More stories

  • in

    Best Songs of 2024

    Listen to 68 tracks that made major statements, boosted big beefs, propelled up-and-comers and soundtracked the party this year.Jon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay ZoladzJon ParelesA Little Strife, a Lot of RhythmHere’s a dipperful of worthwhile tracks from the ocean of music released this year. The top of my list is big-statement songs, ones that had repercussions beyond how they sound. Below those, it’s not a ranking but a playlist, a more-or-less guided cruise through what 2024 sounded like for one avid listener. I didn’t include any songs from my list of top albums, which are worth hearing from start to finish. But in the multiverse of streaming music, there are plenty of other possibilities.1. Kendrick Lamar, ‘Not Like Us’Belligerent, accusatory and as tribalistic as its title, “Not Like Us” wasn’t an attack ad from the 2024 election. It was the coup de gras of Kendrick Lamar’s beef with Drake, a rapid-fire, sneering assault on multiple fronts. Its spirit dovetailed with a bitterly contentious 2024.2. Beyoncé, ‘Texas Hold ’Em’“Texas Hold ’Em” isn’t just an invocation of Beyoncé’s home state. It’s a toe-tapping taunt at the racial and musical assumptions behind country music as defined by record labels and radio stations. Rhiannon Giddens picks an oh-so-traditional claw-hammer banjo intro and Beyoncé — raised in Texas — promises “a real-life boogie and a real-life hoedown,” singing about drinking and dancing and daring gatekeepers to hold her back.3. Sabrina Carpenter, ‘Please Please Please’Sabrina Carpenter delivers a sharp message on the slick “Please Please Please.”Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesComedy is tricky in a straight-faced song, but Sabrina Carpenter’s eye-roll comes clearly through the shiny pop of “Please Please Please.” The singer tries to placate and possibly tame a boyfriend who sounds more obnoxious in every verse. “I beg you, don’t embarrass me,” she coos; eventually she reaches a breaking point.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

  • in

    FKA twigs’s Electro-Pop Enticement, and 8 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Haley Heynderickx, Cymande, Bonzie 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.FKA twigs, ‘Perfect Stranger’Collaborating with a consortium of electronic producers — Koreless, Stargate, Ojivolta and Stuart Price — FKA twigs makes the case for an anonymous hookup in “Perfect Stranger”: “I’d rather know nothing than all the lies / Just give me the person you are tonight,” she urges. The ticking, pumping track is neater and poppier than most FKA twigs songs, yet her high, whispery voice reveals the anxiety behind the offer.Cymande, ‘Chasing an Empty Dream’The British funk band Cymande was formed in 1971 by Caribbean musicians in London, broke up in 1974 after releasing three albums, and regrouped in 2014, long after being sampled for hip-hop from the Fugees, Wu-Tang Clan and De La Soul. “Chasing an Empty Dream,” from an album due in January, rekindles socially conscious 1970s R&B, with a conga-driven Afro-Caribbean groove, swooping disco strings, pointed horn arrangements and a call for music to reclaim a purpose beyond materialism. “Everybody chasing fame, with no message for the young to hold onto,” the lyrics warn. As Cymande urges listeners to heed the lessons of “yesterday,” the music embodies them.Kelly Lee Owens, ‘Love You Got’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

  • in

    The Weeknd, FKA twigs, Soccer Mommy and More New Music

    Hear tracks by Soccer Mommy, FKA twigs, Reyna Tropical 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.The Weeknd, ‘Dancing in the Flames’It’s back to the mid-1980s synth-pop of Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson and Eurythmics in the new song by the Weeknd, abetted by the symmetry-loving production of two more producers, Max Martin and Oscar Holter. Pointillistic keyboard notes bounce in stereo over programmed drums, full of major-key optimism, as the Weeknd sings about a romance that’s like fast, reckless driving: “I can’t wait to see your face/crash when we’re switching lanes,” he sings in his sweetest falsetto. A tolling keyboard coda suggests an unfortunate outcome — made explicit in the video — no matter how catchy things were. JON PARELESSoccer Mommy, ‘Driver’The grungy chug of Sophie Allison’s guitar brushes up against a lilting vocal melody on “Driver,” the third single from “Evergreen,” the upcoming album from the singer-songwriter who records as Soccer Mommy. “I’m a test of his patience with all that I do,” Allison sings of a lover who calms her clanging neuroses. “’Cause I’m hot and he stays cool, I don’t know why.” LINDSAY ZOLADZFKA twigs, ‘Eusexua’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

