Music

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 [email protected] and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Ariana Grande featuring Justin Bieber, ‘Stuck With U’[embedded content]Riskless and beautiful, the first collaboration between Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber is a fluttering prom-core ballad about the resilience of love, even when things get a little messy. Grande and Bieber are radically different singers, but they find common ground here, Bieber’s percussive patterns shimmying in and around Grande’s mountainous howls. For a moment in which every choice feels tenuous, this song exudes a slow, legible certitude. (Proceeds benefit the First Responders Children’s Foundation.) JON CARAMANICABob Dylan, ‘False Prophet’The songs Bob Dylan has been surprise-releasing every few weeks are starting to add up. He has tied “False Prophet,” the latest one, to the announcement of an album due in June: “Rough and Rowdy Ways.” As in his April 16 song, “I Contain Multitudes,” his band sets up a vamp and Dylan talk-sings his way through a proud self-assessment that mixes biblical, mystical and literary allusions with bits of rock ’n’ roll lore. He rasps, “I ain’t no false prophet, I just know what I know/I go where only the lonely can go.” This time, the vamp is a slouchy blues shuffle and the lyrics are pointed. Dylan is a longtime expert in toggling between the apocalyptic and the individual: “I searched the world over for the Holy Grail/I sing songs of love, I sing songs of betrayal.” What’s startling is that after decades of shrugging off that specific role, he’s willing to play the prophet. JON PARELESIan Isiah, ‘N.U.T.S’The self-love strut “N.U.T.S” is a pitch-perfect revisiting of the issues-soul of the 1970s. Isiah has a lithe, poignant, carefully sweet voice, and he sings about how important it is to allow others to see the real you over a Chromeo production full of prideful strings, weepy sax and warm-bath keys. CARAMANICAPeter Manos, ‘Tennessee’Peter Manos is from Texas, but “Tennessee” is no country song. It’s an electronic lament, Auto-Tuned and steeped in James Blake and Frank Ocean; it also hints at the Beatles’ chromatic chord progressions. The singer is bereft that “You don’t answer my calls,” and even as programmed arpeggios swell to support him, he’s left uncomprehending and alone, pure male angst: “How could I understand?” he wonders. PARELESKeith Jarrett, ‘Answer Me’Don’t expect a livestream concert from Keith Jarrett any time soon. If this pre-eminent pianist were of that mind, he’d probably have done one long ago. As Nate Chinen wrote in 2013, “It’s hard to think of a major jazz figure who has been as cloistered as Mr. Jarrett, while remaining a vital force.” He hardly gives interviews and lives on a sprawling property in northwest New Jersey, touring only occasionally. His albums in recent years have consisted of archival recordings from years-old concerts. On the occasion of Jarrett’s 75th birthday on Friday, ECM Records has released a single track from a 2016 performance in Budapest. “Answer Me” originated as a midcentury German pop song before becoming a hit for Nat King Cole. Unlike the version from last year’s live full-length, “Munich 2016,” Jarrett starts this performance with the bridge, a dolorous minor passage that in his hands sounds like lieder; before long he’s fallen into the gentle, ribboning symmetry of the main melody, from which he hardly strays. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBlake Mills, ‘Summer All Over’Blake Mills has been a guitarist and producer for musicians as diverse as John Legend, Fiona Apple and Alabama Shakes. His new album, “Mutable Set,” is deliberately and startlingly restrained, though far from simple. “Summer All Over” has a waltzing pulse and a vocal just above a whisper; most of its backup is chords played on a creaky piano, but they are quietly bolstered by orchestral instruments. He’s sings about global warming with cleareyed, pragmatic details: “Looking for water, looking for shade/And there’s only sunblock and beer.” PARELESRhiannon Giddens featuring Sxip Shirey, ‘Just the Two of Us’Rhiannon Giddens commemorates Bill Withers, who died in April, with a fondly idiosyncratic version of “Just the Two of Us,” backed by the unlikely combination of harmonica, drums and the hoot of low brass (sousaphone and trombone). She hints at New Orleans, reggae and jazzy scat-singing as she proclaims one-on-one affection. PARELESThe Weeknd, ‘I’m a Virgin’The Weeknd co-wrote the most recent episode of “American Dad,” and there’s a plotline that involves him confessing a dark secret to a fan trying to seduce him. He does so in song: “I’m a Virgin” functions well as both songcraft and self-parody. His voice is that familiar shrill exhale, and it’s chilling to hear it applied to such unlikely confessions: “Underneath the lies and the big talk, I’ve been waiting for a wife/Never watched porn, never did drugs, ’cause I’m terrified.” CARAMANICAJamie xx, ‘I Don’t Know’The producer Jamie xx whips up phantom drumlines, laced with sirens and warped vocals, working through beats that shift and accelerate but still haven’t peak before the track plays out. PARELESFolie, ‘Cortisol’Nerves not jangled enough lately? Try Folie, which shares the razor-wired bubble gum aesthetic of last year’s blitz-pop sensation, 100 gecs. “Cortisol” is full of concise, catchy little pop devices, from its bits of singsong melody to the thumping beat that arrives about midway through. But every one of those devices is tweaked to maximize irritation: pitched up, distorted, perforated with silences or followed by chemtrails of dissonance. And every so often the whole thing comes unsprung, only to regroup and leap ahead again. It’s not aggressive; it’s just having noisy fun. PARELESAaron Parks, ‘Solace’What Aaron Parks has in common with Keith Jarrett — in addition to onetime status as a child prodigy, and a clarion touch at the piano — is his sometimes-dangerous belief in the primacy of precision. “Solace” starts with 70 seconds of quizzical, disarming solo piano, the occasional discolored harmony catching your ear. Then the members of his band Little Big arrive, and the music fastens down tightly around the shared melody. The querying feeling is basically gone: In its stead is a polished cohesion, the reassurance of something executed crisply and masterfully, almost without encumbrance. RUSSONELLO More

