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.
Maren Morris, ‘Carry Me Through’
Equal parts self-help, Elton John and secular gospel, “Carry On” puts robust piano chords and a choir behind Maren Morris as she works on finding the will to heal herself. She’s taking full responsibility. “Yeah, I got friends around / Plenty of hands held out,” she sings. “But I’m still the one who has to choose to carry me through.” The music gives her ample reinforcement, and by the end she’s vowing, “I’ll get there.”
Mumford & Sons, ‘Truth’
Mumford & Sons get a strong infusion of Southern rock in “Truth” from the band’s new album, “Rushmere.” Over a bluesy, sinewy riff, Marcus Mumford declares, “I was born to believe the truth is all there is” and insists, “I refuse to offer myself up to men who lie.” The track intensifies — with percussion, guitars, handclaps and choral harmonies — as the singer’s desperation grows: “Don’t leave the liars in the honest places,” he pleads as it ends.
Timbaland, ‘Azonto Bounce’
Timbaland, the producer whose sounds and techniques transformed 1990s hip-hop, has suprise-released an album, “Timbo Progression,” that visits entirely unexpected territory: West African music, with a vintage sound. Azonto is a dance and music style from Ghana; Timbaland’s version, with its mid-tempo beat and modal horn lines, also hints at Fela Kuti’s 1970s Afrobeat. There’s little information with the album — Timbaland is credited as “programmer” — but the groove is undeniable.
Pablo Alboran, ‘Clickbait’
The Spanish pop songwriter Pablo Alboran usually deals in romance. But “Clickbait” confronts a different class of relationships: the parasocial ones online. “Many say they know me, but they have no idea who I am,” he complains in Spanish, with an Auto-Tuned edge. In Spanglish, he continues, “Flash flash, mucho clickbait, mucho fake.” It’s a choppy track that jump-cuts between a minor-chorded ballad and pounding drums, then unites them. Alboran sings about people with “poison in their hearts,” and he’s willing to break character to fight back.
Tortoise, ‘Oganesson’
Since its formation in 1990, the Chicago instrumental band Tortoise has been blending jazz, rock, Minimalism, electronics and improvisation. Its first new track since 2016 is “Oganesson,” named for a synthetic, very short-lived element with atomic number 118. It’s an off-kilter, 7/4 funk tune with a spy-movie ambience: laconic guitar chords, plinks of distorted vibraphone and a hopscotching bass line. Perhaps the stretch of noise at the end represents atomic decay.
Lucy Dacus, ‘Forever Is a Feeling’
The title track of Lucy Dacus’s new, love-besotted album, “Forever Is a Feeling,” exults in a romance that just might endure. “My wrists are in your zip tie / 25 to life, why not?” Dacus sings, marveling at the possibility of permanence. The verses surround her with nervous, pointillistic patterns in stereo — piano notes, percussion — as she sings about what were tentative beginnings; the chorus reassures her with rapturous vocal harmonies.
Allison Russell featuring Annie Lennox, ‘Superlover’
Here’s an unexpected but sensible alliance: the Canada-to-Nashville songwriter Allison Russell joined by Annie Lennox of Eurythmics. “Superlover” is a plea and a prayer for the world’s children, especially in combat zones. It’s accompanied mostly by Russell’s banjo picking, but adds churchy overtones. “There’s no God of fire and blood / If there’s a God, God is love,” Lennox sings. Is that enough to save lives?
Mon Laferte, ‘Otra Noche de Llorar’
A thoroughly retro torch song — with cocktail piano, a studio orchestra and a relaxed swing beat — gets combustibly overwrought as Mon Laferte’s jealousy builds and explodes in “Otra Noche de Llorar” (“Another Night to Cry”). With her usual mastery of dynamics, Laferte starts out sweetly caressing each phrase. But that sweetness rises to a raspy near-scream before she lets her boyfriend know, “I have to hang up on you now / she’s surely by your side.” The timing of this release is odd; Laferte sings that it’s almost Christmas. But the fury of being betrayed knows no season.
The Swell Season, ‘People We Used to Be’
In a complicated conjunction of art and life, Glen Hansard — the Irish songwriter who led the Frames — and Markéta Irglová, who came to Ireland from the Czech Republic, formed the Swell Season and made an album together in 2006. They starred in the 2007 film “Once,” which was adapted into a Tony-winning Broadway musical; they dated and broke up but have continued to record and perform together. They trade verses in “People We Used to Be,” a folky ballad with swelling strings that reflects on how an artistic collaboration can survive a changing friendship. And they sing, in harmony, “I will not stand by and watch this fire / burn down everything we worked so hard to build.”
Uwade, ‘Harmattan’
A six-beat pulse carries Uwade Akhere, a songwriter from North Carolina, through doubts and anxieties in “Harmattan,” from her debut album, “Florilegium,” due in April. The harmattan is a windy, dusty dry season in West Africa; Uwade, whose family is Nigerian, asks, “Will you sway with me when my voice gives out? / When the harmattan comes round?” Around her, voices and instruments flicker in and out of the mix. Plucked guitar, a few piano notes, stately trumpet lines, sporadic drums and percussion and handclaps gradually align, propelling her toward “Laughing ’til we cry / Bathing in dust and light.”
Poppy Ackroyd and Norman Ackroyd, ‘Notes on Water’
Poppy Ackroyd composed “Notes on Water” for her father, the landscape artist Norman Ackroyd, in the months before his death in 2024. One of his final etchings, a seascape, accompanies the single release. The piece is built on repeating, consonant piano motifs, repeatedly accelerating from limpid undulations to headlong momentum and then easing back, evoking winds and tides. Ackroyd recorded two versions: one a solo meditation, the other multitracked with additional sounds — including plucked strings and percussive tapping inside and outside the piano — that add both propulsion and mystery.
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