Hozier-Byrne, Andrew (Hozier)

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    Barbra Streisand’s Silky Duet With Hozier, and 9 More New Songs

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    Hear tracks by Summer Walker, Nilüfer Yanya, Ed Sheeran 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.Barbra Streisand with Hozier, ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’At 83, Barbra Streisand still commands a voice of dewy-eyed purity, long-breathed grace and tremulous anticipation. She has announced “The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume 2” — an album of duets with Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Sting, Laufey and more — with “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” A deferential, un-gritty Hozier joins her in a slow, string-laden arrangement that changes key to accommodate him. This duet definitely won’t eclipse Robert Flack’s eternally radiant version, but it has an earnest charm.Ed Sheeran, ‘Old Phone’Fireside folk-rock contends with digital technology in “Old Phone.” It’s a guitar-strumming, foot-tapping ditty about realizing, too late, that cellphone storage can hold a Pandora’s box of regrets: lost friends, misjudgments, arguments, “messages from all my exes.” Better to wipe it next time.Summer Walker, ‘Spend It’The sound is plush and sensual, a silky, spacious R&B ballad with glimmering vocal harmonies sharing the chorus. But the message is coldly mercenary: “Give me the last four of your credit card / Buy back my love, you can keep your heart.” Instead of refuting the hip-hop cliché of women as gold-diggers, Summer Walker leans into it.Nilüfer Yanya, ‘Cold Heart’With her new single, “Cold Heart,” Nilüfer Yanya sets aside her trusty fuzz-toned guitar. Amid undulating keyboard chords and programmed beats, she sings about desire, separation, resentment and heartache: “I don’t wanna bear this burden ’cause it hurts like hell,” she sings. Many of her previous songs have built toward grungy catharsis, but in “Cold Heart,” the chords keep cycling around her; she’s still enmeshed.Bambii featuring Jessy Lanza and Yaeji, ‘Mirror’Bambii, a Jamaican-Canadian D.J. turned producer and songwriter who’s based in Toronto, keeps reconfiguring a sparse, syncopated bass riff and twitchy, flickering breakbeats in “Mirror.” Jessy Lanza sings in English and Yaeji sings and raps in English and Korean, pondering connection and identity — “I look in the mirror / I see your eyes” — as the rhythms ricochet.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The 15 Songs That Hit No. 1 This Year (So Far)

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      Hear tracks by Shaboozey, Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar and more.Shaboozey reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 this week for the first time with “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”Daniel PrakopcykDear listeners,It’s Caryn the editor here again, seizing control of the playlist one more time (don’t worry, you’ll have Lindsay back next week).On Monday, Shaboozey reached the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 with “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” making him the second Black artist to hit No. 1 on both the all-genre singles chart and Hot Country Songs. Somehow both milestones came this year: Beyoncé did it first with “Texas Hold ’Em.”The news got me scrolling through what’s topped the Hot 100 so far in 2024 — over the last 27 weeks, 15 songs have done it. And we’re going to listen to all of them in The Amplifier today.It’s always interesting to see how the official chart stacks up against cultural vibes. It may feel like the summer of “Espresso,” but Sabrina Carpenter’s Certified Bop hasn’t hit No. 1 in the United States (yet). It doesn’t just seem like Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” is dominating 2024: It is, with 11 straight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. But only one of its songs — its opener, “Fortnight,” featuring Post Malone — has spent any time atop the Hot 100. Ariana Grande’s “Eternal Sunshine” has had two songs summit the singles chart; Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” had the one. Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan haven’t hit No. 1 yet this year, but I wouldn’t count them out.The longest run belongs to “I Had Some Help,” by Post Malone featuring Morgan Wallen (six weeks, five of them consecutive). Two songs from the Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake beef hit No. 1; perhaps unsurprisingly considering the outcome, they were both Lamar’s.So let’s take a trip through the recent past together — and for fun (or counterprogramming), see how the biggest songs of the year (so far) compare to our critics’ best songs of the year (so far).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hozier Was Never a One-Hit Wonder. But Now He Has a Second Smash.

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      He broke out in 2014 with “Take Me to Church.” Then listeners on TikTok found his passionate, dramatic songs and a new single made its way to No. 1.A decade ago, the Irish singer-songwriter Andrew Hozier-Byrne, who performs as Hozier, scored a surprise global hit with his debut single, “Take Me to Church,” thanks in large part to its black-and-white music video depicting an intimate relationship between two gay men, one of whom is attacked by a masked mob. The soulful, octave-hopping track, written as a rebuke to the Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality, established Hozier as a serious, socially conscious artist. It peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned a Grammy nomination for song of the year.Though Hozier hardly disappeared — his second album, “Wasteland, Baby!” from 2019, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and its 2023 follow-up, the concept record “Unreal Unearth,” became his first U.K. No. 1 — for years afterward he operated at a lower public profile, tagged by some as a one-hit wonder. But Hozier, now on the road with a nine-piece band, is once again having a moment, courtesy of a younger generation of fans and a new hit song.“We’re selling more tickets now than when I was in the charts with ‘Take Me to Church,’” Hozier, 34, said in an interview this month while onboard his tidy tour bus, which was parked on the grounds of Forest Hills Stadium, a 13,000-capacity amphitheater in Queens, N.Y. The 6-foot-5 artist — dressed in a brown corduroy jacket and Adidas track pants, his shoulder-length hair pulled back in a bun — was just a few hours from playing the third of four sold-out nights there, a record-breaking run at the venue. In August, he will co-headline the first day of Lollapalooza in Chicago, with Tyler, the Creator.In April, Hozier reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 with the bouncy “Too Sweet,” becoming the first Irish artist to claim the top spot since Sinead O’Connor, with “Nothing Compares 2 U,” in 1990. Sung from the vantage of the hard-partying half of a mismatched couple, “Too Sweet” is featured on Hozier’s “Unheard,” a recent EP of songs that didn’t make the cut for “Unreal Unearth,” which was inspired by Dante’s “Inferno.” The track was at No. 7 for a second consecutive week in mid-June.“Most of the songs that I always admired and hoped to capture the quality of in my work were not charting hits,” Hozier said.Brian Karlsson for The New York TimesBoth Hozier and his manager, Caroline Downey, who’s been with him since the beginning, noted that all four Forest Hills shows sold out well before the release of “Too Sweet” and credited his surge in popularity to Gen Z listeners who discovered his music on TikTok. Songs featuring acoustic instruments, passionate vocals and dramatic dynamic shifts are ripe for heartstring-tugging clips about weddings, bucket-list trips and beloved pets, and Hozier has more than a few in his arsenal, including “Would That I,” from his second LP.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