Post, Austin (Post Malone) (1995- )

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    Taylor Swift and Post Malone’s Regretful Duet, and 9 More New Songs

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    Hear tracks by Arooj Aftab, Cigarettes After Sex, Claire Rousay 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.Taylor Swift featuring Post Malone, ‘Fortnight’“I love you, it’s ruining my life,” Taylor Swift and a subdued Post Malone sing to each other, full of breathy regret, in “Fortnight,” the song that opens Swift’s new double album, “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology.” They’re both obsessing over a brief but unforgettable affair, even though both of the song’s narrators are now married — and, to make things worse, neighbors. “Your wife waters flowers, I wanna kill her,” Swift notes. The music is a measured march with vocal harmonies wafting through electronic spaces where the recriminations can smolder.Cigarettes After Sex, ‘Dark Vacay’Greg Gonzalez, the songwriter behind Cigarettes After Sex, sets decadent, morbid, sex-and-drugs scenarios to plush, slow-motion retro-rock that David Lynch might appreciate. In “Dark Vacay” he’s taking pills, “sipping Château Lafite Rothschild” and listening “to the last message that you left/Then the voice from the suicide hotline.” He’s calm, even a little self-satisfied, as he invites someone to “Feel it all around you/Crash and fall.”Arooj Aftab, ‘Raat Ki Rani’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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      How Pop Stars Turned NPR’s ‘Tiny Desk’ Into Authenticity Theater

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      The concerts have become an incongruous draw for pop stars with something to prove.What does anyone stand to gain from a string quartet accompanying Post Malone? At one of the megastar’s typical performances, you might find Austin Post standing alone on a vast stage, shirtless, mimicking the postures you might see at a rapper’s show, warbling his melodic pop with its intermittent hip-hop gestures. Recently, though, the singer sat down on the set of NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series — in an unassuming, tchotchke-filled corner of a Washington office — to perform a handful of his songs with a larger ensemble: 12 musicians, including four backup vocalists and four string players, rearranging his hits to highlight multipart harmonies and the twinkle of acoustic instruments. Why?Gradually, over its 15 years of existence, the Tiny Desk series has come to host some of the biggest names in music — artists like Taylor Swift, Alicia Keys and Harry Styles. That’s something of a coup, given its roots. In its early days, Tiny Desk programming was geared toward exactly the kinds of performers you might expect to find playing an intimate set in a mundane corner of an office, with no stage or lights or flashy videography: folk acts, singer-songwriters, crooning indie-rockers. The series has always introduced listeners to new musicians, and it still hosts performances in an impressive array of genres. But its biggest gets, back in the late aughts, were acts like The Swell Season or Tallest Man on Earth — musicians practiced at addressing small, hushed rooms with acoustic instruments. The Tiny Desk series became a prime venue for artists seeking an authenticity baptism. Then T-Pain changed everything. By the time the Tallahassee star performed a Tiny Desk concert, in 2014, his use of Autotune as a musical signature had led plenty of casual listeners to assume the pitch-correcting tool was hiding a weak voice. Even fellow artists complained that he was polluting the industry. (He was depressed for years, he has said, after Usher told him that he had “killed music.”) T-Pain used his Tiny Desk performance to demolish the idea that he lacked talent, sitting beside a single electric-piano player and singing, beautifully, with no digital adornment. The video of his set went viral, not least among those only just learning that his use of Autotune was artistic flair, not a crutch; it remains one of the most watched of the hundreds of sessions Tiny Desk has produced.The Tiny Desk series became a prime venue for artists seeking an authenticity baptism. The series built its audience organically, getting bigger bookings and finding frequent viral successes. If you’re looking to discover young folk, rock or jazz acts, or to rediscover sidelined innovators, its nonpop shows remain a valuable and thoughtfully programmed resource. But for pop artists, it has become a tool with a very specific utility: demonstrating in-the-room chops. It inherits this role from a long line of similar series — chief among them MTV’s “Unplugged,” a pioneer in the field of forcing musicians to spend a set signaling their allegiance to the values of ensemble performance. You don’t have to perform with acoustic instruments on Tiny Desk, but musicians often choose to. (Post Malone, for instance, used the string quartet to replace all the charming synth bleeps and bloops of his recordings; it’s a common Tiny Desk move to render digital production flourishes acoustically.) The audio and video are engineered in-house at NPR, an act of submission that’s rare in a world where stars seek to control every part of their image. And the old air of coffeehouse intimacy has, for big acts, been oddly abandoned, replaced by a new kind of excess geared to the constraints of the format. Post Malone’s Tiny Desk ensemble