“Second chances, they don’t ever matter, people never change,” Hayley Williams sang, decisively, at the wizened age of 18. Since “Misery Business” propelled her power-emo band Paramore to stardom, the ever-evolving singer and songwriter has proved that maxim wrong over and over again. Case in point: Though it remains a much-requested fan favorite, the band no longer performs the song live. As Williams wrote on her Tumblr five years ago, “I haven’t related to it in a very long time.”The decision by Williams, now 31, to release the searing, knotty “Petals for Armor” — her first album under her own name — also represents a change, a kind of long-deferred second chance. When she was a teen vocal powerhouse and major labels wanted to mold her into the next Avril Lavigne, Williams insisted that she and her band were a package deal. After her parents divorced, she’d longed to be a part of something; her band was more than a collection of musicians.But “Cinnamon,” a skittering single off “Petals for Armor,” is an attempt to make peace — and maybe even have some fun — with Williams’s recurring fears of isolation and loneliness. She has called the song an ode to her current home, the first she’s ever lived in alone. (Between “Cinnamon” and Fiona Apple’s “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” female artists making challenging but therapeutic music that reimagines domestic space as a place of creative experimentation are certainly having a moment!) The song’s chorus is a wordless primal yowl, the kind of noise you’d make only when home alone. As she sings with a convincing bravura, “I’m not lonely, baby — I am free.”[embedded content]“Petals for Armor” comes from a period of intense questioning, when Williams’s short marriage to her longtime partner Chad Gilbert was ending, and she found herself wondering if her solo itch would jeopardize the future of Paramore. (“I came close to stifling my creative process because I didn’t want to live up to those expectations of what it looks like when a female leaves a band and makes a project on her own,” Williams — a descendant of ’90s alt-rock who’s certainly seen No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” video — said recently.)In therapy and bouts of free-writing, Williams dug deep and unearthed demons. And so, like the striking music videos accompanying the record, “Petals for Armor” conjures the atmosphere of a psychological horror movie in which the call is coming from inside the house. In the video for “Simmer,” Williams sprints through a sunless forest; the monster pursuing her is an amorphous red light that the song suggests is her long-repressed “rage.”“Simmer” is the operative word here. Though Paramore’s most beloved songs feature firework choruses that showcase the pyrotechnic heights of Williams’s voice, many of the songs on “Petals for Armor” snake instead, like a long, slow-burning fuse. Some of them eventually provide the relief of catharsis — as in the Björk-like cries that enliven “Sudden Desire” — while others, among them “Leave It Alone” and “My Friend,” get stuck in droning, monochrome loops that evoke late-period Radiohead.Williams divided the 15-song “Petals for Armor” into three EPs that she has released in installments. Each has its own mood and thematic focus: The brooding, hypnotic Part I is focused on past trauma; the slightly more propulsive Part II confronts the work of self-care and rebuilding (she released a playful “workout video” set to the buoyant “Over Yet”); and the sultry, R&B-tinged Part III embraces the promise of a new, healthier romantic relationship.The lyrics are often vivid and sometimes startlingly candid: “I got what I deserved,” she sings on the bouncy “Dead Horse,” “I was the other woman first.” Elsewhere, on the mournful “Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris,” which features backing vocals from the indie all-stars boygenius, Williams conjures poignant imagery:Think of all the wilted womenWho crane their necks to reach a windowRipping all their petals off just ’cause“He loves me now, he loves me not.”As a solo artist, Williams is emboldened to both embrace and interrogate femininity as never before, and to admit to herself that, even if the male-dominated punk scene caused her to internalize some sexism and write some sanctimonious lyrics in the past, it’s not too late to forgive herself, or to change.“Dead Horse” begins with a caveat, presumably for the “Petals” producer and Paramore member Taylor York: “It took me three days to send you this, but uh, sorry, I was in a depression, but I’m trying to come out of it now.” On one hand this is an admirable peek into the ways mental health can affect the creative process. But tacked onto the beginning of one of her album’s most accessible songs, it feels like a sign of ambivalence toward, even a retreat from, the record’s most straightforwardly poppy moments. Many of these songs sparkle with insight and the daring of a shape-shifting vocalist, but a handful assume too readily that maturity and seriousness are only achieved through dour restraint.Still, as she and her band proved on Paramore’s excellent 2017 record “After Laughter,” Williams was already a pro at packing complex emotions and perceptive wisdom into bright, technicolor pop-rock songs. Tracks like “Hard Times” and “Forgiveness” were no less sophisticated for inviting full-throated singalongs.By the end of “Petals for Armor,” she seems to have arrived at a similar conclusion. “Sugar on the Rim” expands the record’s palette with a fun, new-wave sheen and a hint of a churning techno beat. Even better is the crystalline groove of “Pure Love,” which ties its succinct self-knowledge to an absolute rocket-ship of a chorus: “If I want your love, got to open up.” Sounds like she’s giving herself a second chance.Hayley Williams“Petals for Armor”(Atlantic) More

