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 theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Megan Thee Stallion featuring Beyoncé, ‘Savage Remix’[embedded content]With “Hot Girl Summer,” a catchphrase became an inspiration for a song that became an occasion for Megan Thee Stallion to rap alongside one of her idols, Nicki Minaj. The results were mixed, a too-timid color-by-numbers exercise. The remix for her track “Savage” arrives via a similar path — the chorus to “Savage,” from Megan’s recent album “Suga,” became a TikTok dance-challenge sensation, elevating the song from amusing album cut to legitimate phenomenon. That made it an ideal vehicle for a collaboration with fellow Houstonian Beyoncé, a pairing that has been a long time coming. “Savage Remix” is fantastic, far more involved and intricate than most blink-and-you’ll-miss-it collaborations. Beyoncé rises to the challenge, rapping heartily about staying silent even when mad, the kinship of curves (“If you don’t jump to put jeans on, baby, you don’t feel my pain”) and, in a flamboyant demonstration of cultural acuity, the Demon Time series of private Instagram strip clubs that’s been a quarantine-era distraction for hip-hop and sports celebrities. Proceeds from the collaboration go to Bread of Life’s coronavirus relief efforts. JON CARAMANICAHaim, ‘I Know Alone’On the songs Haim has been teasing out from its next album, now due June 26, its three sisters have been turning to less sparkly, more subdued productions than in the past, suiting the misgivings that have always been in the lyrics. “I Know Alone” portrays longtime depression and isolation — “Nights turn into days/That turn to gray” — while the instrumental intricacies turn inward, like obsessive thoughts. The video clip is a TikTok-ready sync-dance sequence, with the sisters at a social-distance separation and a recurring move that suggests scrolling through social media. JON PARELESOasis, ‘Don’t Stop’In the mid-1990s, Oasis reigned as proud inheritors of a British rock continuum from the Beatles through the Smiths and the Stone Roses. The band split up in the late 2000s over the long-running filial conflict between Noel Gallagher — the band’s songwriter — and Liam Gallagher, its lead singer. During pandemic isolation, Noel rediscovered a demo of “Don’t Stop…,” a song that was previously known to die-hard fans from a bootlegged 2005 soundcheck performance. It’s a waltz sung by Noel, backed by guitars and a tambourine, saying goodbye and urging a positive spirit: “Take a piece of life/It’s all right to hold back the night.” It’s a kindly postscript from a contentious band; who knows if it’s the final one? PARELES More

The old friend shows up every night, big and brawny as ever. He’s on a Brooklyn family’s seventh-floor balcony in Windsor Terrace, and above the Portofino Ristorante in Forest Hills, and bellowing out of a truck rolling slowly up and down the empty canyons of Manhattan’s avenues, right on time to — with the crash of a cymbal — start spreadin’ the news.It is 7 p.m., and the city is already clapping, a nightly outpouring of support for health care workers that has taken place for weeks. And many have added a soundtrack to their applause, as familiar as the skyline. It’s as brassy and over the top as ever — and yet, playing out across a cooped-up city of crowded apartments and masks and gloves, its bottomless optimism can visibly bring smiles, a short pause to The Pause.I want to be a part of it — New York, New York.“A lot of people stop doing what they’re doing and start cheering,” said George Leon, a manager at Portofino with a front-row seat to the nightly performance, when an upstairs neighbor plays it on loudspeakers from his apartment window. “It’s awesome.”A truck is driving around NYC blasting Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” to thank all the healthcare and essential workers pic.twitter.com/ML4E1BK5TV— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) April 24, 2020
With the city in the grip of the coronavirus, Frank Sinatra’s “Theme from ‘New York, New York,’” its actual name, has once again stepped up as its anthem, as it did after 9/11 and as it does after Yankee games and police promotion ceremonies. It seems to have always been with us, a staple of the voice instantly recognizable all over the world since his prime in the 1940s and 1950s; but in fact, it’s a song that’s barely reached middle age.The nightly performances are the latest stop in the unlikely journey of a song that, in more ways than one, almost didn’t get made at all.In 1977, the director Martin Scorsese was making “New York, New York,” and he needed a title track. The songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote a song and brought it to a meeting with the director and the film’s stars, Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli.“We played our songs — Scorsese and Liza liked them a lot,” Mr. Kander told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 2015. “We were just about to leave, and Bobby, over on the couch, waved his arm, and Scorsese said, ‘Excuse me just a minute,’ and he went over and talked to him. It was a very animated conversation in terms of arms, but we couldn’t hear what they were saying.”The director returned “very embarrassed” and said Mr. De Niro found the title number “lightweight” and wanted them to try again, Mr. Kander said. More