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    New Songs From Pulp, Bon Iver, Rauw Alejandro and More

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    Listen to tracks by Bon Iver, Valerie June, Rauw Alejandro and others.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.Pulp, ‘Spike Island’“This time I’ll get it right,” Jarvis Cocker vows on “Spike Island” from “More,” the first album since 2001 by Pulp, the 1990s Britpop standard bearers. Due in June, the new album grew out of songwriting spurred by a Pulp reunion tour that started in 2023. The band has reclaimed its old glam-rock swagger, backed by strings, and Cocker is just self-conscious enough: “I exist to do this — shouting and pointing,” he sings. True to Britpop, the song’s chorus (“Spike Island come alive”) is a British rock self-reference, to an annoying D.J.’s exhortations at a 1990 Stone Roses concert. And in an equally self-conscious video, Cocker prompts A.I. to make Pulp’s 1995 album cover photos “come alive,” with hilariously suboptimal results.Stereolab, ‘Aerial Troubles’After 15 years between albums, Stereolab has completed a new one: “Instant Holograms on Metal Film,” due May 23. Its first single, “Aerial Troubles,” has the band sounding like its old self, imperturbably setting out patterns within patterns while the lyrics critique late capitalism. “An unfillable hole / An insatiable state of consumption — systemic,” they sing in call-and-response. “We can’t eat our way out of it.” Synthesizers buzz and drums tick steadily as Stereolab calmly anticipates “the new yet undefined future / That holds the prospect for greater wisdom.”Turnstile, ‘Never Enough’From its beginnings more than a decade ago, Turnstile thoroughly established its hardcore bona fides without ever ruling out melody, allowing its music room to expand. “Never Enough,” which will be the title song of Turnstile’s first album since 2021, sets its succinct lyrics in two very different ways. Its intro and outro use stately, billowing, organ-like chords. But its middle section is a fortress of punk-grunge guitars and barreling drums. It crests into a singalong-friendly refrain — “It’s never enough love” — before the track dissolves back into a rich keyboard haze.Bon Iver featuring Dijon and Flock of Dimes, ‘Day One’A couple struggles against self-doubt and depression and tries to reconcile in “Day One” from “Sable, Fable,” Bon Iver’s cathartic new album. “It got bad enough I thought that I would leave,” Justin Vernon moans. Jenn Wasner (Flock of Dimes) advises, “You may have to toughen up while unlearning that lie.” Together, they sing, “I don’t know who I am without you.” While the chords and tempo come from gospel, the production is fractured and glitchy, questioning its own comforts.Valerie June, ‘Endless Tree’Constant bad news on TV? Pervasive isolation and hopelessness? In “Endless Tree,” from her new album “Owls, Omens and Oracles,” Valerie June recognizes dire times — she’s not naïve — and preaches hope, community spirit and “getting the courage to do something small” anyway. “If you’re on the couch and you’re feeling alone / May you feel moved after hearing this song,” she urges. An increasingly frantic orchestra and chorus join her, revealing some tension behind the positive thinking.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Taylor Swift Revises a Lyric on ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’

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      Hear tracks by Prince, Rauw Alejandro, First Aid Kit and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. 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, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Taylor Swift, ‘Better Than Revenge (Taylor’s Version)’“Speak Now,” from 2010, was Taylor Swift’s third album, and it is now the third to be rereleased as a rerecorded “Taylor’s Version.” But all along, the album was a declaration of independence: It was the first she wrote entirely on her own, as a rebuttal to critics — perhaps like the one she cuts down on the sugary, spicy “Mean” — who suggested that Swift’s co-writers had a bigger hand in her previous successes than she’d let on. “Speak Now” remains one of Swift’s best and most sharply penned albums: The line “You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter,” from the chorus of the great opening track “Mine,” is often held up as an example of Swift’s lyricism at its most expertly concise.But “Speak Now” is an album of excesses, too; some of them are glorious — like the epic kiss-off “Dear John” or the romantic grandiosity of “Enchanted” — and some of them are the authentic artifacts of a 19-year-old’s somewhat myopic sensibility. “Mean,” which punches down, is guilty of that, and so is the acidic rocker “Better Than Revenge,” which has the most significantly revised lyrics in a “Taylor’s Version.” “He was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches,” Swift sings on this 2023 update, a clumsier and less direct lyric than the original: “She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress.” The change is unfortunate, and perhaps the beginning of a slippery slope of self-editing. The previous lyric was sanctimonious and nasty, yes, but it was also a historical document of Swift’s point of view at 19, and that of many young women who, being raised in a misogynistic society, are taught to blame the other girl before they learn how to curse “the patriarchy.” LINDSAY ZOLADZFirst Aid Kit, ‘Everybody’s Got to Learn’First Aid Kit is a duo of Swedish sisters, Johanna and Klara Söderberg, whose vocal harmonies are so perfect they can seem unreal. They have thoroughly studied 1970s Laurel Canyon folk-pop, with its gleaming, precisely blended electric and acoustic guitars. “Everybody’s Got to Learn,” from the expanded version of the 2022 album “Palomino,” sounds like parental advice from Fleetwood Mac. Over earnest folk-rock guitars and what grows into a hefty girl-group beat, the song reflects on the missteps that lead to maturity — “The blues and the bliss/you’ll hit and you’ll miss” — and promises, “You’re gonna see this through.” JON PARELESPrince, ‘All a Share Together Now’The latest find from Prince’s vault is “All a Share Together Now,” a song he recorded in 2006 but never released in any form. Prince sings about generational responsibilities — “the debt of the ones before us must be paid” — in a taut, bare-bones funk workout built around a jumpy bass riff. Live drums kick the beat around and a note-bending guitar teases out terse licks that are simultaneously lead and rhythm. It’s a homily disguised as a jam. PARELESRauw Alejandro, ‘Cuando Baje el Sol’Rauw Alejandro’s new album, “Playa Saturno,” eases back on the electronic experiments of his 2022 album, “Saturno,” in favor of earthy, party-ready reggaeton. But in “Cuando Baje el Sol” (“When the Sun Goes Down”), Alejandro and his fellow producers complicate the reggaeton thump with plenty of spatial and sonic mischief. Sampled and warped vocals, echoey synthesizers, turntable scratching and eruptive percussion all ricochet around his promises of hot times after sunset. PARELESKaisa’s Machine, ‘Gravity’Is “Taking Shape” — the latest album by the bassist Kaisa Mäensivu and her quintet, Kaisa’s Machine — a journal, or a workbook? Original tunes like “Shadow Mind” (a listless ballad) and “Eat Dessert First” (the LP’s eager, clattery final track) bespeak a confessional urge, but they can’t help spotlighting Mäensivu’s conservatory chops and wily compositional tactics. When wizardry takes the wheel — especially in jazz, and especially today — the voice underneath it can end up muffled in the trunk. Mäensivu deserves credit for seeking a healthy balance. “Gravity” is the album’s only track without a piano, slimming down this band of young aces to just bass, drums, guitar and vibraphone. Moving at a fast, nine-beat clip, Mäensivu’s bass line squares up firmly in a minor key, easing you into a space of feeling before the tune’s harmonic center starts shifting around. