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    2022: The Songs of the Year

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    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIt’s easier than ever to disagree on the best songs of the year — there is simply so much music to consume, and weighing it all against each other feels increasingly futile.But there was some — OK, a little — consensus among The New York Times pop music critics this year. Well, mainly just Ice Spice. But the lists also are broad and deep, including cuts from Cardi B, Beyoncé, Residente, Ethel Cain, Mitski, NewJeans, Tyler ICU, Lil Kee, Aldous Harding, Stromae and many more.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the songs of the year, and the sometimes unusual places they appeared.Guests:Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticLindsay Zoladz, a pop music critic for The New York TimesConnect 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 Songs of 2022

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      Seventy-two tracks that identify, grapple with or simply dance away from the anxieties of yet another uncertain year.Jon Pareles’s Top 25Full disclosure: There can’t be a definitive list of best songs — only a sampling of what any one listener, no matter how determined, can find the time to hear in the course of a year. For discovery’s sake, my list rules out the (excellent) songs on my favorite albums of the year, and it’s designed more like a playlist than a countdown or a ranking. Feel free to switch to shuffle.1. Residente featuring Ibeyi, ‘This Is Not America’Backed by implacable Afro-Caribbean drumming and Ibeyi’s vocal harmonies, the Puerto Rican rapper Residente defines America as the entire hemisphere, while he furiously denounces historical and ongoing abuses.2. The Smile, ‘The Opposite’Thom Yorke of Radiohead — in a side project, the Smile — wonders, “What will become of us?” Prodded by a funky beat and pelted by staggered, syncopated guitar and bass notes, he can’t expect good news.3. Wilco, ‘Bird Without a Tail/Base of My Skull’With Wilco picking and strumming like a string band, Jeff Tweedy spins a free-associative fable about elemental forces of life and death, leading into a brief but probing jam that reunites country and psychedelia.4. Rema featuring Selena Gomez, ‘Calm Down’The crisply flirtatious “Calm Down,” by the Nigerian singer Rema, was already a major African hit when Selena Gomez added her voice for a remix. He’s confident, she’s inviting — at least for the moment — and the Afrobeats syncopation promises a good time.5. Emiliana Torrini and the Colorist Orchestra, ‘Right Here’A plinking Minimalist pulse and a deft chamber-pop arrangement carry the Icelandic songwriter Emiliana Torrini through fond thoughts of hard-won but durable domestic stability.Thom Yorke, left, and Jonny Greenwood of the Smile performing at Usher Hall in Edinburgh in June. The band also includes the drummer Tom Skinner.Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns, via Getty Images6. Lucrecia Dalt, ‘Atemporal’“Atemporal” (“Timeless”) is from “Ay!,” Lucrecia Dalt’s heady concept album about time, physicality and love. It’s a lurching bolero that dovetails lo-fi nostalgia with vaudeville horns and an electronically skewed sense of space.7. Burna Boy, ‘Last Last’The Nigerian superstar Burna Boy juggles regrets, justifications and resentments as he sings about a romance wrecked by career pressures, drawing nervous momentum out of a strumming, fluttering sample from Toni Braxton.8. Aldous Harding, ‘Lawn’The tone is airy: unassuming piano chords; a high, naïve voice; a singsong melody. But in one of Aldous Harding’s least cryptic lyrics, she is trying to put the best face on a confusing breakup.9. Madison Cunningham, ‘Our Rebellion’Madison Cunningham sings, wryly and fondly, about an opposites-attract relationship in a tricky, virtuosic tangle of guitar lines.10. Big Thief, ‘Simulation Swarm’Adrianne Lenker’s wispy voice belies the visionary ambition — and ambiguity — of her lyrics. So does the way the band, not always in tune, cycles through four understated folk-rock chords, swerving occasionally into a bridge. It’s a love song with a backdrop of war and transformation, delivered like a momentary glimpse into something much vaster.11. Margo Price, ‘Lydia’Somewhere between folk-rock plaint and short story, Margo Price sings about a pregnant woman at a clinic, with a hard-luck past and a tough decision to make.12. Ice Spice, ‘Munch (Feelin’ U)’Cool, fast, precise and merciless, the Bronx rapper Ice Spice dispatches a hapless suitor by designating him as a new slang word: “munch.”13. Jamila Woods, ‘Boundaries’Mixing a suave bossa nova with a tapping, stubbornly resistant cross-rhythm, Jamila Woods neatly underlines the ambivalence she sings about, as she ponders just how close she wants someone to get.14. Stromae featuring Camila Cabello, ‘Mon Amour’The cheerful lilt of Stromae’s “Mon Amour” is camouflage for the increasingly threadbare rationalizations of a compulsive cheater; he gets his comeuppance when Camila Cabello asserts her own freedom to fool around.15. Giveon, ‘Lie Again’Giveon floats in a jealous limbo, hoping not to be exposed to hard truths. His voice is a baritone croon with an electronic penumbra, in a track that hints at old soul translated into ghostly electronics.16. Tyler ICU featuring Nkosazana Daughter, Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa, ‘Inhliziyo’No fewer than three leading producers of amapiano, the patient, midtempo South African club style, collaborated on “Inhliziyo” (“Heart”), creating haunted open spaces for the South African singer and songwriter Nkosazana Daughter to quietly lament a heartbreak.The Nigerian star Burna Boy addresses the challenges of balancing a relationship with his growing career on “Last Last.”Ferdy Damman/EPA, via Shutterstock17. Tinashe, ‘Something Like a Heartbreak’Nothing feels entirely solid in this song: not Tinashe’s breathy vocals, not the beat that flickers in and out of the mix, not the hovering tones that only sketch the chords. But in the haze, she realizes, “You don’t deserve my love,” and she moves on.18. Jessie Reyez, ‘Mutual Friend’Revenge arrives with cool fury over elegant, vintage-soul strings as Jessie Reyez makes clear that someone is definitely not getting a second chance.19. 070 Shake, ‘Web’Danielle Balbuena — the songwriter and producer who records as 070 Shake — overdubbed herself as a full-scale choir in “Web,” a pandemic-era reaction to the gap between onscreen and physical interaction. She wants carnality in real time, insisting, “Let’s be here in person.”20. Holly Humberstone, ‘Can You Afford to Lose Me?’In an ultimatum carried by a stately crescendo of keyboards, Holly Humberstone reminds a partner who’s threatening to leave just how much she has already put up with.21. Brian Eno, ‘There Were Bells’“There Were Bells” contemplates the slow-motion cataclysm of global warming as an elegy and a warning, with edgeless, tolling sounds and a mournful melody as Brian Eno sings about the destruction no one will escape.22. Caroline Polachek, ‘Billions’Is it love or capitalism? Caroline Polachek sings with awe-struck sweetness — and touches of hyperpop processing — against an otherworldly backdrop that incorporates electronics, tabla drumming and string sections, at once intimate and abstract.23. Stormzy, ‘Firebabe’In a wedding-ready, hymnlike ballad, Stormzy sings modestly and adoringly about a love at first sight that he intends to last forever.24. Hagop Tchaparian, ‘Right to Riot’A blunt four-on-the-floor thump might just be the least aggressive part of “Right to Riot” from the British Armenian musician Hagop Tchaparian, which