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      M.I.A. Takes Aim at Fame, and 7 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Nicki Minaj, Gayle, Yeah Yeah Yeahs 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.M.I.A., ‘Popular’It’s a little hard to tell if M.I.A. is skewering the self-involvement of social media culture on “Popular” or if she’s vying for a TikTok hit herself — but hey, who says you can’t have it both ways? “Love me like I love me, love me,” she intones, as the skittish but thoroughly hypnotic beat (from the producers Boaz van de Beats and Diplo) lulls the listener into nodding along. The accompanying video is a wild, creepy trip into the uncanny valley, as M.I.A. confronts and ultimately destroys her A.I. alter ego, the appropriately named “M.A.I.” LINDSAY ZOLADZGayle, ‘Indieedgycool’A concept song about the resurgence of anti-pop posturing rendered with the dryness of 1990s alt-rock delivered by a singer whose breakout came via a record label-initiated TikTok. It’s a catchy eye roll that’s an ouroboros of TikTok-addled hype-cycle collapse, meshing microtrend and backlash all together into one. JON CARAMANICAWillow, ‘Hover Like a Goddess’“Hover Like a Goddess,” from the upcoming album “,” is further proof that Willow has finally found her lane in the space where bouncy pop-punk and anguished emo-rock converge. “I’ll never be fine if you won’t be mine,” she sings with pent-up intensity amid a number of other lusty confessions (“Just meet me under the covers/Baby, I wish”), before the song suddenly transforms into a dreamy reverie. That bliss is fleeting, though, and by the next verse Willow is just as quickly jarred back into her endearingly anxious reality. ZOLADZYeah Yeah Yeahs, ‘Burning’Yeah Yeah Yeahs unexpectedly interpolate Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ 1967 version of “Beggin’” for their fiery new single “Burning,” from their upcoming album “Cool It Down,” expanding the original’s feeling of romantic desperation into a more vast and ominous conflagration. Nick Zinner’s guitar riff snakes through the song like a lit fuse as Karen O croons devilish come-ons like, “Lay your red hand on me as I go.” The whole thing’s a little bit retro, and a little bit neo-apocalyptic. ZOLADZNicki Minaj, ‘Super Freaky Girl’As the title would suggest, this is simply a series of intense, gum-snapping Nicki Minaj raps over Rick James’s “Super Freak,” a combination so obvious and winningly bubbly that it’s shocking it didn’t already exist. CARAMANICAIce Spice, “Munch (Feelin’ U)”Few things have better mouth feel than a fresh piece of slang. The way the lips, teeth and tongue contort to form a word as the neural pathways connect that word to a new concept — it’s invigorating. So it goes with “Munch (Feelin’ U)” by the Bronx drill rapper Ice Spice, who in the past week received a boost following an embrace by Drake. In a frenzied genre, she’s a calm rapper, which is part of what makes this song so frosty — the beat is skittish and portentous, but Ice Spice sounds at peace. She’s rhyming quickly, but also calmly and slightly dismissively, probably because of the subject matter. That would be a man who might be useful in some ways, but is easily dismissed — someone who’s on call, but barely needed. He’s good at one thing, and when that’s done, not much else — he’s a munch. Get used to saying it. CARAMANICARex Orange County, ‘Threat’A tender take on self-doubt by the goofily warm British singer Rex Orange County. “I don’t wanna keep you in a boring life/I can pick up when you’re calling/Keep it real with you always,” he sings, wondering if he’s worthy of the object of his affection. It’s all delivered over a guitar figure that suggests the early Vampire Weekend revival is just around the corner. CARAMANICAAri Lennox, ‘Hoodie’Hoodies have never sounded sexier than they do on Ari Lennox’s slinky new homage to loungewear and whatever’s going on “underneath your North Face.” The track from the R&B singer’s forthcoming album “Age/Sex/Location,” which comes out on Sept. 9, has a few playful lines (“spread it like some queso”) but Lennox’s powerhouse vocal performance imbues the whole thing with a mature, pulsing sensuality. ZOLADZ More

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      Carly Rae Jepsen’s Brand-New Boy Problems, and 7 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by DJ Khaled featuring Drake and Lil Baby, Panda Bear & Sonic Boom, the 1975 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.Carly Rae Jepsen, ‘Beach House’Boy problems? Carly Rae Jepsen’s got them in spades on “Beach House,” a cheeky earworm from her forthcoming album “The Loneliest Time.” Jepsen employs her deadpan sense of humor as she lists off the red flags and deal-breakers that marred relationships with “Boy No. 1” to “Boy No. I Can’t Keep Count Anymore.” Amid all the silliness, though (“I got a beach house in Malibu,” one prospect tells her, “and I’m probably gonna hurt your feelings”), the song effectively taps into the romantic frustration of endless, “Groundhog Day”-esque first dates and long-term singledom: “I’ve been on this ride, this roller coaster’s a carousel,” Jepsen sings on the anguished pre-chorus, “And I’m getting nowhere.” LINDSAY ZOLADZDJ Khaled featuring Drake and Lil Baby, ‘Staying Alive’A quizzically melancholic opening salvo from the upcoming DJ Khaled album “God Did,” “Staying Alive” nods casually to the Bee Gees on the way to somewhere far less ecstatic. In this construction, staying alive is an act of defiance, not exuberance. Drake bemoans “This life that allow me to take what I want/it’s not like I know what I want,” while in the video, he plays a doctor smoking hookah in the hospital and absently signing off on charts of patients who might need some help achieving the song’s title. JON CARAMANICABenny Blanco, BTS and Snoop Dogg, ‘Bad Decisions’Equally unimaginative as the BTS English-language breakthrough hit “Dynamite” but somehow less cloying, this collaboration benefits from the grandfatherly presence of Snoop Dogg, who at this stage of his career always raps as if his eyebrow is arched, and he can’t quite believe what he’s called upon to do either. CARAMANICAThe 1975, ‘Happiness’“Happiness,” the latest single from the eclectic British pop group the 1975, manages to sound both sleek and a little spontaneous; the dense, ’80s-inspired production gleams but there’s always enough air circulating to keep the atmosphere well ventilated. The frontman Matty Healy sounds uncharacteristically laid back here, trading in his usual arch, hyper-referential lyrics for simpler sentiments: “Show me your love, why don’t you?” he croons on an ecstatic chorus that’s catchy without feeling overdetermined. The video, directed by Samuel Bradley, is a hoot, finding the group mugging in all variety of louche, gorgeously lit environments — basically the visual equivalent of the lush saxophone solo that drops in the middle of the song. ZOLADZBandmanrill, ‘Real Hips’A surprisingly luscious and nimble offering from the Newark rapper Bandmanrill that makes plain the through lines that connect drill music, Jersey club and bass music. CARAMANICAPanda Bear & Sonic Boom, ‘Edge of the Edge’Fans of Panda Bear’s beloved 2007 album “Person Pitch” will likely enjoy the sunny, collagelike “Edge of the Edge,” which will appear on “Reset,” the Animal Collective member’s collaborative album with Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom, out next week. “Edge of the Edge” pairs a playful sample of the doo-wop group Randy & the Rainbows’ 1963 hit “Denise” with Panda’s serenely melodic vocals, which cut through the carefree, pop-psychedelic vibe with some light social critique: “Can’t say it’s what you bargained for,” he sings, wagging a finger at the frenzied escalation of technology, “It’s forever at the push of a button.” The song, in opposition, sounds contentedly off the grid. ZOLADZBonny Light Horseman, ‘Exile’The voices of Eric D. Johnson and Anaïs Mitchell entwine beautifully on “Exile,” the opening track from the folk trio Bonny Light Horseman’s upcoming second album “Rolling Golden Holy.” The song is a duet in the truest emotional sense, as Mitchell swoops in to finish some of Johnson’s lines and, on the chorus, provides a warm, glowing harmony that meets his lonely plea, “I don’t wanna live in exile.” ZOLADZYoungBoy Never Broke Again featuring Rod Wave, ‘Home Ain’t Home’The two loneliest howlers in hip-hop unite for a meditation on the joylessness of fame. CARAMANICA More