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOAnohni and the Johnsons, ‘Why Am I Alive Now?’The title is a plain-spoken survivor’s lament, ostensibly about living through a time of environmental collapse: “I don’t want to be witness,” Anohni wails, “seeing all of this duress, aching of our world.” But within the context of Anohni and the Johnsons’ piercing new album “My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross” — which features a photo of the band’s namesake, the gay activist Marsha P. Johnson, on its cover — that question is also haunted by the ghosts of the queer community. By the end of this loose, mournful soul song, Anohni finds a hopeful answer to that titular inquiry: She’s here to tell these stories, to draw attention to these causes, to sing this song. ZOLADZLittle Dragon featuring Damon Albarn, ‘Glow’Surrounded by swirling, twinkling, glimmering arpeggios, Little Dragon’s Yuki Nagano sings about sheer rapture: “Glowing in the dark to find streams of stars to taste.” Midway through, and inexplicably, Damon Albarn arrives from a different, bummed-out dimension, with apologies for being “Under the spell of the eyes that paralyze.” Having provided a little ballast, he vanishes in a download spiral and Nagano returns, still glowing and utterly unperturbed. PARELESFito Páez featuring Mon Laferte, ‘Sasha, Sissi y el Círculo de Baba’Fito Páez, Argentina’s most celebrated — and perpetually eccentric — rocker, decided to remake all the songs on his definitive 1992 album, “El Amor Después el Amor” (“Love After Love”), three decades later for the album “EADDA9223,” joined by duet partners including Elvis Costello, Nathy Peluso and Marisa Monte. “Sasha, Sissi y el Círculo de Baba” — a tale of passion and crime — used busy disco-funk guitar back in 1992. But the new version — trading vocals with the dynamic, torchy Chilean belter Mon Laferte — uncovers the retro bolero underlying the song. With reverb-laden guitar and a trumpet obbligato, Páez and Laferte revel in the drama together. PARELESTkay Maidza & Flume, ‘Silent Assassin’The Australian electronic music producer Flume usually juxtaposes bouncy, consonant chords with a little noise. But the track he brought to the Australian rapper Tkay Maidza is pure irritation: buzzes, distortion, wavery tones, a drone that bristles with dissonance. Maidza tops it with a speedy, shifty, percussive boast, racing through lines like “I’m a jigsaw, not a quick fix” and “I’m tactical, no attachments/I’m doing it for the passion.” From any angle, it’s combative. PARELESPJ Harvey, ‘Lwonesome Tonight’Polly Jean Harvey meticulously constructed a narrative, a sound and a language — based on the local dialect in Dorset, where she grew up — for “I Inside the Old World Dying,” her first album since 2016. The music is folky but fringed with electronics; her vocals are high and eerie, nearly disembodied. In “Lwonesome Tonight,” she sings about encountering a mystically charismatic figure: “Are you Elvis? Are you God?/Jesus sent you, win my trust,” she sings, and at the end she’s left wondering: “My love, will you come back again?” PARELESBrian Blade & the Fellowship Band, ‘God Be With You’Over the past quarter-century, Brian Blade’s Fellowship has come to feel more like a brotherhood than an ensemble, accruing a repertoire of original music that will stand the test of time along with an unmistakable sound: a mix of country, jazz and gospel that exudes a feeling of choral warmth, despite not using any vocals. But beyond that, they’ve stood up against (and basically outlived) a few insidious trends in jazz: When so many fine improvisers seemed be reconciling themselves to a future where the audience might become an afterthought, Blade and Fellowship had no time for that. The group’s fifth album, “Kings Highway,” begins with “Until We Meet Again,” a slowly seductive Blade original that makes reference to a William G. Tomer hymn; it ends with “God Be With You,” a short and elegant rendition of the Tomer piece itself. We can only hope that those valedictory titles aren’t telling us something about Fellowship’s future. RUSSONELLO More

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      8 New Songs You Should Hear Now

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      A dive into tracks by Tyler, the Creator, Feist, Bully and more recent highlights.Tyler, the Creator released a new track as part of an expanded edition of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”Luis “Panch” PerezDear listeners,I have a constantly replenishing playlist on my phone called “Thursday Nights and Friday Mornings.” It’s named for the time I do some of my most focused new-music listening, in preparation for the publication of the Playlist, a weekly feature that I compile with my colleagues Jon Pareles and Jon Caramanica.* Each Friday, we recommend a handful of songs released in the past week, a task that helps me stay on top of all (well, most) of the new music that comes out in a given week, and often the Jons’ picks point me toward what I missed.Every few weeks, I’ll be sending out an Amplifier digest of recent Playlist highlights. Today, we’ve got a mix of some possibly familiar names (Lucinda Williams; Feist; Tyler, the Creator) and hopefully some new ones, too.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. Jess Williamson: “Hunter”This is one of my favorite new songs right now. It’s from the Texas-born singer-songwriter Jess Williamson, whose music I’ve been following since her haunting 2014 debut, “Native State.” Last year, she teamed up with a fellow musician from the South, Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, and formed a country duo called Plains. Williamson’s contributions to Plains’ excellent record “I Walked With You a Ways” felt like a step forward for her as a songwriter, and I hear that growth on “Hunter,” the first single from her next solo album, “Time Ain’t Accidental,” out in June. It’s a bittersweet song about the spiritually exhausting process of looking for love, but on the chorus Williamson sounds hopeful and replenished, reminding herself, “I want a mirror, not a piece of glass.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Bully: “Days Move Slow”My former colleague at Vulture Jesse David Fox once compared an early song from Alicia Bognanno’s grungy power-pop band Bully to “Sugarhigh,” the fictional alt-rock hit that Renée Zellweger’s character sings at the end of “Empire Records” — and now I will never un-hear that similarity as long as I live. (It’s definitely a compliment.) I interviewed Bognanno over video chat in August 2020, and I remember a very sweet dog named Mezzi dozing behind her. (A dog lover myself, I always ask my interview subjects about their pups. Always.) Sadly, Mezzi has since passed on, but “Days Move Slow,” from the forthcoming Bully album “Lucky for You,” is both an ode to her memory and a chronicle of Bognanno trying to propel herself out of the muck of grief. That probably makes it sound like a downer, but the song has a resilient, upbeat energy about it — sort of like an excitable canine. Rest in power, Mezzi! (Listen on YouTube)3. Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro: “Beso”Some couples announce their engagement with a ring pic on Instagram. Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro, two of the brightest Spanish-language stars in the current pop firmament, hinted at theirs in a music video. Their sweet and sultry duet “Beso” is a highlight from their recently released collaborative EP, “RR” — and proof of their musical chemistry. (Listen on YouTube)4. Tyler, the Creator: “Sorry Not Sorry”Fun fact: In 2021, only two albums made appearances on all three of our critics’ Top 10 lists — Olivia Rodrigo’s head-turning debut “Sour” and Tyler, the Creator’s sprawling rap odyssey “Call Me if You Get Lost.” Last week, Tyler released an expanded edition featuring a few new tracks, including this one, the gregarious “Sorry Not Sorry.” I really like this song’s Jekyll-and-Hyde energy, as a repentant Tyler apologizes for a number of personal and professional slights and then, occasionally, a brasher version of himself takes it right back: “Sorry to the fans who say I changed — ’cause I did.” (Listen on YouTube)5. Mahalia: “Terms and Conditions”I’m a total mark for any song that mines and cleverly updates the sounds of Y2K pop or “TRL”-era R&B. (See also: The entire output of the young British girl group Flo.) “Terms and Conditions,” from the 24-year-old singer Mahalia, does just that. It’s giving me hints of Mya, Destiny’s Child and a whole lot of J. Lo’s glimmering millennial time capsule “If You Had My Love.” But it’s also got a contemporary twist, as Mahalia tells a potential suitor what she won’t tolerate (“If you look at her, consider bridges burned”), flipping the dry language of contractual agreements into something confident, fun and flirty. (Listen on YouTube)6. Lucinda Chua featuring yeule: “Something Other Than Years”Like the Mahalia song, I have my colleague Jon Pareles to thank for this next Playlist pick, from the London-based songwriter Lucinda Chua. “Something Other Than Years” is a sparse, hypnotic duet with the Singaporean musician yeule, which finds Chua pleading in a glassy voice, “Show me how to live this life,” a request that seems to be answered by yeule’s celestial melody. Jon describes the rest of Chua’s new album “Yian” as a collection of “meditations seeking serenity — often just two alternating chords, set out slowly on keyboard and sustained by orchestral strings.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Feist: “Borrow Trouble”I love it when Feist — an artist often associated with calm and quietude — lets loose and makes a ruckus, as she does on this stomping tune from her upcoming album, “Multitudes.” Wait for her primal screams at the very end! (Listen on YouTube)Two Lucindas in a single playlist? Better believe it. The country-rock legend Lucinda Williams’s voice has sounded defiant since at least the 1980s, but since recovering from a 2020 stroke, her survivor’s rasp has taken on a whole new gravitas. “New York Comeback” — from the upcoming album “Stories from a Rock N Roll Heart” — has Williams’s characteristic grit and lack of sentiment (“No one’s brought the curtain down,” she sings wrly, “maybe you should stick around”) but there’s something poignant about hearing Amplifier fave Bruce Springsteen (along with his wife and bandmate Patti Scialfa) singing backing vocals to support her as if he’s just one more rock ’n’ roll lifer nodding to another. (Listen on YouTube)These are my terms and conditions,Lindsay*If the grammatically correct plural of “attorney general” is indeed “attorneys general,” maybe I should say “Jons Pareles and Caramanica.”The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“8 New Songs You Should Hear Now” track listTrack 1: Jess Williamson, “Hunter”Track 2: Bully, “Days Move Slow”Track 3: Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro, “Beso”Track 4: Tyler, the Creator, “Sorry Not Sorry”Track 5: Mahalia, “Terms and Conditions”Track 6: Lucinda Chua featuring yeule, “Something Other Than Years”Track 7: Feist, “Borrow Trouble”Track 8: Lucinda Williams, “New York Comeback”Bonus TracksA few of you have written in to ask if we archive previous Amplifier playlists on Spotify. We do! The easiest way to find them is through our account page, where we also archive all the weekly Friday Playlists, too.And speaking of reader emails: Special thanks to Sharon Smith for — after I mentioned that Bob Dylan won his first Grammy nearly two decades into his career, for his 1979 song “Gotta Serve Somebody” — directing me to this blistering performance of Dylan playing the song live at the 1980 Grammys. (Kris Kristofferson, as you’ll see, was loving it.) Apparently the producers asked him to cut the song down to three or four minutes; he played for six and a half. Classic Bob! More

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      Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro’s Love Trilogy, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks from Meshell Ndegeocello, the Japanese House, Hannah Jadagu and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. 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, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro, ‘Beso’“Beso” (“Kiss”) quivers with fear of separation, as Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro tell each other that “Being away from you is hell.” The song is part of a three-track collaborative project called “RR” the couple released on Friday; the “Beso” video hints at an engagement. They keep their voices high, small and tremulous over a brusque beat topped with quasi-Baroque keyboards and strings, a genteel backdrop for deep neediness. PARELESMeshell Ndegeocello, ‘Virgo’“They’re calling me back to the stars,” Meshell Ndegeocello declares in “Virgo” from her coming album, “The Omnichord Real Book.” It’s a funky march that revels in cosmic imagery, cross-rhythms and multifarious vocals: singing, chanting, making percussive sounds, high harmonies, husky low confidences and an occasional “la-la.” Morphing through nearly nine minutes, the track struts on Ndegeocello’s synthesizer bass lines; twinkles and hovers with Brandee Younger’s harp; and sprints toward the end with double time drumming, headed somewhere new. PARELESMoor Mother featuring Kyle Kidd, Keir Neuringer and Aquiles Navarro, ‘We Got the Jazz’Moor Mother seethes about Black achievements met with disrespect in “We Got the Jazz”: “We ain’t ’bout to stand for no national anthem,” she declaims. “When we was swinging they couldn’t even stand in attention.” Her testy voice is surrounded in a rich, polytonal murk: multiple tracks of Aquiles Navarro’s trumpet, Keir Neuringer’s saxophone and Kyle Kidd’s vocals over a slowly heaving bass line, burdened but determined. PARELESThe Japanese House, ‘Boyhood’The British musician Amber Bain, who records as the Japanese House, reckons with her past and present on the flickering synth-pop track “Boyhood,” which pairs smooth sonic surfaces and effervescent electronic flourishes with her yearning, achingly human vocals. “For a moment there, I swear I saw me,” Bain sings, her 20-something growing pains palpable as she yearns — in vain — for a stable, unchanging sense of self. ZOLADZRina Sawayama, ‘Eye for an Eye’The British-Japanese pop musician Rina Sawayama makes her film debut on Friday in “John Wick: Chapter 4,” and has released a new song from the soundtrack, the slinky “Eye for an Eye.” The track splits the difference between Sawayama’s gloriously bombastic debut album, “Sawayama,” and the softer, more recent “Hold the Girl.” Propelled by a mid-tempo, industrial chug, Sawayama vamps with the confident menace of an action star. “A life for a life,” she sings. “I’ll see you in hell on the other side.” ZOLADZBully, ‘Days Move Slow’“Days Move Slow,” from Alicia Bognanno’s