  • in

    ‘The Crow’ Review: Resurrected and It Feels So Bad

    Hoping to skate by off moody vibes, this revamp of “The Crow” comic book series seems derived from a flattened, Hot Topic image of the hero.In the long and winding road it took to finally get to “The Crow” — with some 15 years of recasts, rewrites, and director switches — the one constant that has remained is that this version would not be a remake of the 1994 film of the same name. It would, the mantra went, instead be a reimagining of the original comic book series by James O’Barr about a man, resurrected from the dead, enacting vengeance on the small-time gangsters who killed him and his fiancée.It’s a sensible distinction to make for any movie revamp, but here is a particularly important and likely futile disclaimer to evade existing in the shadow not only of a cult classic, but also of a tragic and storied legacy — the accidental on-set death of its star, Brandon Lee — that shrouded and ultimately fueled the original film’s beloved status. “The Crow” of 2024 was never meant to be, couldn’t ever be, a version of that movie, a grittily stylized, rough-edged gothic melodrama whose pain and grief was so deeply absorbed by fans because those very things bled beyond the frame.That, of course, is fine and all. But ultimately what this version, directed by Rupert Sanders, is spiritually derived from is neither the film nor the comic, but rather the flattened popular image that the film produced — a Hot Topic-style version of alternative consciousness.“Do you think angsty teens would build shrines to us?” Shelly (FKA twigs) asks Eric (Bill Skarsgard) about their love story, the film’s central romance, whose edgy sensitivity is packaged with as much real feeling as a perfume ad starring Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox. You might think of Shelly’s line as a kind of wink at how Lee’s image became a beacon for brooding cynicism for an entire generation.But the real punchline is that the film itself is the embodiment of that kind of hollow emo teen worship, throwing vague echoes of “Joker,” “John Wick” and “Constantine” into a laundry machine and hoping faded shades of black eyeliner remain.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

  • in

    FKA twigs Dances Martha Graham: ‘This Is Art in Its Truest Form’

    Once a young bunhead, the acclaimed musical artist is taking the stage with the Martha Graham Dance Company. For her, it’s holy grail territory.The rebellious spirit of Martha Graham has found a rebellious soul mate in another creative powerhouse. A classically trained dancer, she’s known in the world as an acclaimed recording artist. She moves like water. Her pole dancing is pretty astounding, too. This is FKA twigs.On Thursday, she will make her debut as a dancer with the Graham company in the solo “Satyric Festival Song” (1932). “To me, this is, honestly, like winning a Grammy,” she said. “I feel like I’m winning a Grammy.”At the company’s gala performance, FKA twigs will slip into her costume, a bold and graphic striped dress designed by Graham. She will pop into the air as if the floor were on fire. She will twist and bend her body into jagged edges. And she will tease the audience with tilts of the head and dancing, expressive eyes. This is a solo inspired by rituals that Graham observed in the pueblos of the American Southwest, specifically, the kachina figures that served as comic relief at religious ceremonies. Graham was also poking fun at her serious, dramatic self.“To me, this is, honestly, like winning a Grammy,” FKA twigs said of dancing with the Graham company.Caroline Tompkins for The New York TimesAn artist of vast imagination whose music defies genre, FKA twigs is adventurous in all of her pursuits. Her shimmering, fluent physicality, displayed over the years in videos and performances, is equally fearless and lissome. “My values of success and achievement are maybe slightly different to other people’s,” FKA twigs said in an interview from London. Many of her colleagues will be at Coachella over the next two weeks, “which is obviously such an honor,” she said. “But I’ve spent the whole of my life in the dance studio. I studied Martha Graham’s technique at dance school. I took the class many times when I was a younger dancer.”The Graham company, though, didn’t know she had studied the technique. So how did this solo happen? Through that unofficial dance network known as Instagram.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

  • in

    7 Rainy Songs for April Showers

    Hear tracks by Neil Young, FKA twigs, Love Unlimited and more.Neil Young, on a sunnier day.Ryan Henriksen for The New York TimesDear listeners,It’s finally April, which means it’s time for those proverbial showers. We’re enduring another dreary, drizzly week of gray skies here in New York, but I’ve found a silver lining in all the clouds. Rather than rage against the rain, I’ve decided to make it my muse for today’s playlist.Perhaps because enduring a drizzly day is such a universal experience, popular music is full of rain songs. Some (like a track here from the soul trio Love Unlimited) celebrate it, but most (the Carpenters, Ann Peebles) bemoan it, or at least see it as a metaphor for all kinds of sadness. So get ready to wallow — but know that this playlist ends on an optimistic note.Plus, if all these rain songs get you down, just know that there’s an inevitably floral sequel to this playlist coming in May.I’d rather be dry, but at least I’m alive,LindsayListen along while you read.1. Neil Young: “See the Sky About to Rain”You know I had to include some Neil Young now that he’s back on Spotify. Clouds gather ominously on this moody tune from his great, uncompromising 1974 album “On the Beach,” which features understated percussion from Levon Helm and foreshadows the downpour to come on the album’s melancholic second side.▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe 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

