Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to each week’s New Music Friday’s most important releases: the essential music everyone’s talking about today and dominating your playlists this weekend and beyond.
Last week, we featured FKA Twigs alongside Lil Yachty, Miles Smith, Cassius Culpepper, and more.
This week: sombr returns with a new single and a video studded with rising stars. Phoebe Bridgers has shared the lead single from her upcoming third album, Lost Weekend. And Steve Lacy continues to tease his third album, Oh Yeah?, which includes a collaboration with SZA… and more. Check out all of this week’s picks below.
Depression: “My body is not ready”
Sombre has done it again. With his latest single, he continues to give voice to the complex feelings that come with moving on, or in this case, not being ready to move on (the New Yorker also remains the sole writer of his music). Now, he’s proven he can deliver a pop-rock banger just as easily as a meditative slow-burn. The latter best describes “My Body Isn’t Ready.” For fans who subscribe to what Noah Kahan calls “Sad Summer,” this song is perfect for you.
Phoebe Bridgers “Lost Boys”
“Lost Boys,” which opens with glitchy, distorted lyrics, immediately stands out as a folky, fairly sophisticated pop song. While the song is a perfect fit for Bridgers, it also hints at the expanded sonic world of her upcoming third album, Lost Weekend, due out in August. Fittingly, Jack Antonoff co-produced with Tony Berg (a frequent melancholy collaborator) and Ethan Gruska, with vocal support provided by Bridgers’ Voygenious bandmates Lucy Dacus and Julian Baker. For the first three-and-a-half minutes, “Lost Boys” serves as a warmly welcomed lead single, perhaps alluding to the theme of losing yourself in everything, but then Phoebe hits us with a typical Bridgers scream, indicating that there’s still some angst beneath this smooth sonic surface.
Steve Lacy feat. SZA “Are you cool?”
“Is It Cool?” is Steve Lacy’s second release, kicking off the next album era with the light-hearted indie rap lead single “The Feeling.” Hits are faster (execution time is almost half that of previous versions). As a result, the conversation with SZA, which appears in just two verses (plus a few harmonies), tells a much tighter story about the role trust plays in partnerships. “Don’t believe you love me, baby/Cause I don’t even believe in myself,” Lacey sings. But somewhere along the way, he seems to realize in real time that it’s really uncool, and concludes, “Maybe I should just believe in myself.”
Gracie Abrams “Look at My Life”
“Daughter From Hell,” the second single from Gracie’s upcoming album, continues the narrative flow of the first single. That is to say, not everything is actually as great as it seems. Lead single “Hit the Wall” puts it quite simply, but “Look at My Life” tugs at the strings with a bit of manic denial, obscuring the harsh truth in its push for pop production: “Do I look high-functioning? Or is my facade crumbling?” Abrams asks before singing in the chorus, “You can’t tell, but these are kind of bad times / Every night there’s a new spiral / I roll my eyes and cry / No, but I’m so fine.” Perhaps her third single will be the verdict.
Katy Perry “Watch It Burn”
On ‘Watch It Burn’, Katy goes all in with a fresh perspective (essentially shit) and a new group of collaborators including Justin Tranter (who teamed up on her previous single ‘bandaids’), Jason Gill and Kido. The song is less than three minutes long, but it has a defiant clarity that essentially proves that nothing more can be solved in her head or in the studio. She says it herself. “I’m going to get what I deserve…Finally I’ve put myself first.” And, judging by the sounds of it, what a great place to be.
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