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.Lady Gaga, ‘Stupid Love’[embedded content]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 GANZSZA 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 PARELESGorillaz 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. PARELES100 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 CARAMANICAKokoko!, ‘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. PARELESPink 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.” CARAMANICAPhoebe 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.” PARELESRMR, ‘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. CARAMANICALianne 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. PARELESKassa 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 More

Lynn Evans Mand, who was plucked from obscurity to become the lead singer of the Chordettes, performing with them during the height of their fame in the 1950s and ’60s on songs like the instantly recognizable hits “Mr. Sandman” and “Lollipop,” died on Feb. 6 at a care facility in Elyria, Ohio. She was 95.Her grandson Robert Evans II said the cause was a stroke.The Chordettes began in the 1940s in Sheboygan, Wis., as an all-woman barbershop quartet. They appeared regularly on Arthur Godfrey’s popular radio and television shows.In 1953 Ms. Evans, as she was known at the time, was a case worker for the Red Cross and sang with an amateur barbershop quartet in Youngstown, Ohio. One day the Chordettes came through town for a performance, and Ms. Evans had a chance to sit in.The members of the group were so impressed with her voice that when the time came to replace one of the original Chordettes, Dorothy Schwartz, who was leaving to have a child, Ms. Evans was asked to audition for the spot. She won it.“She sang so beautifully and expressively, very clear,” Marjorie Needham Latzko, another Chordette and a close friend of Ms. Evans’s, said in a phone interview. “You could understand every word.”A year after Ms. Evans joined, the Chordettes had the first of several hits on Cadence Records, a label formed by Archie Bleyer, Mr. Godfrey’s former bandleader, after he and the host parted ways. (Mr. Bleyer later married one of the Chordettes, Janet Ertel.)That song was “Mr. Sandman,” a frothy pop tune written by Pat Ballard featuring rhythmic nonsense syllables (“bum-bum-bum-ba-bum…”) and the memorable line “Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream.”“Mr. Sandman” reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart in 1954 and sold more than a million records, and the Chordettes became stars. They had more hits, like “Born to Be With You” (1956) and “Just Between You and Me” (1957), before almost reaching the top again — they made it as far as No. 2 — with “Lollipop” in 1958.Written by Julius Dixon and Beverly Ross, “Lollipop” was first recorded by Ronald & Ruby, an interracial vocal duo (Ms. Ross was Ruby), shortly before the Chordettes released their version, which retained the song’s catchy refrain (“Lollipop, lollipop, oh lolly, lolly, lolly — lollipop”) and added a loud popping sound.The Chordettes remained in high demand throughout the 1950s and early ’60s, appearing on “American Bandstand” and “The Ed Sullivan Show” and performing for President Dwight D. Eisenhower.“George Burns, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Lucille Ball — we knew them all,” Ms. Evans told the Long Island newspaper Newsday in 1990. “It was wonderful, but it didn’t seem that big a deal at the time. It sort of went with the territory.”The Chordettes’ popularity waned as rock ’n’ roll’s grew. They had a few more hits, including a version of the theme from the television show “Zorro” and a vocal version of the title tune from the hit 1960 movie “Never on Sunday,” before the group split up in 1964.“It was a very tough and traumatic adjustment,” Ms. Evans said. “I had led a rather unreal existence, and now I was faced with things I had never really done — like shopping, cooking and housecleaning.”The Chordettes may not have survived the British invasion, but their two biggest hits lingered in popular culture. Their version of “Mr. Sandman” has appeared in films from “Uncle Buck” to “Deadpool”; it was heard in a Kia commercial during Super Bowl XLVI in 2012; and the trio of Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt covered it. “Lollipop” has appeared in films like Rob Reiner’s “Stand by Me” and John Waters’s “Mondo Trasho.”The Chordettes were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2001.Carolyn Marie Hartgate was born in Youngstown, Ohio, on May 2, 1924, to George and Caroline (Williams) Hartgate. Her father was a steel mill supervisor, her mother a homemaker. She used the first name Lynn with the Chordettes because one of other singers in the group went by Carol.She studied piano as a girl, graduated from high school in Youngstown in 1942 and earned a bachelor’s degree in education in 1946 from Ohio Wesleyan University, where she took voice lessons.She married Robert B. Evans that year. They divorced in 1964, after the Chordettes broke up. Her grandson said her fame and success had strained their relationship.A second marriage, to Charlie Fell, ended with his death. In 1997 she married Jack Mand. He died two years later.In addition to her grandson, she is survived by a son, Robert H. Evans; a daughter, Carolyn Evans; three other grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.After the Chordettes broke up, Ms. Evans went back to school, earning a master’s degree in special education from Hofstra University on Long Island in 1969. She was a special-education teacher in Brentwood, also on Long Island, until retiring in 1989.Even as a teacher, she kept on singing. She recalled reaching her students by creating songs out of words as she pointed to them on a chart. More