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.
Chappell Roan, ‘Good Luck, Babe!’
The rising pop star Chappell Roan sends an ex-lover off with an eye roll on the wrenching “Good Luck, Babe!,” a synth-driven tune that allows the dynamic vocalist to do her best Kate Bush. The subject of the song is noncommittal and perhaps in denial of her sexuality: Roan imagines her former flame kissing “a hundred boys in bars” and eventually becoming a man’s dissatisfied wife in the aftermath of their affair. But ultimately, Roan chooses herself, singing with all her heart, “I just wanna love someone who calls me baby.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ
Prince, ‘United States of Division’
“Everybody stop fighting/everybody make love,” Prince urged in “United States of Division,” a song previously released only as a British single B-side in 2004, alongside Prince’s album “Musicology.” It’s six minutes of deep-bottomed polytonal funk — topped with synthesizer jabs and horn lines, goaded by a hard-rock guitar riff — that veers between disenchanted verses and a conditionally optimistic chorus. Prince was hoping for the best but seeing stubborn obstacles, pondering tribalism, inequality and faith all at once and wondering, “Why must I sing ‘God Bless America’ and not the rest of the world?” JON PARELES
Charli XCX, ‘B2b’
Charli XCX is a supreme hook maker: tersely melodic and vocally expressive behind neatly generalized sentiments. “B2b” isn’t business-to-business; it’s the D.J. term, back-to-back, applied to old habits. Charli XCX sings, “I don’t want to go back to, back to, back to, back to you,” and adds, “Maybe you should run right back to her.” The track is pure electro-pop, all synthesizer beats and bass lines, with voice and electronics syncopating tensely until the bridge gets strategically more revealing. “Took a long time breaking myself down/building myself up,” she sings. The machine-human interface of electro-pop can still fabricate emotions. PARELES
Young Miko, ‘Princess Peach’
Minimal production and maximum personality carry “Att.,” the full-length debut album by the fast-rising Puerto Rican songwriter Young Miko, who has lately shared tracks with Karol G, Bad Bunny and Bizarrap. Over skeletal tracks that draw on reggaeton, trap and electronic R&B, Young Miko sings and raps with calm self-satisfaction about a life filled with lust and celebrity perks. “Princess Peach” is about anticipation. Her girlfriend has been teasing her, she’s three minutes away from her apartment, and she’s bringing weed and desire. Switching between ballad and pop-trap, it brings a breezy touch to sweaty expectations. PARELES
Doja Cat featuring Teezo Touchdown, ‘Masc’
“Maybe it’s the dude in you that makes you act so vicious,” Doja Cat sings atop a sputtering, piano-driven beat on this brooding breakup song from “Scarlet 2: Claude,” the deluxe edition of her 2023 album “Scarlet.” The track is at once melancholic and playfully androgynous: A steely Doja “has to get masculine” on a cheater, while Teezo Touchdown breaks down and confesses on an emotional guest verse, “I’m not that tough, I need your love.” ZOLADZ
Khalid, ‘Please Don’t Fall in Love With Me’
Verses pour out in nervous triplets as Khalid processes seeing his ex with someone else: “The fact that I actually started to trust you/Then you broke my heart, someone bring me a tissue or maybe my notebook.” But the backdrop is plush and the chorus is even plusher, with billowing vocal harmonies and lofty reverberations. He just repeats the song title, warning off anyone he might find on the rebound. PARELES
The Black Keys, ‘On the Game’
The Black Keys deliver a convincing 1960s-style anthem — think “Hey Jude” — coupled with 21st-century cynicism in “On the Game.” The beat is a staunch march and the guitar tones and massed voices reverberate, complete with George Harrison-like slide-guitar fills. Dan Auerbach sings that “We’re all the same/The joy, the pain,” but he clearly knows that human empathy doesn’t register on algorithmic metrics. PARELES
Isobel Campbell, ‘Everything Falls Apart’
The placid tone is completely deceptive in “Everything Falls Apart” from the Scottish songwriter Isobel Campbell, who was in Belle & Sebastian before beginning her solo career. “Everything Falls Apart” meditates on one chord, with serene guitar picking and a smoothly undulating bass line. But the lyrics that Campbell sings — just above a whisper — seethe with the rage of a betrayed lover: “Quit stepping on my heart, you son of a bitch,” she coos. “I’ll make a brand new start, you son of a bitch.” PARELES
Mei Semones, ‘Tegami’
“Tegami” (“Letter”) opens the new EP, “Kabutomushi,” by the Japanese American songwriter and guitarist Mei Semones; “Hold my hand, you’re my biggest fan,” she sings almost nonchalantly, then promises, “I won’t let you down.” Although the titles of her albums and songs are in Japanese, she often sings in English; she was born in Michigan, attended Berklee College of Music and now lives in Brooklyn. “Tegami,” like her other songs, is an elegant, intricate assemblage of jumpy guitar lines, jazz chords, warped bossa nova rhythms, string orchestrations and sudden dynamic surges: a tightly curated set of influences that adds up to elegant, flexible, wily songs. PARELES
Lizzy McAlpine, ‘Drunk, Running’
On this delicately sung, sharply introspective track from Lizzy McAlpine’s third album “Older,” which is out Friday, the folk-pop artist observes a lover’s false promises before turning the focus on herself. “No one stops me, nobody takes you from my hand,” she sings, admitting her own complicity in a doomed dynamic. “Even when you break your leg, drunk, running.” ZOLADZ
Carin León and Leon Bridges, ‘It Was Always You (Siempre Fuiste Tú)’
With bilingual, manly camaraderie, two convincingly earnest singers — Leon Bridges (Georgia-born, Texas-based) and Carin León from Mexico — convince themselves that it’s not their fault things went wrong. In a lilting folk-rock bolero, with reverbed guitar picking and sly electronic interpolations, they trade verses in English and Spanish. “I finally see there was nothing wrong with me/It was always you,” they conclude in harmony, so relieved. Their subject might disagree. PARELES
James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg, ‘Death Wishes to Kill’
The guitarists James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg collaborate now and then on duet albums; “Death Wishes to Kill” is from their third one, “All Gist,” due April 12. It’s a folky, quasi-Minimalist waltz that has them sharing repeated phrases — sometimes in unison, sometimes in harmony — and eventually joined by the throaty violin lines of Wanees Zaroor, who helps them reach a nicely unresolved endpoint. PARELES
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