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      Bad Bunny Reigns Again Before Beyoncé’s Chart Arrival

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      The Puerto Rican pop star logs a seventh week at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart; numbers for “Renaissance,” Beyoncé’s latest, arrive next week.Before Beyoncé arrives with oomph on the charts, Bad Bunny is spending a seventh nonconsecutive week at No. 1.“Renaissance,” the feverishly anticipated and extensively teased seventh solo studio LP from Beyoncé, will debut on next week’s Billboard rankings; industry estimates predict an easy ride to No. 1 on the album chart, with totals between 275,000 and 315,000 total units including sales, streams and downloads. Spotify said on Saturday that the first 24 hours of “Renaissance” made it the most-streamed release by a female artist in a single day so far this year.Those predictions, though not final, would put the singer near the top of the sales heap for 2022 debuts. But Beyoncé would still fall well short of the biggest opening to this point: Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House,” which opened with 521,500 units in May, including 182,000 copies on vinyl, the most of the modern era. Beyoncé, too, is selling multiple physical versions of her new release, but Billboard’s rules dictate that they will only be counted toward chart position when they are shipped to customers — an open logistical question that will affect her final first-week totals.In the meantime, Bad Bunny remains on top of the Billboard 200 for the fifth week in a row, during a relatively slow time for fresh releases from major artists. “Un Verano Sin Ti,” the fourth album from the Puerto Rican rapper and singer, earned 98,000 in sales by Billboard’s metrics, almost all of which came via the 135.9 million streams of songs from the album, according to the tracking service Luminate.Released in May, “Un Verano Sin Ti” had topped 100,000 units in each of its previous 11 weeks on the chart, according to Billboard.Also in the Top 5 this week, with modest numbers: the country singer Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album,” released in early 2021, is back up to No. 2 with 49,000 units; “Harry’s House” is No. 3 with 48,000 units; the South Korean group Seventeen is No. 4 with 34,000 units; and Future’s “I Never Liked You” is No. 5 with 33,000 units. Jack White’s latest solo album, “Entering Heaven Alive,” debuts at No. 9. Lizzo’s “Special” falls to No. 7 from No. 2 in its second week out, down 58 percent to 29,000 units. More

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      A Guide to the Dance Music on Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’

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      Chicago house, hyperpop, classic ’70s disco: The pop star’s new album is a tour through some of the genre’s most well-known touchstones as well as more underground sounds.Beyoncé’s new album, “Renaissance,” is consciously steeped in dance-music history, cannily embracing decades of samples and sounds: the 1970s disco of Donna Summer and Chic, Jamaican dancehall, internet-speed hyperpop. She chose collaborators, references and even specific keyboard sounds that pay homage to club-land memories while making her own 21st-century statement. Here are some of the sources she celebrates, and an exploration of their significance.The album’s second and third tracks, “Cozy” and “Alien Superstar,” feature writing and production by the Chicago-born house-music D.J. and producer Honey Dijon. “Cozy” also includes a writing credit for Curtis Alan Jones, known as Cajmere or Green Velvet — one of Chicago house music’s greatest producers.That locale is key here. Chicago is house music’s birthplace, and Chicago house, in particular, often moves with a heavily pronounced swing, accentuated by octave-jumping staccato bass patterns. The canonical example is Adonis’s “No Way Back,” from 1986, and the bass line of “Cozy” plays like an inversion of it. The song is almost mnemonically recognizable as early Chicago house without simply sounding like homage.On “Alien Superstar,” the cadence of the hook (“I’m too classy for this world/Forever I’m that girl”) is credited to an interpolation of Right Said Fred’s dance-floor novelty smash “I’m Too Sexy.” Taylor Swift borrowed the same part (also with credit) on her 2017 track “Look What You Made Me Do,” and Drake sampled the 1992 song on “Way Too Sexy” from 2021.There’s another direct callback on “Cuff It”: The bass line is instantly recognizable as the progeny of Bernard Edwards’s monster riff from Chic’s “Good Times,” a No. 1 hit in 1979, and Edwards’s partner in Chic, Nile Rodgers, gets credit for writing and playing guitars here. (On bass and drums: Raphael Saadiq.) As Ken Barnes pointed out in his liner notes to “The Disco Years Vol. 4: Lost in Music,” a compilation on Rhino Records, rewriting Chic became a kind of national pastime during the early 1980s, not least via early hip-hop and post-disco R&B. This version of the one, two, three (rest) is as indebted to the many “Good Times” rewrites as the original: the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” and Vaughn Mason’s “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll,” for example.“Energy” features writing and production from Skrillex, an EDM-festival superstar through the early 2010s known for his drops — dramatic buildups that resolve into a fresh beat — but since his heyday, he’s largely worked behind the scenes. (See Justin Bieber’s 2015 smash “Where Are Ü Now,” which he made alongside Diplo.) “Energy” seems to operate on wires; it’s taut minimalism, with the supplest layering of sub-bass tones.The song also has writing credits for Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, the songwriting and production duo the Neptunes, known for their work with a wide swath of singers and rappers starting in the 1990s. On Thursday, before the release of “Renaissance,” the singer and songwriter Kelis spoke out on social media, saying those credits were for a sample of one of her songs (it turned out to be an interpolation of “Milkshake,” from 2003), and that she hadn’t given permission for its use. Kelis wasn’t a credited writer or producer on most of the early albums she made with the Neptunes, and didn’t have credits on “Milkshake.” In a 2020 interview with The Guardian she said she had signed an agreement with the duo when she “was too young and too stupid to double-check it.”A similar situation arose with the album’s lead single, “Break My Soul,” which