Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.
Lady Gaga, ‘Stupid Love’
Lady Gaga’s major label career started with simple, ultra-catchy disco pop before moving into ambitious, artier pop, then something she called “Artpop” that was anything but, then — sigh — a strained play for authenticity. Her last album, “Joanne” from 2016, was supposed to mean something “real” because it was rooted in a painful family narrative and its sound had, well, roots (read: acoustic guitars). “Joanne” was not good, but it was a bridge to something exponentially better: “Shallow” from “A Star Is Born,” an instant classic with that note that made us believe in Gaga as an entity once again. “Stupid Love,” the first single from her forthcoming sixth LP, is a total reset button, a trip all the way back to the gleeful, glitchy disco of “The Fame” almost as if “The Fame Monster,” “Born This Way,” “Artpop” and “Joanne” hadn’t happened. (The new track, however, does recall the single “Born This Way” flash fried.) That is not a bad thing: These are Gaga’s roots, and it’s thrilling to hear her return to them so zealously, digging back into the kind of dance-floor anthems that have set her — and her fans — free. CARYN GANZ
SZA and Justin Timberlake, ‘The Other Side’
Michael Jackson’s music and moves are the gift that keeps on giving to Justin Timberlake and anyone who joins him — in this case SZA, who easily dominates this insistently optimistic, if not quite lucid, bit of self-help. “You start to feel like you’re losing your shine/But the grass ain’t always greener on the other side” — uh, OK. The glossy keyboard chords, the backbeat highlighted by synthesizer slides and the layered backup voices all come out of 1980s-vintage Jackson, and haven’t lost their lift. JON PARELES
Gorillaz featuring Fatoumata Diawara, ‘Désolé’
Damon Albarn has come up with another of his morose, midtempo, insinuating minor-key rock ditties — “I’m a long way from land/I don’t know what to do,” he sings — and he tops it lavishly, with strings, piano, (perhaps synthetic) horns and a West African balafon (marimba). But the winning accessory by far is the voice of Fatoumanta Diawara, a Malian singer born in Ivory Coast. She sounds knowing, pensive, improvisational and utterly natural, rising above all the self-conscious backdrop. PARELES
100 gecs featuring Charli XCX, Rico Nasty and Kero Kero Bonito, ‘Ringtone’ (Remix)
Whether 100 gecs can sustain the glorious chaos generated by last year’s breakout album “1000 gecs” may come down to whether they can play nice with others, or whether others want to play nice with them. Though their songs are tautly structured and decidedly sweet, their cloak of mayhem can be dissuading. However this remix indicates they may have more allies than it would seem. Charli XCX brings art-pop rigidity and Kero Kero Bonito contributes a light swagger. But the breakout collaborator is Rico Nasty, who out-eccentrics the hosts with quick-tongued raps and pop-punk yelps. JON CARAMANICA
Kokoko!, ‘Zala Mayele’
The Congolese group Kokoko! mingles standard instruments with homemade ones, in mixes that can often be phantasmagoric. In “Zala Mayele,” a strutting bass line faces pushback from drums, bells and electronic handclaps; meanwhile, the lead vocal is warped by electronic quavers, there are bursts of distorted guitar and a saxophone wanders in now and then to offer melodic solace. The lyrics are about the mundane and supernatural dangers a young man faces on the streets of Kinshasa, and the video is full of blade-wielding marauders. PARELES
Pink Sweats, ‘17’
A patient, restrained ballad about timeless love from the promising young R&B singer Pink Sweats, “17” has a light doo-wop lilt and an airy timelessness in the vocals, which find novel ways to profess undying affection: “I don’t really know what’s right, but I could never call you wrong/I just want to dance with you, floating over marble floors.” CARAMANICA
Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Garden Song’
Folky guitar chords crumble into an electronic haze as Phoebe Bridgers whispers her way through verses with an elusive dream logic, touching on growing up, hopes, desire and the fragility of any given moment: “Everything’s growing in our garden,” she sings. “You don’t have to know that it’s haunted.” PARELES
RMR, ‘Rascal’
Just watch it. The terms to best capture what’s happening in this video don’t yet exist, but here are the essentials: In melody, the song is a faithful revision of “Bless the Broken Road,” a stellar and sappy 2004 ballad by Rascal Flatts. (The original is by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, but the Rascal Flatts version is the canonical one.) Slow, deliberate and lightly corny, it’s one of the foundational pop-country songs of the 2000s. RMR begins the video singing it a cappella — wearing a Saint Laurent bulletproof vest, and surrounded by men pointing guns at the camera. After that brief intro, there’s a pause, and it seems like the song might shift to something less unexpected, less juxtaposed. But then the piano drops and it’s clear he’s sticking with it. Weird Al Yankovic style, RMR remakes the lonely hearted original as an ode to scamming, drug dealing and anti-police sentiment. It is jolting, hilarious, sentimental, rousing, ingenious. Is it a comedian’s sketch? A teaser for an impending remake of “CB4”? A savvy slab of performance art? Or maybe the shtick will never break. CARAMANICA
Lianne La Havas, ‘Bittersweet’
With her first song since 2016, Lianne La Havas immerses herself in the painful persistence of a failing romance. The tempo is slow and sticky; each verse starts low and tentative — “Please stop asking do you still love me” — then rises and crests with a decision in the chorus: “I’m born again/No more hanging around!” But the negotiations still aren’t over. PARELES
Kassa Overall, ‘I Know You See Me’
Whether he’s confessing or pleading, Kassa Overall’s rapping is a focused mumble. As a drummer, he likes to drape a mellow, swerving cymbal beat over everything, letting you feel the looseness of his gesture. And his bedroom productions can sound like a body without cartilage: Synths, harp, vibraphone, piano, drums and ambiguous samples don’t stick snugly together; they orbit and coexist. That’s not to his detriment. His music invites you deeply into his restless psyche, sedate but never quieted. And his new album, “I Think I’m Good,” is his most realized exploration yet of this style, which clearly derives some of its inspiration from his work with Das Racist but boasts a blue-lit vibe of its own. On “I Know You See Me,” he reaches back into the black musical canon, with the singers Melanie Charles and J. Hoard vocalizing references to Nina Simone and black spirituals. Overall name-checks titles by Tupac and Fela Kuti, then finishes his rap with a disquieting image: “Don’t cough at the officer, they tossin’ him time/It cost him his mind.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Source: Music - nytimes.com