grungy indie-rock project Bully, is a song about being caught in the muck of grief — she wrote it after the death of her beloved dog, Mezzi — but it also has a propulsive, bouncy energy that promises eventual forward motion. “There’s flowers on your grave that grow,” Bognanno sings in her signature holler, battling her buzzing guitar. “Something’s gotta change, I know.” ZOLADZShygirl, ‘Woe (I See It From Your Side) (Björk Remix)’Björk’s remix of Shygirl’s “Woe” is equal parts endorsement and disruption. Shygirl, born Blaine Muise in England to parents from Zimbabwe, has worked with pop experimenters like Sophie, Arca, Tinashe and Sega Bodega, and she was a founder of the label Nuxxe. “Woe,” from her 2022 debut album, “Nymph,” was a smoldering counterattack to a toxic partner: “Smiling faces fade just to leave a shell,” she charged. Björk, playing fourth-dimensional chess, offers both sympathy — agreeing with Shygirl that “I see it from your side” — and outside perspective. The new track lurches from the dark groove of “Woe” to something else: Björk’s vocal harmonies, warped keyboard vamps and mystical life lessons. “Forever we shoot for the sublime,” she advises. PARELESHannah Jadagu, ‘Warning Sign’“Warning Sign” is a hushed, hazy song that maps interpersonal tensions onto musical contrasts: quiet and loud, sustained and rhythmic, dulcet and distorted. Jadagu is an N.Y.U. student who grew up in a Texas suburb and recorded her first EP, in 2021, entirely on an iPhone. She has more resources since signing to Sub Pop. “Warning Sign” could have been an easygoing R&B vamp, but Jadagu has other imperatives; the song coos with keyboard chords and airborne harmonies, then crashes or glitches. What she hears goes with what she feels: “I can’t stand to hear your voice when it’s oh so loud/Could you quiet down?” PARELESLucinda Chua featuring Yeule, ‘Something Other Than Years’The songs on “Yian” (Chinese for “sparrow”), the new album by the London-based songwriter Lucinda Chua, are meditations seeking serenity — often just two alternating chords, set out slowly on keyboard and sustained by orchestral strings. In “Something Other Than Years,” she sings, “When all I fear is all I know/Show me how to live this life,” and she’s answered by the higher voice of Yeule, who promises, “There’s more in this life/Angel being of light.” PARELES More

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      Mavis Staples and Levon Helm’s Last Show, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Pusha T, Laura Veirs, Helado Negro and others.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.Mavis Staples and Levon Helm, ‘You Got to Move’Back in 2011, Mavis Staples and her band visited Woodstock, N.Y., to perform at the barn-studio-theater of the Band’s drummer Levon Helm; they had appeared together at the Band’s “The Last Waltz,” in 1976. Helm’s band joined hers, which included her sister Yvonne Staples on backup vocals, and they recorded the show. More than a decade later, an album, “Carry Me Home,” is due May 20. Staples gave “You Got to Move,” a gospel standard, her full contralto commitment; the guitarists Rick Holmstrom and Larry Campbell traded blues twang and bluegrassy runs. It was just another good-timey show in two long careers, but it would be their last together; Helm died in 2012. JON PARELESPusha T featuring Ye, ‘Dreamin of the Past’Nostalgia is not a concept often associated with Pusha T; even when he’s mining his coke-dealing past for material (and best believe, he usually is), his rhymes have the vivid immediacy of the present tense. But the classic, Old-Kanye production heard on “Dreamin of the Past” — revolving around a sped-up sample of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” — gives the song a halcyon glow that’s playfully at odds with his unrepentant flow. As ever, on this highlight from his latest solo album “It’s Almost Dry,” Push’s lyrics pop with poetic detail (“We hollowed the walls in back of bodegas”) and riotous cleverness: At one point, he boasts of keeping people “on the bikes like Amblin.” LINDSAY ZOLADZShakira and Rauw Alejandro, ‘Te Felicito’​​Robot love, funky bass lines, Rauw Alejandro’s head in a refrigerator: Welcome to Shakira and the Puerto Rican reggaeton star’s first collaboration. “Te Felicito” is a bitter send-off to a paramour whose love has been a charade that marries some of the superstars’ signature gifts: the Colombian singer’s eccentric choreography and Rauw’s penchant for funk-infused reggaeton. The Shak stamp of approval is a sought-after trophy for young artists ascending the ranks of the industry — just another sign that Alejandro is here to stay in all his freaky glory. ISABELIA HERRERAMidas the Jagaban featuring Liya, ‘420’Marijuana anthems abound on April 20. Here’s a lighter-than-smoke one from Nigeria, sung by the always-masked female songwriter Midas the Jagaban and a guest, Liya. The tapping, airborne polyrhythms of Afrobeats, topped by labyrinthine echoed vocals, provide just enough propulsion and haze as the women declare, “Whatever I do/I do it better when I smoke my marijuana.” PARELESPinkPantheress featuring Willow, ‘Where You Are’To capture the way a breakup can upend everything, PinkPantheress enlisted two beat experts — Skrillex and Mura Masa — to share production on “Where You Are,” along with Willow (Smith), who delivers full-throated hooks. They sing about the limbo between wanting to move on and longing to stay together: “I know it will never be the same,” Willow wails. The song is a vortex of obsession, with a brisk beat, a fingerpicking pattern (sampled from Paramore’s “Never Let This Go”) and vocals that diffuse into echoes and wordless syllables as PinkPantheress (breathy) and Willow (desperate and dramatic) toss around all the possibilities of separation, confrontation and wishing for a reunion. PARELESLaura Veirs, ‘Winter Windows’Laura Veirs has been a folk-rock fixture since the early aughts, but over the past few years she’s experienced a great deal of personal and professional change. Shortly before the pandemic, she divorced her longtime collaborator Tucker Martine, who had produced many of her albums — including “My Echo” from 2020, which was partially about their split. Her forthcoming album “Found Light,” due July 8, is her first album without Martine and the first she co-produced herself. Veirs sounds fittingly reinvigorated and inspired on the lead single “Winter Windows,” an antsy, guitar-driven meditation on motherhood and moving on. “I used to watch them watch you light up every room,” she sings, a gritty resilience in her voice. “Now it’s up to me, the lighting I can do.” ZOLADZSorry, ‘There’s So Many People That Want to Be Loved’On the London group Sorry’s charming “There’s So Many People That Want to Be Loved,” Asha Lorenz sings with the sort of sweet, earnest guilelessness that Mo Tucker brought to the Velvet Underground’s “After Hours.” “See them in the nightclubs, barking up the walls, head in their hands in the bathroom stalls,” she notes of all the lonely people she observes. But as the song gradually builds from unassuming to epic, “There’s So Many People” becomes less a lament and more a celebration of communal human longing — a feeling to be cherished, and, ironically, shared. ZOLADZRavyn Lenae, ‘M.I.A.’It’s been four years since the Chicago R&B singer Ravyn Lenae dropped her “Crush” EP, a Steve Lacy-produced release that stitched her sky-high vocals with funky bass lines and delicious electro-soul textures. For “M.I.A.,” her first single from her debut album “Hypnos,” Lenae pairs with the producer Sango for something a little more breezy. Over a buoyant, syncopated