Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.
The Cure, ‘Alone’
“This is the end of every song we sing,” Robert Smith laments in the stately, dire, seven-minute “Alone.” It’s the first preview of “Songs of a Lost World,” the Cure’s first studio album since 2008, which is due Nov. 1. The first half of the track is instrumental, establishing a lugubrious pace with thick, sustained chords punctuated by slamming drums. It sets up Smith to deliver a threnody for just about everything: not just music but love, nature, hope, dreams, even the stars. “Where did it go?” Smith wonders amid the emptiness.
Stevie Nicks, ‘The Lighthouse’
Stevie Nicks has re-emerged, righteous and adamant, with “The Lighthouse,” a post-Dobbs call for action on women’s rights. “You better learn how to fight,” she sings. What starts as a dirge — “All the rights that you had yesterday are taken away” — quickly snowballs into a march, a latter-day sequel to “Stand Back” that insists on standing up instead.
Lady Gaga, ‘Happy Mistake’
Lady Gaga has always flaunted that she was a theater kid, in love with self-transformation. Then she turned to widescreen naturalism in the redemptive remake of “A Star Is Born.” “Happy Mistake,” from her surprise album “Harlequin,” uses a raw-throated vocal over acoustic guitars, the totem of sincerity, even with the track’s echo effects. She sets out an artifice — “I can try to hide behind the makeup but the show must go on” — but goes on to claim, “I could hold my heart in a safe place.” What’s the pose, what’s the person? In a pop song, it doesn’t matter; listeners find meanings of their own.
Flower Face, ‘If I Beg You’
Grandly avenging buildups loom behind delicate beginnings in the songs of Flower Face, the Montreal-based songwriter Ruby McKinnon. “If I Beg You” starts as a gentle, folk-Baroque waltz, with Flower Face offering yet another chance to the fiancé who’s let her down. “I’m not a runaway bride, wasn’t born for deceiving,” she sings. “I love you too much, I’m no good at leaving.” Then a band crashes in, the beat turns into a march and she’s irreversibly changed her mind: “You should get a ride home from someone who loves you,” she sneers. While the waltz returns, her bitterness lingers. “God help the next girl that loves you,” she coos.
Rosalía featuring Ralphie Choo, ‘Omega’
In this straightforwardly blissful love song, ‘Omega’ Rosalía insists — in a high, breathy voice — that she’s found her best, ultimate partner, her omega; the Spanish pop songwriter Richie Choo returns the affection. Acoustic guitar gives the track a rich, folky foundation, but Rosalia can’t resist an interlude of flamenco handclaps and computer-manipulated vocals before the final reverent affirmation.
Willow featuring Kamasi Washington, ‘Wanted’
Willow’s ever-expanding album is now titled “Ceremonial Contrafact (Empathogen Deluxe),” with new songs including “Wanted.” Willow sings about being buffeted by contradictory desires in a song with neck-snapping shifts of tempo — hurtling, languorous, swirling, funky — and an arrangement that deploys Kamasi Washington’s saxophones as both an insistent horn section and a cascading final solo, spurring Willow to keep questioning: “Is this what I wanted?”
José Junior, ‘Projections’
José Junior, born in Britain to parents from Spain and Colombia and now based in New York City, waxes psychological in the psychedelia-tinged “Projections,” a modal drone that revs up, ratchets down and revs up again and again. “Now you’ve decided to put all your sadness on me,” he sings in one verse; later he exchanges “sadness” for “loving.” The stability of the drone anchors the emotional volatility.
Shakira, ‘Soltera’
Shakira revels in independence in “Soltera” (“Single”). She sings, in Spanish, that she’s at a beachside hotel with a cocktail, and “Nobody is going to tell me how to behave.” The transparent, irresistible groove — concocted with Latin Grammy-winning collaborators including Bizarrap and Edgar Barrera — hints at Afrobeats, cumbia, bachata and Congolese soukous. Shakira may be single, but not alone; at the end, Shakira summons a chorus of fellow “lobas”: she-wolves.
Mustafa, ‘I’ll Go Anywhere’
The Sudanese-Canadian songwriter Mustafa sings ever so gently about loss, violence, heritage, racism and enduring Muslim faith on his full-length debut album, “Dunya.” In “I’ll Go Anywhere,” he affirms a prayerful devotion that overcomes doubts. A waltz with Arabic underpinnings, it meshes acoustic fingerpicking — from an oud — with flamenco handclaps and a guest appearance from Rosalía, turning herself into a choir and embracing flamenco’s North African roots.
Contour, ‘(Re)Turn’
Khari Lucas, who records as Contour, writes songs that seem to bubble up directly from the unconscious. Over hazy, jazzy, off-center grooves, in a modest voice that sounds more quizzical than declarative, he sings elusive, ruminative lyrics. There’s a hint of Brazil in the sputtering, six-beat drum loops, guitar syncopations and subtly ascending harmonies of “(Re)Turn.” Contour ponders aspirations, disappointments, vulnerability, touring, mortality and how to “hide the grief in a cheerful song,” finding purpose in amorphousness.
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