also brandishes traditional sounds — six-beat drumming and the snarl of the double-reed zurna — and zapping, woofer-rattling electronics as it builds.25. Oren Ambarchi, ‘I’The first section of an album-length piece, “Shebang,” by the composer Oren Ambarchi, is a consonant hailstorm of staccato guitar notes, picked and looped, manipulated and layered, emerging as melodies and rejoining the ever-more-convoluted mesh.Jon Caramanica’s Top 22There are plenty of ways to try out something new — fooling around with your friends, tossing off a casual but not careless experiment, disappearing so deeply into a feeling that you forget form altogether.1. GloRilla featuring Cardi B, ‘Tomorrow 2’Kay Flock featuring Cardi B, Dougie B and Bory300, ‘Shake It’It was a great year for the Cardi B booster plan. Like Drake before her, she is an attentive listener and a seven-figure trend forecaster, as captured in these two cousin-like feature appearances. “Shake It” is as credible a drill song as a non-drill performer has yet made — Cardi’s verse is pugnacious and tart. And “Tomorrow 2,” with its big BFF energy, helps continue construction of a new pathway for female allyship in hip-hop.2. Ice Spice, ‘Munch (Feelin’ U)’Ice Spice is a gleefully patient rapper. On “Munch,” she pulls off a perfectly balanced tug of war between neg-heavy seduction and the affect of being utterly unbothered.3. Bailey Zimmerman, ‘Rock and a Hard Place’The trick of this catalog of a couple’s catastrophic collapse is that the arrangement never lets on that the circumstances are dire, but atop it, Bailey Zimmerman sings like he’s narrating a boxing match.4. Lil Yachty, ‘Poland’A non-song. A koan. A cry from beneath the ravenous eddies. A memory bubbling up from repression. A tractor beam. A stunt. A hopeful warble. A promise of infinite tomorrows.5. The Dare, ‘Girls’Epically silly and epically debauched, “Girls” marks a return(?) of quasi(?)-electroclash(?), but, more pointedly, is a reminder of the perennial power of lust, sweat and arch eroticism.Cardi B didn’t put out a lot of her own music in 2022, but she showed up in a savvy selection of features.Mario Anzuoni/Reuters6. Sadie Jean, ‘WYD Now? (10 Minute Version) [Open Verse Mashup]’The logical endpoint of the TikTok duet trend: one extended posse-cut version aggregating everyone’s labor into a lofi-beats-to-study-to forever loop. The wooden spoon provides.7. Lil Kee, ‘Catch a Murder’From his arresting debut mixtape “Letter 2 My Brother,” a caustic and bleak pledge of revenge from the Lil Baby affiliate Lil Kee, who sing-raps as if in a trance of menace.8. Cam’ron, Funk Flex #Freestyle171Another year, another casual calisthenics lesson from Cam’ron, the last avatar of the intricately economical style that dominated Harlem rap in the ’90s and remains staggering to observe.9. Yahritza y Su Esencia, ‘Soy El Unico’The first song Yahritza Martinez wrote — at age 13 — was “Soy El Unico,” a defiantly sad retort from a discarded partner to the discarder that pairs the groundedness of Mexican folk music with a vocal delivery inflected with hip-hop and R&B.10. Kate Gregson-MacLeod, ‘Complex (Demo)’This song began life as viral melancholy on TikTok, a brief portrait of someone stuck in the gravitational pull of a person who doesn’t deserve their care. The finished song is desolate but resilient, a hell of a plaint.11. NewJeans, ‘Cookie’Most striking about “Cookie,” the best song from the debut EP by the impressive young K-pop girl group NewJeans, is its ease — no maximalism, no theater. Simply a cheerful extended metaphor over an updated take on the club-oriented R&B of a couple of decades ago, finished off with a tasteful Jersey club breakdown.12. Jack Harlow featuring Drake, ‘Churchill Downs’The student befriends the teacher. Both drop out for a life of partying, followed by self-reflection, followed by more partying.13. Ethel Cain, ‘American Teenager’Midwest emo as refracted through Southeastern parchedness under a filter of radio pop-rock, delivering devastating sentiment about the emptiness of the American dream and the hopelessness of those subject to its whims.Ethel Cain turns a critical eye on the American dream with her debut album, “Preacher’s Daughter.”Irina Rozovsky for The New York Times14. Joji, ‘Glimpse of Us’You OK, bro?15. Delaney Bailey, ‘J’s Lullaby (Darlin’ I’d Wait for You)’One long ache about the one who’s slipping away: “Darlin’, I wish that you could give me some more time/To herd the whole sky in my arms/And release it when you’re mine.”16. Muni Long, ‘Another’Luscious, indignant, scolding.17. Romeo Santos featuring Rosalía, ‘El Pañuelo’Two traditionalists at heart, each feeling out the outer boundaries of their appetite for risk while still honoring what the other can’t quite do.18. Hitkidd featuring Aleza, Gloss Up, Slimeroni and K Carbon, ‘Shabooya’Roll-call rap that bridges the early ’80s to the early ’20s, with a cadre of Memphis women reveling in filth and sass.19. Kidd G featuring YNW BSlime, ‘Left Me’Lil Durk featuring Morgan Wallen, ‘Broadway Girls’What is hip-hop to country music these days? A source of vocal inspiration? A place for experimentation? Close kin? Safe harbor?20. Fireboy DML and Ed Sheeran, ‘Peru’The globe-dominating update of the Fireboy DML solo hit features bright seduction delivered with jaunty rhythm from Ed Sheeran.Lindsay Zoladz’s Top 25Anxiety abounds in this modern world, and music is one surefire way to process it — or maybe, for a few minutes at a time, to escape from it. The songs on this list consider both options.1. Hurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Life on Earth’Conventional wisdom tells us that life is short, time flies and there are never enough hours in the day. But Alynda Segarra takes the long view on this elegiac, piano-driven hymn: “Rivers and lakes/And floods and earthquakes/Life on Earth is long.” As it progresses at its own unhurried tempo, the song, remarkably, seems to slow down time, or at least zoom out until it becomes something geological rather than selfishly human-centric. The thick haze of climate grief certainly hangs over the track (“And though I might not meet you there, leaving it beyond repair”) but its lingering effect is one of generosity and spaciousness, inspiring a fresh appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things.2. The 1975, ‘Happiness’Matty Healy, the gregarious leader of the British pop group the 1975, is rarely at a loss for words, but on the supremely catchy “Happiness,” infatuation leaves him tongue-tied: “My, my, my, oh/My, my, my, you.” Ultimately, though, the song becomes an ode to giving oneself over to forces beyond control: like love, the unknown or maybe just the groove — particularly the loose, sparkling atmosphere the band taps into here.3. Beyoncé, ‘Alien Superstar’The moon is a disco ball and it orbits around Beyoncé on this commanding dance-floor banger, a studied but lived-in ode to ball culture and Afrofuturism. Like the rest of the remarkable “Renaissance,” the song’s focus flickers constantly from the individual to the collective, as Beyoncé’s braggadocious boasts of being No. 1, the only one, share space with her exhortations to find that unicorn energy within: “Unique, that’s what you are,” she intones regally, before a transcendent finale in which the song takes flight on a Funkadelic spaceship of its own making.4. Amanda Shires, ‘Take It Like a Man’The melody keeps ascending to nervy, dangerous heights, like a high-wire walk without a net: “I know the cost of flight is landing,” Amanda Shires sings on this imagistic torch song, trilling like some newly discovered species of bird. The title is playfully provocative, but it takes a twist in the song’s final lyric, when Shires proclaims, “I know I can take it like … Amanda” — a fitting finale for such a singular song of self.Amanda Shires makes a strong statement on “Take It Like a Man,” also the name of her latest album.Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York Times5. Taylor Swift, ‘Anti-Hero’Rejoice, you who have suffered through “Look What You Made Me Do,”“Me!” and even “Cardigan”: For the first time in nearly a decade, Taylor Swift has picked the correct lead single. “Anti-Hero” is one of the high points of Swift’s ongoing collaboration with the producer Jack Antonoff: The phrasing is chatty but not overstuffed, the synthesizers underline Swift’s emotions rather than obscuring them and the insecurities feel like genuine transmissions from Swift’s somnambulant psyche. Prospective daughters-in-law, you’ve been warned.6. Rosalía, ‘Despechá’Rosalía, smacking her gum, eyebrows raised, one hand on an exaggeratedly cocked hip: That’s the attitude, and this is its soundtrack. “Despechá” — abbreviated slang for spiteful — is a lighter-than-air, mambo-nodding dance-floor anthem, and an invitation to join the ranks of the Motomamis. As always, she makes pop perfection sound as easy as A-B-C.7. Pusha T, ‘Diet Coke’Pusha T, is, as ever, part rap-poet and part insult comic on the razor-sharp “Diet Coke,” bending language to his will and laughing his enemies right out of the V.I.P. room: “You ordered Diet Coke — that’s a joke, right?”8. Chloe Moriondo, ‘Fruity’“Fruity,” like the best hyperpop, is an anarchic affront to refinement and restraint, an ever-escalating blast of melodic delirium and warped excess. It’s a sugar rush, it’s brain-freeze-inducing, it’s recommended by zero out of 10 dentists. Turn it up loud.9. Yeah Yeah Yeahs featuring Perfume Genius, ‘Spitting off the Edge of the World’Yeah Yeah Yeahs grow elegantly into their role as art-rock elders here, not just by slowing to a tempo as confidently glacial as the Cure’s “Plainsong,” but by placing a spotlight on the existential dread of the next generation. “Mama, what have you done?” Karen O sings, channeling the voice of a frightened child. “I trace your steps in the darkness of one/Am I what’s left?”10. Grace Ives, ‘Lullaby’Grace Ives makes music of interiority, chronicling the liminal moments of her day when she’s by herself, daydreaming: “I hear the neighbors sing ‘Love Galore,’ I do a split on the kitchen floor,” goes the charming “Lullaby,” a passionately sung, welcoming invitation into her world.11. Weyes Blood, ‘It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody’The pandemic left many people isolated in their own heads, questioning their perceptions, feeling disconnected from a larger whole. The clarion-voiced Natalie Mering has written a soothing anthem for all those lost souls in the emotionally generous “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody”; its title alone is an offering of solace and sanity.12. Florence + the Machine, ‘Free’A bass line buzzes like a live wire, snaking continuously through this exorcism of anxiety. “The feeling comes so fast, and I cannot control it,” Florence Welch wails as if possessed, but she eventually finds her catharsis in the music itself: “For a moment, when I’m dancing, I am free.”13. Ice Spice, ‘Munch (Feelin’ U)’“I’m walking past him, he sniffing my breeze,” the rising star Ice Spice spits expeditiously on this unbothered anthem; before he can even process the insult, she’s gone.14. Drake, ‘Down Hill’A sparse palette from 40 — finger snaps, moody synth washes, light Afrobeats vibes — gives Drake plenty of room to explore his melancholy on this standout from the welcome left turn “Honestly, Nevermind.”15. Alex G, ‘Miracles’An aching, bittersweet meditation on the holiness of the everyday, and an expression of intimacy from one of indie rock’s most mysterious, and best, songwriters.16. Carly Rae Jepsen, ‘Western Wind’The one-time “Call Me Maybe” ingénue shows off a breezier and more mature side, as impressionistic production from Rostam Batmanglij helps her conjure California sunshine.17. Mitski, ‘Stay Soft’“You stay soft, get eaten — only natural to harden up,” Mitski sings on this sleek but deceptively vulnerable pop song, as her voice, fittingly, oscillates between icy cool and wrenching ardor.Drake takes a refreshing swerve into dance music with the songs on “Honestly, Nevermind.”Prince Williams/Wireimage, via Getty Images18. Miranda Lambert, ‘Strange’Down is up and wrong is right in this topsy-turvy, tumbleweed-blown country rocker, on which a wizened Miranda Lambert sings like a woman who’s seen it all: “Pick a string, sing the blues, dance a hole in your shoes, do anything to keep you sane.”19. Plains, ‘Problem With It’Katie Crutchfield, better known as Waxahatchee, embraces her twang and her Alabama upbringing on this collaboration with the Texas-born singer-songwriter Jess Williamson; the result is a feisty, ’90s-nodding country-pop gem.20. Charli XCX, ‘Constant Repeat’“I’m cute and I’m rude with kinda rare attitude,” she boasts on the best song from her aerodynamic “Crash” — a top-tier lyric befitting some next-level Charli.21. Alvvays, ‘Belinda Says’As in Belinda Carlisle, whom the Alvvays frontwoman Molly Rankin addresses at the climactic moment of this blissfully moody song: “Heaven is a place on Earth, well so is hell.” Towering waves of shoegaze-y guitars accentuate her melancholy and give the song an emotional pull as elemental as a tide.22. Jessie Ware, ‘Free Yourself’A thumping, glittery one-off single from the British musician finds her continuing in the vein of her 2020 disco reinvention “What’s Your Pleasure?” and proving that she’s still finding fresh inspiration from that sound.23. Koffee, ‘Pull Up’The Jamaican upstart Koffee has a contagious positivity about her, and this reggae-pop earworm is an effortless encapsulation of her spirit.24. Anaïs Mitchell, ‘Little Big Girl’“No one ever told you it would be like this: You keep on getting older, but you feel just like a little kid,” the folk musician Anaïs Mitchell sings on this moving standout from her first solo album in a decade, which poignantly chronicles the emotions of a demographic drastically underexplored in popular music: women at midlife.25. The Weather Station, ‘Endless Time’“It’s only the end of an endless time,” Tamara Lindeman sings in a mirror-fogging exhale, eulogizing a whole host of things taken for granted — love, happiness, the inhabitability of Earth — expressing a fragile, and very human, disbelief that they won’t last forever. More

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      Best Albums of 2022: Beyoncé, Rosalía and More

