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

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

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    Taylor Swift Bests K-Pop Band to Stay No. 1 for Seventh Week

    Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ held off Ateez’s ‘Golden Hour: Part.1.’ The singer-songwriter Shaboozey opened at No. 5.Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” is the No. 1 album once again, leading the Billboard 200 chart for a seventh straight time.Since it came out in April with historic numbers — breaking records for streaming and vinyl sales, and posting the biggest opening week of Swift’s career — “Tortured Poets” has been unstoppable, even as its performance has gradually cooled. In recent weeks it has held off challenges from Billie Eilish and Dua Lipa, and this week it blocks the latest from the K-pop boy band Ateez.In its latest week out, “Tortured Poets” had the equivalent of 148,000 sales in the United States, including 157 million streams and 27,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate. Since its release, the album has had the equivalent of about 4.3 million sales and just shy of 2.5 billion streams in the United States alone.Of the 14 albums that Swift has sent to No. 1 in her career — going back to “Fearless,” her second LP, back in 2008 — “Tortured Poets” has now had the longest consecutive stretch at the top, exceeding “Folklore,” which in 2020 spent its first six weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s flagship LP chart. (Several of Swift’s albums, including “Folklore,” have had more turns at No. 1 overall, but not in a row.)Also this week, Ateez’s “Golden Hour: Part.1,” a six-track “mini-album,” opens in second place with 131,000 equivalent sales, largely from its popularity on CD and vinyl. “Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going” by Shaboozey, a singer-songwriter who was featured on Beyoncé’s latest album, “Cowboy Carter,” opens at No. 5 with the equivalent of 50,000.Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft” falls to No. 3 after spending its first two weeks in second place, and Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 4 in its 67th week on the chart. More

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    Con ‘Houdini’, Eminem pierde la magia y otras 10 canciones nuevas

    Nuestros críticos de música pop tienen una lista con los temas más destacados de las últimas semanas: Clairo, Nathy Peluso, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds y más para escuchar.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Todos los viernes, los críticos de música pop de The New York Times comentan las nuevas canciones más destacadas de la semana. Escucha la playlist en Spotify aquí (o encuentra nuestro perfil: nytimes) y en Apple Music aquí, y suscríbete a The Amplifier, una guía quincenal de canciones nuevas y antiguas.Eminem, ‘Houdini’Eminem intenta recuperar glorias pasadas en su agotadora nueva canción “Houdini”, el primer sencillo de su próximo 12º álbum, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce). Sobre un ritmo estridente y carnavalesco que interpola una muestra de “Abracadabra” de la Steve Miller Band, el craso alter ego del MC Slim Shady analiza el momento cultural actual y encadena algunos chistes en su rapeo de forma rebuscada, desesperado por ofender a cada paso. El truco más viejo de la historia. LINDSAY ZOLADZTwenty One Pilots, ‘Navigating’Clancy, el nuevo álbum de la banda Twenty One Pilots, es la cuarta entrega de una serie de álbumes conceptuales. Pero “Navigating” no necesita necesariamente una historia de fondo. Es una crisis psicológica, como canta Tyler Joseph, que se siente aturdido y disociado, incapaz de hablar pero desesperado por conectar: “Perdón por el retraso, estoy navegando por mi cabeza” es la mayor explicación que consigue dar. El tema es una fusión animada, galopante y vibrante de punk-pop y electrónica, que se abre con un “Hey-oh” que suena al coro de una tribuna en un estadio y trata de atravesar el punto crítico con puro ímpetu. JON PARELESWe 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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    Eminem Loses the Magic, and 10 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Clairo, Nathy Peluso, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds 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.Eminem, ‘Houdini’Eminem attempts to recapture past glories on his exhausting new song “Houdini,” the first single from his upcoming 12th album, “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce).” Atop a garish, carnivalesque beat that interpolates a sample of the Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra,” the M.C.’s crass alter ego Slim Shady surveys the current cultural moment and strings together some stiltedly rapped jokes, desperate to offend at every turn. Oldest trick in the book. LINDSAY ZOLADZTwenty One Pilots, ‘Navigating’“Clancy,” the new album by the two-man band Twenty One Pilots, is the fourth installment in a series of concept albums. But “Navigating” doesn’t necessarily need a back story. It’s a psychological crisis, as Tyler Joseph sings about feeling dazed and disassociated, unable to speak but desperate for connection: “Pardon my delay — I’m navigating my head” is his closest explanation. The track is a buzzing, galloping, pumping merger of punk-pop and electro, opening with an arena-sized “Hey-oh” chant and trying to get through the crisis on sheer momentum. JON PARELESGirl Scout, ‘I Just Needed You to Know’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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    A Guide to Beyoncé’s Guests on ‘Cowboy Carter’: Linda Martell, Shaboozey and More

    A guide to key guests and behind-the-scenes figures on the star’s eighth studio album.A new Beyoncé release isn’t just an album — it’s a sprawling collective effort where the supporting cast and behind the scenes crew can reveal a lot about the scope of the star’s vision. For “Cowboy Carter,” in addition to household names like Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Miley Cyrus and Post Malone (and a brief cameo from her daughter Rumi), she’s looped in a slew of collaborators new and old. Here’s a guide to some of the most significant figures you’ll see in the credits.Rhiannon Giddens in London last year. The musician and scholar contributes banjo, viola and gravitas to “Cowboy Carter.”Serena Brown for The New York TimesRhiannon GiddensRihannon Giddens plays on the “Cowboy Carter” single “Texas Hold ’Em,” but beyond the banjo and viola she contributed to the track, she lends the whole project a special kind of historical weight. During the past two decades, Giddens has led a new wave of folk artists helping to shed light on the foundational role that Black musicians played in the creation of American roots music. A scholar of the banjo as much as a practitioner, she’s made it her mission to educate audiences about its history as an African-descended instrument that was once, as she put it in 2017 when she won a MacArthur Genius Grant, “an absolute emblem of the African American in the South.”Trained as an opera singer, Giddens rose to prominence in the early 2000s as a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops — with Dom Flemons, Justin Robinson and Sule Greg Wilson — a Grammy-winning group that celebrated and updated the legacy of Black string bands with help from an older mentor, the fiddler Joe Thompson. In 2023, she released “You’re the One,” her first album of all original material. Last year, Giddens also won a Pulitzer Prize for “Omar,” an opera she co-wrote with the composer Michael Abels based on the life of a West African Muslim scholar who was captured and sold as a slave in America.Raphael SaadiqRaphael Saadiq’s name has been a mark of quality in R&B for more than 30 years. Saadiq, who wrote, produced and played various instruments on Beyoncé’s latest, first found fame in the late ’80s with the trio Tony! Toni! Toné! and went on to score a Top 20 solo hit with “Ask of You” in 1995. He became an in-demand producer and worked with a wide array of artists including D’Angelo — whose two biggest hits, “Lady” and “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” are Saadiq co-writes — as well as Whitney Houston, Erykah Badu and Bilal. He’s been in Beyoncé’s orbit for years, having produced her team-up with Stevie Wonder on a 2005 Luther Vandross tribute album, helped produce her sister Solange’s acclaimed 2016 effort “A Seat at the Table,” and appeared on “Renaissance” as a producer, writer and performer.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