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Beverly Glenn-Copeland, the Philadelphia-born multidisciplinary artist who has lived and worked for decades in Canada, is experiencing fame for the first time now at 76 years old. Glenn-Copeland, who for years identified as a lesbian woman before learning about transgender language and now identifies more accurately as a transgender man, is enjoying a new sense of fame and adoration thanks to the recent rediscovery of his nuanced 1986 electronic album, Keyboard Fantasies. New audiences are flocking to his work, which also includes writing he has done for kids shows like Sesame Street and Shiny Time Station and the records he released in the ‘70s and ‘80s. This week, on April 9, Glenn-Copeland will officially re-release his 1986 record, which, the artist says, originally came to him more as a transmission from above rather than an unearthing or physical labor.

The story of the 77-year-old gospel singer, Elizabeth King, is the story of a life of hard work. King, who grew up on a Tennessee plantation, started working at five years old with her father. At nine years old, she began picking cotton and chopping corn. She worked so well with her brother that they earned adultpay, $3 a day, instead of $2. Later, working for a florist in Memphis the day Elvis died, King drove back and forth from her shop to the world famous singer’s mansion delivering bouquet after bouquet. Flowers from every state in America came through her place of business.

Throughout her life, King has attended church devoutly. Her relationship to a higher power remains central to her life, even today. King, who cut singles in the ’70s, stepped away from formal recording for more than four decades afterwards. In that time, she raised kids, sewing their school’s uniforms. Now, she’s back in the public eye thanks to her new record, Living In The Last Days, out today. The debut LP boasts her timeless, remarkable sound.

The thing about a diary is that it’s private. But when that diary is also the music you make, it begins to morph into a different relationship and responsibility. For Nashville-based singer-songwriter, Bren Joy, the autobiographical admissions that his music allows him is what brought him to the art form to begin with, and what has kept him there working diligently ever since. In fact, that the music he makes will have a life after he departs the earth is crucial to Joy’s appreciation for the work he does. He wants each song and each record to mark his thoughts cleanly and clearly in a given moment in time. He responds to and respects other artists like Taylor Swift who manage their work in this way, too. It’s this impulse that inspired Joy to write and release his 2019 album, Twenties, and why he decided to release the deluxe version of the album last week. In short, he had more to say about this time in his life before it grows and shifts into a new era of creativity.

Professional hit song maker, Starrah (born Brittany Hazzard), can trace it all back to when she was four years old. For the songwriter, who has since gone on to co-write tracks like Camila Cabello’s “Havana,” Maroon 5’s “Girls Like You” and Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage,” inspiration first hit when she heard the 1994 song “Candy Rain” by the group, Soul for Real. More than the music, though, she was struck that the singing group included a kid in its ranks. This was an early light bulb moment—you didn’t have to be an adult to participate in music. Just a few years later, around 10 years old, the songs began to come. Starrah was on her way. She began recording with a rudimentary app on Microsoft Windows, recording herself over herself. Now, all of that inspiration and hard work is paying off. This month, Starrah has released her debut solo LP, The Longest Interlude, and the new album marks the beginning of yet another fruitful era in Starrah’s already illustrious career.

Jamie Stewart, co-founder of the eerie indie rock group, Xiu Xiu, is no stranger to hardship. But thanks to the beauty of music, Stewart has long had a space where he can turn those difficulties into something new and, perhaps, especially beneficial. In that way, he can be constructive. Not the opposite.

Recently, Stewart says, about a half-dozen people he was “very close” with personally and professionally betrayed him, lied to him severely or just “fucked” him over at various recent times. For the sometimes cynical, oft-agoraphobic Stewart, that could have been the last straw. He could have pulled the proverbial blankets over his head and shut out the rest of the world. But, to his surprise, something else happened. Friends and fellow musicians began to reach out to him and ask about his state and offer their help. It was healing. And to thank them for their care, Stewart wrote and recorded his band’s new record, OH NO (out March 26), with the idea of the duet at its figurative center.

The art of music production is as varied as the number of people partaking. Some release demo after demo, track after track, almost indiscriminately. Others, like the New York City-based trio of brothers AJR, are more reserved and meticulous. In one sense, it may seem that the fewer songs a band releases, the easier it is. But for AJR, it’s the opposite. The group combs over its music, finding the right sound here and the right one there.

The band has a mantra—Given that no one is perfect, therefore everyone fails. But the brothers work to “fail faster,” meaning that they endeavor not to linger on their errors, get past the inevitable junk as quickly as possible to better locate the gems. Since its inception in the early 2010s, the trio has produced a great many hits amongst the 50-something formal releases. The brothers’ newest offering, the forthcoming LP, OK ORCHESTRA, is set for release on March 26, and should produce more fans for the already popular family project.

For those familiar with the at times-frenetic, at times-pleasantly disorienting music of the Brooklyn, New York-based hip-hop group, Flatbush Zombies, hearing the new solo music from the trio’s co-founder and primary producer, Erick Elliott (a.k.a. Erick the Architect), may come as a bit of a surprise. Where the Flatbush Zombies might try to proverbially push you over the sonic edge, Elliott, in his recent solo EP, Future Proof, instead tries to reason with you, relax you and offer kernels of insight.

While one style is not inherently superior to the other, what the distinction exemplifies is that Elliott, like many great artists, has multiple sides to his aesthetic and creative mind. Further, it shows that he embraces both. This latter fact took some time to manifest, but, thanks to Elliott’s concerted efforts to do so, the musician has already established himself in a significantly new way, which, he says, he fully intends to continue to dig into, embrace and find a home in.