rivaled the number of musicians on his nationwide arena tour.A Tiny Desk appearance doesn’t just underline musical skill: There’s also star quality. Listeners already knew that Usher, for instance, could sing. But he could still capitalize on T-Pain’s precedent. Last year he used a Tiny Desk set to remind people that he is a charismatic performer even without the benefit of lavish stage production — an effective advertisement for the second leg of his Las Vegas residency shows. The purpose of a Tiny Desk appearance in a pop marketing campaign is now to assert the artist’s performing prowess, an opportunity that has been seized on by artists like Lizzo and Anderson .Paak, whose chops are key parts of their stardom.Often the goal of presenting songs in this format doesn’t feel financial or artistic or even purely a matter of marketing; sometimes it feels almost ideological. Post Malone doesn’t exactly need the exposure Tiny Desk offers. He surely has the resources to stage his own acoustic performance videos. But Tiny Desk offers the perfect venue to present himself as a genre-transcending renegade. The performance that results feels less like a musical idea and more like a statement about his persona — an argument that he’s not “just” a hip-hop artist, that his hit song “I Fall Apart” can be both a stadium banger and cello-adorned chamber music.There are perils in this hybridity. Stripped of the artificial charm he can summon in a recording studio or the collective exhilaration he can rely on in an arena, the Tiny Desk version of Post Malone reveals his songs a little too clearly for what they are. The packaging insists that he’s able to transcend genre, but his blithe transit through rap, pop and ballads shows no commitment to any of these forms beyond ensuring their availability to him. Their meanings are hollowed out; their signifiers are piled up into a thing without a center. The whole set sounds like no one thought much about making it good — only about making the point that Post Malone could do it. Post isn’t the only artist whose Tiny Desk performance revealed a certain shallowness. Take the British producer and electronic musician Fred Again. It’s hard to imagine many of his forebears in dance music capitulating to the notion that “authentic” live performance is the way to justify their work. But Fred Gibson aimed his music at a Tiny Desk funnel, performing alone at a piano amid a nest of samplers and synthesizers. His anthems for crying on the dance floor felt, without the dance floor, like a saccharine, exhausting solicitation of approval — more interested in asserting that Gibson is a composer and a performer than in doing justice to the genre he’s currently dominating. With every year, more and more of pop music moves over into the disembodied world of digital sound production, pushing further into the synthetic, the abstract — sounds that are neither rooted in nor trying to imitate anything in the real world. At the same time, audiences seem to hunger for a certain type of authenticity theater, and artists hunger to perform it. It grows steadily more tempting for musicians to hedge their eccentricities and creative excursions into studio sounds with lavish office-corner performances — sets that are growing steadily more incongruous and strange. The Tiny Desk is where pop stars can go to reconcile all the exquisite contradictions of being a performing musician in 2023. For some, a better option is to leave them be.Opening illustration: Source photographs from NPRAdlan Jackson is a writer from Kingston, Jamaica, who covers music in New York. He runs the Critical Party Studies blog. More

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      Mitski’s Beautifully Moody Meditation, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jorja Smith, Towa Bird, Wilco and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Mitski, ‘Bug Like an Angel’Mitski has a gift for singing serenely about troubled thoughts and finding large implications in small images. That’s what she does in “Bug Like an Angel,” a song from her next album, “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We,” due Sept. 15. That bug is stuck to the bottom of a glass — which makes her reflect, in turn, on drinking and a relationship gone stale. The song is subdued and moody, mostly just Mitski and four guitar chords. But when she gets to a life lesson, suddenly a choir appears, as if there’s a chance of redemption after all. JON PARELESTowa Bird, ‘This Isn’t Me’The singer, songwriter and guitarist Towa Bird evokes feelings of social alienation on “This Isn’t Me,” a single from her forthcoming debut album. Out of place at the sort of gathering where there’s “a special spoon for caviar,” she sings in a lilting melody, “Sycophants and luxury, everyone’s a somebody, and I wish you were here with me.” Her vocal delivery is breathy and muted, but beneath that, her nimble guitar playing expresses her inner rage. LINDSAY ZOLADZJorja Smith, ‘Go Go Go’“Go Go Go” isn’t a cheer — it’s a command, as an increasingly fed-up Jorja Smith decides, “I don’t know you that well/And I’m not trying to get to know you,” soon adding, “You gotta go.” Her voice ricochets off a backbeat that’s both pushy and lean, defined by a bare-bones, Police-like trio of drums, rhythm guitar and occasional bass, for a jumping, unapologetic heave-ho. PARELESPost Malone, ‘Joy’Post Malone — despite his face tattoos — has emerged as an old-fashioned rock songwriter, reaching for hooks. He’s also deeply committed