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.
Lil Wayne featuring Bono, ‘The Days’
“I ain’t gettin’ younger, but I’m gettin’ better,” Lil Wayne declares in “The Days,” a rock anthem about survival and seizing the moment: “If my days are numbered, treat every day like Day One.” None other than Bono shares the song, starting and ending it and singing about “the days that tell you what life is for,” while the production emulates U2’s grand marches. Elsewhere on his new album, “Tha Carter VI,” Lil Wayne offers his usual punchlines and free associations; here, he’s unabashedly earnest.
Water From Your Eyes, ‘Life Signs’
The Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes revels in musical jump cuts and not-quite-sequiturs. “I am coming apart / I’m becoming together, true to form,” Rachel Brown sings in “Life Signs” from an album due in August. Nate Amos’s guitars leap from wiry, hopscotching math-rock lines to brute-force distortion and back; Brown deadpans through monotone verses, but offers a wistful melody in the chorus. By the end of the song, somehow it all makes sense.
Sabrina Carpenter, ‘Manchild’
Sabrina Carpenter lightheartedly and brutally dissects what might be called a himbo in “Manchild.” In a track that starts as synth-pop and ends up as country-rock, she mock-appreciates how “your brain just ain’t there” with a guy who can’t charge a phone, much less satisfy her. “I like my men all incompetent,” she claims, barely suppressing a giggle.
Addison Rae, ‘Fame Is a Gun’
Who could be better than Addison Rae, the TikTok sensation turned pop songwriter, to sing about craving attention, achieving the “glamorous life” and dealing with all the parasocial fallout? “I live for the appeal,” she sings, adding, “It never was enough / I always wanted more.” Yet she also realizes, “I’m your dream girl, but you’re not my type.” The production cycles through its three chords with an insistent pulse that hints at the pressure to keep generating more content.
Sudan Archives, ‘Dead’
Sudan Archives — the songwriter, violinist and producer Brittney Parks — powers through an identity crisis with the shape-shifting, maximalist, ultimately unstoppable track “Dead.” She asks “Where my old self at?” and “Where my new self at?” and teases “Did you miss me?” and “Do you miss me?” In four minutes, the song morphs among quasi-orchestral string arrangements, spacey electronics and walloping dance beats, then merges them all in a triumphant closing stomp.
Ethel Cain, ‘Nettles’
The first preview of Ethel Cain’s next album, “Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You,” unfolds in a haze of memories, longing, pain and loss. It’s an eight-minute reverie that gradually turns toward country, with distant fiddle and pedal steel guitar. Cain sings about a rapturous, encompassing youthful romance that’s also suffused with anxiety; nettles sting. Even as Cain envisions their wedding, she warns, “To love me is to suffer me.”
Pulp, ‘Tina’
After decades of a solo career, Jarvis Cocker has regrouped Pulp, with members from its 2002 lineup, for its first studio album since 2001, “More.” The band resumes its familiar Britpop sound — some rock, some cabaret, some plush string-topped pop — with Cocker sounding just a little craggier in his latest batch of character studies. In “Tina,” he’s a man who extols his beloved Tina, the ideal woman he always sees in passing but has never actually met. He’s delusional, but the yearning rings true.
Kaleah Lee, ‘What Are You So Afraid Of?’
Kaleah Lee, a Canadian songwriter, faces down insecurities in a title that doubles as a chorus: “What Are You So Afraid Of?” Folky fingerpicking propels her as she urges herself to “Redirect the pattern before it’s worse / Crash through the ceiling, let every feeling do the work.” In the last minute of the song, the perspective suddenly expands; echoing voices and horns remind her that there’s a much wider world.
Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles, ‘Screaming Song’
For three decades, the guitarist Alan Sparhawk and his wife, the drummer Mimi Parker, made music together in the band Low, until her death in 2022. He turned to electronics and computer-tweaked his vocals for a 2024 solo album, “White Roses, My God.” But his new album, the plainly titled “Alan Sparhawk With Trampled by Turtles” is organic and exposed; Trampled by Turtles is a bluegrass-rooted string band that also includes a cello. Sparhawk’s mourning is not over. Although it’s a stately, folky waltz, “Screaming Song” channels endless untamed grief: “If you and I love is forever / Then I’ll probably be screaming that long,” he sings with weary gravity. A scratchy, keening fiddle sharpens his elegy.
Cynthia Erivo, ‘You First’
Tentative peace offerings swell into an indictment in “You First.” Over billowing orchestral string chords, Cynthia Erivo starts out promising to make amends — as long as her partner does so first. But the more she thinks about it, the more she realizes, “You say the right things / but when it’s time to show up you’re nowhere.” A choir underlines her growing conviction that “It’s not fair,” and at the end, chilly a cappella harmonies seal her ultimatum.
Jon Pareles has been The Times’s chief pop music critic since 1988. He studied music, played in rock, jazz and classical groups and was a college-radio disc jockey. He was previously an editor at Rolling Stone and The Village Voice.
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