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 Weeknd featuring Anitta, ‘São Paulo’
The Weeknd gets top billing on “São Paulo,” but the song is defined by its Brazilian funk-style synthesizer riff and a hook that Anitta borrowed (with credit) from the Brazilian funk singer Tati Quebra Barraco. Anitta chants about her irresistible body (and dominates the version edited for video), while the full song gives the Weeknd ample time to bemoan how thoroughly he’s in her thrall.
Champion, Four Tet, Skrillex and Naisha, ‘Talk to Me’
Three top producers concocted the sparse beat and boinging riff that accompany a nearly weightless melody from the Indian singer Naisha Bhargabi. She sings and raps in Hindi about solitude and self-sufficiency — “My nights are by myself alone, never lonely.” But she switches to English for the simple invitation to “talk to me.”
The Black Keys featuring Beck, ‘I’m With the Band’
Beck makes a triumphant throwback to his own 1990s rock, abetted by the stomping beat and layered, distorted guitars of the Black Keys. The lyrics announce “a party at the neon graveyard” where “my cellphone is slowly melting” and he’s got “a heart full of napalm.” But there’s more than enough tambourine-shaking exhilaration to push ahead.
Kany García and Rawayana, ‘La Culpa’
The Puerto Rican pop singer Kany García finds a sultry side in Puerto Rico’s continuing electric blackouts in “La Culpa” (“The Blame”). It’s a tale of a drunken, anonymous hookup — it was dark! The Venezuelan band Rawayana supplies a male duet partner, Alberto Montenegro, and an Afro-Caribbean beat rooted in Puerto Rican plena. A group-sing insists, “In the dark we didn’t see each other.” It’s deniable enough.
Danny Elfman, ‘Monkeys on the Loose’
Danny Elfman, the soundtrack composer who got his start leading the new wave band Oingo Boingo, is a master of sardonic bombast. “Monkeys on the Loose” isn’t his first Halloween song; he composed “This Is Halloween” for the soundtrack of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” in 1993. His new “Monkeys on the Loose” is an orchestral stomp celebrating anarchic primates who are “breaking everything they can get their little hands on.” It’s clear that he sympathizes with them.
Steve Coleman and Five Elements, ‘Mdw Ntr (Live in Paris)’
Over the last three decades, the alto saxophonist Steve Coleman has evolved his own compositional system and mentored many like-minded musicians. “Mdw Ntr (Live in Paris)” is from his latest album, “PolyTropos/Of Many Turns (Live),” with his quartet: Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Rich Brown on electric bass and Sean Rickman on drums. “Mdw Ntr” has the system working with upbeat efficiency, turning short motifs into hopping seven-beat funk, a jazz alternative to math-rock.
Ethel Cain, ‘Punish’
Ethel Cain’s next album, due in January, is titled “Perverts,” and its first single, “Punish,” sinks into the self-torment of a narrator who avows, “I am punished by love.” It’s a glacial seven-minute track of muffled piano chords, ghostly creaks and a sudden surge of electric guitar that only leaves a more desolate soundscape after it disappears.
Lola Young featuring Lil Yachty, ‘Charlie’
Charlie isn’t exactly Lola Young’s optimum partner in “Charlie,” yet sheer desire makes her willing to put up with him even though she knows better. “You’ve got so many red flags, but boy they just turn me on,” she sings, affirming her love and lust over a stripped-down soul vamp. Lil Yachty adds a smug rap verse from her partner’s perspective, but Young’s acrobatically tortured, increasingly raspy voice defines her predicament.
Ilham, ‘Games’
Ilham, a Moroccan-American R&B singer, cools off the brittle, implacable drum-machine sounds of drill by gliding above them with breathy, barely there vocal lines. “Games” uses hazy, low-fi piano chords and a leaping hook that’s phrased in passive voice — “Game are being played” — to cloak an adamant message: “Give me respect, I want a mention.”
The post Anitta Mesmerizes the Weeknd, and 8 More New Songs appeared first on New York Times.
