Polaris Music Prize 2023: Debby Friday s GOOD LUCK Wins stereogum.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stereogum.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The qualities every songwriter should strive for are honesty and specificity — Joanna Sternberg has both. The New York City musician’s songs are vulnerable and tender, a chronicle of one person’s experience that feels eminently relatable. Sternberg sings about heartbreak and loneliness, being overwhelmed and under pressure, feeling invisible and like no one will ever understand you. But then a song comes along, like the ones that Sternberg writes, that reminds you of the universality of the human experience, even in all its individual quirks and idiosyncrasies.
The best global music albums demonstrate how much art comes specifically from connections between people and the importance of the places they bring with them.