  • in

    Tyla Avoids a Bad Romance, and 9 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Olivia Rodrigo, Gary Clark Jr. featuring Stevie Wonder, Four Tet 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.Tyla, ‘Safer’Following her worldwide 2023 hit “Water,” the South African songwriter Tyla has now released her self-titled debut album, merging African rhythms with English lyrics and R&B delivery. The album’s songs toggle between approach — like “Water” — and avoidance. In “Safer,” Tyla pulls away from temptation. The song harnesses the log-drum beat and sparse, subterranean bass lines of South African amapiano as Tyla worries that “This feels too good to be true” and decides, “As bad as I want you, I know that it’s danger.” Choral call-and-response vocals carry South African tradition into the electronic wilderness of 21st-century romance. JON PARELESOlivia Rodrigo, ‘So American’Olivia Rodrigo knows all too well how susceptible a young woman can be to physical attraction and a good line. With the speedy, pumping new wave rock and breathless vocals of “So American” — from the extended version of her 2023 album, “Guts (Spilled)” — she sums up a guy with “hands that make hell seem cold” who “laughs at all my jokes and says I’m so American.” For three frantic minutes, self-consciousness is no match for pheromones. PARELESRemi Wolf, ‘Cinderella’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

  • in

    Drake Looks for Love, Repeatedly, and 9 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by beabadoobee, Perfume Genius, the Beths 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.Drake, ‘Falling Back’Less than 10 months after “Certified Lover Boy,” Drake has returned to monopolize summer. His surprise-released seventh album, “Honestly, Nevermind,” is a balmy mood piece —somewhere between a D.J. mix and one very long song — and after a series of weighty, overstuffed albums, it’s refreshing to hear him return to a lighter register, à la the 2017 mixtape “More Life.” (As I type this, “Passionfruit” is trending on Twitter.) Drake showcases his softer side on highlights like the club-ready, house-influenced “Massive,” and the pensive, tuneful “Overdrive,” one of several tracks partly produced by the South African D.J. Black Coffee. And though “Honestly, Nevermind” finds Drake singing more often than not, those who prefer his rapping will appreciate the relentless flow of “Sticky” and the cheeky closing track “Jimmy Cooks,” which features a sharp verse from 21 Savage.But it’s the kinetic “Falling Back,” the album’s first proper track and single, that best sets the scene: A throbbing electronic beat (produced by the D.J.s Rampa, &Me, Alex Lustig and Beau Nox) allows Drake the space for some Auto-Tuned crooning about — what else — a once-promising relationship turned sour. “How do you say to my face, ‘Time heals?’” he sings in a reedy, vulnerable falsetto, “Then go and leave me again, unreal.” The track’s video, though, is more of a lark, playfully sending up Drake’s heartbreaker reputation and imagining a time when he finally settles down and gets married — to 23 different women. Quips his mother, Sandi Graham, “I think he’s really taking these ones seriously!” LINDSAY ZOLADZRhys Langston featuring Fatboi Sharif, ‘Progressive House, Conservative Ligature’The polysyllables fly fast, then go on to accelerate wildly in “Progressive House, Conservative Ligature” by the Los Angeles rapper Rhys Langston, from a coming album called “Grapefruit Radio.” The producer Opal-Kenobi supplies loops of blurry, undulating piano chords and synthesizer swoops, shifting pitch every so often. Langston syncopates his verbal abstractions in double time and then triple time, delivering conundrums like: “Creative manners to skip and erase from moment to moment/abstract, realist, most problematic version of futurism.” It’s both virtuosic and defiantly nonchalant. JON PARELESbeabadoobee, ‘10:36’“I didn’t think you’d fall in love — you’re just a warm body to hold,” Bea Kristi sings on “10:36,” a tale of an emotionally lopsided relationship that will appear on her upcoming second album, “Beatopia.” Her feelings may be indifferent, but the song itself is exuberant — a bright, hooky blast of lo-fi pop propelled by punchy percussion and a bouncy chorus. ZOLADZThe Beths, ‘Silence Is Golden’Elizabeth Stokes is desperate for some peace and quiet on “Silence Is Golden,” the latest track from the New Zealand rockers the Beths and the first single from their forthcoming third album, “Expert in a Dying Field.” Antic percussion and squalling guitars mimic