is indebted to the central Korg motif from Robin S.’s pop-house hit “Show Me Love.” But whether her 1992 remix was sampled was initially unclear, and for the first week of the song’s release, the credits shifted. (The latest version says the Beyoncé song “contains elements” of “Show Me Love.”) The Robin S. song’s afterlife has been robust: Its riff showed up in the Brooklyn producer AceMo’s 2019 “Where They At???” featuring John FM, which became a key underground dance anthem before and during the pandemic, as well as in recent releases from Charli XCX and Daddy Yankee.Another key to “Break My Soul” is the shouting of exhortations (“Release your wiggle!”) by the New Orleans bounce artist Big Freedia, whom Beyoncé had earlier sampled on “Formation” (2016). Bounce is a New Orleans-bred dance-music style that’s dizzyingly fast, bass intensive and heavy on call and response; twerking emerged in response to it.Beyoncé glances back to the late ’90s again on “Plastic Off the Sofa.” While the bulk of the song is lush digital balladry, there’s a moment in its coda that could have come from “glitch” experimental-electronica, where the tail end of a vocal run, heavily overdubbed, is subjected to a deliberately audible edit. It’s a hair jarring but mostly humorous — an audible wink to the listener, one facet of modern pop’s high-tech production laid bare. (For an example from the ’90s, see Oval’s album “94diskont,” or the compilation “Clicks + Cuts,” released in 2000.)Classic disco asserts itself at the album’s midway point. “Virgo’s Groove” features layers of undulating percussion, synthesizer and bass that updates the production work Quincy Jones did with Michael Jackson — a sort of companion piece to Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.” “Move,” the next track, includes a feature from Grace Jones — disco royalty, just in case anyone wondered where Beyoncé may be coming from.Just as notable on “Move” — and even more noticeably on “America Has a Problem” — is the swarming low end known in the dance world as the “Reese bass.” The term is a reference to a 1988 record, “Just Want Another Chance” by Reese, one of many aliases used by Kevin Saunderson, one of the first producers identified with Detroit techno in the mid-80s.In much the same way that “Chicago house” refers not only to a style and its birthplace but also that swinging octave-hopping sound, “Detroit techno” tends to denote attention to detail and an aura of restless invention. The heavy-fog low end of “Just Want Another Chance” was often repurposed by London bass-music styles like jungle, drum & bass, U.K. garage and dubstep — what the writer Simon Reynolds has called the “hardcore continuum” of Black British musical styles from urban areas that took root on London pirate radio.Beyoncé’s use of the heavy, undulant Reese bass on “Move” and “America Has a Problem” further locates the album in the Black dance-music continuum. “Problem” also opens with orchestral stabs, à la Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force’s landmark electronic-rap track “Planet Rock” — or, even more aptly given the title and lyrical theme, Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation.”“Heated” features Beyoncé in commanding neo-dancehall form over a slinky, wood-block-heavy groove. At the end of the song, she mentions tapping out tracks with her fingers on the MPC, an instrument designed by Roger Linn that arrived in 1988. The MPC, made by Akai, isn’t played with a keyboard, but instead features a square grid of pads that trigger different sounds, and it has become a widespread compositional and performance tool.“Thique” sounds like something that would have been all over dubstep dance floors in the days before Skrillex, when the subgenre’s distended bass and variable tempos were primarily the province of British producers. Sure enough, the song’s writing and production credits include an artist influenced by those musicians: Chauncey Hollis Jr., a.k.a. Hit-Boy, who produced a dubstep-inflected hit on Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Watch the Throne” (2011).The Plasticine sounds of “Thique” segue into the even more heavily synthetic “All Up in Your Mind,” co-produced by A.G. Cook, the main mind behind the London label and art collective PC Music, which arrived in the mid-2010s with a sound built on stylish exaggeration: tones that weren’t just high in a machine-music way, but deliberately squeaky. (Sophie, the producer known for exhilarating hyperpop who died in 2021, came from this camp.) “All Up” is futurist robo-pop, with a sub-bass line that seems to be snorkeling under the speakers rather than emanating from them.“Pure/Honey,” next to last, is another sub-bass monster: The first part, propelled by a nasty kick drum, is a surprising approximation of techno at its steeliest, or maybe its most “pure.” The “honey” comes at the 2:11 mark, a bulbous neo-disco groove with feathery horns that recalls early Sylvester. The track runs in part off a sample of a Kevin Aviance song subtitled “The Feeling” — one of the key recordings in a queer house sub-style known as “bitch tracks.”The album’s final track, “Summer Renaissance,” features Beyoncé singing, “It’s so good, it’s so good, it’s so good, it’s sooooo good” over a very familiar pinballing riff — yes, the finale interpolates Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love,” the 1977 disco hit with an all-synthesizer backdrop and pulsating rhythm that anticipated the future sound of dance music. But the main melodic phrase from “I Feel Love” sounds like it’s being played on the Korg keyboard that anchors “Break My Soul,” subtly tying two eras together in a third one. More

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      Phyo Zeya Thaw, Burmese Pro-democracy Rapper, 41, Is Executed

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      The hip-hop star became a democracy activist in military-ruled Myanmar, and then a lawmaker. After the latest military coup, he joined the resistance, and was hanged for it.U Phyo Zeya Thaw, a Burmese hip-hop pioneer whose democracy-affirming lyrics led to a career in Parliament and, after Myanmar’s military coup last year, as a resistance leader, was executed on Saturday in Yangon, Myanmar, by the country’s military junta. He was 41.His execution, and those of three other political prisoners, were announced in the junta-controlled news media on Monday. His mother, Daw Khin Win May, confirmed his death.The four men were convicted of terrorism charges in trials widely denounced as a sham. The four executions, including that of the veteran democracy activist U Kyaw Min Yu, popularly known as Ko Jimmy, were the first to be carried out in decades in Myanmar.Since the junta seized power last year from a civilian government, it has killed more than 2,100 civilians and arrested 14,800, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a monitoring group. Large swaths of the country are in open rebellion, with civilian militias defending against military incursions and launching occasional raids on army bases.Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw, already well known as a democracy activist, led an underground resistance cell in Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital. Many such civilian militias, loosely grouped together as the People’s Defense Force, are led by ousted legislators, pro-democracy activists and even the occasional doctor or lawyer.After Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw was arrested on terrorism charges last November, the authorities released a photo of him surrounded by weapons that they said he had been planning to use to kill members of the military forces.His defenders disputed the authenticity of the photo. Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw’s face in the photo was visibly bruised and puffy.“I laughed when I saw the weapons in the picture,” said Ma Thazin Nyunt Aung, Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw’s fiancée, who said she had been with him when he was arrested. “The military council is an organization that is never trusted because it never tells the truth.”Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw, who was commonly known as Zayar Thaw (pronounced zay-yahr thaw), was adept at career makeovers.Toward the end of the military’s first round of iron-fisted rule, in the early 2000s, he fronted one of Myanmar’s first hip-hop groups and co-founded Generation Wave, a collective of rappers, activists and other young people who used music as a medium of dissent.“With hip-hop, we can express ourselves without fear,” Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw said in a 2011 interview, shortly after he was released from his first stint in prison. “Music can make us brave.”As the ruling generals began to open up the country and allow members of the long oppressed National League for Democracy to run for Parliament in a 2012 by-election, Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw reinvented himself as a politician, trading his baggy hip-hop outfits for the demure shirt and sarong of the political class. His sideways baseball cap gave way to a neat hairdo worthy of a business executive.He won a seat in Parliament for the N.L.D., the party of the democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.His was a rare young face in a political party whose stalwarts had grown old battling the military generals who had ruled Myanmar for nearly five decades, a period of international isolation and destruction.“I was just an activist who rebelled against injustice,” Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw said shortly after his electoral victory. “When I was in prison, I thought seriously about what I wanted. I wanted to end injustice, so I joined the N.L.D.”He grew close to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, traveling overseas with her and soothing her often cranky dog.“He is almost like a son to her,” U Win Htein, a now-imprisoned N.L.D. elder, said of Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw in 2019. “He is very obedient. He believes in her, and she believes in him.”Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who rose to de facto leader of Myanmar after elections in 2015 and 2020, is also imprisoned and has been convicted of crimes that Western governments and human rights groups say are trumped up.Phyo Zeya Thaw was born on March 26, 1981, in Yangon. His father was a rector of a dental school, and his mother was a dentist. In ninth grade, he told his parents that he wanted to become an artist. They encouraged him to pursue more traditional studies.A year later, he informed his mother, Ms. Khin Win May, that he wanted to become a D.J.“I asked him to explain what a D.J. is,” she said. He obliged.She survives him, along with his father, U Mya Thaw; his sister, Daw Phyu Pa Pa Thaw; and his fiancée, Ms. Thazin Nyunt Aung.Myanmar was then one of the most closed countries on earth, moldering under the generals’ inept rule. The military secret police terrorized the population. Listening to foreign radio broadcasts or holding foreign currency could result in long prison sentences.While completing his university studies in English, Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw opened a recording studio and began to form Myanmar’s first major hip-hop band. The band was called Acid, and his music name was Nitric Acid.In 2007, amid rising fuel prices and yet another economic crisis, Buddhist monks led mass protests in Yangon and other cities, overturning their alms bowls to signal disenchantment with the military junta. Young protesters syncopated their rebellion with local hip-hop.As it had with previous mass demonstrations, the military ultimately responded with gunfire. Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw then co-founded Generation Wave, a secret band of anti-government hip-hoppers and youth activists.He was arrested in 2008 and convicted of violating a law-and-order statute and of illegally possessing the equivalent of about $20 in foreign currency.After his release from prison in 2011, he still performed at occasional gigs, but he began to focus on promoting the National League for Democracy.With the military agreeing to power-sharing with a civilian authority, he was elected to Parliament in 2012 and re-elected in 2015, this time to represent a district in Naypyidaw, the capital built by the generals early this century to replace Yangon. The military-linked party was shocked by its defeat on home turf.Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw busied himself as an assistant to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, helping to prepare briefing papers on legislation and peace talks with ethnic minority rebels. He remained loyal, even as she earned international condemnation for her support of the military when it unleashed a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims.During parliamentary season in Naypyidaw, Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw lived in an austere concrete dormitory for legislators, his room outfitted with little more than a hard bed with a mosquito net and a table piled high with legislative paperwork. There was little evidence of his life as one of Myanmar’s most renowned hip-hop artists.“He liked singing more than politics,” said Ms. Thazin Nyunt Aung, his fiancée. “But he did his duty to the end.”Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw declined to run for re-election in 2020, hoping to return to rap. The National League for Democracy won an even bigger margin of victory that year. The military-aligned party was mortified.The putsch came less than three months later, and the country’s top leaders were quickly rounded up and imprisoned.When mass protests against the new junta spilled onto the streets, Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw joined the rallies. But with soldiers killing unarmed protesters with single shots to the head, even targeting small children, he and others went underground.His activities in the resistance are not publicly known. He was arrested in November when 300 soldiers descended on the Yangon housing project where he was in hiding.The military accused the four men executed on Saturday of being responsible for the deaths of at least 50 civilians, as well as soldiers, but it has not publicly presented any evidence of that.In January, the junta’s court sentenced Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw and the three other activists to death.“These death sentences, handed down by an illegitimate court of an illegitimate junta, are a vile attempt at instilling fear among the people of Myanmar,” the United Nations said in a statement.Mr. Phyo Zeya Thaw was hanged before dawn on Saturday, along with the three other democracy activists.“I will always be proud of my son because he gave his life for the country,” Ms. Khin Win May said. “He is the martyr who tried to bring democracy to Myanmar.” More

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      What Is Beyoncé’s Definitive Album?