to self-pity. “The harder I try/The more I become miserable/The higher I fly, the lower I go,” he sings in the ironically titled “Joy,” a bonus track added to his latest album, “Austin.” The beat pushes ahead, with a bass line that pulses like a 1980s Cure track, but Post Malone stays proudly mired. A choir arrives at the end to savor the word “miserable.” PARELESWilco, ‘Evicted’“Am I ever gonna see you again?” Jeff Tweedy wonders in “Evicted,” a low-key preview of Wilco’s album due Sept. 29, “Cousin.” Apparently not: “I’m evicted from your heart/I deserve it,” he confesses. With a new producer, Cate Le Bon, what starts as basic Wilco country-rock — steady-chugging piano, strummed acoustic guitar — gathers a shimmery psychedelic aura while the singer’s despair deepens. PARELESHalle, ‘Angel’Halle Bailey — half of the sister duo Chloe x Halle — contrasts celestial perfection with earthly travail in “Angel,” a somber but determined self-affirmation that fuses the church and R&B. “Won’t let the troubles of the world come weigh me down,” she vows. When she sings, “Some might hate and they wait on your fall/They don’t know there’s a grace for it all,” it could well be her dignified response to the racist backlash she received for starring as Ariel in the live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid.” Quasi-classical piano arpeggios roll through the song, and Halle’s tremulous voice leaps up to high soprano notes as she declares herself to be an angel, “perfectly a masterpiece” even with flaws and scars. PARELESNite Bjuti, ‘Singing Bones’Spirit, conjure, necromancy and memory seem to be some of the grounding ideas behind “Nite Bjuti,” the eponymous debut album from a new collective trio (pronounced “Night Beauty”) featuring the vocalist Candice Hoyes, the turntablist and percussionist Val Jeanty and the bassist Mimi Jones. They improvised all 11 tracks in the studio; by the last one, “Singing Bones,” Hoyes is inviting the dead to rise. Over a spare, electronic, six-beat rhythm from Jeanty and a plump, syncopated pattern from Jones’s electric bass, Hoyes almost whispers, then croons: “Rise up, singing bones/Shake yourself together.” Then the song is over, almost before it began. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLODamon Locks & Rob Mazurek, ‘Yes!’“New Future City Radio,” the first duo album from two longtime collaborators, the multidisciplinary artist Damon Locks and the trumpeter Rob Mazurek, was imagined as a pirate radio broadcast from the future. Or maybe from an alternate version of now, where a group of everyday anarchists might still have a fighting chance at repossessing a stray radio frequency. The music is about perception, not optimism. On “Yes!,” a slyly swinging drum loop clangs along beneath a cropped synth sample, until the music cuts out momentarily and Locks enunciates: “They got you where they want you: nowhere/Shrouded in confusion, grasping at straws.” The beat reappears. “When you’re living like this, you can’t envision/Blind to possibility, this is where the plan kicks in.” This album is supposed to make you long for another world, but like a good radio broadcast it also works well as background or ambience — putting questions in your head that you can’t articulate, without elbowing everything else out of your brain. RUSSONELLOKany García and Carin Leon, ‘Te Lo Agradezco’The Puerto Rican singer and songwriter Kany García has lately been dabbling in regional Mexican music; she had a hit 2022 duet, “El Siguiente,” with the Mexican singer Christian Nodal. Now she has another one: “Te Lo Agradezco” (“I Appreciate It”) with Carin Leon, a Mexican singer and songwriter who leans into the drama with tremolos and breaking notes. The song is a furious exchange of accusations, though they are sometimes shared in close harmony; apparently there were lies and betrayal on both sides. The arrangement stays elegant — with a sousaphone bass line, mariachi horns, a guitar obbligato and a hovering pedal steel guitar — while the singers battle. PARELESUsher, Summer Walker and 21 Savage, ‘Good Good’The world is full of scorched-earth breakup songs, but on “Good Good,” Usher, Summer Walker and 21 Savage team up for something considerably rarer: a song about staying on decent terms with an ex. “We ain’t good-good, but we still good,” Usher sings benevolently on the hook, while Walker echoes the sentiment, adding, “We’re happier apart than locked in.” But it’s 21 Savage who makes perhaps the most generous offer: “If you wanna open up a new salon,” he raps, “I’d still help pay for the wigs.” ZOLADZJonathan Suazo, ‘Don’t Take Kindly’Everything on the saxophonist and composer Jonathan Suazo’s new LP, “Ricano” — which finds him mining the intersections between his Puerto Rican and Dominican bloodlines — seems to be spilling energy out the top. This is richly built, effusively played Latin jazz, written from the heart and packed with complexity, always seeking the next level of altitude. On “Don’t Take Kindly,” as Tanicha López sings in billowy open vowel sounds and long, held tones, the ensemble’s three percussionists play around with a rhythm based in Puerto Rican bomba, while Suazo’s alto saxophone douses them in minor blues. RUSSONELLOKnoel Scott featuring Marshall Allen, ‘Les Funambules’The swing is righteously loose and steamy on “Les Funambules,” from “Celestial,” the debut studio album from Knoel Scott, a longtime saxophonist and flutist with the Sun Ra Arkestra. On “Celestial,” Scott’s acoustic quartet is augmented by a special guest: the explosive alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, 99, who has led the Arkestra since Ra’s death. “Les Funambules” means “the tightrope walkers,” but nobody walks a tightrope like this: going every direction at once, limbs kicking out. But the title fits. As Scott and Allen’s saxes trill in wild harmony, you can feel a sense of balance in motion, of poise and danger and control. RUSSONELLO More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): Fans Misbehaving at Concerts, and Pinkydoll’s NPC TikTok