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Aside from sharing the behind-the-scenes story, the ‘Leave (Get Out)’ singer promotes her new song featuring Tory Lanez and 30 Roc as one that oozes the ‘sexy time playlist’ vibe.
May 8, 2020
AceShowbiz – JoJo has apparently made the filming of her music video for “Comeback” a family affair. On Thursday, May 7, the “Too Little Too Late” hitmaker released the “very sexy” visual for the latest single off her “Good to Know” album, and revealed in an interview that her mother did lend a hand during its production.
Speaking about the sensual music video, the 29-year-old singer told E!’s Scott Tweedie for HappE! Hour that it was shot at her home in Los Angeles. “This table that I’m talking to you on, we turned it into a surface for me to kind of crawl on and dance on and do all these things,” she dished. “And my mom was, like, helping hold up the lighting and stuff.”
Though admitting that having her mother around during the sensual shoot “was weird,” the “Leave (Get Out)” singer still found the process “fun.” On the reason why, she explained, “My mom, she’s no prude. So it’s not like she was like ‘oh my!’ clutching pearls or anything.” She additionally noted that a friend, “who’s a director, come through – wearing a mask and everything” to do the shoot.
When discussing the single featuring Tory Lanez and 30 Roc, JoJo acknowledged its steamy elements. “I guess some people are surprised to hear me talkin’ that way,” she weighed in before pointing out, “But yeah, it’s a fun song. You definitely need to add it to your sexy time playlist type of vibe.”
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Upon releasing the promo video, JoJo announced in an Instagram post, “this is dedicated to everyone who’s looking forward to that post-quarantine comeback with bae.” She continued spilling, “made this video IN MY CRIB !!! #quarantinestyle @torylanez and I shot our parts in separate states (f*kin ‘rona…) but AYE. we made it WERK. Ps- we accept no liability for any babies made as a result of your post covid comeback sex.”