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      The most effective artists of the year weren’t afraid to root around deep inside and boldly share the messiness, the complexities and the beauty of their discoveries.Jon Pareles | Jon Caramanica | Lindsay ZoladzJon ParelesA Cornucopia of IdeasIf there’s one thing that unites my favorite albums of 2022, it’s a sense of creative abundance: of ideas spilling out so fast that songs can barely contain them, and of artists ready to follow their impulses toward revelatory extremes. No need to hold back: In 2022, more was more.1. Beyoncé, ‘Renaissance’A disco revival gathered momentum during the pandemic years, as musicians and listeners found themselves yearning for the joys of sweaty, uninhibited communal gatherings. Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” also looks back to dance floor styles, but it goes much further. It’s not merely a nostalgic re-creation of a fondly remembered era. With leathery vocals and visceral but multileveled beats, it’s an excursion through layers of club culture, connecting with pride, pleasure and self-definition and taking no guff from anyone.Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” is a tour through decades of dance music.Mason Poole/A.M.P.A.S. via Getty Images2. Rosalía, ‘Motomami’“I transform myself,” Rosalía declares in the first song on “Motomami,” and throughout the album she does just that: playfully, impulsively and very purposefully smashing together musical styles and verbal tactics. Every track morphs as it unfolds, hopping across the Americas and back to Spain, rarely giving away where it’s headed. Along the way, Rosalía presents herself as fragile at one moment and invincible the next.3. Beth Orton, ‘Weather Alive’Over ghostly, circling piano motifs, the songs on “Weather Alive” meditate on longing and memory, connection and solitude, nature and time. Beth Orton’s voice stays unguarded in both its delicacy and its flaws, while her production cradles it in patiently undulating arrangements, floating acoustic instruments in electronic spaces; the songs linger until they become hypnotic.4. Sudan Archives, ‘Natural Brown Prom Queen’Sudan Archives — the songwriter, singer and violinist Brittney Denise Parks — juggles the many conflicting pressures and aspirations of being young, Black, female, artistic, carnal, career-minded and social on “Natural Brown Prom Queen.” The music is kaleidoscopic, deploying funk, electronics, hip-hop beats, jazz, chamber-music arrangements and the African fiddle riffs that inspired Sudan Archives’ name, barely keeping up with her ambitions.5. iLe, ‘Nacarile’Vulnerability and courage are never far apart on “Nacarile,” which is Puerto Rican slang for “No way!” The songwriter Ileana Cabra, who records as iLe, sings about political and feminist self-assertion alongside songs about toxic and tempting romances. Each of the 11 songs conjures its own sound — acoustic bolero, orchestral ballad, Afro-Caribbean drums, gravity-defying electronics — for music that’s richly rooted but never constrained.6. Sylvan Esso, ‘No Rules Sandy’Sylvan Esso’s electronic pop goes gleefully haywire on “No Rules Sandy,” the fourth studio album by the duo of Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn. In songs that leap between the everyday and the metaphysical, they maintain the transparency that has always defined their music, but skew and tweak the details: moving vocals off the beat, slipping in hints of cross rhythms, always keeping serious ideas lighter than air.Sudan Archives’ “Natural Brown Prom Queen” reflects the vastness of her aspirations and influences.Frank Hoensch/Redferns, via Getty Images7. black midi, ‘Hellfire’The human condition is nasty, brutish and ferociously virtuosic on the third album by the British band black midi. In songs that flaunt the complexity and dissonance of prog-rock and the bitter angularity of post-punk — while stirring in ideas from jazz, classical music, funk, salsa and flamenco — loathsome characters do odious things. But the music turns grotesquerie into exhilaration.8. Björk, ‘Fossora’Forget pop comforts: Björk has other plans on “Fossora,” leaning toward chamber music at one moment and blunt impact the next. Her new songs contemplate earthy fertility and the continuity of generations, using rugged electronic sounds, families of acoustic instruments and the very human passion of her voice. As Björk looks all the way back to a primordial “Ancestress,” she’s also determined for her music to move ahead.9. Billy Woods, ‘Aethiopes’In hip-hop that’s simultaneously grimy and cerebral, upholding a New York City legacy, the prolific Billy Woods raps about colonialism, poverty, personal memories and ruthless historical forces. The unsettling productions, by Preservation, draw on Ethiopian music (of course) as well as funk, jazz, reggae, soundtracks, Balinese gamelan and many murkier sources, and Woods is joined by equally determined guest rappers. The tracks are dense, and well worth decoding.10. Porridge Radio, ‘Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky’Catharsis is the agenda for Porridge Radio, the British band led by Dana Margolin. In songs that wrestle with connection and autonomy, her vocals declaim, sob and gasp; her lyrics blurt out dilemmas and demand responses that may not arrive. The arrangements sound live and jammy, harnessing post-punk and psychedelia for emotional crescendos.And 15 more, alphabetically:Rauw Alejandro, “Saturno”Bad Bunny, “Un Verano Sin Ti”Congotronics International, “Where’s the One?”Jorge Drexler, “Tinto y Tiempo”Ethel Cain, “Preacher’s Daughter”FKA twigs, “Caprisongs”Horsegirl, “Versions of Modern Performance”Jenny Hval, “Classic Objects”Rokia Koné & Jacknife Lee, “Bamanan”Kendrick Lamar, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers”Makaya McCraven, “In These Times”Mitski, “Laurel Hell”Bonnie Raitt, “Just Like That…”Soul Glo, “Diaspora Problems”Soccer Mommy, “Sometimes, Forever”Jon CaramanicaLetting It All GoJudging by these albums, it was a year of release: superstars opting to get physical, neat songs spilling over with unruly emotions, artists relinquishing familiar beliefs, singing and rapping teetering on the edge of control. Disruption is in the air — being contentedly static is no longer enough.1. Zach Bryan, ‘American Heartbreak’An astonishing feat of emotionally acute songwriting and shredded-artery sentiment, Zach Bryan’s mainstream breakthrough is a heavy lift, in all senses: 34 songs, and 10 times as many small details that kick you in the sternum. “Summertime Blues,” the EP he released two months later, is maybe even better — bare bones and almost harried, it’s even more evidence of a faucet that simply won’t stop spilling.2. Rosalía, ‘Motomami’When Rosalía first broke through, she was engaged in a tug of war between tradition and modernity. But the dissonance she’s navigating on “Motomami” is more profound: cultivating a futurist aesthetic that spans multiple genres, eras and philosophies, making for an album as radical and syncretic as any released by a global superstar in the last few years.Zach Bryan’s “American Heartbreak” is a lengthy album that probes raw emotions.Kristin Braga Wright for The New York Times3. Drake, ‘Honestly, Nevermind’The better of the two Drake albums this year was the less expected one: a collection of earthen, sensual, soulful house music. In a career defined by blurring borders, this was less a plot twist than a quick spotlight on an underappreciated character: body music that keeps the heart palpitating.4. Priscilla Block, ‘Welcome to the Block Party’The most promising Nashville debut of the year belonged to Priscilla Block, a pop-friendly singer-songwriter with a robust grasp of country tradition. Her first album includes a few rowdy bridge-burners and a gaggle of torch songs sung in a sweet but unshakable voice.5. Beyoncé, ‘Renaissance’“Renaissance” is a few things that Beyoncé’s music hasn’t always been: chaotic, breathy, unrelentingly sweaty, appealingly frayed. A titanic collection of club music, it has an almost gravitational urgency, emphasizing the primal pull of the dance floor, where putting on airs is not an option.6. Bartees Strange, ‘Farm to Table’Bartees Strange has quite a voice, or perhaps voices. He sings with huskiness and nimbleness, plangency and viscosity — sometimes all of these at once. On his eruptive second album, he writes about growth and self-doubt, Phoebe Bridgers and George Floyd, all unified by singing that’s brimming with heart and pluck and can pivot on a dime.7. Gulch’s final show, Sound & Fury Festival, July 31, 2022Not an album per se, but the video of this 34-minute concert — on the StayThicc YouTube channel — is a hair-raising document of this San Jose, Calif., hardcore band at its punishing peak, the fan fervor it inspired, and the ridiculous, anticlimactic conclusion in which power to the stage was abruptly turned off.8. 