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The recent scourge of concertgoers throwing things at pop stars onstage and how Adele, Harry Styles, Bebe Rexha, Drake and others have responded; plus the ways in which the stage/crowd barrier has become more porous in recent years, in both directionsThe TikTok streamer Pinkydoll, who has honed an NPC-style of performance that has been earning her thousands of viewers, and thousands of dollarsNew songs from Troye Sivan and Militarie Gun (as performed by Post Malone)Whether there’s still a Mason-Dixon line divide in pop music consumption, especially as it relates to hip-hop and countrySnack of the weekConnect 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. More

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      Billy Walsh Designs Sneakers for Rihanna and Writes Songs for the Weeknd

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      The Footwear News Achievement Awards, sometimes called the Oscars of shoes, shines a spotlight on the industry’s top designers. But when the singer Dua Lipa won for a Puma collection last November, her frequent collaborator Billy Walsh bolted at the sight of flashing cameras.“Billy Walsh’s five-seconds limit on the red carpet,” Ms. Lipa said, as photographers shouted her name at Cipriani Wall Street.“More like two seconds,” Mr. Walsh, 40, added safely from the sidelines.Avoiding attention is a peculiar trait for a man who collaborates with some of the biggest names in pop, including Ms. Lipa, Post Malone and the Weeknd, straddling the upper echelons of fashion and music.He has collaborated with Rihanna on a Fenty collection with Puma, and consulted Kanye West on video directors. As a fashion stylist, he dressed the Weeknd in Givenchy for the Met gala and James Blake in Yohji Yamamoto for awards shows.But his biggest achievements are in songwriting. His co-writing credits include “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee, and six tracks on Mr. West’s “Donda” album — and those are just counting his Grammy nominations.“Billy is part of a small group of people in this industry that I consider to be like family,” Mr. Malone said by email. Their shared writing catalog also includes the hits “I Fall Apart,” “Better Now,” “Wow” and “Circles.” “Not only is he one of the best songwriters, but he is a brilliant creative and fashion designer.”Dua Lipa and Mr. Walsh won collection of the year award at the Footwear News Achievement Awards last November.Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressMr. Walsh has written numerous songs for Post Malone, seen here at a Spotify concert in 2022.Antony Jones/Getty ImagesOn a recent Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Walsh went shopping at Dover Street Market, the retail temple in Manhattan where he often goes for inspiration. “I would come here to do massive pulls for the Weeknd,” he said. “I used to start on the top floor and work my way down.”He still does. As he flipped through racks of Raf Simons and Junya Watanabe on the seventh floor, Mr. Walsh recounted this unorthodox rise in the recording and street wear industries. “Fashion and music are definitely interrelated, but I guess I don’t know too many people who have succeeded in both,” he said. “I stay in the back and don’t need credit.”Dressed in an all-black “uniform” (T-shirt, Prada nylon shorts, Alyx socks and Nike Air Tuned Max sneakers), with his signature shaved head and chrome-metal grills, he has the tough-guy appearance of a post-apocalyptic British rude boy.Mr. Walsh credits his dexterity to his rough-and-tumble upbringing in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. His father, William Walsh, a folk musician who performed at local Irish pubs, encouraged him to write poetry and dance. He was also an obsessive sneaker head. “I drove my mom crazy looking all over the city for the Adidas Equipment Basketball shoes with the interchangeable, different-colored socks,” he said.Other addictions followed. He started drinking at 11, often getting into after-school brawls until he sobered up a decade later.Mr. Walsh at his home in Los Angeles.Jack Bool for The New York TimesAt 18, he headed to Los Angeles to study dance at Loyola Marymount University, and signed with an agent. But dance gigs were few and far between, so he spent most of his 20s as a nightclub promoter, working alongside his brother at Hollywood hot spots like Emerson Theater and Hyde, where he would party with a young Post Malone and future designers like Matthew M. Williams of Givenchy.In 2011, the choreographer Fatima Robinson, who he met at Eden, a Hollywood nightclub, encouraged him to stop dancing and focus on poetry and design instead. “This woman literally saved my life,” he said.He quit auditioning and busied himself with writing poetry and daydreaming about street wear. He looked inside his sneaker closet and began experimenting with Frankenstein combinations. One of the first designs cobbled together