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.
Miley Cyrus: ‘Beautiful That Way’
At 32, Miley Cyrus is an old soul in the guise of a provocative modern pop star, which means that she can nail a slow, torchy ballad in her sleep. She brings expected, husky-voiced pathos to “Beautiful That Way,” a Golden-Globe-nominated song from the soundtrack of “The Last Showgirl,” Gia Coppola’s moody character study that stars Pamela Anderson. “Just like a rose, she’ll cut you with thorns,” Cyrus croons on the track, co-written with Andrew Wyatt and the Swedish musician Lykke Li. “She’s beautiful that way.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ
Snoop Dogg featuring 50 Cent and Eminem, ‘Gunz N Smoke’
Self-congratulation reigns on “Missionary,” the new Snoop Dogg album that reunites him with the producer Dr. Dre and other 1990s Dre protégés — including, on “Gunz N Smoke,” 50 Cent and Eminem. Flaunting a “Gun smoke, gun smoke” sample from “Dead Wrong” (by the Notorious B.I.G. featuring Eminem), the track has the three rappers revisiting belligerent poses that have become all too familiar: “I come from freestylin’ over gunshots and sirens / Nothing more gangster than my voice over these violins,” Snoop Dogg claims. But Eminem admits, “Now I’m much older, and I may be calmer.” JON PARELES
Mario, ‘Questions’
In “Questions,” the main question from the longtime R&B crooner Mario is simple: “Can we boom-boom tonight?” The complexities are in the springy, ingenious music. Sparse, syncopated guitar chords bounce against spaces in the bass line, while Mario’s melody phrases push against the downbeat in the verses and agree with it in the chorus. Samples from the rapper Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass” underline Mario’s confidence that she’ll say yes. PARELES
Julien Baker and Torres, ‘Sugar in the Tank’
Straightforward country — guitar strumming, banjo picking, pedal steel guitar — perfectly suits the all-out declarations of love in “Sugar in the Tank.” It’s a checklist of for-better-and-for-worse promises like “I love you swimming upstream in a flash flood, wondering when I’m gonna drown.” The vows are delivered separately or in harmony, with both women admitting to failings but determined to weather them all. PARELES
Benjamin Booker: ‘Same Kind of Lonely’
A scratchy-voiced roots-rocker who draws on gospel, punk and Southern soul, Benjamin Booker is re-emerging with his first studio album since “Witness,” from 2017. “Lower” is due for release early in 2025. Booker’s new producer and songwriting collaborator, Kenny Segal, is known for surreal hip-hop tracks. “Same Kind of Lonely” could have been a retro-soul ballad about desperately longing to move past heartbreak: “If I could make it out tomorrow / If I could start again on my own.” But the track cranks up distorted guitar chords into a barbed-wire-topped wall of sound, melts down into woozy piano chords and crushes them all together with gunshots and children’s voices, a blitz of mixed emotions. PARELES
Oracle Sisters, ‘Riverside’
Oracle Sisters, a multinational trio that’s based in Paris but sings in English, plays amiable indie-pop that borders on Americana. The stately “Riverside” builds calmly but inexorably, gathering instruments as it climbs toward questions with no logical answers: “With your mind on its own, is your silence untold? / With your eye on the road, does your time take its toll?” PARELES
Salif Keita, ‘Kanté Manfila’
The renowned Malian songwriter goes back to basics — just his guitar and voice — in “Kanté Manfila,” a tribute to a mentor and collaborator. Manfila, a Guinean who died in 2011, was the lead guitarist and singer in Les Ambassadeurs du Motel (later Les Ambassadeurs Internationales), the band Keita joined in 1972. They collaborated through the 1970s on songs that fused their Mandé traditions with jazz and funk. Keita picks an intricate four-bar pattern and pours out praise for his fellow musical pioneer. PARELES
Ichiko Aoba, ‘Luciférine’
The Japanese songwriter Ichiko Aoba has been releasing music for more than a decade, gradually expanding her palette from just her classical guitar and voice to orchestral arrangements and electronics. “Luciférine” is from “Luminescent Creatures,” an album due Feb. 28. Its lyrics, in Japanese, contemplate the ocean, nature, consciousness and the cycles of existence with a wide-eyed mysticism. In Luciférine, Aoba sings, “Here, life can be found / from long before words were born.” It’s a gauzy, undulating, rhapsodic track, with rippling piano arpeggios and distant, tremulous orchestral swells behind Aoba’s gentle voice, perpetually filled with wonderment. PARELES
Masma Dream World, ‘Please Come to Me’
Masma Dream World — the project of Devi Mambouka, who was born in Gabon and immigrated to the Bronx at 12 — makes music rooted in drones and ritual rhythms. “Please Come to Me” is more a soundscape than a song. It’s paced by slow, deep breaths and has a foundation of deep, sustained chanting that suggests Tibetan monks run through reverb and pitch shifters. Above it, Mambouka repeatedly sings two syllables — “a-mah” — like a visitor probing a dark cavern, occasionally knocking something loose that clatters noisily into the void. PARELES
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