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.
Japanese Breakfast, ‘Here Is Someone’
Plucked string tones from all directions create a magical, shimmering cascade around Michelle Zauner’s voice in “Here Is Someone” from the new album by Japanese Breakfast, “For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women).” The lyrics hint at tensions and anxieties, but the track radiates anticipation: “Life is sad, but here is someone,” Zauner concludes.
Jon Pareles
Marianne Faithfull, ‘Burning Moonlight’
Marianne Faithfull, who died in January at 78, kept recording almost to the end. She brought every bit of her scratchy, ravaged, tenacious voice to “Burning Moonlight,” a song she co-wrote that holds one of her last manifestoes: “Burning moonlight to survive / Walking in fire is my life.” Acoustic guitars and tambourine connect the music to the 1960s, when she got her start; her singing holds all the decades of experience that followed.
Jon Pareles
The Waterboys featuring Fiona Apple, ‘Letter From an Unknown Girlfriend’
“Letter From an Unknown Girlfriend” is from the Waterboys album due April 4, “Life, Death and Dennis Hopper,” and was written by Mike Scott. But it is sung and played by Fiona Apple, alone at the piano, delivering a remembrance of an abusive boyfriend: “I used to say no man would ever strike me,” it begins, “And no man ever did ’til I met you.” She admits to the charm of the “satyr running wild in you,” but her voice rises to a bitter, primal rasp as she recalls the worst. It’s a stark, harrowing performance.
Jon Pareles
Tamino featuring Mitski, ‘Sanctuary’
Diffidence turns into resolve in the course of “Sanctuary,” a waltzing duet from “Every Dawn’s a Mountain,” the new album by the Belgian songwriter Tamino-Amir Moharam Fouad. In separate verses, Tamino and Mitski sound fragile, contemplating uncertainty and loss; “I reside in the ruins of the sanctuary,” Mitski sings. But when they connect — asking “Is it late where you are?” — and harmonize, an orchestra rises behind them to offer hope.
Jon Pareles
Morgan Wallen, ‘I’m a Little Crazy’
“I’m a little crazy, but the world’s insane,” the disturbed narrator of Morgan Wallen’s new single contends. His character is a drug dealer who keeps a loaded gun nearby. He’s sustaining himself “on antidepressants and lukewarm beers” and yelling at his TV, “but the news don’t change.” Over steadfast acoustic guitar picking and lightly brushed drums, Wallen sings with chilling, sociopathic calm.
Jon Pareles
Takaat, ‘Amidinin’
The rhythm section from the African rock band Mdou Moctar — Ahmoudou Madassane, Mikey Coltun and Souleymane Ibrahim — has been recording on its own as Takaat, which means “noise” in Tuareg; an EP is due in April. Takaat’s first single, “Amidinin” (“Friend”), keeps the modal riffing and six-beat propulsion of Mdou Moctar, but cranks up the guitar distortion, slathers on echo and unleashes the drums to sound even more ferocious.
Jon Pareles
Debby Friday, ‘1/17’
The Toronto-based vocalist and producer Debby Friday won the Polaris Music Prize for her sharp 2023 debut album, “Good Luck.” She returns with the euphoric electro-pop single “1/17,” a dance-floor confessional that shows off yet another side of her multifaceted talent. “I swear you’re a sign,” Friday sings in an airy atmosphere punctured by percolating synths. The track builds layer atop gauzy layer until it explodes in a burst of club-ready catharsis.
Lindsay Zoladz
No I.D. and Saba featuring Raphael Saadiq and Kelly Rowland, ‘Crash’
The legacy of 1970s Stevie Wonder suffuses “Crash,” with cushy chromatic chord changes and a loping synthesizer bass line supplied by the keyboard master (and co-producer) Greg Phillinganes. Saba raps a no-pressure come-on: “Together we can make time go fast / And if it’s late, I hope you might just crash.” And Kelly Rowland, joining in on choruses, sounds perfectly amenable.
Jon Pareles
Jack Harlow featuring Doja Cat, ‘Just Us’
Jack Harlow and Doja Cat exchange flirty verses on “Just Us,” a fast-paced track that forgoes catchy pop choruses and focuses instead on dexterous flows and winking wordplay. “I know it sounds like Zack and Cody, this life’s sweet,” Harlow raps, showing his age with a reference to a mid-2000s Disney Channel show. Corny? Maybe, but Doja’s into it: “You a softy, marshmallows and black coffee,” she counters affectionately. The video is full of celebrity cameos that prove how many people will pick up the phone when Harlow calls: Matt Damon, PinkPantheress, John Mayer and Nicholas Braun. Zack and Cody, alas, are nowhere to be found.
Lindsay Zoladz
Deerhoof, ‘Immigrant Songs’
The long-running indie-rock band Deerhoof can be coy or oblique, but it’s neither in “Immigrant Songs,” a response to America’s sudden, brutal xenophobia. Satomi Matsuzaki gives voice to unrecognized immigrant labor — drivers, cooks, entertainers — over guitars and drums that lilt and intertwine behind her. But for the second half of this seven-minute track, the instruments just scream. There’s no more arguing or persuasion left.
Jon Pareles
