Hailee Steinfeld
Age: 18
In the news for: Love Myself
Academy Award nomination by age 15 for the portrayal of Mattie Rose in True Grit (2010), masters a cappella by age 17 (Pitch Perfect 2), and then at age 18 comes up with this teen anthem about flying solo. “We’re fed this false sort of sense of what we’re supposed to be like in order to love ourselves. I think this song, kind of highlights the power of loving yourself and empowering yourself,” she said during a recent chat on the Elvis Duran Show. Is this the She Bop of our times?  

Jillian Hervey
Age: 26
In the news for: Impossible
Looks like a cross between Rihanna and a lioness. Sings like her mother Vanessa Williams with touches of Beyonce. Jillian Hervey is one half of Lion Babe (the other half is Lucas Goodman), who has spent eight years to create a musical identity of her own. That even involved passing up a chance to appear in the teen drama Gossip Girl. With producers Pharrell Williams and Mark Ronson on her well-wisher list, she is creating cool earworms. “I know that people think I’m overly sexual when I dance, but I’m not afraid of my body. I’m comfortable, and I’m OK with being sensual and open with that,” she has told The Daily Telegraph.

 

 

Demi Lovato
Age: 22
In the news for: Cool For The Summer
Her risque bondage-style leather top at her recent Z100 pool party in New York and the video for the song in question have helped shake off her Disney-girl image. The lead single from her upcoming album is
“... basically your go-to party anthem song.... It’s definitely more grown up than my other singles I’ve released. It’s sexy, it’s fun. After kind of being put in a corner of talking about so many things in my past, I just want to talk about sexy time and fun things!” she said in a recent interview. What does she mean by “fun things”? “Got my mind on your body and your body on my mind/ Got a taste for the cherry, I just need to take a bite/ Don’t tell your mother/ Kiss one another/ Die for each other/ We’re cool for the summer.” Get?

 

Kacey Musgraves
Age: 26
In the news for:  Pageant Material (album)
She had a tough time getting her 2013 song Follow Your Arrow mainstream radio play because of the lyrics: “Kiss lots of boys, or kiss lots of girls if that’s something you’re into”. She persevered and the album picked up a Grammy last year. The follow-up is Pageant Material and it packs more than a punch. The album opener High Time may sound like a stoner anthem (“It’s high time/ To slow my roll/ Let the grass just grow and lean way back/ It’s a fine time/ To let it it all go/ I’ve been too low, so it’s high time.”) but it’s really about going back to her roots. “People will always choose to be offended by things no matter what, and it’s not really my place to alter myself to make up for that,” she has told The Guardian.

 

 

Jarryd James
Age: 30
In the news for:Do You Remember
Joel Little, the producer behind Lorde’s breakout hit Royals, may have found his next big project — Jarryd, whose single recently touched #1 on the Australian iTunes singles chart. The Brisbane-based boy-man had given up on music after years on the pub circuit and a failed label deal but all that changed when he posted this single on Soundcloud in January. He told Mic: “My piano player came in and put on a Dashboard Confessional song, and immediately I was transported to a different time and place. That’s so powerful. If you want to get away from the here and now, you can put a song on and do that. I want to write music that does that.”

 

 

 

The Weeknd
Age: 25
In the news for: Beauty Behind the Madness (album, dropped on August 28)
The Canadian has brought back the deadly combination of love, life, death and defeat which has been missing from pop music for long. After the duet Love Me Harder with Ariana Grande, he has peppered his music with gloom and doom. Discussing songwriting with The New York Times, he said: “I felt I had to change who I was.” The music on his next release is inspired by Guns N’ Roses, Michael Jackson (whose Off The Wall plays in his greenroom before a concert) and Phil Collins. And did we mention that Zayn Malik is listening to his High For This?

 

 

Tori Kelly
Age: 22
In the news for: Unbreakable Smile (album)
September 14, 2009 tweet: “#iwish I could go to the VMAs! :)”
August 31, 2015 tweet: “Incredible night. So thankful for the opportunity to share my heart on a stage like the VMAs. Never gonna forget this.”
Tori won hearts at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards with her powerhouse vocals on her single Should’ve Been Us. She is the same singer who auditioned for season nine of American Idol and judge Simon Cowell called her voice “almost annoying”. 
Her YouTube channel now has over 1.2 million subscribers? And her VMA performance was introduced by Ne-Yo and Kylie Jenner?! Wrong Direction this time, Mr Cowell?

 

 

 

Ryn Weaver
Age: 23
In the news for: OctaHate
A break-up has inspired her new album, The Fool. “Super cathartic and heartbreaking. I’ve always had this imagery of us [with me] as a siren, one of the ladybirds on the rock, and I feel like I let him pluck my feathers, one by one. Whatever, I don’t care. He dates girls that are just out of their house,” the San Diego singer told The New York Times. On the listen list of several mags, there is drama in her music. “They want you to be this bubblegum pop star showing your body off, and then people are like it’s fine because it’s ironic and she doesn’t [write] any of her songs but no one cares, because she’s hot and she’s got a great voice. Or they want you to be, like, in your garage, doing it all by yourself, Imogen Heap style.” She certainly ain’t no fool!

 

 

Hozier 
Age: 25
In the news for: Take Me To Church
If you haven’t heard this Grammy-nominated Irish singer’s lusty composition, you are missing out on a lot. The original video, revolving around a young gay couple, went viral soon after release. The James Joyce fan told The Guardian during this year’s Coachella festival: “I didn’t receive any backlash in Ireland. The message went under the radar until it was in the charts….” If you’re still not blown away, watch David LaChapelle directing dancer Sergei Polunin to this song.

 

 

 

 

Borns
Age: 23
In the news for: Electric Love
The synth-sensation has Al Greene, Earth Wind & Fire, and the Bee Gees as inspiration. “A lot of my songs are inspired by a muse of some sort, whether she’s real or not. I like writing love songs. I really like romantic poetry. There’s this poet named Walter Benton, I really like his stuff. He always uses landscapes as a metaphor for the female body,” the singer has told Interview magazine. Psst: The time he had spent in a treehouse has also inspired his music!