“Comeback” comes from JoJo’s fourth studio album “Good to Know”, which was released on May 1. She explained that she was abstaining from sex in her process of making the record. “The album just finds me processing and getting to a place of realising I’ve never been alone my whole adult life,” she told PEOPLE. “I’ve always been in a relationship with somebody, and I was delaying a really important part of becoming an adult, which is being independent.”

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Focusing on the social distancing practice amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the visual features many famous friends, including Kendall and Kylie Jenner, and a special cameo from Dalton Gomez.
May 8, 2020
AceShowbiz – Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande are offering a glimpse of their life in quarantine in a brand new music video for “Stuck With U”. On Thursday, May 7, the “Yummy” singer and the “7 Rings” hitmaker debuted their COVID-19 charity song, and treated fans to a promo that saw how they spent their time during the lockdown.
Over 4-minute long, the visual is kicked off with clips of fans and famous friends dancing with those they shared quarantine with. Grande then takes over singing before more clips of fans are shown including one that captures her collaborator Bieber being hugged by wife Hailey Baldwin as they lay around on bed.
Sisters Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner, married couple Ayesha and Stephen Curry as well as Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis make brief appearances in the video which also features the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Chance the Rapper, Michael Buble and Jaden Smith. Its highlight, however, comes near the end when Grande’s new boyfriend Dalton Gomez makes a special cameo.
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Hours before the music video was released, Grande expressed her shock over Bieber’s teaser that featured “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” star Carole Baskin dancing with husband Howard. “i am very glad someone is laughing [loudly crying face emoji] the f**king heart attacks i had over this,” she tweeted at the time.
“Stuck With U” is a single Bieber and Grande worked on in support of the First Responders Children’s Foundation and SB Projects, an organization founded by their manager Scooter Braun. All the proceeds made from the song will help fund grants and scholarships for children of the first responders who have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Upon its release, Bieber took to his Instagram account to announce, “#StuckwithU song and video out now with my amazing friend @arianagrande. proceeds to support @1strcf. Thank you to the @sb_projects fam for this one. Proud of this song and this cause. Hope you all like it.” He added a special note for his collaborator, “Ariana you are amazing. Happy this finally happened.”

Grande herself has earlier shared her excitement over the charity duet. “i can’t fully articulate ……… howwwww happy i am that we waited this long to do this (the duet thing). this moment really means so much more than it ever could have if it had happened any other way or if it had been any other song,” she wrote in an Instagram post.

“being able to lend our voices to this project and collaborating on this has been so fulfilling and i really just love this song so much,” she continued. “grateful to be doing this with my friend and also just wanted to express an enormous thank u to all of the brilliant creatives who worked on this song.” She added, “my heart is seriously so full. we’re so close and i cant wait for u all to hear #stuckwithu in a few hours !”

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Counting down to the release of ‘Stuck With U’ music video, the ‘Yummy’ hitmaker puts out on social media a clip of the ‘Tiger King’ star slow-dancing with her husband Howard.
May 8, 2020
AceShowbiz – Ariana Grande has been left shocked by Justin Bieber’s teaser for an upcoming music video of “Stuck With U”. On Thursday, May 7, the “Yummy” hitmaker offered a sneak peek at a surprise cameo by “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” star Carole Baskin and her husband Howard, prompting his duet collaborator to quickly set the record straight.
Denying to have any part to do with the 13-second clip, Grande responded to Bieber’s post by stressing in a Twitter post, “for the record, i did not allow or approve this clip to be in the actual video.” She, nevertheless, admitted, “but. nonetheless. it exists and that’s ….. unique,” before hyping up the music video release, “anyway, 7.5 hours !”
When a fan responded to her clarification with laughter, the 26-year-old songstress could not help being sarcastic. “i am very glad someone is laughing [loudly crying face emoji] the f**king heart attacks i had over this,” she replied.