42 Dugg & EST Gee, ‘Last Ones Left’These two, stars in their own right, have all the makings of a great rap duo — EST Gee, from Louisville, Ky., is steely and narratively vivid, his verses square-cornered and bleak. 42 Dugg, from Detroit, delivers nasal, curvy passages flecked with scars of having seen too much.9. Asake, ‘Mr. Money With the Vibe’The debut album from the rising Nigerian star Asake is both appealingly grounded and aiming for an astral plane. Taking in Afrobeats, fuji and amapiano, but also flickers of jazz fusion and even gospel, Asake’s music is enveloping and inspirational, mellow but assured.10. Bad Boy Chiller Crew, ‘Disrespectful’There’s an inherent silliness to bouncy club music, songs designed to trigger full-scale abandon. Bad Boy Chiller Crew — effectively a comedy troupe wearing the costume of a music collective — amplifies and underscores that tendency on its second album. The songs — faithful bassline and garage tunes that sound like shout-rapping over a D.J. mix — are absurd and uncanny, an invitation to dance and a metacommentary on letting loose.11. Bad Bunny, ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’The defining pop star of 2022, Bad Bunny is fully untethered from expectations. His fourth solo album is a sunshine beam, taking reggaeton and Latin trap as starting points and embracing styles from across the Caribbean, from mambo to dembow.Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” has dominated the charts in 2022.Gladys Vega/Getty Images12. Bandmanrill, ‘Club Godfather’Bandmanrill emerged last year from the Jersey drill scene, which takes the drill template of immediate, punchy rapping and matches it with up-tempo Jersey club music. In short order, he became one of drill’s premier songwriters, but his debut, “Club Godfather,” already shows him stretching beyond the genre’s boundaries.13. Special Interest, ‘Endure’The ecstatically erratic third album from the New Orleans band Special Interest is full of politically minded punk-funk. It is a howling good time, but also nervous and tense, with songs that are agitated, but more crucially, agitating.And 16 more, alphabetically:The 1975, “Being Funny in a Foreign Language”Cash Cobain & Chow Lee, “2 Slizzy 2 Sexy (Deluxe)”Tyler Childers, “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?”Fred again.., “Actual Life 3 (January 1 — September 9, 2022)”Giveon, “Give or Take”Lil Durk, “7220”Mavi, “Laughing So Hard, It Hurts”Tate McRae, “I Used to Think I Could Fly”Rachika Nayar, “Heaven Come Crashing”Harry Styles, “Harry’s House”Earl Sweatshirt, “Sick!”Rod Wave, “Beautiful Mind”The Weeknd, “Dawn FM”Willow, “”YoungBoy Never Broke Again, “Colors”Honorary late 2021 release: Kay Flock, “The D.O.A. Tape”Lindsay ZoladzInner Lives, Shared WideThis year I found myself drawn to records that created their own immersive worlds that reflected the bold, distinct perspective of their creators — a trick that quite a few big-budget pop albums pulled off, sure, but plenty of smaller indie records did, too, with just as much personality and flair.1. Grace Ives, ‘Janky Star’Small, quirky pop albums are a dime a dozen these days, but they rarely come with the wit, vision and lyrical personality of this one by Grace Ives. For the last half year, the Brooklyn musician’s sharp, frequently hilarious observations have stuck in my mind as often as her infectious, synth-driven melodies: the overdraft fee from a $100 A.T.M. withdrawal on “Loose”; the flirty way she co-opts business jargon like “circle back” on “Angel of Business.” Or how about this deadpan punchline on the jangly, crush-struck “Shelley”: “I wonder what she wants for dinner/She’s really got me looking inward.” Ives’s voice across these 10 tracks is weighty but nimble, her ear for melody idiosyncratic but always immediate and true. By the end of “Janky Star,” it’s hard not to be charmed by the warm interiority of her sound and her peculiar, canted vision of the world.Grace Ives’s “Janky Star” is laced with small details and personal touches.Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images2. Beyoncé, ‘Renaissance’Along this dazzling and immaculately sequenced joyride through the history of dance music, Beyoncé celebrates her own uniqueness while also decentering herself, refracting the disco ball’s spotlight so it illuminates a long line of forebears: Grace Jones, Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, Robin S., Moi Renee, Nile Rodgers, Big Freedia and of course her very own Uncle Jonny. Bless whoever dosed the lemonade at this party: “Renaissance” is Queen Bey at her loosest, funniest, sweatiest and — as she testifies on the sublime “Church Girl” — her most transcendently free.3. Rosalía, ‘Motomami’On the singular “Motomami,” one of the coolest pop stars on the planet mashes up innumerable genres and cultural influences to create her own sonic world. Rosalía combines the braggadocio of your favorite rapper (“Rosa! Sin tarjeta!”) with the emotional intensity of the flamenco legend Carmen Amaya (“G3 N15”), effortlessly pivoting between stylistic extremes that would give a less innovative talent whiplash.4. Alex G, ‘God Save the Animals’The Philly indie-rock everydude Alex Giannascoli reimagines the New Testament as a fanzine, sort of (“God is my designer, Jesus is my lawyer”), and the miracle is how well it actually works. The sudden jolts of sonic abrasion — a hyperpop breakdown in the middle of an acoustic ballad about the innocence of children, say — and the unbroken through line of weirdness do not diminish the radical empathy and poignant sincerity that is this record’s beating heart.5. Florence + the Machine, ‘Dance Fever’On her fifth, and best, studio album with her trusty Machine, Florence Welch’s imperial goddess persona comes crashing down to earth, or maybe somewhere even less dignified: “The bathroom tiles were cool against my head, I pressed my forehead to the floor and prayed for a trap door,” she sings on the gut-wrenching closer “Morning Elvis,” a painstakingly detailed depiction of a breakdown. Welch has never been sadder (“Back in Town”), more provocative (“King,” “Girls Against God”), or funnier (“And it’s good to be alive, crying into cereal at midnight”) than she is on the kaleidoscopic “Dance Fever,” an album that constantly, seamlessly moves between the macro and the micro, from an inquisitive exploration of gender and power to a blown-open window in the heart.6. Nilüfer Yanya, ‘Painless’London’s Nilüfer Yanya harnesses the antsy buzz of modern anxiety and transforms it into something not just manageable but actually beautiful, thanks to her elegant melodies and the lavender calm of her voice. The magnificent “Painless” is so well paced that one of the peak musical moments of the year comes at its direct center: that beat when the hitherto coiled “Midnight Sun” suddenly blooms into a reverie of guitar distortion.Florence Welch has never been sadder or funnier than she is on her latest album, “Dance Fever.”Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated Press7. Alvvays, ‘Blue Rev’This Toronto five-piece makes — and on its third album, “Blue Rev,” perfects — a kind of inverted shoegaze: big-hearted, smeary dream-pop oriented toward the sky. Molly Rankin’s achingly sweet voice cuts through the woolly squall of distortion as she sings of the thwarted expectations and indistinguishable hope of early adulthood: “I find myself paralyzed/Knowing all too well, terrified/But I’ll find my way.”8. Sudan Archives, ‘Natural Brown Prom Queen’Get comfy when Sudan Archives welcomes you into her domicile on the mood-setting opener “Home Maker” — you’re going to want to stay awhile. The prismatic songwriter born Brittney Denise Parks showcases the many facets of her musical personality — singing, rapping, playing violin — on the immersive, genre-hopping “Natural Brown Prom Queen,” an 18-track song-of-self filled to the brim with smart, sensual and continuously adventurous ideas.9. Angel Olsen, ‘Big Time’To address some radical changes in her life — coming out as queer just before both her parents died — the indie star Angel Olsen turns, incongruously, to the traditionally minded sounds of vintage country and torch-song pop. Turns out they suit the wailing grandeur of her voice perfectly, though, and she can’t help but make them her own thanks to the fiery force of her musical personality.10. Miranda Lambert, ‘Palomino’Miranda Lambert’s wandering spirit is given plenty of room to roam on the majestic “Palomino,” a travelogue across not just the interstate highway system but the many musical stylings Lambert can command: honky-tonk country (“Geraldene”), Petty-esque Southern rock (“Strange”) and even some heartstring-tugging folk balladry (“Carousel”). Mamas, this is what it sounds like when you let your daughters grow up to be cowboys.11. Amanda Shires, ‘Take It Like a Man’Here’s the spirit of outlaw country in 2022: a fearless woman gathering all her strength and belting out her truths with a poet’s diction and a bird of prey’s voice. “Come on, I dare you, make me feel something again,” the singer/songwriter/fiddle player Amanda Shires trills at the beginning of “Take It Like a Man,” and then she spends the next 40 minutes rising to her own challenge.12. The Weeknd, ‘Dawn FM’If you’ve ever wondered what the finale of “All That Jazz” would sound like had it been scored by Oneohtrix Point Never, have I got the record for you. The Weeknd follows the huge success of “After Hours” with some high-concept and deeply stirring experimentation on the probing “Dawn FM,” reimagining the pop album as a kind of death dream without sacrificing the hooks.13. Aldous Harding, ‘Warm Chris’The New Zealand eccentric Aldous Harding is a folk-rock harlequin, clowning and mugging her way through beguilingly catchy tunes. In the weird world of her fourth album, “Warm Chris,” there’s not a lot of because, just a lot of deadpan, and glorious, is.And 12 more very good records worth mentioning:The 1975, “Being Funny in a Foreign Language”Bad Bunny, “Un Verano Sin Ti”Yaya Bey, “Remember Your North Star”Kendrick Lamar, “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers”Julianna Riolino, “All Blue”Sasami, “Squeeze”Syd, “Broken Hearts Club”Sharon Van Etten, “We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong”The Weather Station, “How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars”Weyes Blood, “And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow”Wet Leg, “Wet Leg”Wilco, “Cruel Country” More

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      Aldous Harding’s Gloriously Peculiar World of Songs

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      On her fourth album, “Warm Chris,” the New Zealand singer and songwriter delivers unpredictable but enchanting vocals and enigmatic lyrics that revel in simplicity.If you are unfamiliar with the weird and wonderful world of the New Zealand folk musician Aldous Harding, the mesmerizing music video for her 2019 single “The Barrel” is probably the place to start.The song is breezy and light — gently strummed acoustic guitar chords, a buoyant piano riff — but as the video proceeds, a disarming sense of the uncanny creeps in. Something is ever so slightly off. Harding wears a billowing blouse with a pilgrim collar and a stovepipe-shaped straw hat, stiffly shimmying her shoulders and making a series of awkwardly expressive faces. It’s not quite obvious at first, but you could swear that with each cut her hat seems to be getting … taller? Then it’s definitely taller, comically so — but right when it becomes bizarre enough to laugh out loud, there’s a sudden cut to Harding wearing a spooky demon mask that takes your breath away. At any point, you might be tempted to ask, why? But that would be the wrong question. In Aldous Harding’s droll, dreamlike work, there’s not a lot of because, just a lot of glorious, deadpan is.Harding is generally reluctant to explain what her songs are “about” and gravitates toward prismatic and evocative lyrics that welcome multiple interpretations. Still, in the middle of her enchanting fourth album, “Warm Chris,” out Friday, she stumbles upon a refrain that sounds, in some sense, like a mantra for her whole joyfully immersive oeuvre: “Passion must play, or passion won’t stay,” she sings on the jaunty, piano-driven “Passion Babe,” in a high, staccato voice that makes her sound like a wise child.Even Harding’s more gloomy-sounding early records, like the sparse and gothic “Party” from 2017, were enlivened by moments of absurdist humor, like incongruous backing vocals that emerged out of nowhere on song titles like “What If Birds Aren’t Singing They’re Screaming.” Since her breakout 2019 album “Designer,” though, Harding’s music has been drifting ever closer to weightlessness. “Warm Chris,” a collection of fractured, airy pop songs and her third album produced by the PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish, continues this progression. It is her nimblest album yet, though it has not sacrificed her signature, surrealist undertow.Harding’s voice is chameleonic, and the way it changes in tone and timbre from song to song is one of her music’s disorienting pleasures. “People say to me, ‘Why don’t you use your real voice?’” she said in a recent Pitchfork interview. “But what people don’t understand is that I don’t know what my normal voice is anymore.” On paper, Harding could be classified as just another “female folk singer/songwriter,” but her music and videos have a spaciousness that makes that descriptor seem unbearably limiting. In her writing process, which she has described as a kind of channeling of various characters’ monologues, she added, “taking identity too seriously is really detrimental to my music.”And so her vocal delivery throughout “Warm Chris” is anything but predictable: On one song, the plangent, plinking “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain,” Harding sings with the reedy keen of “After the Gold Rush” era Neil Young, while on the very next, “Staring at the Henry Moore,” she’s a lilting chanteuse in the style of Vashti Bunyan. The typical Harding song is not a legible narrative so much as a tableau vivant, with strange, unknowable characters posed in the middle of a scene that is fully realized if never entirely explained.Much of this effect comes from Harding’s lyrics, which are succinct, enigmatic and potent. That wasn’t always the case: On her 2014 self-titled debut album, she used often archaic words and knotty diction, as if she were straining to sound serious and poetic. But her writing has greatly improved as she’s come to understand the power of simple, modern words arranged in unexpected ways. “Oh, the dirty of it,” she intones in a gruff voice at the beginning of the “Warm Chris” highlight “Tick Tock” — a line that is somehow both inscrutable and precisely vivid.The excellent single “Fever,” a spiky, stutter-stepping mid-tempo number, contains some of her most stirring lyricism yet. Though too vague and imagistic to be reduced to a linear narrative, the song still loosely, and poignantly, suggests how difficult it can be to make a long-term partnership work: “I still stare at you in the dark,” Harding sings in a low croon, “looking for that thrill in the nothing.”It’s quite a tightrope act to make music this legitimately odd without falling into excessive whimsy, and, every so often, Harding’s legs wobble. (“Of all the ways to eat a cake,” she sings on “Passion Babe,” “this one surely takes the knife.”) But at its core, like David Byrne in his big suit or David Bowie playing harlequin, Harding’s is a grounded eccentricity, rooted in the traditions of avant-garde theater and folk music while still retaining a welcoming sense of play. As with all of Harding’s best work, “Warm Chris” is an offbeat, infectious and ultimately liberating invitation to stop making sense.Aldous Harding“Warm Chris”(4AD) More