Afrobeats production, a gleaming synth expands and contracts under Lenae’s airy falsetto, as she coos about finally making it: “I’m gonna run the town, ain’t nothing in my way.” HERRERARuth Radelet, ‘Crimes’“Is it easy to start over?” Ruth Radelet wonders on the chorus of her debut solo single, and it’s safe to assume that’s an autobiographical sentiment. For nearly two decades, Radelet was the frontwoman of the moody electro-pop group Chromatics, who disbanded last summer amid drama surrounding a mysterious (and possibly nonexistent) final album. On the glassy, synth-driven “Crimes,” though, Radelet sounds ready to wipe the slate clean. The verses have a bit of a steely bite (“I know what they’re telling me is true/I know I could never be like you”), but the lush chorus is awash in her signature, dreamy melancholy. ZOLADZHelado Negro, ‘Ya No Estoy Aquí’Helado Negro’s music may be dreamlike and crepuscular, but don’t confuse his songs for simple lullabies. “Ya No Estoy Aquí,” his latest single, revisits the celestial meanderings that have defined his work: soft, pulsing drum loops and wobbling, echoing synths. The Ecuadorean-American artist sings about isolation and melancholy alongside harmonic melodies from the Chicago singer-songwriter Kaina. “Ojalá me estoy volviendo loco/Por lo menos tengo con quien puedo hablar/alucinaciones,” he intones (“Hopefully I’m going crazy/At least I have someone to talk to/Hallucinations”). Underneath that soothing exterior, Helado Negro’s music holds a special power: the capacity to engage difficult feelings. HERRERALou Roy, ‘U.D.I.D.’The Los Angeles songwriter Lou Roy regularly juggles euphoria and disillusionment. Her debut album, “Pure Chaos,” is due April 29, and in “U.D.I.D.” — “You don’t I don’t” — she probes a relationship that seems about to fissure. “I always want you here/but I’m starting to get the deal,” she sings. The track, which she co-produced with Sarah Tudzin of Illuminati Hotties, has an upbeat 4/4 pop thump, but some sonic elements — vocals, keyboards, guitar chords — linger like contrails, hinting that the romance may already be a memory. PARELESCharles Mingus, ‘The Man Who Never Sleeps’One heavy day in 1973, Columbia Records dropped every jazz musician on its roster besides Miles Davis. The bassist and composer Charles Mingus (whose 100th birthday would have been on Friday) was among them. So were Ornette Coleman, Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans. But just months before that, the label had arranged to have a performance by Mingus’s new sextet recorded at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London. The tapes were ultimately shelved. They’ll finally be released on Saturday, Record Store Day, as the triple-disc set “The Lost Album From Ronnie Scott’s.” On “The Man Who Never Sleeps,” Mingus is lit up by the antic virtuosity of the young trumpeter and Dizzy Gillespie protégé Jon Faddis, barely 19, who had just joined the band. Just before Columbia would press a final symbolic seal on an entire jazz generation, you can hear a torch being passed. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOFred Moten, Brandon López and Gerald Cleaver, ‘The Abolition of Art, the Abolition of Freedom, the Abolition of You and Me’“Freedom is too close to slavery for us to be easy with that jailed imagining,” the poet and theorist Fred Moten says in a coolly controlled voice, speaking over the rustle of Gerald Cleaver’s drums and the dark pull of Brandon López’s open bass strings. There’s a doom-metal energy here, and Sun Ra’s relationship to darkness — as a substance. López hangs on the high strings for a moment at the end of Moten’s phrase, aware that the thought needs time to settle and land, then comes home to the root of the minor key. In the past 20 years Moten has become perhaps the leading thinker on Black performance, writing volumes of poetry and theory that dance with the ways in which Diasporic expression resists definition and capture. “The Abolition of Art” is the first track from a new album, “Moten/López/Cleaver,” putting that engagement directly to music and sacrificing none of its complexity or wit. RUSSONELLO More

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      Reggaeton’s Global Expansion and Wide-Open Future

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThe current generation of reggaeton superstars — J Balvin, Rauw Alejandro, Farruko and more — find themselves in constant dialogue with pop, EDM and hip-hop, and have become ambitious ambassadors of cultural exchange. As the genre is growing in global popularity, it is also stratifying into subsets, some leaning toward the synthetic and some returning to roots.That sign of reggaeton’s growth and maturity also portends questions about who will lead the genre into its future, and what that future might sound like.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about reggaeton’s engagements with the pop music mainstream, how its biggest stars navigate the responsibilities of being emissaries and also recent developments in Dominican dembow.Guests:Isabelia Herrera, The New York Times’s arts critic fellowKatelina Eccleston, reggaeton historian at reggaetonconlagata.comConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Best Albums of 2021

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      Less isolation didn’t mean a return to normalcy. Albums with big feelings and room for catharsis made the most powerful connections.Olivia Rodrigo, Moneybagg Yo and Allison Russell stood out in 2021.From left: Grant Spanier; Noam Galai/Getty Images; Bethany Mollenkof for the New York TimesJon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay ZoladzJon ParelesSongs of Trauma, Fear and TriumphThe past year was awash in recorded music — not only the stuck-at-home recordings that musicians occupied themselves with when touring evaporated during the pandemic, but also many albums that had been made before the lockdowns but had been shelved in hopes of some return to normalcy. The albums that resonated most with me during 2021 were songs of reflection and revelation, often dealing with traumas and crises, transfigured through music.1. Bomba Estéreo, ‘Deja’The Colombian duo Bomba Estéreo released “Deja” as a series of EPs tied to the ancient elements: water, air, fire, earth. Each new one broadened an album that entwines folklore and electronics, personal yearning and planetary concerns. With Liliana Saumet’s tartly endearing singing and rapping and Simón Mejía’s meticulously kinetic productions, the songs dance through their fears. (Read our interview with Bomba Estéreo.)Simón Mejía and Liliana Saumet of Bomba Estéreo released “Deja” as a series of EPs.Valerie Amor C2. Allison Russell, ‘Outside Child’Allison Russell, the longtime frontwoman of Birds of Chicago, transforms a horrific childhood — she was abused by her stepfather — into songs of joyful survival. “I’m still rising, stronger for my pain and suffering,” she sings. Drawing on soul, country, folk and deep blues, she connects her own story to myth and metaphor, remembering the trauma yet decisively rising above it. (Read our interview with Allison Russell.)3. Mon Laferte, ‘Seis’Sometimes visitors can see what residents take for granted. Mon Laferte is from Chile, but she has been living for more than a decade in Mexico and has immersed herself in its music. On “Seis,” she wrote songs that draw deeply on regional Mexican traditions — mariachi, banda, ranchera, corrido, norteño — to sing, in a voice that can be teasing or furiously incendiary, about deep passions and equally deep betrayals. (Read our interview with Mon Laferte.)Mon Laferte drew on Mexican traditions for one of two albums she released this year, “Seis.”Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times4. The Weather Station, ‘Ignorance’Tamara Lindeman, who writes songs and records as the Weather Station, surrounded herself with a jazzy, intuitive backup group for “Ignorance,” clearly aware of Joni Mitchell’s folk-jazz precedent. The rhythms are brisk and precise; winds, keyboards and guitars ricochet respectfully off her breathy vocal lines. She sings about impending disasters, romantic and environmental, and the widespread disregard for what’s clearly about to happen. (Read our interview with the Weather Station.)5. Mdou Moctar, ‘Afrique Victime’Mdou Moctar is a Tuareg guitarist born in Niger. Like Tinariwen, his band plugs North African rhythms and modal vamps into rock amplifiers and drums. But “Afrique Victime” further expands the sonic possibilities for Tuareg rock, from ambient meditation to psychedelic onslaught. Six-beat rhythms and skeins of guitar lines carry Moctar’s voice in songs that can be modest and introspective or unstoppably frenetic.6. Julien Baker, ‘Little Oblivions’“Beat myself until I’m bloody/And I’ll give you a ringside seat,” Julien Baker sings in one of the brave, ruthlessly self-indicting songs that fill “Little Oblivions,” an album about the toll of one person’s addictions on everyone around her. She played all the instruments herself, scaling her sound up to arena size and chiming like U2, even as she refuses herself any excuses or forgiveness. (Read our review of “Little Oblivions.”)7. Black Midi, ‘Cavalcade’The virtuosic British band Black Midi bristles in every direction: with jagged, skewed funk riffs; with pointed dissonances; with passages of Minimalistic, ominous suspense; with lyrics full of bitter disillusion. And then, just to keep things unsettled, come passages filled with tenderness and wonderment, only to plunge back into the fray. (Read our interview with Black Midi.)8. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’Olivia Rodrigo, now 18, fixates on a breakup with an adolescent’s obsessiveness on “Sour,” building on the audience she found as a cast member in Disney’s “High School Musical.” With Taylor Swift as a role model for craftsmanship, her songs are as neatly detailed as they are wounded, and the production whipsaws through styles — calm piano ballad, ethereal choir harmonies, fierce distorted guitars — to match every mood swing. (Read our review of “Sour” and watch her “Diary of a Song.”)Olivia Rodrigo’s songs are neatly detailed.Erica Hernandez9. Esperanza Spalding, ‘Songwrights Apothecary Lab’“Songwrights Apothecary Lab” was the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding’s pandemic project; she consulted neuroscientists, music therapists and ethnomusicologists to devise music for healing, and an online user’s guide prescribes the purpose of each song. But the songs are equally effective off-label; they encompass meditations, serpentine jazz compositions, calm or turbulent improvisations, open-ended questions and sly bits of advice, the work of a graceful, perpetually questing mind. (Read our interview with Esperanza Spalding.)10. Tyler, the Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’A life of luxury can’t mollify Tyler, the Creator. He’s no longer the trolling provocateur he was a decade ago when he emerged with Odd Future, but he’s still intransigent and high-concept. After singing through most of his 2019 album, “Igor,” he’s back to rapping, now simulating a mixtape with DJ Drama as hypeman. In his deep voice, he raps about all he owns and all he can’t control — mostly romance — over his own dense, detailed productions, at once lush and abrasive. The album peaks with an eight-minute love-triangle saga, “Wichita”: a raw confession, cannily orchestrated. (Read our review of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”)Tyler, the Creator swings back to mostly rapping on his 2021 album.Luis “Panch” PerezAnd here are another 15 deserving albums, alphabetically:Adele, “30”Arooj Aftab, “Vulture Prince”Khaira Arby, “New York Live”Billie Eilish, “Happier Than Ever”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, “Promises”Flock of Dimes, “Head of Roses”Rhiannon Giddens with Franceso Turrisi, “They’re Calling Me Home”Idles, “Crawler”Ka, “A Martyr’s Reward”Valerie June, “The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers”L’Rain, “Fatigue”Arlo Parks, “Collapsed in Sunbeams”Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, “Raise the Roof”Omar Sosa, “An East African Journey”Jazmine Sullivan, “Heaux Tales”Jon CaramanicaProcessing Pain, Blurring BoundariesIn the second year of global quasi-paralysis, what made the most sense were, once again, albums that felt like wombs and albums that felt like eruptions. When there was nowhere to go, literally or metaphorically, there were still places to retreat — to the gut, to history, to memory, to forgetting.1. Mustafa, ‘When Smoke Rises’Did you mourn this year? Were you broken in some way that was beyond words? Mustafa’s debut album was there with you, a startling, primal chronicle of relentless loss and the relentless grace required to navigate it. In moments when the ground buckled, this album was a cradle. (Read our interview with Mustafa.)Mustafa’s debut album is a profound meditation on loss.Bethany Mollenkof for The New York Times2. EST Gee, ‘Bigger Than Life or Death’The latest in a string of excellent releases from the Louisville, Ky., rapper EST Gee, whose verses are refreshingly burly and brusque, and who tells stories sprinkled with surprisingly vivid left-field details. A bold back-to-basics statement, utterly free of filigree.3. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’The most important new pop star of the year delivered a debut album of poppy punk and punky pop that’s sometimes musically blistering and always emotionally blistered. A reminder that a failed relationship might leave you icy or bruised or drained, but in truth, it frees you to be emboldened. (Read our review of “Sour” and watch her “Diary of a Song.”)4. Moneybagg Yo, ‘A Gangsta’s Pain’Moneybagg Yo is a casually sassy rapper — a don of tsk-tsking, fluent in arched eyebrows, dispositionally blunt. This is his fourth major-label album, and it’s punchy and robustly musical. À la peak 2 Chainz, Moneybagg Yo boasts so long and so intently that he sounds fatigued, and in turn, uproarious.5. PinkPantheress, ‘To Hell With It’This is music about listening to music, about the secret places we burrow into in order to make sure our favorite songs can wash over us unimpeded. The singing is sweet and melancholic, and the production flirts with memory and time — stories of right now and back then, all told as one. (Read our review of “To Hell With It.”)6. Summer Walker, ‘Still Over It’The most emotionally direct vocalist working in R&B today, Summer Walker is a bracing listen. And this album, her third full-length release, is rawly vindictive and unconcerned with polish, the equivalent of a public-facing Instagram account that feels like a finsta. (Read our notebook on Summer Walker.)Summer Walker’s third album is appealingly unpolished and intimate.Theo Wargo/Getty Images7. Lana Del Rey, ‘Chemtrails Over the Country Club’Lana Del Rey albums have become pop music’s most compelling ongoing saga about American loneliness and sadness. This, the better of her two albums this year, is alluringly arid and dreamlike. (Read our review of “Chemtrails Over the Country Club.”)8. Tyler, the Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’In which the rapper who introduced himself a decade ago as the genre’s great anarchist reveals something that was long clear to close observers: He reveres tradition. Brick-hard rhyme structures. Ostentatious taunts. Mixtape grit. All of it. (Read our review of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”)9. Playboi Carti, ‘Whole Lotta Red’Just an unyieldingly odd record. Notionally a cousin of mid-2010s SoundCloud rap, it also has echoes of 1980s industrial rock and also the glitchcore of the 2000s. It’s buoyant and psychedelic and totally destabilizing.10. Kanye West, ‘Donda (Deluxe)’“Donda” lives at the intersection of Kanye’s “Yeezus” era and his Jesus era. On the one hand, there’s scabrous, churning production that sets a chaotic mood. On the other, there are moments of intense searching, gasps for air amid the unrest. (Read our notebook on “Donda.”)11. Rauw Alejandro, ‘Vice Versa’Rauw Alejandro, the most imaginative meta-reggaeton Latin pop star, dabbles in drum ’n’ bass and baile funk on his second major-label album. But the star is his hypertreated voice, which is synthetically sweet and appealingly lush, almost to the point of delightful suffocation. (Read our review of “Vice Versa.”)Rauw Alejandro’s latest album puts a spotlight on his vocals.Thais Llorca/EPA, via Shutterstock12. Doja Cat, ‘Planet Her’Outlandish, eccentric, lustrous, mercenarily maximalist pop from the sing-rapper with the richest and keenest pop ear not named Drake.13. Chloe Moriondo, ‘Blood Bunny’Openhearted and effortlessly catchy indie punk-pop about lovelorn confusion and beginning to figure out you’re too cool for that. (Read our notebook on Chloe Moriondo.)14. Kidd G, ‘Down Home Boy’Why yes, those are Juice WRLD cadences in the singing on the year’s best country debut album. (Read our interview with Kidd G.)15. The Armed, ‘Ultrapop’Shrieking sheets of nervy noise — a battering ram.16. Carly Pearce, ’29: Written in Stone’A brief marriage, a messy divorce, a helluva album.17. Yeat, ‘4L’If “Whole Lotta Red” is too coherent for you, try Yeat.18. Conway the Machine, ‘La Maquina’A cold, cold, cold growl of a classic-minded hip-hop album.19. Farruko, ‘La 167’“Pepas” is here, along with a confidently expansive range of reggaeton styles.Farruko’s “La 167” is a showcase for reggaeton styles.Rich Polk/Getty Images20. Mickey Guyton, ‘Remember Her Name’A pop-country winner that feels both universal and singular. (Read our interview with Mickey Guyton.)… and 20 more albums for a more well-rounded year.42 Dugg, “Free Dem Boyz”Gracie Abrams, “This Is What It Feels Like”Aespa, “Savage”Jay Bahd, “Return of Okomfo Anokye”Benny the Butcher and Harry Fraud, “The Plugs I Met 2”Ivan Cornejo, “Alma Vacía”Jhay Cortez, “Timelezz”Dave, “We’re All Alone in This Together”Drake, “Certified Lover Boy”Halsey, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power”Cody Johnson, “Human the Double Album”NCT 127, “Sticker”RXK Nephew, “Crack Dreams”serpentwithfeet, “Deacon”Spirit of the Beehive, “Entertainment, Death”Don Toliver, “Life of a Don”Rod Wave, “SoulFly”Tion Wayne, “Green With Envy”Wiki, “Half God”Young Thug, “Punk”Lindsay ZoladzOpening Up Hearts and MindsIn an emotionally hung over year when so many people were trying to process loss — of loved ones, of charred or flooded homes, of the world as we once knew it — some of the best music offered an opportunity to slow down and reconnect with feelings we may have rushed right by before truly acknowledging. Sometimes we just needed a voice to capture and echo the absurdity all around us, but other times records gave us a way of experiencing nothing less than mass catharsis.1. Adele, ‘30’It takes a certain kind of record to make me want to quote Rumi, but Adele really killed this, so let me say: “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”Adele has been our mass-cultural bard of heartbreak for the past decade, but in her music — save for the handful of instant-classic ballads scattered across her discography — I did not really get the sense that she was truly open in all the terror and glory that implies. Then she turned 30. “I’m so afraid but I’m open wide,” she sings on the divine “To Be Loved,” her imperial voice trembling but assured. Most breakup albums are full of anger, scorn, and blame, but this one is remarkably self-directed, a grown woman making a deeply considered choice to leap into the void and break her own heart wide apart. “I took some bad turns that I am owning,” she sings, audibly italicizing that last phrase, as if the preceding 10 tracks in all their startling honesty hadn’t already made that clear.On “19,” “21,” and “25,” Adele acted wise beyond her years: “We both know we ain’t kids no more,” she chided an ex on an album about being in her mid-20s, which also included a world-wearied number called “When We Were Young.” “30” refreshingly winds back the clock and finds her admitting that all along she was “just a child, didn’t get the chance to feel the world around” her. But now she sings like a mature woman who knows there’s still plenty of time to get wine-drunk on the everyday wonders of her own freedom, to break her heart open again and again in her newly omnivorous and sonically eclectic songs. This, at last, is Adele living up to her promise, pop majesty at the highest count. (Read our review of “30.”)Adele breaks her own heart open on “30.”Cliff Lipson/CBS2. Tyler, The Creator, ‘Call Me if You Get Lost’He’s still on the boat! Tyler has never sounded this breezy yet in control, but for all the luxurious braggadocio, there’s a darker undercurrent at work, too. “I remembered I was rich so I bought me some new emotions,” he raps at the beginning of the album; by the stunning penultimate track, the heart-tugging epic “Wilshire,” he’ll have to admit that’s impossible. Full of playful reflections on his past (“I was canceled before canceled was with Twitter fingers”) and auspicious blessings for his future, “Call Me” finds Tyler dropping a stone into that murky blue and discovering unexplored new depths. (Read our review of “Call Me if You Get Lost.”)3. Snail Mail, ‘Valentine’Lindsey Jordan begs, bargains and finally accepts the pain of heartache in this searing song cycle that further establishes her as one of indie rock’s brightest young stars. There’s a raw immediacy to these 10 songs that make them almost feel hot to the touch — the thrashing title track, the keening acoustic ballad “Light Blue,” even the slinky, synth-driven vamp “Ben Franklin.” Her nimble guitar work highlights a sharp ear for off-kilter melody, but at the core of “Valentine” is Jordan’s passionately hoarse voice, lungs filled to the brim with sound and fury. (Read our review of “Valentine.”)4. Jazmine Sullivan, ‘Heaux Tales’The chatty, candid interstitials woven through this wonderful album play out like an adult reunion of those young girls in the classroom from “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” — now grown women swapping secrets, recollections and hard-earned wisdom. “Heaux Tales” is a prismatic, multiperspective snapshot of female desire in the 21st century, enlivened by the testimonies of friends like Ari Lennox and H.E.R. but made cohesive by the soulfully versatile voice of Jazmine Sullivan. She breathes life into a spectrum of emotions, from the sassy assertion of “Pick Up Your Feelings” to the naked yearning of “The Other Side,” proving that it would be too limiting to choose between being a hard rock or a gem. Aren’t we all a little bit of both? (Read our review of “Heaux Tales.”)Jazmine Sullivan explores the multiple dimensions of female desire in the 21st century on “Heaux Tales.”NAACP, via Reuters5. Illuminati Hotties, ‘Let Me Do One More’The indie producer turned surprisingly ebullient frontperson Sarah Tudzin is a personable and occasionally hilarious guide through the surreal ruins of late capitalism. “You think I wanna be a part of every self-appointed start-up?” she seethes in a punky, cartoonish voice, but a few songs later she’s exhausted enough to sound resigned to inevitable compromise: “The corner store is selling spit, bottled up for profit,” she sighs, “can’t believe I’m buying it.” Still, Tudzin’s songs glow with the possibility of human intimacy amid all the rubble, and they show off her mastery of so many different genres that by the end of the record, it seems like there’s no ceiling to her talent as both a producer and a finger-on-the-pulse songwriter. (Read our interview with Illuminati Hotties.)6. Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Sour’Hell hath no fury like a young woman out to prove she’s no one-hit wonder. From the opening guitar-crunch of the Zoomer primal scream that is “Brutal,” Olivia Rodrigo proves there’s so much more to her than could be expressed even in a song as exquisitely expressive as her seismic smash “Drivers License.” Rodrigo fashions teen-girl sarcasm into a lethal weapon on the dream-pop “Deja Vu,” rails against the Instagram industrial complex on the barbed social critique “Jealousy, Jealousy” and transforms a sample of one of her idol Taylor Swift’s sweetest love songs into a tear-streaked heartbreaker on “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back.” If it feels comparatively weak on the back end, that’s only because the first half of this album is probably the most impressive six-song run anybody put together this year. (Read our review of “Sour” and watch her “Diary of a Song.”)7. The Weather Station, ‘Ignorance’How do you make music about climate change without it sounding too didactic and abstract? Tamara Lindeman, the Canadian musician who records as the Weather Station, came up with a winning solution on her stirring album “Ignorance,” which finds her singing elegiac love songs to a dying planet. The graceful melancholy of “Tried to Tell You” surveys the natural beauty we’ve been too numb to mourn, while the sparse, jazzy “Robber” is a kind of musical tone-poem about large-scale corporate destruction. With her nimble voice — sometimes high and fluttery, other times earthy and low — and evocative lyricism, the songs of “Ignorance” animate, as one of her bandmates puts it, “the emotional side of climate change,” employing music’s depth of feeling to ignite political consciousness. (Read our interview with the Weather Station.)Tamara Lindeman of the Weather Station finds artful ways to sing about the climate crisis.Angela Lewis for The New York Times8. Low, ‘Hey What’If only every band could sound this adventurous 30 years into existence. As their eerily heartfelt harmonies cut through with rhythmic blurts of electronic noise, Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk sound, quite literally, like ghosts in the machine, imbuing vast, steely soundscapes with a disarming beauty. Following the sonic reinvention of the stunning 2018 album “Double Negative,” the Duluth band have continued to frame human yearning amid a churning and apocalyptic backdrop, with career-best songs like “Disappearing” and “Days Like These” capturing both the difficulty and the necessity of finding light in a dark age.9. Lucy Dacus, ‘Home Video’Lucy Dacus’s wrenching third studio album is as much an achievement of memoir as it is of songwriting, a vividly conjured coming-of-age story so personal that she used her own teenage diaries for research. “In the summer of ’07, I was sure I’d go to heaven,” she sings on “VBS” (as in, Vacation Bible School), before a gradual and all-consuming doubt begins to creep in. By the final song, when a friend tells her she’s afraid that their desires have rendered them “cursed,” Dacus responds, “So what?” As thoughtfully crafted as a collection of short stories, “Home Video” achingly chronicles the tale of a young person who loses her religion but in the process gains autonomy, a sense of identity and the glorious strength to tell her own truths in song. (Read T magazine’s interview with Lucy Dacus.)10. Dry Cleaning, ‘New Long Leg’“Are there some kind of reverse platform shoes that make you go into the ground more?” the ever-droll Florence Shaw asks, one of many absurdist yet somehow relatable philosophical questions she poses on the English post-punk band Dry Cleaning’s singular debut album. The instrumentation around Shaw swells like a sudden squall, but her deadpan, spoken-word musings — a mixture of found text, overheard chitchat and offbeat poetry — are the eye of the storm, remaining steady and strangely unperturbed in all kinds of weather.11. Billie Eilish, ‘Happier Than Ever’No record grew on me more this year than Billie Eilish’s patient and personal sophomore effort, which shuns repeat-the-formula predictability and unfolds at its own unhurried pace. It’s somehow even quieter than her sumptuously ASMR-triggering debut, until those sudden moments when it isn’t — as on the corrosive conclusion to the Nine-Inch-Nails-like “NDA,” or the fireworks display of pent-up frustration that rips open the title track. Exquisitely sequenced, this is a rare pop album that doesn’t show all its cards right away, but instead saves its strongest material for the end, building toward a satisfying finale and a hint at the potential versatility of her future. (Read our review of “Happier Than Ever.”)Billie Eilish’s second album, “Happier Than Ever,” reveals itself at its own pace.Rich Fury/Getty Images12. Mdou Moctar, ‘Afrique Victime’The fluid and incandescent playing of the Tuareg guitar hero Mdou Moctar transcends borders, seamlessly fusing Western psychedelia with North African desert blues. “Afrique Victime,” his strongest and most focused record to date, showcases not only his quicksilver fingerwork but his innate gift for melody and songcraft, proving in every one of these nine blazing tracks that shredding is a universal language.13. Bitchin Bajas, ‘Switched on Ra’This shouldn’t work, or at least not nearly as well as it does: A drone synth outfit tackling the otherworldly compositions and complex harmonies of cosmic jazz pioneer Sun Ra? But Chicago’s Bitchin Bajas approach the task with equal parts reverence and playfulness, assembling an Arkestra of 19 different analog synths and in the process creating a prolonged musical meditation on time, space and the meaning of retrofuturism. The vibes are exquisite, and the whole thing sounds like the Muzak that would play in an intergalactic portal’s waiting room.14. Remi Wolf, ‘Juno’Here’s to anyone who takes a technically skilled voice and chooses to do something delectably weird with it. The Palo Alto native Remi Wolf’s pipes are strong enough to have propelled her to Hollywood on the 2014 season of “American Idol,” but she’s since carved out a much less conventional path, making bold, psychedelic pop that bursts at the seams with ideas, melodies and truly wild wordplay (“I love my family intrinsically, like Anthony Kiedis,” she sings, which — sure!). On “Juno,” one of the most promising debut albums of the year, Wolf throws everything she’s got at the wall — and a surprisingly high percentage of it actually sticks. (Read our interview with Remi Wolf.)Remi Wolf makes bold, psychedelic pop that bursts at the seams with ideas.Amy Sussman/Getty ImagesSome runners-up worth mentioning:L’Rain, “Fatigue”Rostam, “Changephobia”Flock of Dimes, “Head of Roses”Lana Del Rey, “Chemtrails Over the Country Club”/“Blue Banisters”Halsey, “If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power”Palberta, “Palberta 5000”/Lily Konigsberg, “Lily We Need to Talk Now” More