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      With the superstar’s seventh solo studio album, “Renaissance,” due Friday, our critics and reporters debate which work from her past reveals the most about her artistic vision.Much is made of pop star “eras” these days, but the term is deployed as a tool of marketing, not meaning. Rare is the artist who can sustain multiple visions and repeatedly regenerate. But different cultural and social moments have demanded different Beyoncés, and she has consistently delivered. At times she has been a singles powerhouse, dominating the radio and pop charts. At others, she has announced herself as a seismic cultural force, playing on a field much bigger than music. On Friday she will release “Renaissance,” her seventh solo studio album. Below, eight New York Times critics and reporters choose what they believe to be her definitive album so far, the one that reveals the most truth about the scope and shape of her career.‘B’Day’ (2006)Beyoncé’s second solo album opens with “Déjà Vu,” and “bass” is the first thing we hear her say. So up rumbles the most bootylicious bottom. The second is “hi-hat.” And a slapping sizzle ensues. But I don’t know who’s at the kit, ’cause that ain’t what no regular cymbals sound like when you slap ’em. These ones here? They make a sick drag. They double-dutchin’.That’s the time signature for at least the first half of this album: two rope turners and a jumper. “B’Day” arrived in 2006 just before Labor Day. And the whole thing — minus two of the last three ballads — is wet with the nectar of a wrenched-open fire hydrant.“Déjà Vu” spreads into “Get Me Bodied,” which hops to “Suga Mama” then “Upgrade U” and “Ring the Alarm,” which leads to “Kitty Kat,” “Freakum Dress” and “Green Light.” Different rooms on Single Ladies Night at the biggest club in Stankonia. It slinks and struts. This album’s the one that culminates with the ninth track (of an efficient 12): That would be “Irreplaceable,” the “Wanted Dead or Alive” of “better call Tyrone” balladry.“B’Day” doesn’t have the split-persona nerve of “Sasha Fierce” or that damn-the-charts idiosyncrasy of “4,” the first of her masterwork trio. It’s a parade of bangers about lust and its discontents, about how to take a nightspot over with Naomi Campbell’s walk. Her singing hadn’t yet gone through the puberty of playing Etta James. And yes, Jay-Z’s two appearances still sound like a formula replicated rather than a partnership forged. And do I know why she’s been photographed for the cover to evoke Brigitte Bardot if Bardot missed the last train out of Stepford? I really don’t.What’s essential about it, though, is its author’s determination to have it be more than some pop singer’s next album. Beyoncé angles for the synths and drum machines to frolic with all the horns, Latin percussion and credited use of a ney. She all but resorts to violence and makes funnies (“pat-pat-pat your weave, ladies”). I remember hearing these songs for the first time and feeling as slinky and swaggering as this music. I also remember laughing. With respect. I mean, she went and called the thing “B’Day,” like a star who knows she was born. WESLEY MORRIS‘I Am … Sasha Fierce’ (2008)Before Beyoncé’s third solo LP, she was a girl-group standout. She was a master of the cadences where early 2000s R&B met hip-hop. She was a sturdy practitioner of the ballad, the soulful throwback, the dancey throwdown. But on “I Am … Sasha Fierce,” she became something more significant: a character.Sasha Fierce was the name of an alter ego Beyoncé created over the years “whenever I have to perform,” she told Oprah Winfrey in 2008. It was her stage persona; the fearless, brash pop queen in the leotard, not the demure mortal on the host’s couch, gamely discussing her work — something Beyoncé would stop doing once fierceness transformed from an onstage mood into her default public presentation. Beyoncé seizing control of how her music is released, commandeering a girl army in a dusty apocalyptic wasteland, leading a squadron of dancers on the Super Bowl halftime field, transforming a music festival into a personal showcase, redefining her relationship with her husband on a joint album, controlling her image on Instagram — all of that springs from the absorption of Sasha Fierce into Beyoncé.The music on “I Am … Sasha Fierce” was divided in half: eight ballads where Beyoncé unfurled elegant, virtuosic vocals, and eight uptempos delivered with snarls and grit. Sasha Fierce’s arrival was cemented on “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” where she became a defiant spokeswoman for the spurned. Gender dynamics dominated the album’s most interesting tracks, including “If I Were a Boy,” where Beyoncé imagined the freedom she’d enjoy if she’d been entitled to the casual power of manhood, and “Diva,” where she redefined a feminine archetype as a masculine, streetwise pose.But the album’s true pivot point may have been “Video Phone,” an almost atonal, grindy track Beyoncé rereleased as a remix with Lady Gaga, then pop’s most adventurous star; Beyoncé repaid the favor with an appearance on “Telephone” that let her be astonishingly, gloriously weird. Over the past few years, they’ve nearly swapped careers: Gaga has become the traditionalist, and Beyoncé the explorer. CARYN GANZ‘4’ (2011)Even Beyoncé had to pull back and re-center before exploding outward again. In between the complementary bombast of “I Am … Sasha Fierce” and “Beyoncé,” following a split with her manager-father and something of a creative hiatus, came the relatively subdued “4,” the first album released via the singer’s all-purpose entertainment company, Parkwood.That Beyoncé chose, in this moment of renewal and self-determination, to wrap herself in the warmth of traditional soul and R&B was telling, and it paid off in the strength of her vocal performances, which rank among her best even on the album’s inconsistent array of ballads. Opening the original track list with “1+1,” possibly her barest emotional showing, seemed at the time like a play for seriousness, and unlike most pop stars staring down their perceived frivolity, it actually worked: Even as “4” remains the least commercially successful of Beyoncé’s solo albums, it feels like the pivot moment in which she came to be perceived as an auteurist, capital-A album artist, timeless and often untouchable. Stripping down well can do that.Yet “4” also contains some of the most enduringly crowd-pleasing Beyoncé singles (“Love on Top,” “Countdown,” “Party”), plus