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      FKA twigs Seeks Angelic Intervention, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Maren Morris, Stromae, Robert Glasper 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.FKA twigs, ‘Meta Angel’FKA twigs’s new mixtape, “Caprisongs,” is woven through with snippets of conversations with friends, which she has said represents a kind of sonic antidote to the loneliness and self-doubt she was experiencing during the 2020 lockdown. The wrenching, shape-shifting “Meta Angel” is perhaps the purest distillation of this approach: After an introductory pep talk from a friend, twigs confesses her private vulnerabilities (“I’ve got voices in my head, telling me I won’t make it far”), before summoning all her defiance on an artfully Auto-Tuned, Charli XCX-esque chorus. “Throw it in the fire,” she belts, in a conflagration of emotion that sounds like the first step to healing. LINDSAY ZOLADZStromae, ‘L’enfer’“L’enfer” — the “Hell” that Stromae confesses to in this single — is thoughts of suicide. Stromae, whose father is from Rwanda, is a Belgian songwriter, musician, dancer and YouTube creator who has been making a return after releasing his last studio album in 2013. This song suggests the reason for his absence: dark, self-destructive impulses that he has averted. It begins with Bulgarian-style vocal harmonies and moves to four mournful piano chords as Stromae considers how “It’s crazy how many people have thought the same.” A choir, stuttering electronics and a looming beat answer him, but there’s nothing sanctimonious about the song; Stromae sounds like he’s still grappling with his troubles. JON PARELESAldous Harding, ‘Lawn’“Doors are the way you leave/Open it up to me,” sings the ever-enigmatic Aldous Harding in “Lawn,” from an album due in March. The track is a wispy-voiced homage to Stereolab, serenely cycling through two-chord piano patterns over breezy syncopated drums, as Harding airily ponders “losing you” and the obligations of songwriting: “Time flies when you’re writing B-sides,” she observes. The video, co-directed by Harding, features human-lizard hybrids and actual reptiles, but she never sounds entirely coldblooded. PARELESMaren Morris, ‘Circles Around This Town’The first single from Maren Morris’s forthcoming album, “Humble Quest,” vividly conjures her earliest days in Nashville, hustling around town in a “Montero with the A/C busted” shopping “a couple bad demos on a burned CD.” Those details may feel lived-in and time-stamped, but Morris knows she’s operating within a long lineage — she was certainly not the first aspiring songwriter to drive circles around Music City in hopes of catching her big break, nor will she be the last. The song’s direct appeal to this country tradition makes it feel like a throwback to the days before Morris’s pop crossover, but she and the producer Greg Kurstin prove twang is no obstacle to a soaring, universally inviting chorus. “Thought that when I hit it, it’d all look different, but I still got the pedal down,” Morris sings from the other side of success, still hungry but now with a mature confidence in her talent. ZOLADZPavement, ‘Be the Hook’An infamous lore hangs over “Terror Twilight,” Pavement’s fifth and final album, from 1999. The alt-rock super-producer Nigel Godrich was hired in an attempt to make the band’s slacker-rock sound slightly more palatable to the mainstream, but his methods ended up hastening the already-fraying group’s demise — or so the story goes. On April 8, though, Matador Records will finally release a comprehensive deluxe edition of “Terror Twilight,” and perhaps enough time has passed since the LP’s polarizing release that it can finally be appreciated on its own terms. The first taste of the unreleased material, the loose and bluesy jam “Be the Hook,” already complicates the received wisdom that “Terror Twilight” was all streamlined melodies and smoothed-over edges, as Stephen Malkmus meta-vamps charismatically atop a crunchy riff: “Everybody get your hands together and cheer for this rock ’n’ roll band!” ZOLADZKing Princess featuring Fousheé, ‘Little Bother’King Princess, a songwriter from Brooklyn, uses a programmed punk-pop beat, U2-style guitar chords, cascading vocal harmonies and the endorsement of a co-writer, Fousheé, to confront an ex who ended up being indifferent, treating her like a “little bother.” Pointedly, she asks, “Do you feel like you should-could have tried a little harder?” PARELESRobert Glasper featuring Killer Mike, Big K.R.I.T. and BJ the Chicago Kid, ‘Black Superhero’Robert Glasper, a jazz pianist who maintains a close connection with hip-hop, works through three thick chords and enlists choir-like backup vocals behind Killer Mike (from Run the Jewels), Big K.R.I.T. and BJ the Chicago Kid to call for a “Black Superhero.” The song invokes 1960s activism and current unrest to call for ways to save “every block, every hood, every city, every ghetto.” PARELESDJ Python, ‘Angel’The Brooklyn-based producer Brian Piñeyro (a.k.a. DJ Python) has a reputation for tenderness. Consider the title of his website, a painfully veracious observation on contemporary texting behavior: “sayingsomethingsincerelyandendingitwith.lol.” That kind of soft-focus sentimentality also appears on “Angel,” the latest track from his upcoming full-length “Club Sentimientos, Vol. 2.” Over the course of the 10-minute production, Piñeyro collages oneiric, crystalline synths and drums into a suspended state of astral bliss. The song arrives alongside a custom perfume, whose description — a “gender-spectral” scent that draws on rave culture — only plunges the release further into the universe of daydreams. ISABELIA HERRERAJacques Greene, ‘Taurus’Jacques Greene has always been interested in weaving the textures of all kinds of club music, but on “Taurus,” he takes a more meditative path, perhaps inspired by the film scores he recently composed. Hard-edge drum breaks propel the production, recalling the rush of a distant dance floor, but a softness remains at the center. The vaporous whispers and echoes of the vocalist Leanne Macomber float on and over each other, curling into a small misty cloud, like visible breath on a frigid day. The effect is cold and cavernous, but it offers an unexpected sense of comfort. HERRERAGonora Sounds, ‘Kusaziva Kufa’Gonora Sounds, from Zimbabwe, is led by a blind guitarist, Daniel Gonora, who had been a member of a top Zimbabwean group, Jairos Jiri Band. For years, he made a living performing on the streets of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. A documentary, “You Can’t Hide from the Truth,” revived his reputation, and on Feb. 4 he releases an album, “Hard Times Never Kill,” backed by some of Zimbabwe’s top musicians. His style is called sungura, which meshes Zimbabwe’s own traditions — guitar picking that echoes the plinking patterns of thumb pianos — with styles from across Africa. “Kusaziva Kufa” (“Ignorance”) taunts anyone who doubted that his music would survive; between drums, vocals and guitars, it’s a syncopated marvel that shifts to an even higher gear halfway through. PARELESRokia Koné & Jacknife Lee, ‘Kurunba’The Malian singer and songwriter Rokia Koné smiles her way through the video for “Kurunba,” and the beat she and the Irish producer Jackknife Lee — whose collaborative album is due Feb. 18 — worked up meshes a four-on-the floor thump, electronic swoops, quick-strummed guitars and West African percussion, an unstoppable groove. Yet her lyrics, delivered with a tough rasp, are about the ways a patriarchal culture discards women after they have raised their children, protesting with unquestionable vitality. PARELES More