was a white Nike Air Force One with a black rubber creeper sole. “I always wondered what a creeper would look like with certain old sneakers from my childhood,” he said.He wore his custom sneakers to the clubs, which would get noticed by emerging V.I.P.s like Virgil Abloh and Travis Scott. In 2014, with seed money from fellow party promoters, he and a friend started a street wear label called Mr. Completely, which reimagined classic sneakers including Adidas Sambas and Stan Smiths.Mr. Walsh added a creeper sole to an Adidas Stand Smith for his streetwear brand, Mr. Completely.via Billy WalshTo promote the brand, he held a party at Fourtwofour on Fairfax and invited everyone he knew. Among them was the stylist Jahleel Weaver, who ordered several pairs for his client Rihanna. That turned out to be a propitious sale. A few months later, Rihanna invited Mr. Walsh to design her debut collection with Puma (which went on to win the Footwear News “Shoe of the Year” two years later).Sneakers opened other doors. One of them led to Illangelo, a veteran Canadian producer, who became a confidant and his unexpected entree into music writing. Once again, it started at a nightclub. The two were clubbing on the Sunset Strip in 2014 when Illangelo mentioned that he needed a new songwriter. Seizing the moment, Mr. Walsh shared a short poem from his iPhone Notes app.Illangelo was so impressed that he brought Mr. Walsh into studio sessions with Alicia Keys and he ended up getting his first mainstream writing credit on the song, “In Common.” Illangelo also introduced Mr. Walsh to the Weeknd, who at first was only interested in working with him as a stylist. (The two shared an appreciation for military bomber jackets.) But as Mr. Walsh’s reputation as a songwriter began to rise, the Weeknd began bringing him into the studio.Mr. Walsh dressed the Weeknd for the Met Gala in 2016.George Pimentel/WireImageMr. Walsh dressed James Blake in Yohji Yamamoto for the Grammy Awards in 2020.Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesThose sessions resulted in three tracks from the 2016 album‌‌ “Starboy,” including “True Colors” and “Die ‌for You,” which peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 this month, seven years after it was first released, thanks to going viral on TikTok.Mr. Walsh has since gone on to write more than 100 songs for artists as varied as the Kid Laroi (“Without You”), pop powerhouses like Mr. Malone and Ms. Lipa, and rock royalty like Ozzy Osbourne (“Ordinary Man”). His publishing catalog has racked up a combined 20 billion streams. Last November, “Sunflower” went 17 times platinum, becoming the highest-certified single of all time.His soaring music career hasn’t stopped him from other creative pursuits. In 2016, he started Donavan’s Yard, a nightlife collective in Los Angeles with the D.J.s Drew Byrd and Sean G that hosts parties in Tokyo and a streaming concert series on Amazon Music Live. Branded merch is sold at Dover Street Market,In October, he started a conceptual street wear label called Iswas with Keith Richardson, his creative partner at Mr. Completely. The label currently sells one item: a pair of painter’s pants made from Japanese selvage denim that costs $450.Despite his many accolades, Mr. Walsh prefers being behind the scenes. “I am never the main focus, just as it should be,” he said. Jack Bool for The New York TimesWearing many hats, Mr. Walsh said, affords him creative freedom. “If Abel knows I am winning an award with Dua and doing my own clothing line, he respects that I’m doing OK for myself,” he said, referring to the Weeknd by his given name. “No one feels like you’re too dependent.”Back at Dover Street, Mr. Walsh went from floor to floor, examining the clothing racks like an archaeologist at a fresh dig. On the shoe floor, he picked up a pair of cloven-toed “tabi” boots by Martin Margiela. “I appreciate what this guy does,” he said of the designer, who, like himself, shuns the limelight in favor of letting his work speak for itself.After about two hours, he reached the Rose Bakery on the ground floor, took a seat and ordered an Earl Grey tea. As ambient music played overhead, he reflected on his unusual journey. “My success comes from artists recognizing that I see the creative process as sacred, somewhat secret,” he said. “I am never the main focus, just as it should be.” More

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      Post Malone and Pop’s Single Sound

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      “Twelve Carat Toothache,” the new album from the post-genre star, continues to collapse several styles into one, and hones a template adopted by a new generation, including Tate McRae.For a stretch in the mid-to-late 2010s, Post Malone found a way to make every kind of music, all at once. His songs were rooted in the attitude of hip-hop while helping underscore the genre’s sing-rap evolution. He had a penchant for lightly plangent country, and lived in the long shadow of what was once called alternative rock. Every now and then, he dialed up his tempo ever so slightly, turning his wails into bright pop. And his voice, a heavily processed sweet gargle, sounded completely modern, yet also like a deeply imprinted memory.On his fourth album, “Twelve Carat Toothache,” the 26-year-old musician returns with more sorrowful yodels from the basement of the gilded mansion. Success hasn’t sated him, nor has it challenged him. He remains a calm synthesizer of styles for an era in which old borders matter