her best bonus track (“Schoolin’ Life”), with the production and writing duo The-Dream and Tricky Stewart, consistent collaborators throughout the singer’s various eras, operating at the height of their powers. (Even the album’s lead single, “Run the World (Girls),” which doesn’t quite fit and was originally tacked onto the end of the track list, provides the best peek at the self-titled moment to come.) Pure Beyoncé, tight at just 12 official tracks but with plenty of all of the things she does best, “4” is an amuse bouche and a palate cleanser that ends up being better than most meals. JOE COSCARELLI‘Beyoncé’ (2013)When a musician’s fifth album is self-titled, it can be a sign of empty gimmickry or a lack of ideas. But “Beyoncé” marked her full transformation into the star we have known ever since: an artist whose true medium is fame, who cannot be limited to any format, who bends the world to her will.At midnight on Dec. 13, 2013, Beyoncé posted “Surprise!” on Instagram, and the album’s 14 songs and 17 videos appeared for sale on iTunes. The stealth release — back then, partly a defensive strategy against leaks — is what mostly captured public imagination. But in retrospect, “Beyoncé” comes across as a broader manifesto about Beyoncé as a performer and a human being. It’s all about containing multitudes, and looking fabulous doing so. Songs like “Flawless” and “Pretty Hurts” (“We shine the light on whatever’s worst”) position her as a paradox, both perfect and imperfect, a deity who is kinda-sorta relatable.Yet “Beyoncé” also marked the point at which mere music seemed insufficient for her. Beyoncé’s true project was on a bigger canvas, one centered on her image and her potency as a 21st-century media celebrity. The music videos that were part of the original “visual album” — now best viewed as a YouTube playlist — are essential to the story she tells. That narrative touches on the meaning of feminism (with a place for lap dancing), monogamy and Black identity; the video for “Superpower” even includes a Black Lives Matter-style protest scene with Beyoncé in camouflage and fishnets.Mostly, though, the story adds up to Beyoncé’s majesty, with music just one jewel in the crown. BEN SISARIO‘Lemonade’ (2016)On “Lemonade,” Beyoncé merged a message of solidarity with a cry from the heart. The second of Beyoncé’s visual albums, “Lemonade” mustered lavish musical and filmic resources to expand an individual story — the fury of a betrayed wife — toward a recognition of how many kinds of injustice, personal and historical, that women have endured, particularly Black women.The songs easily stood up on their own, slipping sonic experimentation and an eerie sense of space into sturdy pop structures. Beyoncé both collaborated widely and drew samples from across genres and eras: Kendrick Lamar, the Weeknd, James Blake, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Led Zeppelin, Animal Collective. She hurled raspy imprecations in “Hurt Yourself” and let her voice break with tearful desperation and then find its own resolve in the hymnlike “Sandcastles.” She claimed Texas country with “Daddy Lessons,” electronica with “Sorry” and marching-band unity in “Freedom.”The album’s lyrics continued Beyoncé’s career-long stance of self-determination, but they also admitted to pain and bewilderment. Heard as a whole, “Lemonade” created a narrative of one couple’s fracture, separation and, amazingly, reconciliation, with a postscript — “Formation” — that posited Beyoncé’s success as the spearhead of a movement.Then the visual album multiplied the songs’ implications. Beyoncé recited poems by Warshan Shire that saw women’s pain as not only individual but archetypal. She showed images of women of all ages and multiple eras — in plantation dresses, African-style face paint, haute couture and streetwear — and of real parents mourning children shot by police. Onscreen, Beyoncé was singing not only for herself, but for all of them. JON PARELESI know exactly where I was when “Lemonade” dropped: at home mourning Prince’s death by listening to the obscure and familiar that is his oeuvre. Then Beyoncé’s most personal album arrived as an offering to her audience and her ancestors, an otherworldly gift that crossed histories, geographies and genres to help us all heal.She opened on a stage, then in a field while wearing a hoodie. With the haunting ballad “Pray You Catch Me” as its score, she was a stand-in for Trayvon Martin, tragically killed in Florida. And as her album’s tale unfolded, this insistence on not forgetting was underscored by the appearance of his mother, Sybrina Fulton; Eric Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr; and Michael Brown’s mother, Lezley McSpadden-Head; each holding photographs of their gone-to-soon sons. These were the album’s stakes — “Lemonade” was not about a woman scorned (though that might be there), but a work made in the struggle and for a people whose lives seem not to matter. So, yes, it is fair to say this was her movement album, but it is also her major album.Beyoncé had been experimenting with the video form for a minute; her 2013 self-titled album was a mix of styles, personas and declarations. But on “Lemonade,” she was at her most liberated — beyond the eye of her father or the gaze of her husband — and in the company of other Black women and girls with whom she found solace and salvation. And if that weren’t enough, Beyoncé was also settling scores and swinging baseball bats.To watch it for over an hour was to embark on an epic journey; to hear it was to witness her take on the American songbook. Her swift move from reggae (“Hold Up”) to rock (“Don’t Hurt Yourself”), from country (“Daddy Lessons”) to hip-hop (“Formation”), with so much soul and R&B in between (“Freedom,” anyone?) was not just a testament to her skill, but also her testifying about the innovative power of Black music and how it repeatedly makes American pop music, well, so popular. During that weekend in April 2016, Beyoncé not only gave us her genius, she moved a nation. SALAMISHAH TILLET‘Homecoming: The Live Album’ (2019)It’s not terribly controversial to call Beyoncé’s brilliant 2018 Coachella performance — excuse me, Beychella — one of the undisputed highlights in her career. So why does the 2019 live album “Homecoming” still feel strangely underrated? Even without the dazzling visuals, considered solely as a sonic document, the immaculately recorded “Homecoming” deserves to be mentioned alongside classics of the genre like the Who’s “Live