Ariana Grande Responded to Carole Baskin Cameo Teaser
The clip at issue saw Baskin slow-dancing with her husband and their cat, Pearlie, to the instrumental of Grande and Bieber’s charity single. The couple donned matching animal-print onesies and lion hats for the clip, which TMZ claimed won’t be included in the final cut.

About her submitted clip, Carole explained to the outlet that Bieber’s friends reached out to her and asked her to do one. The big cat-rights activist went on to express her hopes that “it doesn’t attract too many of the haters who have been bashing us since being misled by ‘Tiger King’.”
Grande and Bieber have joined forces to record “Stuck With U” in an effort to provide support fort the children of first responders, who have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The money they raised from the song will benefit the First Responders Children’s Foundation and SB Projects, an organization founded by their manager Scooter Braun.
Hours before she responded to Carole clip, Grande had taken to Instagram to share her excitement over her duet with Bieber. “i can’t fully articulate ……… howwwww happy i am that we waited this long to do this (the duet thing). this moment really means so much more than it ever could have if it had happened any other way or if it had been any other song,” she wrote.

“being able to lend our voices to this project and collaborating on this has been so fulfilling and i really just love this song so much,” she continued. “grateful to be doing this with my friend and also just wanted to express an enormous thank u to all of the brilliant creatives who worked on this song.” She added, “my heart is seriously so full. we’re so close and i cant wait for u all to hear #stuckwithu in a few hours !”

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The book inspired by the daughter and niece of the band’s manager and authored by James Patterson is expected to use lyrics of the rock group’s classic single.
May 8, 2020
AceShowbiz – Prolific U.S. author James Patterson has written a new children’s book based on Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” hit.
The picture book, which spins a story for youngsters using the lyrics of the track, will be available in September 2020.
“As a longtime fan of Guns N’ Roses, I’m thrilled to partner with the band in bringing their famed hit song to life on the page,” Patterson said in a statement. “Sweet Child O’Mine is a story that I know kids will love reading and that parents will love singing along to.”
Illustrated by Jennifer Zivion, the book was inspired by the daughter and niece of Guns N’ Roses manager Fernando Lebeis, who adds, “My sister and I have been lucky to be able to watch our daughters – Maya and Natalia Rose – grow up while touring with the guys. We ourselves have been part of the ‘GUNS family’ for over 30 years… Being able to bring this into a children’s print book is truly special and a fun milestone in our lives.”

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In a new interview, the ‘Lockjaw’ hitmaker also calls out the Rae Sremmurd member for putting out the sequel of his hit record ‘Unforgettable’ without including him.
May 8, 2020
AceShowbiz – French Montana once again made a wild statement during an interview. After making headlines for his remarks about outshining Kendrick Lamar, French appeared to throw major shade at Swae Lee.
Speaking with Billboard, the “That’s a Fact” rapper alluded that he produced the Rae Sremmurd artist’s song “Powerglide” but never got credited for it. Additionally, he called out Swae for putting out the sequel of his hit record “Unforgettable” without including him.
“If I didn’t structure the song, what happened when they put out ‘Unforgettable’ part 2, ‘Guatemala’? How come that didn’t sell nine million?” asked French. “That’s how they try and do me. I do ‘Unforgettable’, they take me out and he replaces me with somebody else to come out with a part 2. I never took it no way.”

Just recently, French revealed in a phone call interview with Big Boy TV that he used to have an awkward moment when he and Kodak Black filmed music video for his hit “Lockjaw”. “Me and him didn’t have one conversation when we shot the video,” French explained. “I just looked at him and he growled at me,” he went on saying while laughing.
That is not the only wild remark that French made during recent interview. He previously sparked controversy after he said that he would outshine Kendrick Lamar. “I could go against anybody. You could put somebody like Kendrick Lamar next to me on the same stage at a festival, I might outshine him. Not because I’m a better rapper, or whatever it is. It’s just that I got more hits,” he told Complex in an interview earlier this month.
He went on explaining, “Kendrick Lamar got albums. He got masterpieces. But if you want to put us on the festival stage, I would outshine him because I have more hits than Kendrick Lamar.”
The Bronx rapper received backlash from Kendrick fans, prompting the “Welcome to the Party” spitter to clarify on his Twitter account. “IF WE JUST TALKING ABOUT ANTHEMS, !! ME VS KENDRICK HIT FOR HIT ! I BELIEVE I CAN GO NECK TO NECK !!” French insisted. “I BEEN MAKING HITS FOR A LONG TIME ! IT AINT MY FAULT I BELIEVE IN MYSELF. HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION ? HOW MANY TIMES I GOTTA PROVE MYSELF BEFORE I GET MINE.”
Assuring that there’s no bad blood between him and Kendrick, French added, “I love kendrick! that’s not just for kendrick that’s to anybody they put in front of me, and ask me that same question that u want me to say lol ? It should be your attitude too. If u think any less of yourself don’t blame it on the next person who don’t ! set it up.”