less than ever. At times, he is relentlessly effective, but just as often, his music has an air of indifferent inevitability — it sounds both like the template for what’s still to come and also the logical endpoint of pop specificity as we once knew it.What makes Post Malone particular are songs in which ecstasy and misery are indistinguishable: antagonists are saviors, surrender is freedom. “I was born to raise hell/I was born to take pills/I was born to chase mills,” he moans on “Reputation,” never shifting his tone. On “Euthanasia,” he can’t decide what form celebration should take: “Behold! A sober moment/Too short, and far between/I should crack one open to celebrate being clean.”The real narcotic is Post Malone’s voice, though — it contains unanimity. Whether boasting about stealing someone’s girlfriend (“Insane”), excavating the anxiety associated with hyperfame (“Wasting Angels”) or delivering the odd deeply moving koan (“Everything done for the dead after they’re dead is for the living”), he sounds the same: bereft, lonely, removed.That consistency goes a long way in the streaming ecosystem, when songs have no incentive to ever come to a conclusion, or resolution. TikTok may reward the choppy and the bristling, but Spotify privileges the tuneful and the atmospheric.This album’s production leans in to that, even as it includes some of Post Malone’s brightest sounds to date: “Wrapped Around Your Finger” has 1950s sweetness and 1980s syntheticness, and “I Cannot Be (a Sadder Song)” has a bubbly undertow that recalls some of the squeakiest K-pop. “One Right Now,” with the Weeknd, is more zippy dyspepsia.But even the chirpy moments don’t detract from the album’s tonal consistency — Louis Bell, a longtime collaborator and architect of Post Malone’s sound, is an executive producer on “Twelve Carat Toothache,” and has a production credit on each track. Mostly, he’s conducting a gloomy mood that’s tactile — “Insane” is ominous, “Cooped Up” is lavishly empty, and the production on “Love/Hate Letter to Alcohol” sounds like Foley artists recreating storm sounds for a disaster film. It’s ignorable but inescapable music that operates at gut level, not ear level — call it “Ambient 2: Music for AirPods.”The album’s guest roster captures the potency of this approach as well: Mostly, Post Malone seeks out like-voiced performers who blend singing and rapping — Gunna, the Kid Laroi, Doja Cat, Roddy Ricch. He even recruits Fleet Foxes, who more than a decade ago brought a keening shimmer to roots-friendly indie rock, making music that was epiphanic and smudgy, and a little grating. This gathering of performers feels pointed: a seamless bridge between generations of stars in Post Malone’s image, even as the man himself remains blurry.Strikingly, though, this tactic is even spilling over to more straightforward pop singer-songwriters, who are finding the audience for crispness narrower than it might once have been.It’s hovering over “I Used to Think I Could Fly,” the astute and piercing debut album from the 18-year-old Canadian Tate McRae. McRae has found some success on TikTok, mostly as a lightly puckish (or even punky) pop singer in the Olivia Rodrigo vein. Her recent hit “She’s All I Wanna Be” is a taut mix of self-laceration and eye-rolling. And some of the finest moments on this album follow a similar pattern, like “What Would You Do?,” with its sock-hop sass, or the exceptional “What’s Your Problem?,” which renders romantic gut punch with curiously ecstatic production.But more often, McRae’s sharp vocals are coated in layers of production — the melancholy “Hate Myself” is thick with theatrical reverb, and “Go Away” pulses with a muscular throb. There’s the faintest hint of R&B on “I’m So Gone” and “Don’t Come Back.” And the smeared production and vocal effects on “Chaotic” start somewhere near Billie Eilish but then become something more synthetic, touching on the anodyne joy of Christian pop and Post Malone’s aquatic pain. For good measure, Bell produced a track on McRae’s album, “You’re So Cool,” which echoes some of the more optimistic moments on “Twelve Carat Toothache.”It is a savvy decision, but also something of a hedge — in an era in which styles are all melting into one, it can seem like the way to stand out is to fit in. But maybe not forever.Post Malone“Twelve Carat Toothache”(Mercury/Republic)Tate McRae“I Used to Think I Could Fly”(RCA) More

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      Post Malone and the Weeknd’s Emo Synth-Pop, and 12 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jenny Lewis, TNGHT, Dawn Richard 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.Post Malone and the Weeknd, ‘One Right Now’Oh, the fragile male ego. “Don’t call me baby when you did me so wrong” is one of the milder jibes hurled at a straying girlfriend by Post Malone as he trades verses with the Weeknd. She may want to get together, but the guys have already moved on, with “one coming over and one right now.” A very 1980s track — springy synthesizer bass line and hook, programmed beat — carries pure, focused resentment about how much damage she’s done to “my feelings.” JON PARELESCharli XCX featuring Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek, ‘New Shapes’“What you want/I ain’t got it,” Charli XCX snarls over a blast of ’80s pop gloss. The British pop provocateur unleashes her ultrapop persona, brooding over cinematic new wave synths. “New Shapes” leverages the kind of vulnerability and insecurity that defines some of Charli’s