the anxiety induced by an avalanche of urban distractions, like sirens, jet planes and “6 a.m. construction”: Sighs Stokes, “It’s building and building and building until I can’t function at all.” She finally gets what she’s after in the final moments of the song, when the instruments suddenly cut out and she’s left to repeat the chorus contentedly a cappella. ZOLADZJulia Jacklin, ‘I Was Neon’The Australian songwriter Julia Jacklin doesn’t get very specific about the relationship she’s apparently left behind in “I Was Neon.” All she offers are hints like, “I was steady, I was soft to the touch/Cut wide open, did I let in too much?” Midway through the song, she arrives at the more important question: “Am I gonna lose myself again?” She repeats it more than a dozen times over an unswerving drumbeat and a language of rock obsession that dates back to the Velvet Underground — two drone-strummed electric guitar chords — with more guitars and voices arriving to wrangle over whether she’ll stay trapped in past habits. PARELESPerfume Genius, ‘Photograph’Mike Hadreas’s sixth and most abstract album as Perfume Genius, “Ugly Season,” is a work that entwines sound and movement, as he began composing it as an accompaniment to the choreographer Kate Wallich’s 2019 piece “The Sun Still Burns Here.” The beautifully spooky “Photograph” has the feel of a ghostly waltz: Drifting synthesizer riffs and groaning ambience provide the backdrop for Hadreas’s darkly romantic croon — “no fantasy, you were meant for me,” he sings — that adds yet another layer to the song’s lush, beguiling atmosphere. ZOLADZFKA twigs, ‘Killer’Even if FKA twigs weren’t suing Shia LaBeouf for sexual battery, “Killer” would be chilling. “I don’t want to die for love,” she sings in her highest, most fragile register. The track is starkly transparent — keyboard chords, electronic blips and drums, sustained bass lines, multitracked vocals, dub echoes — with a terse pop structure of short phrases and repeated intervals; she sings about attraction, intuition, self-doubt, denial and gaslighting. It’s an elegant crystallization of pain. PARELESRöyksopp featuring Jamie Irrepressible, ‘Sorry’The Norwegian electronic duo Röyksopp periodically sets aside dance beats for ballads. That’s what it does on “Sorry,” an abject apology that arrives as a preview of its next album, “Profound Mysteries II.” It begins with melancholy piano chords reminiscent of Erik Satie, then opens up a bassy abyss as Jamie Irrepressible — the British singer Jamie McDermott — thoroughly indicts himself for abandoning a lover: “I hate myself for running scared,” he croons. “No heroics, I know, will bring you back.” For the last half of the song, all he can do is repeat, “I’m sorry.” PARELESAlanis Morissette, ‘Heart — Power of a Soft Heart’Alanis Morissette arrived in the 1990s as a voice of righteous wrath and determined self-rescue. Her pandemic project has been “The Storm Before the Calm,” an album of wordless meditation tracks striving for serenity. It’s a collaboration with Dave Harrington, who has worked with Nicolas Jaar in the psychedelic rock project Darkside. “Heart — Power of a Soft Heart” has uplift built into its foundation — three slow, ascending piano notes that are repeated throughout the track and enfolded in other tones: chimes, cymbals, hovering guitar notes and Morissette singing “ah,” sustaining a magnificent hush. PARELESVadim Neselovskyi, ‘Waltz of Odesa Conservatory’Vadim Neselovskyi’s third-stream pianism shares the qualities of a sculpture carved in ice: finely wrought detail, sharply traced; glinting elegance; coolness to the touch; refractions of light. His right and left hands converse with each other in eager, enchanted dialogue. Since moving to the United States two decades ago, Neselovskyi has collaborated with leading elders in jazz, like Gary Burton and John Zorn, but on his new album, “Odesa: A Musical Walk Through a Legendary City,” he sits alone at the piano. The record is a tribute to the Ukrainian seaport where he was raised, and although he composed the suite in 2020 based on personal inspirations — remembering his childhood there, as his father, a Ukrainian Jew, fought cancer — the album inevitably takes on a different cast now that this Russian-speaking, cosmopolitan city is in the throes of war. Before he joined the New York jazz world, Neselovskyi was a classical prodigy; “Waltz of Odesa Conservatory” calls back to the 1990s, by way of some Baroque piano turns, when he was the youngest student ever admitted to the school. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO More