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    Miley Cyrus and Brandi Carlile’s Raw Duet, and 9 More New Songs

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    Hear tracks by Bartees Strange, Nicki Nicole, Caroline Rose 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.Miley Cyrus featuring Brandi Carlile, ‘Thousand Miles’From Miley Cyrus’s new album, “Endless Summer Vacation,” comes this rugged, low-to-the-ground duet with the polished roots-rock yowler Brandi Carlile. Both are capable of broad vocal theatrics, but it should be said, Carlile is holding back here, in order to allow Cyrus the space to ruminate in this song about failure: “I’m not always right/but still I ain’t got time for what went wrong.” In her post-Disney career, Cyrus has flirted with various forms of adulthood in terms of performance — sexual defiance, hippie experimentalism and so on. But she’s perhaps at her most appealing when applying restraint. JON CARAMANICANicki Nicole, ‘No Voy a Llorar’Latin R&B enjoys a whiff of hyperpop helium in “No Voy a Llorar” (“I’m Not Going to Cry”), a preemptively defensive breakup song. The 22-year-old Argentine songwriter Nicki Nicole insists she’s fully prepared if things go wrong. “When you leave, I’m not going to suffer,” she predicts. The song’s chord progression could have come from the 1950s, but its production is as contemporary as its brittle attitude. Her pop soprano gets pitched further upward as the track begins; elusive background vocals and synthesizers puff their syncopations around the beat. Even the exposed voice-and-piano coda, the sincere payoff, gets computer-tweaked. JON PARELESBaaba Maal featuring the Very Best, ‘Freak Out’The Senegalese songwriter Baaba Maal, with an extensive catalog behind him, has lately been heard worldwide with vocals on the soundtracks of the Black Panther films. He collaborated with the African-tinged English group the Very Best on “Freak Out,” from his coming album, “Being.” Ignore the song’s psychedelic title. The lyrics draw on an old proverb from Maal’s culture, the Fulani, instructing that someone who has deep knowledge should say neither too little nor too much. Its music merges programmed and hand percussion with a desert drone, an electric-guitar lick and the backup vocals of the Very Best’s Malawian singer, Esau Mwamwaya. It’s both up-to-the-minute and resolutely grounded in traditional wisdom. PARELESEladio Carrión featuring Future, ‘Mbappe’ (Remix)Last year, the Puerto Rican rapper Eladio Carrión had a hit with “Mbappe” a drowsy and delirious Migos-esque boast. Future appears on this remix with a pair of verses that are somehow both utterly rote and also grossly charming, rapping about the place where carnality and expensive jewelry intersect, and the elation of toxic love. CARAMANICANF, ‘Motto’NF has always rapped as if full of anxiety, and on a core level, that hasn’t changed on “Motto,” a clever narrative about unshackling oneself from the stressors of pop music success. But over classicist boom-bap production amplified with a whimsical swing and some of the howling dynamics of rock groups like Imagine Dragons, “Motto” feels somehow lighter. In his early career, NF sounded as if he was internalizing all the pressures of the world, but now he sounds free and calm, dismissing those same pressures with a shrug. CARAMANICABartees Strange, ‘Daily News’“Daily News” was tucked away on the vinyl version of the album Bartees Strange released in 2022, “Farm to Table.” Now it’s streaming, and it sums up and expands the album’s moods and dynamics. Strange sings about alienation, numbness and anxiety — “I can feel the weight/Crashing over me again” — as electric-guitar lines coil and intertwine around him. A bridge finds him even more alone — reduced to nervous, isolated vocals — but someone rescues him. Perhaps it’s a partner; perhaps it’s an audience. “I’ve found you,” he exults, in a full-band onrush of drums, saxophone and tremolo-strummed guitars, and the connection sounds rapturous. PARELESCaroline Rose, ‘Tell Me What You Want’A breakup could hardly be messier or more noisy than the one Caroline Rose depicts in “Tell Me What You Want.” “I am just pretending not to lose my mind,” she explains, in a track that swerves between acoustic-guitar strumming and full grunge blare. She blurts both “I can’t bear to lose you” and “Boy you’re going to hate this song!” She wonders if she should hold on; she wants to smash everything and move along. The video clip, a drunken trek through Austin, Texas, spells out all of her conflicting impulses. PARELESAngel Olsen, ‘Nothing’s Free’The steadfastness of vintage soul carries Angel Olsen through “Nothing’s Free,” as she sings about an unspecific but primal revelation. Slow gospel organ and piano chords, bluesy saxophone and patiently hand-played drumming sustain her amid — and in a long closing instrumental, beyond — something that sounds both life-changing and inevitable, as she sings, “Nothin’s free like breaking free/out of the past.” PARELESNoia, ‘Verano Adentro’Noia is Gisela Fullà-Silvestre, a songwriter from Barcelona who’s now based in Brooklyn. In “Verano Adentro” (“Summer Inside”), she wafts her voice over an amorphous, ever-shifting electronic backdrop. At first it’s tentative — chords and pauses, the clatter of a rainstick — but other, more ominous sounds crowd in: distorted guitar, insistent drums, rumbly low arpeggios. Nothing ruffles her as she basks in bliss: “All I need is an ocean, all I need is time,” she coos. PARELESSarah Pagé, ‘Premiers Pas Au Marécage’“Premiers Pas Au Marécage” translates as “First Steps in the Swamp,” and it’s a meditation on evolution — formlessness into forms — by Sarah Page, a harpist and composer from Montreal. She mingles electronics and plucked strings in this piece, which opens with yawning, amorphous sounds and recordings of Hungarian frogs, then deploys a quintet of Japanese kotos to join her in a measured, echoey waltz and march, a tentative climb toward order. PARELES More

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      Mary J. Blige’s Daily Affirmation, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Grimes, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Kim Petras 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.Mary J. Blige, ‘Good Morning Gorgeous’Once again, Mary J. Blige battles and overcomes self-doubt. “I’m so tired of feeling empty,” she sings in a gritty croon over a slow-rolling, vintage-style soul track, abetted by a moody string arrangement. But she’s got the solution: looking in the mirror every morning with the self-affirmation, “Good morning, gorgeous.” She adds, “I ain’t talking about getting no hair and makeup/I’m talking about soon as I wake up.” The video makes clear she’s waking up in a mansion, toned and bejeweled, a long way from “all the times that I hated myself.” JON PARELESHurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Jupiter’s Dance’“Jupiter’s Dance” is an exercise in tenderness. It is a welcome departure for Alynda Segarra, who typically makes warm folk-punk as Hurray for the Riff Raff, here trading grit for cosmic reverie. In a breathy whisper, Segarra coos: “Seven revolutions around the sun/Blessings on our way, it has only begun.” The video juxtaposes celestial NASA images with found footage of people dancing to the Afro-Puerto Rican genres bomba and plena. It is a galactic prayer, a belief in the promise of the future, rooted in the vitality of the past. ISABELIA HERRERAKali Uchis and Ozuna, ‘Another Day in America’Pointedly released on Thanksgiving Day, “Another Day in America” borrows the tune of “America” from “West Side Story,” anticipating the release next week of the Steven Spielberg remake. Over syncopated guitar and a boom-bap beat, Kali Uchis sings and raps in English, keeping her tone cheerful but not mincing words: “Say ‘land of the free’/But the land was always stolen.” Ozuna, from Puerto Rico, sing-raps in Spanish, declaring, “Quisiera tumbar las fronteras de México a Nigeria”: “I would like to bring down the borders from Mexico to Nigeria.” It’s a conversation starter. PARELESAurora, ‘Heathens’The Norwegian songwriter Aurora has announced her next album, due Jan. 21, is titled “The Gods We Can Touch,” and on “Heathens” she sings about Eve, Eden and falling from grace to a life on Mother Earth. It’s a shimmering, wide-screen production, with pealing harp, Aurora’s choir-like harmonies and a seismic beat that comes and goes. It’s also a warning that paradise was lost. “Everything we touch is evil,” Aurora sings. “That is why we live like heathens.” PARELESGrimes, ‘Player of Games’Recently “semi-separated” from the Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, with whom she has a child, Grimes (Claire Boucher) coos club-ready recriminations in “Player of Games,” which she sometimes sings like “play your love games.” Over a brisk house track written and produced with Illangelo, she asks questions like “Baby, will you still love me?” and “How can I compare to the adventure out there?” as the arpeggios repeat and the four-on-the-floor thumps. “If I loved him any less, I’d make him stay,” she asserts, teasing the gossip-industrial complex. PARELESKim Petras, ‘Coconuts’A deliriously comic, sexually playful disco anthem from Kim Petras, advocating for, one could say, one kind of fruit over all the rest: “Strawberry, mango, lime/don’t compare to these.” JON CARAMANICAKerozen, ‘Motivation’Kerozen, from Ivory Coast, praises patient, diligent hard work in “Motivation,” but the song provides instant gratification anyway. A galloping six-beat groove carries exultant close-harmony vocals, punched up by pattering snare drums and bursts of synthesizers and simulated horns — pure positive energy. PARELESJoe Meah, ‘Ahwene Pa Nkasa’The latest find from the indefatigable crate-diggers at Analog Africa is “Essiebon Special 1973-1984: Ghana Power House,” from the archives of the Essiebons and Dix labels. It’s Ghanaian highlife souped up with funk, Afrobeat, synthesizers and psychedelia, like “Ahwene Pa Nkasa,” a groove that materializes out of a funk backbeat, turns into a chattery, competitive stereo dialogue between two synthesizer keyboards and eventually gets around to its call-and-response vocals, fading out before the chorus gets done. PARELESCordae featuring Lil Wayne, ‘Sinister’A casually excellent rhyme workout from Cordae, who reveres the complexity of the 1990s — “Eight months with no phone, dog/we aiming for brilliance” — and Lil Wayne, who at his late 2000s mixtape peak, which he recalls here, turned complexity into extraterrestriality. CARAMANICAEladio Carrión and Luar la L, ‘Socio’A strategically placed beat change is more than a secret weapon: It can turn a standard rap track into delicious deviance. Elado Carrión’s “Socio” opens with a soulful piano intro and snare-driven beat reminiscent of something Drake’s go-to producer Noah “40” Shebib might pull out of his hard drive. But before long, the barbs arrive. A muted echo of Russell Crowe’s infamous “Gladiator” line “Are you not entertained?!” crashes into the production, and a muscular, speaker-knocking beat unravels. The guest rapper Luar la L shoots off punch lines like rounds of silver bullets, his full-throated baritone landing each with serrated precision. HERRERAChayce Beckham and Lindsay Ell, ‘Can’t Do Without Me’A good old-fashioned power country duet, with references to the grim day job, a speeding car and the high-horsepower intensity of a rough-hewed love. CARAMANICAChristian McBride and Inside Straight, ‘Gang Gang’The Village Vanguard is where the bassist Christian McBride first performed, over a decade ago, with Inside Straight, which has become maybe the most distinguished acoustic quintet in jazz. McBride’s latest release with Inside Straight, “Live at the Village Vanguard,” was recorded there years later, in 2014, during another weeklong run. “Gang Gang,” written by the vibraphonist Warren Wolf, is the album’s longest track and its most intense. The group centers itself around the drummer Carl Allen’s heavy, spiraling swing feel, and Wolf takes a solo full of pelted, bluesy notes, painting a cloud of energy in pointillist strokes. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOSara Serpa and Emmanuel Iduma, ‘First Song’The Portuguese vocalist Sara Serpa traces an etched, wordless line while Sofîa Rei and Aubrey Johnson circle her with sung melodies of their own, and ambient street sounds gargle below. Soon Serpa begins singing words from the Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma’s book, “A Stranger’s Pose,” about his travels across the African continent: “I can recite distances by heart feet memory/I can tell wanderlust rounded as the eyes,” she sings. Then Iduma’s voice enters, accompanied by the pianist Matt Mitchell, reading a passage on the power of language to create a space “between reality and dream.” “First Song” opens Serpa and Iduma’s impressive new collaborative album, “Intimate Strangers,” a collage of her swimming melodies and his words — many of which describe the experiences of laborers seeking their fate on the road, sometimes heading north to Europe, but in many cases stuck waiting for something to change around them. RUSSONELLO More