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      H.E.R.’s Soulful Suspicions, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Yves Tumor, Brittney Spencer, Tyler, the Creator 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.H.E.R., ‘Cheat Code’H.E.R. (Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson) has a rich grasp of soul and R&B history backed by her old-school musicianship as a singer, guitarist and keyboardist. There are 21 songs on her new album “Back of My Mind,” but most of them cling to a narrow palette: ballad tempos, two-chord vamps, constricted melody lines. “Cheat Code” is still a ballad, but a little more expansive. Its narrator is coming to grips with a partner’s infidelity — “What you’ve been doing’s probably something I ain’t cool with” — and warning, “You need to get your story straight.” The arrangement blossoms from acoustic guitar to quiet-storm studio band, with wind chimes and horns, only to thin out again, leaving her with just backup voices and a few piano notes, alone again with all her misgivings. JON PARELESBrittney Spencer, ‘Sober & Skinny’An insightful take on the way some relationships become sites of push and pull, one promise traded for another, one letdown making room for the next. “Sober & Skinny” is lonesome and doleful (some light melodic borrowing from Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” notwithstanding), the story of two people bound by their habits, and to each other, and how that can be the same thing: “I empty the fridge, you empty the bottle/we’re stacking up a mountain of hard pills we’ll have to swallow.” JON CARAMANICAAldous Harding, ‘Old Peel’The music is methodical and transparent: steady-ticking percussion, grumbling piano chords, spindly high guitar interjections, a melody line that barely budges. But Aldous Harding’s intent and attitude stay cheerfully, stubbornly, intriguingly opaque. “Old peel, no deal/I won’t speak if you call me baby,” she sings, utterly deadpan, enjoying the standoff. PARELESYves Tumor, ‘Jackie’Yves Tumor, the ineffable and audacious experimentalist, once again brandishes a reverence for Prince on “Jackie,” another venture into magisterial rock that clings to devastating grandeur. Tumor, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, assumes the role of a tortured ringleader, shepherding listeners into their surreal world of sexual and musical provocation. It’s almost easy to miss the song’s reality: a lament for the end of the relationship, in which Tumor’s anguish makes it difficult to eat and sleep. “These days have been tragic,” they wail, yearning for the possibility of a return of their body’s biological rhythms, and a promise that they will one day be whole again. ISABELIA HERRERATyler, the Creator, ‘Lumberjack’A return to croaky bragging for Tyler, the Creator, over a beat that heavily samples “2 Cups of Blood,” from the Gothically gloomy debut album by the Gravediggaz. Tyler’s boasts take the gleaming aesthete excess Pharrell once celebrated and gives it a tart edge: “Rolls-Royce pull up, Black boy hop out”; “Salad-colored emerald on finger, the size of croutons”; a credit card that “really can’t max out.” It’s a posture he’s earned:That’s my nuance, used to be the weirdoUsed to laugh at me, listen to me with their ears closedUsed to treat me like that boy Malcolm in the MiddleNow I’m zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zeroCARAMANICAStiff Pap featuring BCUC, ‘Riders on the Storm’Stiff Pap is an electronic duo from Johannesburg: the producer Jakinda and the rapper and singer Ayema Probllem. For “Riders on the Storm,” they’re joined by the Soweto band BCUC (Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness), adding gritty voices and salvos of percussion to both deepen and destabilize a track that’s already skewed and wily. Amid buzzing, hopscotching keyboard lines and fitful drumming, the song addresses, among other things, perpetual striving and social-media anxiety, doubled down by music that keeps shifting underfoot. PARELESChucky73, ‘Diri’A false start, a tiptoeing piano hook, a video featuring a golf course invasion: with “Diri,” the Bronx rapper Chucky73 has assembled an easy home run. The chubby-cheeked, beaming Lothario dazzles here, his slap-happy persona only amplified by his self-assured, nimble baritone and punch lines about the spoils of his success: “En do’ año’ me hice rico/El dinero me tiene bonito.” “In two years, I got rich,” he says. “The money’s got me looking cute.” HERRERAYoung Devyn, ‘Like This’Elsewhere on her debut EP, “Baby Goat,” Young Devyn leans into her Trinidadian roots and her past as a soca singer, and also toys with Brooklyn drill music. But on “Like This,” she’s just rapping — pointedly, nimbly, eye-rollingly: “I don’t even speak to my pops /How the hell would you think I would speak to my exes?” CARAMANICACochemea, ‘Mimbreños’Cochemea Gastelum, the saxophonist for the Dap-Kings soul and funk band, claims his heritage for “Baca Sewa Vol II,” his coming solo album. “Mimbreños” is named after his ancestors from the Mimbres Valley in New Mexico. It’s a call-and-response, his saxophone tune answered by vocal la-las, carried by calm, six-beat percussion. Then a marimba, hitting offbeats, supplies a vamp for Cochemea’s saxophone improvisations, abetted by biting electronic timbres. It’s untraditional, yet it feels deeply rooted. PARELESLeon Bridges, ‘Why Don’t You Touch Me’Leon Bridges, the Texas-based singer whose voice harks back to Sam Cooke, probes his unhappiness as a lover’s desire wanes in “Why Don’t You Touch Me.” A patient beat and lean electric-guitar chords accompany him as he questions, apologizes, complains and begs. “Don’t leave me out here unfulfilled/’Cause we’re slowly getting disconnected,” he reproaches, desperately longing to get physical. PARELESHarold Land, ‘Happily Dancing/Deep Harmonies Falling’“Westward Bound!”, a collection of never-before-released concert recordings from the early-to-mid-1960s at Seattle’s Penthouse club, offers a chance to revisit the overlooked career of Harold Land. A coolly expressive tenor saxophonist, Land left his mark in bands led by Max Roach and Clifford Brown and by the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, but his own career as a bandleader never rose fully above the fray. In ways, “Happily Dancing/Deep Harmonies Falling,” a Land original, is quintessential hard-bop: the waltz-time swing feel, caught between elegance and heft; the cooperation between Land and the trumpeter Carmell Jones; the commingling of hard blues playing and balladic lyricism. But what sets this recording apart is Land, and his way of articulating each note with just enough restraint and sly timing to pull you in close. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBen Goldberg, ‘Everything Happens to Be.’The clarinetist Ben Goldberg arranged “Everything Happens to Be.,” the title track from his rewarding new album (its name riffs on a jazz standard), in such a way that everyone in his quintet has a load-bearing role to play. The guitarist Mary Halvorson, the bassist Michael Formanek and the saxophonist Ellery Eskelin all carry different melodic parts, as the drummer Tomas Fujiwara employs a light touch to push things ahead, mirroring Formanek’s cadence without bearing down on him. RUSSONELLO More