at Leeds,” Sam Cooke’s “Live at the Harlem Square Club” and Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense.”Across nearly two hours, “Homecoming” becomes something more than a souvenir of the impressively calisthenic Beyoncé concert experience. It also works remarkably well as an unbroken piece of music, an expertly arranged 40-song medley that finds common moods and grooves throughout Beyoncé’s deep catalog — thanks in large part to the unifying presence of a drum line and marching band, recalling those of historically Black colleges and universities — and makes the case for her discography not as a disparate collection of eras and aesthetics but a vast continuum containing some of the century’s most forward-thinking pop music.A militantly commanding rendition of “Sorry” seamlessly shape-shifts into a slinky “Me, Myself and I”; “Don’t Hurt Yourself” segues into a transcendent version of its spiritual predecessor “I Care” (just in case Beyoncé needed to remind anyone that she’d been making scorched-earth breakup songs long before “Lemonade”); even her verse on the remix of J Balvin’s 2017 “Mi Gente” smash-cuts to her early, Sean Paul-featuring solo hit “Baby Boy,” subtly connecting the dots between the different decades of pop over which she’s reigned. By the time Beyoncé (and a crowd of about 100,000 screaming people) reaches the album’s pinnacle — an ecstatic mash-up of “Get Me Bodied” and “Single Ladies” — it’s hard to feel anything but sweat-drenched awe at the scope of what she’s just achieved. LINDSAY ZOLADZDestiny’s Child, ‘The Writing’s on the Wall’ (1999)Slight cheat here, but hear me out. Before “The Writing’s on the Wall,” released in 1999, Destiny’s Child was a promising R&B girl group with strong gospel roots. Its relatively straightforward 1998 debut album was good, sometimes very good. But the shift on “The Writing’s on the Wall” is palpable. It’s a wildly playful album, full of risky production and arrangements — skittering aquatic beats, odd filigrees, punchy power harmonies. To evolve their sound, Beyoncé (and her groupmates) opted to work with pop and soul progressives including Missy Elliott, Kevin (She’kspere) Briggs, Kandi Burruss and Rodney (Darkchild) Jerkins, all of whom were at the height of their powers. “Bills, Bills, Bills” is dizzyingly complex, “Jumpin’, Jumpin’” is futuristically forceful and Beyoncé’s singing at the end of “Bug a Boo” is a soaring interjection of traditional glory into the modish present.These collaborators used Destiny’s Child as a template for forward-thinking pop grounded in experimental soul music, and Beyoncé was paying close attention. Throughout her solo career, she’s excelled at finding ways of folding songwriting and production avantists into her vision, demonstrating a preternatural understanding of how unexpected gestures can deepen an artist’s vision, not distract from it. The long tail of that lesson stretches through her solo discography: “Upgrade U,” “Run the World (Girls),” “Partition,” “Get Me Bodied” and many, many more. JON CARAMANICA More

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      Lizzo Earns Her Second No. 1 Song: ‘About Damn Time’

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      The singer and rapper’s disco-tinged hit follows her 2019 smash “Truth Hurts” to the top of the Hot 100. Her album debuts at No. 2.If you have tuned in your local Top 40 radio station recently, or fired up TikTok, there’s a good chance you have come across Lizzo’s discofied hit “About Damn Time” (or at least, on your phone, found it in meme form).This week, after a three-month climb, “About Damn Time” becomes Lizzo’s second song to hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, after “Truth Hurts” — another inescapable hit-slash-meme — in 2019. “About Damn Time” displaces Harry Styles’s “As It Was,” which falls to No. 2 after a 10-week run at the top. Also on the singles chart, Kate Bush’s 37-year-old “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” still riding a new wave of popularity from its appearance in the Netflix show “Stranger Things,” has reached a high of No. 3.The popularity of “About Damn Time,” however, wasn’t enough to send Lizzo’s new LP, “Special,” to the top of the album chart. That position is still held by Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti,” which notches its fourth time in a row at No. 1, and sixth time overall since its release in May.In its 11th week out, “Un Verano” had the equivalent of 103,000 sales in the United States, with virtually all of its commercial activity attributable to 143 million clicks on streaming services, according to the tracking service Luminate. Week after week, “Un Verano” has proved a streaming blockbuster, even as none of its individual tracks has climbed higher than No. 4 on the Hot 100 chart (which is based on a combination of streaming, track sales and radio airplay).“Special,” Lizzo’s fourth album — and second for a major label — opens at No. 2 with the equivalent of 69,000 sales, including 37 million streams and 39,000 copies sold as a complete package. On TikTok, Lizzo posted videos of herself shopping for “Special” vinyl in Target and reacting as fans buy and drop the needle their copies. (Grape-colored, “standard black” or both?)No. 2 is Lizzo’s highest chart position on the album chart yet, surpassing that of her last album, “Cuz I Love You,” which went to No. 4. As Billboard notes, “Special” is the highest-charting album released by a woman this year.Also on the album chart this week, Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” is No. 3, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 4 and Drake’s “Honestly, Nevermind” is No. 5. More

