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 sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.
Lady Gaga, ‘Disease’
Lady Gaga sets aside her forays into analog-era styles — which included duets on pop standards with Tony Bennett and an Oscar for best original song, from “A Star Is Born” — and returns to electronic dance-pop with “Disease,” a sequel to her career-making hits like “Bad Romance” and “Judas.” It’s a four-on-the-floor thumper, with wordless vocal hooks, bulldozing bass and promises to turn around the most dire situations. “Screaming for me baby like you’re gonna die,” she belts. “Poison on the inside / I could be your antidote tonight.” It harks back to her hits from the 2000s, but she sets aside her gimmick from back then: There’s no consonant-repeating stutter.
Sade Adu, ‘Young Lion’
Sade’s first song since 2018 is dedicated to her transgender son, Izaak, and appears on the compilation “Transa” from the Red Hot Organization. Set to minor chords, the song is an apology from a parent who didn’t understand her child’s needs at first: “You must have felt so alone / The anguish and pain, I should have known,” she sings. “Forgive me, son.” Strings swell behind her as she affirms, “You shine like a sun” and “See how far you’ve come.” But the final tolling piano chords suggest irreparable regrets.
Soccer Mommy, ‘Abigail’
Sophie Allison sings about loss and renewal on “Evergreen,” her new album as Soccer Mommy. “Abigail” finds hope in looking ahead. In a track that hints at both chiming girl groups and surging synth-pop, the song professes intimacy — “I know you more than anybody has before” — and verges on a proposal: “Just say these words, we’ll make it true / I do, I do, I do.”
Tyler, the Creator, ‘Noid’
“Noid” is the last syllable of “paranoid,” which is the mood of the new song by Tyler, the Creator previewing an album due next week, “Chromakopia.” Tyler sounds besieged, feeling constantly surveilled and threatened as the downside of celebrity and wealth; “Someone’s keeping watch / I feel them in my shadow,” he moans. The ever-changing, strategically disorienting track encompasses jolts of fuzz-toned guitar and high, speedy vocals — both sampled from a Zambian group, Ngozi Family — along with plush choir harmonies, jazzy interludes and Tyler’s increasingly agitated singing and rapping.
Judeline, ‘Mangata’
The Spanish songwriter Judeline (Lara Fernández Castrelo) whisper-sings about love, bewitchment and betrayal “on the night of the full moon” in “Mangata,” from her debut album, “Bodhiria,” which carries echoes of Spanish and South American traditions into an otherworldly electronic haze. As a subdued house beat pulses behind her, she turns her voice into a ghostly, sharp-voiced choir to charge, “You broke my heart.”
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy featuring Tim O’Brien, ‘Our Home’
Will Oldham, a.k.a. Bonnie “Prince” Billy, gathered adept Nashville pickers for his album due in January, “The Purple Bird.” One is the mandolinist Tim O’Brien, who collaborated on writing and singing “Our Home.” It’s a string-band waltz, punctuated by fiddle solos, about an idealized rural community, where “We’ve got the power and it’s all off the grid,” and where the singers are ready to “Pull down the fences and pull up a chair” — homey, but not unaware.
Laura Marling, ‘Caroline’
In “Caroline,” from her new album “Patterns in Repeat,” Laura Marling sings about an unexpected phone call and the emotions stirred by a half-remembered song. Out of the blue, the elderly narrator hears from Caroline, a woman who left him decades ago; he had gone on to fall in love, marry and raise grown children, and perhaps to be widowed. Hearing Caroline’s voice makes him think of what might have been, and to remember a once-cherished tune. “It went, ‘La la la la, la la la, la la, la la, something something, Caroline,’” Marling sings over ripples of fingerpicking. Her narrator can’t help asking, “Was I something something, Caroline?”
Summer Walker, ‘Heart of a Woman’
Summer Walker knows she has put up with far too much in “Heart of a Woman,” a reproach that’s still some distance from being an ultimatum. “The question is why I do the things I do,” she sings, “I put the blame on me for giving you chance after chance.” The ultra-slow, almost viscous tempo suggests how deeply mired she feels, even if she’s not pulling free.
Chuck Prophet, ‘Wake the Dead’
Chuck Prophet was a member of the neo-psychedelic 1980s band Green on Red, has collaborated with roots-rockers like Alejandro Escovedo and has made more than a dozen solo albums. His new one, “Wake the Dead,” is a collaboration with ¿Qiensave?, a California band steeped in Mexican cumbia. The title track tops a cowbell-tapping, accordion-pumped cumbia with twangy guitar lines, surreal possibilities and a backup plan: “Go ahead and tell the truth / If we have to we can plead insanity.”
Darkside, ‘Graucha Max’
The producer Nicolas Jaar and the guitarist Dave Harrington have been sporadically releasing echo-laden, psychedelia-tinged dance tracks as Darkside since 2011. For “Graucha Max” they’ve added a drummer, Tlacel Esparza, and a lot of extra crunch. “Graucha Max” looks back to the bristling minimalism of a kraut-rock jam. It pounds away at what’s mostly a one-note riff, as the mix sprouts distorted keyboards, barely intelligible vocal chants, whizzing synthesizers and assorted percussion, collapsing down to electronic-drum blips before regrouping to stomp some more.
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