be teetering on the precipice of disillusionment. They’re well-aware of the crumbling dystopian world around them, with themes of apocalyptic existentialism and a real Hail Mary “love at the end of the world” sensibility running through the album. And yet, they maintain that romance – as idealistic and whimsical as the concept might be – is the crux, a delusion worth surrendering to.
The album’s heartbeat lies in “Horseness Is The Whatness,” which takes its name from James Joyce’s Ulysses. Singing lyrics written by O’Connell, Chatten dizzily asks for someone to find out what the word is that makes the world go ‘round. “‘Cause I thought it was love,” he implores, with an almost childlike defiance, and you can tell he wants to believe it. “But some say that it has to be choice.”
The tension between love and choice brings to mind a song on the band’s 2020 album A Hero’s Death. The title is the message, and it’s repeated on a loop throughout the track: “Love Is The Main Thing.” Romance finds Fontaines D.C. running through a thick smog of anxiety and doom, sending up a slew of questions about what the point of it all even is. It seems like they’ve known the answer all along.
Across Canada, country music is synonymous with gatherings. It lives in the dust of a summer rodeo, the sticky floor of a neighborhood dive bar and the reverberating rafters of an arena filled with thousands of voices singing back every word. While most of the music industry spent the last decade adapting to a digital-first reality, country music continues to derive its power from physical spaces.
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny in a split image
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny Dealt With Trump Quietly. It’s a Smart Move
Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny are both major superstars — and they’ve shared some parallels in their careers and discographies for several years. Now, they’re even using the same playbook to deal with taunts and baiting from Donald Trump and the White House’s social media teams.
Since Trump took office during his second term, he and his administration have been using social media as part of their communication strategy. The propaganda-like, rage-bait-style clips often lean into internet culture and use popular music to make light of Trump’s most egregious actions, like his immigration policy and war-hungry foreign policy.
Olivia Rodrigo, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, and Noah Kahan are just some of the artists who have had their music used in these videos without their permission — and vehemently spoken out against these actions and against the president. In the past couple of weeks, the Trump administration seems to have wanted to provoke a response from two of the world’s biggest superstars: Bad Bunny and Swift.
On July 30, the official White House TikTok used “La Mudanza” for a particularly tone-deaf video about immigration that celebrated the number of deportations under Trump. A week later, a video with text that said, “mood because it’s August and Donald Trump is your president” set to Swift’s “August” was uploaded by Team Trump, the president’s official campaign account. The caption was an overt provocation: “I’m sure Taylor Swift is going to be super excited we used her song,” it read. Days later, another clip from the same account featured an edited version of Swift’s Red album cover with text that said, “Did you know that Taylor Swift wrote a whole album about the color of the Republican Party?”
Neither musician has released a public statement denouncing the use of their music in Trump’s videos. Instead, two of the world’s biggest superstars quietly removed their songs from videos posted by official accounts linked to the Trump administration. (It’s unclear if there is a TikTok feature that allows selective sound muting on videos or if the respective teams reached out to the social media accounts directly.) The tracks are still available for other TikTok accounts to use in their videos, making their silence a pointed — and smart — approach. Both Bad Bunny and Swift seem to recognize the president and his administration’s tactics for what they are: antagonizing moves that keep the Trump conversation centered on his social media presence, rather than his actual policies and the harm they commit. Why would they add their star power to the conversation and stoke the flames when that’s exactly what the White House appears to want?
Some people argue that celebrities should wield their platform to denounce Trump at any chance if they are truly not politically aligned with his MAGA politics. But because they hold so much influence, these superstars need to be strategic about how they use it.
Benito, in particular, has been incredibly outspoken about his politics. He stood on two of the world’s biggest stages and used them to voice pro-immigration messages, denounce Trump’s policies, and highlight Puerto Rico as it struggles with the effects of U.S. imperialism. “Before I say, ‘Thank God,’ I’m going to say, ‘ICE out,’” the Puerto Rican superstar said at the 2026 Grammys. “We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.” Last summer, Bad Bunny’s music video for “Nuevayol” used a voice that sounds a lot like the president’s to deliver a pro-immigrant message. “I made a mistake. I want to apologize to the immigrants in America. I mean the United States. I know America is the whole continent,” the voice bellows out of a Seventies radio toward the end of the video. “I want to say that this country is nothing without the immigrants.”
Fans were convinced that Benito would speak out against the official White House TikTok account when it used one of his most political songs. But commenting on the video would only blow up the discussion for a wider audience. When Rodrigo, Perry, Grande, and Kahan made public comments, spokespeople for the White House used the opportunity to spread hateful rhetoric. “We’ll say this one last time: what’s actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens,” Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Rolling Stone after Grande spoke out. It’s the antithesis of what Benito said during his Grammys speech this year: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
Swift, on the other hand, has dealt with Trump and the right-wing’s instigations for years, each one crazier than the last. The TikTok videos from the last week aren’t even the first time that the administration has used the singer’s music for social media videos. Last fall, both the official White House TikTok account and Team Trump used songs from Swift’s then-newly released The Life of a Showgirl in separate videos. One plucked the lyrics “pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes” from “The Fate of Ophelia” to celebrate Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and the first and second ladies. The others boasted about Trump by using “Father Figure” and honored Melania Trump’s Patriot of the Year award with “Opalite.” As of Aug. 10, the audio is not available under all of these specific videos.
The pop superstar has not spoken publicly about these instances. But she has made her disdain for Trump clear. Over the years, Swift has criticized Trump’s autocratic leadership. On X, she wrote “we will vote you out” and endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 and 2024 elections, respectively. In 2019, Swift told Rolling Stone, “There’s literally nothing worse than white supremacy. It’s repulsive. There should be no place for it.”
Even though she’s shared her liberal viewpoints on issues like abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial inequality, Swift has still faced ridiculous claims of being MAGA-aligned and folding in right-wing dog whistles to her music — and that’s without ever naming Trump. If Swift were to make a statement about her music being used by the Trump administration, the attention-seeking president would absolutely revel in it. Getting Swift and Bad Bunny to weigh in is exactly the type of headline grabber he would love to draw attention from his remarkably unpopular presidency.