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Pop culture update: Music industry sees exciting new releases

Videos and albums capture audience attention
Pop culture update: Music industry sees exciting new releases
Ariana Grande Announces Deluxe Version of “eternal sunshine”

A year after its release, American pop singer, Ariana Grande, announced a deluxe version of her album “eternal sunshine” as “eternal sunshine deluxe: brighter days ahead.” The deluxe version will be an expansion of the original album, adding six new songs to the tracklist. The album is planned to be released on March 28, 2025.

Lady Gaga’s New Album: Mayhem

Infamous American artist, Lady Gaga, returns to her pop music days with her recently dropped seventh studio album,“Mayhem” on March 7, 2025. The 53-minute long album features 14 songs with a wide variety of genres, like industrial dance music and synth-pop. Two of the songs in the tracklist, ”Disease” and “Abracadabra,” were released as singles prior to the release of the album.

Gaga drew her inspiration for the album from her own life experiences and musical influences. According to her, the album conveys the inner chaos Gaga has experienced throughout her life and how she responds to it with love.

That’s my answer to all the chaos in my life: I find peace in love. Every song I wrote emerged from surrendering to different dreams tied to my past, almost like a recollection of all the bad decisions I’ve made throughout my life,” Gaga remarked in an interview with Rolling Stone back in Dec. 2024.

 

OIIA Cat – Flow Version

Gints Zilbalodis, the director and co-producer of the Oscar-winning animated film Flow, posted a trending video on X (formerly known as Twitter) a week after the Oscars ceremony. The video featured the protagonist of Flow, a black cat, spinning around with EDM-style music by W&W playing in the background. Zilbalodis captioned the video with “this is what you do after winning an Oscar.” The post would gain millions of interactions on X, amassing over 800k likes since the video was posted on March 14, 2025. According to Zilbalodis, the video was made as a request by an audience member during a virtual Q&A in China.

Zilbalodis’ video is a reference to a reference of the popular “OIIAOIIA Cat” meme, which consisted of a cat with stubby legs spinning around on a green screen with a silly sound effect going “oo ee a e a.” That meme and audio would later then get remixed by the music artist W&W, getting posted to YouTube on Jan. 17, 2025 and garnering over 80 million views since. Zilbalodis would then animate the cat from Flow just like how W&W’s video was edited, leading to the trending X post.

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About the contributor
Alyssa Reign Pontines
Alyssa Reign Pontines, Staff Writer
Alyssa Pontines is a first-year staff writer who works under the Arts and Entertainment section for The Mirror. She has survived 12 years of compulsory education despite her true aspirations lying within the creative industry as an artist. As Van Nuys High School does not offer creative writing classes, she pursues mastering her storytelling skills independently. She primarily works with narrative fiction in her projects, preferring character-driven works over plot-driven ones. Much of her art portfolio consists of original anime-styled artworks as she finds drawing in a realistic style not much fun. Her current inspirations include Vocaloid and Japanese-EDM songs, graphic novels, animated shows and the rhythm game “Arcaea.” In the future, she plans on entering the art industry and specializing in either game design or concept art. If things go well enough, she wants to start a graphic novel or visual novel series of her own.
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