best work, thanks to pointed verses from her guests (and previous collaborators), the sad girl supergroup of Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek. The whole thing doesn’t quite measure up to the irresistible drama of the beloved 2019 anthem “Gone,” but hey, the girls will take it. ISABELIA HERRERATerrace Martin featuring Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Ty Dolla Sign and James Fauntleroy, ‘Drones’The polymathic musician and producer Terrace Martin is widely known for helping Kendrick Lamar sculpt his jazz-tinted masterpiece, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” but he’d been an asset in Los Angeles studios since the mid-2000s, when he first fell in with Snoop Dogg. The title track from Martin’s new solo album, “Drones,” is something like a reading of his résumé, with features from four resounding names in L.A. hip-hop. The dapper, G-funk beat is a braid of plunky guitar, pulsing electric piano and 808 percussion; the lyrics — sung partly by Lamar, in a sly shrug — describe a booty-call relationship that’s exactly as shallow as it looks to the outside world, and maybe not much more satisfying. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLODawn Richard, ‘Loose Your Mind’Following her eclectic album “The Second Line,” released earlier this year, Dawn Richard’s new track for the Adult Swim Singles series is all bass-heavy, aqueous funk. Her voice shape-shifts throughout “Loose Your Mind,” so at times it almost feels like she’s duetting with different sides of her prismatic personality. “Ain’t really nothing wrong when the feeling is golden,” she spits at the beginning, before a melodic chorus of Dawns responds in agreement: “Solid gold.” LINDSAY ZOLADZTNGHT, ‘Tums’Few songs defined the hypermaximalist sound of the 2010s as succinctly as the electronic duo TNGHT’s “Higher Ground,” that brassy, ever-escalating EDM anthem that was sampled by Kanye West on “Yeezus” and — I will die on this hill — has to be the inspiration behind the “Arby’s: We Have the Meats” jingle, right? After a long hiatus, the producers Hudson Mohawke and Lunice reunited as TNGHT in 2019, and have now released a new track called “Tums,” which Lunice says was created according to the duo’s guiding principles: “Keep it really fun. Dumb. Hard-hitting. Don’t overwork it.” Sampled giggles and slide whistles keep things fizzy on the surface, while the track’s booming low end guides it through a series of roller-coaster drops. “Tums” might not be as innovative as the pair’s earlier work, but maybe that’s because everything else has been sounding like them for years now. ZOLADZSimi, ‘Woman’With “Woman,” the Nigerian singer and songwriter Simi offers a tribute, corrective and update to Fela Anikalupo Kuti, who invented Afrobeat in the 1970s in songs including “Lady,” which scoffed at European feminism. “Woman” mixes current electronic Afrobeats with the funk of Kuti’s 1970s Afrobeat, while quoting Kuti songs between her own assertions about women’s strengths: “She won’t pay attention to the intimidation.” The rhetoric is tricky; the beat is unstoppable. PARELESGregory Porter featuring Cherise, ‘Love Runs Deeper’The standard elements of Gregory Porter’s style run through “Love Runs Deeper”: lyrics that linger on the difficulties — and the bounties — of care and connection; twinkling orchestral strings; a gradual build that allows his burly, baritone voice to unfurl itself with just enough tension and release. But this is more of a direct-delivery power ballad than most of Porter’s tunes: The melody wouldn’t feel out of place on an Adele or Halsey record, and it’s liable to get lodged in your head quickly and stay there. With supporting vocals from the young British singer Cherise, “Love Runs Deeper” serves as the soundtrack to Disney’s annual holiday-season advertisement, which this year is a short film (full of self-referential touches, like a Buzz Lightyear cameo) titled “The Stepdad.” The song is also included on a new Porter compilation, “Still Rising,” which features a mix of his greatest hits, B-sides and new songs. RUSSONELLOJenny Lewis, ‘Puppy and a Truck’“My 40s are kicking my ass, and handing them to me in a margarita glass” — how’s that for an opening line? Something about the gentle country strum and laid-back croon of Jenny Lewis’s new stand-alone single recalls her old band Rilo Kiley’s great 2004 album “More Adventurous,” though her perspective has been updated with the unglamorous realities and hard-won wisdom of middle age. After chronicling the wreckage of a few recent relationships, the eternally witty Lewis arrives at a mantra of tough-talking self-reliance: “If you feel like giving up, shut up — get a puppy and a truck.” ZOLADZChastity Belt, ‘Fear’Lydia Lund spends much of the Washington indie-rock band Chastity Belt’s new song “Fear” hollering until she’s hoarse, “It’s just the fear, it’s just the fear.” Apparently she recorded the vocals while she was staying at her parents’ house, and her commitment to the song was so intense that her mother knocked on the door to make sure she was OK because she “thought I was doing some kind of primal scream therapy,” Lund said. “And I guess in a way I am.” Lund’s impassioned delivery and the song’s soaring guitars turn “Fear” into a cathartic response to overwhelming anxiety, and provide a powerful soundtrack for slaying that dreaded mind killer. ZOLADZRadiohead, ‘Follow Me Around’“Kid A Mnesia,” the new, expansive compilation of Radiohead songs from their paradigm-shifting