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      Billie Eilish Contemplates Distraction, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Flo Milli, Jessie Ware, Montell Fish 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.Billie Eilish, ‘TV’“TV” — from a pair of modestly strummed but richly produced “guitar songs” Billie Eilish has just released — starts out like one of her hushed, breathy ballads about estrangement, self-doubt and a longing for numbness, this time using TV; she considers putting on “‘Survivor’ just to watch somebody suffer.” But she’s onto something larger — the ways entertainment nurtures distraction, alienation and apathy — and she turns pointedly 2022 topical: “The internet’s gone wild watching movie stars on trial/While they’re overturning Roe v. Wade,” she sings. But Eilish hasn’t forgotten she’s an entertainer herself; as she ponders her isolation in a closing refrain — “Maybe I’m the problem” — she dials in an arena audience, singing and clapping along. JON PARELESJessie Ware, ‘Free Yourself’Jessie Ware reaches for time-tested disco tools in “Free Yourself,” abetted by the stalwart producer Stuart Price (Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, Dua Lipa). There’s a bouncing-octave piano riff, a solidly thumping beat and eventually the sounds of a swooping, hovering string section, as Ware promises that freedom will feel good: “Keep on moving up that mountaintop,” she urges. “Why don’t you please yourself?” The breakdowns and buildups assemble with a sense of glittery inevitability, strutting toward a big finish that, startlingly, never arrives: “Don’t stop!,” Ware sings, “Baby don’t you …” Suddenly, she’s left hanging. PARELESFlo Milli featuring BabyFace Ray, ‘Hottie’A Flo Milli song is like a Blingee filter: loud, flashy, and confrontationally femme. This week the Alabama rapper put out her major-label debut album, “You Still Here, Ho?,” a kind of spiritual sequel to her irresistible 2020 mixtape “Ho, Why Is You Here?” Following an introductory invocation of the muse, which in this case is the reality TV legend Tiffany “New York” Pollard, the album is a showcase for Flo Milli’s braggadocious humor and the chatty ease of her signature flow. Plenty of other rappers would slow their tempo when given a beat as dreamy as the one on “Hottie,” but Milli is relentless as ever, antically flirty while still taking a breath to set some boundaries (“I don’t text back if I’m cranky”). Here, as on other highlights from the record, she spits like a cartoon character gleefully gliding across a rainbow. LINDSAY ZOLADZTyler ICU featuring Nkosazana Daughter, Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa, ‘Inhliziyo’Three notable South African producers — Tyler ICU, Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa — worked on “Inhliziyo” (“Heart”), a spacious amapiano track built from shakers, sustained keyboard chords, sparsely tapping percussion and shadowy, nearly subterranean bass lines. What makes it even more haunting than most amapiano songs are the vocals by its songwriter, Nkosazana Daughter: quiet and nearly private, hinting at non-Western inflections and suffused with the inconsolable heartbreak of her Zulu lyrics. PARELESSun Ra Arkestra, ‘Somebody Else’s Idea’The Sun Ra Arkestra conjures a loose communality, the feeling of mavericks gathering for a shared purpose. When the Arkestra recorded “Somebody Else’s Idea” during Sun Ra’s lifetime, June Tyson sang lyrics like “Somebody else’s idea of things to come/Need not be the only way.” The current Arkestra, led by the saxophonist Marshall Allen, reclaims the song without words, as a leisurely bolero with saxophones or wordless voices carrying the succinct melody over Afro-Caribbean percussion. They’re joined at times by Farid Barron’s floridly dissonant piano, by brass interjections, by flute trills, and by wavery strings, each adding its own contribution until, like a caravan at sunset, the tune settles into a resting place. PARELESJulianna Riolino, ‘You’“You,” from the Canadian singer-songwriter Julianna Riolino’s forthcoming debut album, “All Blue,” is a twangy, deliriously catchy blast of power-pop. Riolino’s impassioned delivery and boot-stomping energy will appeal to fans of the more upbeat songs on Angel Olsen’s “My Woman,” but Riolino also blends the sounds of vintage country and jangly garage rock in a way that’s uniquely her own. “Everyone is fine until they are drowning in someone,” Riolino sings on this ode to devotion, with the intensity of someone hanging on for dear life. ZOLADZMamalarky, ‘Mythical Bonds’The indie-rock band Mamalarky, formed in Austin and now based in Atlanta, celebrates a deep, joyous friendship in “Mythical Bonds,” the first single from an album due in September, “Pocket Fantasy.” With a teasing smile in her voice, the guitarist Livvy Benneett sings, “I don’t care what I do so long as I do it with you.” The complications — and there are plenty of them — are in the music: stop-start meter changes, peculiar chords, gnarled counterpoint, all packed into two playful minutes. Mamalarky makes math-rock sound like fun. PARELESBlondshell, ‘Kiss City’“Mama, I’m adjacent to a lot of love,” the Los Angeles singer-songwriter Sabrina Teitelbaum sings, in one of several highly quotable lines from her second single as Blondshell. (Also: “I think my kink is when you tell me that you think I’m pretty.”) During the first half of “Kiss City,” Teitelbaum delivers these lines in an arch, somewhat self-deprecating croon, accompanied by an understated arrangement of piano and guitar. But around the midway point, “Kiss City” rips open and becomes a towering rock song, giving Teitelbaum the space to shout those same lines with all of her heart, as if she’s suddenly in a dream, confessing the sorts of things she’d be terrified to admit in waking life. ZOLADZKelsey Waldon, ‘Simple as Love’Sometimes, amazingly, romances actually work out. With a pedal steel guitar sighing affirmations behind her, the plain-spoken country singer Kelsey Waldon rolls out images and similes — “like a monarch to a mimosa tree,” “simple as a cotton dress,” “patient as the moon” — to marvel at a reliable, nurturing love: no drama, just comfort and gratitude. PARELESMontell Fish, ‘Darling’Recorded in Montell Fish’s bedroom in Brooklyn, “Darling” — from his new album, “Jamie” — is a love song infused with fragility, delivered as a serenely undulating waltz. “Did you fall out of love, my darling?” he wonders in an otherworldly falsetto, over acoustic guitar picking and low-fi string squeaks. A big, bedroom-grunge chorus arises as he begs, “Please don’t run away,” but the beat falls away and ghostly piano chords are his only accompaniment as he resigns himself: “I’m finally letting you go,” he decides. PARELESObjekt, ‘Bad Apples’TJ Hertz, the electronic musician who records as Objekt, uses the proudly unnatural tones of techno to generate constantly escalating tension in “Bad Apples.” He undermines the methodical predictability of most dance music. Even as the beat stays foursquare and danceable, sounds and silences keep arriving, accreting, suddenly vanishing or fracturing themselves. Buzzes, chimes, nagging nasal tones, deep bass cross-rhythms, slides and crackles, blips that turn into swarms: in the next two bars, anything might appear, from any direction. PARELES More