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Machines making music. Repetitive, metronomic, locked-in beats. Voices processed to sound as inexpressive as robots. A warning, and an embrace, of technology as both the shaper and subject of songs, of the ever-growing human codependence with the inhuman. In 21st-century art, especially music, these ideas and sounds are inescapable.Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, the German musicians at the core of Kraftwerk, were already committed to those concepts way back in the analog 1970s, when synthesizers were primitive and the idea of a pop group as a “man-machine” was revolutionary. (The original German, “Die Mensch-Maschine,” isn’t gendered; it means “Human-Machine.”) In an era of plush FM-radio pop, disco sensuality and punk rawness, Kraftwerk’s music was mechanical and coolly austere instead. Meanwhile, their songs sensed the coming digital era: impassive and heartless, but also seductive in its precision and possibility.Indirectly and directly, Kraftwerk’s music would quickly provide templates for popular music to come. Its songs showed the way toward synth-pop, electropop, techno and countless varieties of electronic dance music. And Kraftwerk’s crisp, flat electronic drum sounds and the synthesizer line of “Trans-Europe Express” were picked up by Afrika Bambaataa for his 1982 “Planet Rock,” a cornerstone single in hip-hop’s discography.Hütter, Kraftwerk’s machine-tuned vocalist and main lyricist, credited Schneider, who died last month, as the group’s “sound fetishist.” While Hütter and other band members wrote some of Kraftwerk’s poppiest songs, Schneider was the one who coaxed the sound of Kraftwerk out of clunky 1970s technology and, through the years, deployed an ever-updated array of hardware and software. Schneider honed and then expanded Kraftwerk’s synthetic vocabulary of non-naturalistic blips, clicks and buzzes, Vocoder harmonies and tones sustained beyond human breath, echoes and reverberations that did not come out of physical spaces.Schneider left Kraftwerk in 2008. More recently, Hütter’s Kraftwerk has been performing (and sonically tweaking) its catalog from the 1970s through the early 2000s, reaping well-deserved recognition for the ways Kraftwerk transformed popular music.Here are 10 essential songs that Schneider co-wrote and co-produced.Kraftwerk, ‘Ruckzuck’ (1970)Before Kraftwerk tightened its songs into terse pop structures, its music grew out of the hypnotic late-1960s German rock movement known as kosmische. The current Kraftwerk has renounced its early albums, but “Ruckzuck” (which means “in a flash”), from its self-titled 1970 album, now seems to bridge early and latter-day Kraftwerk. It begins with Schneider playing the flute, the instrument he soon gave up for synthesizers, as a rhythm instrument, syncopating one note over a drone. The beat, though played on a physical drum kit, feels like one of later Kraftwerk’s methodical midtempo pulses — until things go psychedelically haywire.Kraftwerk, ‘Autobahn’ (1974)A car door slams, an engine revs up, a horn honks. Then a road trip becomes a hermetic 22-minute journey — it feels like the car windows never open — through changing territory. With sustained chords swooping above an octave-hopping bass line, “Autobahn” is as smooth as a half-remembered Beach Boys song in the early section that was excerpted to become a pop single. Then there are other vehicles swooping by, a droning straightaway, some fiddling with the car radio and some blissful cruising on motifs that were slipped into the song early on.Kraftwerk, ‘Radioactivity’ (1975)Kraftwerk’s first version of “Radioactivity,” before it retrofitted lyrics about events like Chernobyl, was cagey about whether it was a dirge for a nuclear accident, or a celebration of how pop radio can spread a song: “Tune into the melody/Radioactivity, is in the air for you and me.” But a sense of alarm was always there in its Morse-code blips, its insistent repeated bass notes and its minor-key synthesizer line, punctuated by whooshes like steam escaping a safety valve.Kraftwerk, ‘The Robots’ (1978)“The Robots” starts like gadgets warming up, then gets a rhythm track so slyly propulsive that it has been sampled dozens of times, full of question-and-answer phrases: a bass line that hops between high and low, a synthesizer hook behind the deadpan “We are the robots” that immediately gets a four-note reply. Every so often, there’s an interlude where the robots might be singing (in Russian) to themselves.Kraftwerk, ‘Neon Lights’ (1978)Shimmering repeat-echoes surround many of the keyboard tones in “Neon Lights,” an unabashed ballad that is one of Kraftwerk’s most angst-free songs. Over major chords, its handful of lyrics celebrate how “At the fall of night, this city’s made of light.” Its urban soundscape is uncluttered and unhurried, floating in the midrange over a simple beat, and its long wordless coda launches an extended synthesizer line to soar overhead.Kraftwerk, ‘Home Computer’ (1981)Skeletal but decidedly funky, “Home Computer” features some trademark early Kraftwerk sounds, contrasting crispness and haze: a bass line with a hint of being plucked, a muffled four-on-the-floor thump, bits of hiss turned into simulated cymbal accents, some keyboard hooks that waft in with no clear attack and others that ping sharply. Between its chanted verses, “Home Computer” goes abstract; with a beat, tinkly sounds and cheerfully dissonant arpeggios, who needs a chorus?Kraftwerk, ‘Boing Boom Tschak’ (1986)While hip-hop was listening to Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk had clearly been listening to hip-hop. This track is brash and mid-1980s boombox-ready, built on onomatopoetic, pitch-shifted vocal syllables that double as percussion and drums that sound like exploding balloons — well aware of how brittle every sound can be.Kraftwerk, ‘Techno Pop’ (1986)“Techno Pop” segues out of “Boing Boom Tschak” and immediately widens its palette: with unpitched thuds and clanks, with percussion suggesting xylophones alongside pots and pans, with electronics that can buzz or beep and with a hook that travels from simulated viola and string section to quasi-organ to bell tones. The constantly mutating track delivers what the lyrics promise: “synthetic electronic sounds/industrial rhythms all around.”Kraftwerk, ‘Chrono’ (2003)Bouncy with a nervous undercurrent, “Chrono,” from the “Tour de France” album, puts organ-like tones through all kinds of meltdowns: pitches warping, patterns unraveling, notes reversing. One of the album’s recurring tunes and some French spoken words appear near the end, but they’ve been thoroughly undermined.Florian Schneider, ‘Stop Plastic Pollution’ (2015)The sight of village fishermen in Ghana hauling in plastic garbage prompted Schneider to release “Stop Plastic Pollution,” with lyrics as blunt as its title. The music is denser and more nuanced: burbles and drips and whooshing wave sounds, but also a viscous, submerged funk vamp that sounds like it’s being detected on sonar. More