sessions in 1999-2000, has unearthed studio versions of songs that the band performed but never committed to albums, notably “Follow Me Around,” a guitar-strumming crescendo of paranoia. The video, apparently made with a small but persistent camera drone, nicely multiplies the dread. PARELESLorde, ‘Hold No Grudge’Lorde whisper-sings through the first half of “Hold No Grudge,” a bonus track added to her album “Solar Power.” It’s a memory of an early love that ended without a resolution; later messages went unanswered. Midway through, she’s still bouncing syllables off guitar strums, but the sound of the song comes into focus and Lorde realizes, “We both might have done some growing up.” She’s ready to let the passage of time offer solace. PARELESOmar Apollo featuring Kali Uchis, ‘Bad Life’Omar Apollo is known for combining cool funk grooves, slick charisma and sensual falsettos. But on “Bad Life,” his new single featuring Kali Uchis, the young singer-songwriter peels back the layers and puts his armor aside for a bare-bones exercise in vulnerability. “Bad Life” revels in contempt, burning slow and low alongside a soft-focus electric guitar. Apollo opens the track with a heart-piercer: “You give me nothing/But I still change it to something.” Ouch. The singer’s voice curls into anguished melismas, and when the orchestral strings soar in halfway through, the resentment cuts crystal clear. HERRERAAlt-J, ‘Get Better’Alt-J created a serene and almost unbearably mournful song with “Get Better,” a fingerpicked chronicle about the profundity and mundanity of a loved one’s slow death like Paul Simon’s “Darling Lorraine” and Mount Eerie’s “Real Death.” It’s profoundly self-conscious, citing the similarly acoustic arrangement of Elliott Smith; it offers personal moments, stray events, reminiscences, belongings, thoughts of “front line workers,” admissions that “I still pretend you’re only out of sight in another room/smiling at your phone.” The loss is only personal, but shattering. PARELES More

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      Who Will Win Record of the Year at the Grammys? Let’s Discuss.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDiary of a SongWho Will Win Record of the Year at the Grammys? Let’s Discuss.Beyoncé, Megan Thee Stallion, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and more will face off Sunday. In this special “Diary of a Song” episode, critics for The New York Times break down the show’s premiere category.Beyoncé, Megan Thee Stallion, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and more will face off this weekend for record of the year. In this special Diary of a Song episode, The New York Times’ pop music team dissects the award show’s premiere category.March 8, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETAt the 63rd annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, there will be no shortage of big-name matchups in the major categories (Taylor Swift! Dua Lipa! Roddy Ricch!), but only one has the real heavyweight showdown: Beyoncé vs. Beyoncé.Record of the year — which recognizes a single track, based on the artist’s performance and the contributions of producers, audio engineers and mixers — is in many ways the awards show’s premiere category, seeking to define the previous year’s musical zeitgeist in one song. Recent winners offer a fairly representative survey of popular music: “Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish, “This Is America” by Childish Gambino, “24K Magic” by Bruno Mars, “Hello” and “Rolling in the Deep” by Adele, “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers, and so on.This year’s record of the year nominees include those two Beyoncé appearances — “Black Parade” and “Savage (Remix)” with Megan Thee Stallion — plus songs by Lipa (“Don’t Start Now”), DaBaby featuring Ricch (“Rockstar”), Doja Cat (“Say So”), Billie Eilish (“Everything I Wanted”), Post Malone (“Circles”) and Black Pumas (“Colors”).To understand this eclectic mix and who might have the best shot at winning, The New York Times gathered three critics, the pop music editor and a reporter for a special spinoff episode of “Diary of a Song” that breaks down the category. In the video above, the team asks some of the big questions going into Sunday’s show: Should Eilish win again? Does a rap song stand a chance? Will Beyoncé break her decade-plus drought in the big four categories? Which disco revival hit reigns supreme? And who, exactly, are Black Pumas?Guests include:Jon Caramanica, The New York Times’s pop music criticJoe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporter and “Diary of a Song” hostCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorWesley Morris, The New York Times’s critic-at-largeJon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music critic“Diary of a Song” provides an up-close, behind-the-scenes look at how pop music is made today, using archival material — voice memos, demo versions, text messages, emails, interviews and more — to tell the story behind the track. Subscribe to our YouTube channel.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Diary of a Song Breaks Down the Grammys

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      Watch how your favorite pop hits get made. Meet the artists, songwriters and producers as Joe Coscarelli investigates the modern music industry.Watch how your favorite pop hits get made. Meet the artists, songwriters and producers as Joe Coscarelli investigates the modern music industry. More