1. Pink, “Off topic.” One day last week, Pink tweeted, “I woke up. I warmed up. Song written. Coming soon.”

The song that Doylestown-born Alecia Moore wrote – and posted with handwritten lyrics – is ‘Irrelevant’, an emphatic protest song, a rallying cry of defiance in which the singer refuses to be defined by others and gets angry.

The collaborative effort with songwriter-producer Ian Fitchuk is clearly inspired by the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, but is ready to adapt to all kinds of protests.

It strategically evokes both The Who’s “The Kids Are Alright” and Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” which was written by the late Philadelphia singer Robert Hazard. “Girls just want to have rights,” she sings. “So why do we have to fight?”

In a statement, Pink wrote, “As a woman with an opinion and the fearlessness to voice that opinion, it gets very tiring when the only retort is telling me how irrelevant I am. I am relevant. because I exist and because I am a human being. No one is off topic. And no one can take my voice away. Proceeds from the sales of the song go to Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote ballot initiative.

2. Night Lands, Bootleg alcohol. Besides playing with The War On Drugs – you know, the Philly band who opened for the Rolling Stones in London last month – Dave Hartley makes music as Nightlands, a project that leans towards the ethereal, with songs and spacious synth-based vocals that reach for the sky.

Bootleg alcohol is Nightlands’ first album since 2017 I can feel the night around meand his contemplative nature is partly the result of the musician’s move from Philadelphia to Asheville, North Carolina, where Hartley, a new parent, worked in isolation during the pandemic in a studio in a barn outside his century-old home. .

However, many Philadelphia musicians contribute New Age-tinged tracks like “No Kiss For the Lonely,” including Eric Slick, Michael Kiley, and Jessie Hale Moore, as well as Hartley bandmates Charlie Hall, Eliza Hardy Jones, and Anthony LaMarca. The War On Drugs perform at the Xponential Music Festival with Patti Smith on September 16.

3. Margo Price feat. Mavis Staples and Adia Victoria, “Fight to Make it Happen”. Last September, when Margo Price performed at the Mann Center with Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Tour, she debuted a cover of Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” in protest after Texas had passed restrictive anti-abortion legislation that month.

Now Price has teamed up with gospel great Mavis Staples and blues and Americana songwriter Adia Victoria has released this country rock fight song which she says was originally inspired by Amelia Earhart and Rosa Parks. .

Along with “Irrelevant”, it is one of the many protest songs that will be released in the coming months. In a statement, Price said, “Every day I see more of our rights taken away in America. The right to reproductive health in this country has become a luxury for the rich…. Black women in particular experience maternal mortality at a rate two to three times higher than white women.

Bandcamp sales revenue from the benefit of the song noise so far which connects artists with grassroots organizations working on reproductive justice, including access to abortion. Price’s Memoirs Maybe we’ll get there is due from University of Texas Press in October.

Don McCloskey at Ardmore Music Hall. Bucks County-born Don McCloskey celebrates the release of The Chaos & the Beauty, a 10-song collection recorded in Brooklyn with Philadelphia expats Devin Greenwood and Ali Wadsworth and guitarist Ross Bellinoit and released on his own Lemon label Hill Records.

The St. Joe’s Prep graduate has a varied history: He wrote ‘Unstoppable’, the Phillies anthem that was played at Citizens Bank Park during the team’s (long ago) run at the 2009 World Series , he toured with Wu-Tang Clan rapper Raekwon and last Christmas he released a terrific reworked version of “O Holy Night.”

On Friday, he plays at Ardmore Music Hall with Philadelphia songwriter Chris Kasper, whose 2017 song “City By The Sea” is a Jersey Shore snapshot of Ventnor before it became a candle. Friday, July 22 at Ardmore Music Hall, 23 East Lancaster Ave., Ardmore at 8 p.m. $18. ardmoremusichall.com.

The music of The bear. The highly bingeable series about a hot chef who returns to Chicago to run his family sandwich shop, which stars Jeremy Allen White, has some serious verisimilitude quotient in its authentic portrayal of restaurant culture in the kitchen.

But the Christopher Storer-created FX series on Hulu also has something else going for it: a first-rate, still surprising but unpretentious soundtrack, composed by Storer and his music supervising partner Josh Senior. There is not too much music imposed on the viewer as is often the case with prestige television productions. Instead, it’s used sparingly and often packs an emotional punch, whether it’s “Have You Seen Me Lately?” by Counting Crowes. or “Check It Out” by John Cougar Mellencamp.

The show’s Windy City identity stands out with “Via Chicago” by Wilco (and also “Impossible Germany”) and also “Chicago” by Sufjan Stevens, although there is no sign of “My Kind of Town ” of Sinatra in the first season. But there are also plenty of out-of-the-way faraway acts, like Swedish hardcore band Refused and perfectly suited instrumental rock from Staten Island ensemble The Budos Band. Last week, the show was renewed for a second season.