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    Nine Inch Nails Revisits the ’80s, and 9 More New Songs

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    Hear tracks by Robert Plant, Amanda Shires, Blood Orange and more.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.Nine Inch Nails: ‘As Alive as You Need Me to Be’“As Alive as You Need to Be” explains why Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross reclaimed the Nine Inch Nails name for their latest film score, “Tron: Ares.” It’s a complete song and a return to the buzz-bomb synthesizers, stomping march beat, stereo ricochets and gut-wrenching vocals of the band’s heyday — quite suitable, in its late-1980s impact, for the latest sequel to “Tron,” the 1982 movie based on the videogame. The refrain might be a breakthrough for an artificial intelligence: “I can finally feel.”FKA twigs: ‘Perfectly’FKA twigs is still in dance-club mode for this track from “Deluxua,” the expanded version of her “Eusexua” album released in January. She chases euphoria — “Inside my head I have the best time” — over a transparent but insistent house beat topped with ghostly keyboards. Singing delicately but not hesitantly, she’s melting into the moment.Olivia Dean: ‘Lady Lady’On “Lady Lady,” the English pop-soul songwriter Olivia Dean faces change with a little nostalgia and a little hope. “She’s always changing me without a word,” Dean sings, adding, “I was just getting used to her.” Sumptuous keyboards and gently encouraging backup vocals tip the balance toward optimism: “Now we know that dream ain’t coming true / There’s room for something new.”Hermanos Gutiérrez featuring Leon Bridges: ‘Elegantly Wasted’It’s just a guess, but perhaps Leon Bridges was listening to the lilt of a minor-key bolero when he came up with the phrase “elegantly wasted” and built a bolero-meets-soul song around it. The rhythm of that refrain meshes with the guitars and rhythm section of Hermanos Gutiérrez — usually an instrumental band — while Bridges steers the song toward physical longing: “Show me how to taste it,” he pleads.Amanda Shires: ‘A Way It Goes’Retro sounds conjure bitter memories on Amanda Shires’s “A Way It Goes.” A hollow version of a girl-group beat, a distant surf-guitar twang and hovering strings are the backdrop as Shires recalls a shattering heartbreak: She was divorced from the songwriter Jason Isbell in March after a 10-year marriage. “I could tell you I felt like I was dying / Hugged my knees to my chest crying, I couldn’t stop,” she sings. But while the pain is still vivid, so is her determination to leave it behind — to find herself, a year later, “flying happily ever after the aftermath.”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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      Jack Harlow Expands His Romantic Options, and 7 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Horsegirl, Tyla, Amber Mark 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.Jack Harlow, ‘Hello Miss Johnson’The Kentucky rapper Jack Harlow sounds positively smitten on his first solo single of the year, the smooth-talking “Hello Miss Johnson.” Over a bossanova-style beat produced by his younger brother, Clay Harlow, and Aksel Arvid, Harlow chronicles a whirlwind courtship — “Let’s go to Nice and give your sister a niece” — punctuated by several chivalrous phone calls to his girl’s mother, which function as the song’s chorus. “Hello Miss Johnson, you know why I’m calling,” he raps, an obvious musical nod to Outkast. But, ever the charmer, Harlow can’t stop himself from a little maternal flirtation while he’s still on the line: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but was it you that gave to her the eyes I be lost in?” If things don’t work out with the daughter, perhaps he knows who to call. LINDSAY ZOLADZ​​Amber Mark, ‘Wait So Yeah’Pillowy, bountifully layered oohs and ahs surround Amber Mark’s invitation to spend the night in “Wait So Yeah” from a new EP, “Loosies.” The ticking, programmed beat and the profusion of looped, multitracked vocal harmonies make her recording expertise sound like romantic anticipation. JON PARELESTyla, ‘Tears’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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      Luca Guadagnino’s Key Musical Moments in “Challengers” and More Films

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      Hear songs from “Challengers,” “Call Me by Your Name” and more.From left: Mike Faist, Zendaya and Josh O’Connor in “Challengers.”Metro Goldwyn Mayer PicturesDear listeners,This week I saw Luca Guadagnino’s much-hyped tennis love-triangle movie “Challengers” — like a lot of people, it seems. And also like a lot of people, including The Times’s chief film critic, Manohla Dargis, I had a good time at the movies. This film “isn’t trying to say anything important, which is a relief,” Dargis writes in her astute review. “It wants to engage and entertain you, and it does that very nicely.” She also characterizes Guadagnino, correctly I think, as a filmmaker adept at “blissfully gliding along the surfaces of life.”Throughout his career, Guadagnino has used music as a crucial tool in creating those slick surfaces. His first film to charm me was the lush 2015 drama “A Bigger Splash,” which features Tilda Swinton playing a rock star and Ralph Fiennes doing an ecstatic and very memorable dance to the Rolling Stones’ “Emotional Rescue.”Dance sequences recur throughout Guadagnino’s filmography, often as opportunities for bodies and desires to collide, and whether it’s a bunch of young people bopping to the Psychedelic Furs in his great 2017 romance, “Call Me by Your Name,” or Zendaya and her friends getting down to Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” during a flashback scene in “Challengers,” the accompanying song choices feel authentic. In both of those scenes, Guadagnino isn’t looking for the most obscure needle drop, but a song that would convincingly get those characters on the dance floor in the particular cultural moment he is creating.“Challengers” got me thinking back to all the great musical moments in Guadagnino’s films, and before I knew it, I was compiling this playlist. It features a few of the aforementioned moments, along with original songs composed for his movies from the likes of Thom Yorke and Sufjan Stevens, and a selection from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s thumping and prismatic “Challengers” score, which I have been listening to all week. I highly recommend it if you would like every moment of your life — washing the dishes, dashing for the subway, writing a newsletter — to feel like a high-stakes tennis match.Also! I’m out next week but will be leaving you in the capable hands of two special guest playlisters. Till then!Not like the other girls,LindsayWe 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