Music
Coco Jones Shines Bright On R&B Season’s Latest Playlist Update With Soulful Debut
The R&B Season playlist is here yet again with another soul-soaked update, and this time, it comes with a big look for upcoming Coco Jones. “Why Not More?” has arrived for good, and it’s making a dramatic entrance. At only 14 songs, “Why Not More?” is anything but small. It’s a bold, genre-warping testament to Jones’ vocal elasticity and emotional puddles, each song serving up a unique slice of the modern soul pie. Over silky, sexy grooves or spikier, more spirited bangers, Coco sings like someone who’s here to stay.
“I wanted to see what sticks and what lands what really changes my life,” Coco said of the album. That raw ambition courses through the album. It’s exploratory but not aimless. From thoughtful slow jams to sensual, radio-ready hits, Jones sounds like she’s already figured out what works for her and isn’t afraid to push the boundaries. Not for “On Sight” if you’re trying to get started. It’s playful and magnetic and captures just the right amount of latent charisma Coco Jones brings to the mic. It’s also one of the more pumped-up tracks on the album, so it gives you a sense of her skill in the diplomacy of designer pop’s decorousness and real vocal chops. When that one catches, the rest of the album makes for a ride worth taking.
Check out this article: SZA Calls Out Shannon Sharpe for “Tacky” BBL Question During An Interview With Coco Jones
While Coco takes center stage this week, R&B Season also reserves space for another new drop, Roy Woods’ Dark Nights. It’s a moody, late-night counterpoint to Jones’ sophisticated revolution of R&B, nine slow-burning tracks that sound intimate and cloudy. Woods is committed to the atmosphere, with his high-pitched tones and dreamy flows creating an immersive, sometimes other-worldly listening experience. Yet the heart of this playlist update is the one and only Coco Jones. With “Why Not More?,” she asks the question and answers it. And by the sound of it, judging by this debut, there’s far more greatness yet to come.
Artist Spotlight
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” finds a new direction through Ghost of Panama
Rearranging a song that carries six decades of cultural weight is a creative challenge, but Ghost of Panama approaches “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with clear purpose. The rock band radically reworks Bob Dylan’s counter-culture hit, reshaping its identity while keeping its rebellious spirit. It’s a tribute to musical heritage and a statement of artistic independence all in one.
This new interpretation is very much shaped by the production, made at Ghost of Panama’s home studio in West London. The setting allows an intimate approach to reinterpreting a familiar song and lets the group engage directly with the material, taking it in a new artistic direction.
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” centers on the tension between conservation and transformation. Ghost of Panama is true to the song’s rebellious spirit without adding to its legacy, and this approach gives the release an adventurous feel, grounded in countercultural energy but driven by a desire to see what the composition can become in a different musical context.
Their version of this 60-year-old classic shows that respecting a song’s history can also mean breaking the rules and finding new ways to express its spirit. Fundamentally, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” presents Ghost of Panama as artists who want to engage with the past without being tied to it. The release’s strongest identity is a familiar heritage reimagined through a singularly forward-looking creative vision.
Artist Spotlight
“NO MORE” by Amanda Holley connects healing, awakening, and survival
“NO MORE“ carries that kind of emotional weight, and some songs feel like they come from lived experience but reach for something bigger. Amanda Holley blends R&B and soul, turning a lifetime of survival into a vision of healing, awakening, and the determination to move beyond what caused the pain.
“NO MORE“ is a healing anthem for people who have gone through bad experiences and reached a place of higher awareness, but it’s also an emotionally charged protest. The duality is introspective and outward-looking at the same time, turning personal survival into a broader declaration that some experiences, conditions, or cycles should end.
Holley had a premonition of the song six months before the world went into global shutdown. In the vocal booth, working out melodies with her collaborators, she pictured people in the streets. Those images were hard to imagine at the time, but subsequent events would make them painfully familiar.
“NO MORE“ is given a particularly contemplative underpinning by the context. The identity of R&B and soul leaves room for emotion. The song’s themes link survival, awakening, resistance, and the need for change. Amanda Holley is an artist using music to process personal endurance and a broader sense of social awakening. It’s got a complicated significance, and its release feels like a glimpse of a moment when personal intuition and public reality collided in an unexpected way.
Photo Credit: Yulia Shusharina
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