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.
Ringo Starr featuring Molly Tuttle, ‘Look Up’
Ringo Starr maintains his perpetual optimism in “Look Up,” the title track of his new, Nashville-centered album. Written by T Bone Burnett and Daniel Tashian, the song posits, “There’s a light that shines in the darkest days,” bolstered by richly twangy guitars and an unmistakable Ringo backbeat. JON PARELES
The Lumineers, ‘Same Old Song’
The Lumineers — the singer Wesley Schultz and the instrumentalist Jeremiah Fraikes — have set rigorous parameters for their songwriting. The instrumentation is minimal and hand-played; the chords are few and unfancy. “Same Old Song” uses a basic but insistent drumbeat and a few piano chords, with an organ tucked into the background. That leaves Schultz room for wide-open emotions and raw dynamics, as lyrics leap between the mundane — rent, instruments stolen from a van — and thoughts of mortality, depression and tenacity. PARELES
Hamilton Leithauser, ‘Knockin’ Heart’
Much of the solo work of Hamilton Leithauser, the lead singer of the New York rock band the Walkmen, explores the more stately side of his versatile voice, but “Knockin’ Heart,” a single from the forthcoming album “This Side of the Island,” erupts with spiky desperation. “Oh, there’s no one who’s gonna love you like I do tonight,” he sings, just before the chorus explodes into a riot of distorted guitar and stomping percussion. LINDSAY ZOLADZ
Lambrini Girls, ‘Company Culture’
All things patriarchal, capitalistic and obtuse are targets for Lambrini Girls, the gleefully obstreperous English punk duo Phoebe Lunny and Lilly Macieira. “Company Culture,” a blast at workplace harassment from their debut album, “Who Let the Dogs Out,” revs up instrumentally for nearly a full minute — clattery drums, buzz-bombing bass, dissonant guitar — before Lunny lets loose a brutally sarcastic tirade: “Human resources say I’m asking for it,” she barks. PARELES
Spellling, ‘Portrait of My Heart’
Chrystia Cabral, a California songwriter who records as Spellling, proclaims “I don’t belong here!” with mounting vehemence in “Portrait of My Heart,” which will be the title track of her fourth album, due in March. She sings about a psychological and spiritual crisis — “I need a stroke of luck / ’Cause I kicked down all my angels to the dirt” — in a crescendo of choppy drums, layered guitars and orchestral strings, exulting in the drama. PARELES
Bad Bunny, ‘Baile Inolvidable’
Heartache and heritage mingle on Bad Bunny’s new album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” (“I Should Have Taken More Photos”). Like many of its songs, “Baile Inolvidable” (“Unforgettable Dance”) morphs between current and vintage sounds, underscoring the multigenerational continuity of Puerto Rican music. “Baile Inolvidable” begins as a blurred dirge of synthesizer lines and Bad Bunny’s vocals, mourning a lost romance; “I thought we’d grow old together,” he sings in Spanish, and admits, “It’s my fault.” But the track switches to an old-school salsa jam, with organic percussion and horns and a jazzy piano; the lessons of the girlfriend who taught him “how to love” and “how to dance” have stayed with him. PARELES
SZA, ‘What Do I Do’
In “What Do I Do” — from “Lana,” her album-length addition to her album “SOS” — SZA answers her phone to hear an accidentally dialed call and the sounds of her boyfriend with another woman. A lean, finger-snapping track backs her as she grapples with the shock in brief, colliding phrases: old loyalties, new anger, hurt, disgust and the clear realization that “It’ll never be the same again.” PARELES
Cymande featuring Jazzie B, ‘How We Roll’
The Caribbean-rooted British band Cymande, whose first three albums were released in the early 1970s, is about to put out a new one, “Renascence,” after decades of hearing its music recycled as samples. “How We Roll” brings back the group’s hand-played, Afro-Anglo-Caribbean grooves and hardheaded idealism: “We must never lose determination.” Its patient, cymbal-tapping beat and electric-piano chords hint at Miles Davis’s “In a Silent Way,” while the horn lines look toward Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s Afrobeat. And deep-voiced guest raps from Jazzie B, the founder of Soul II Soul, connect across British R&B generations. PARELES
Julia Michaels and Maren Morris, ‘Cut!’
In this breezy kiss-off, Julia Michaels and Maren Morris announce, “If you wanna cut ties, I’ll get the scissors.” It’s a bossa nova that takes on an R&B rhythm section and cotton-candy vocal harmonies. With different lyrics — and some of the same ones, as the women sing “feels so good” — it could have been a come-on instead of a goodbye. PARELES
Japanese Breakfast, ‘Orlando in Love’
Michelle Zauner had an eventful 2021: That was the year she released both “Jubilee,” her Grammy-nominated third album as Japanese Breakfast, and the best-selling memoir, “Crying in H Mart.” On March 21, Japanese Breakfast will put out a new album, produced by Blake Mills, titled “For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women).” The first single, the sumptuously dreamy “Orlando in Love,” pairs Zauner’s clarion croon with soft strumming and gentle orchestral swells. “Orlando in love writes 69 cantos,” she sings at the start, in what has to be modern pop music’s only (or at least most prominent) reference to the Italian Renaissance poet Matteo Maria Boiardo. ZOLADZ
Panchiko featuring Billy Woods, ‘Shandy in the Graveyard’
The latest collaborator for the abstraction-loving rapper Billy Woods is Panchiko. It’s an English band that recorded a hazy, lo-fi demo in 2000 as teenagers, went on to more practical careers, then regrouped after the demo resurfaced in 2016 and found a cult following; there’s an album due in April. “Shandy in the Graveyard” is an enigma with an easy-swaying two-chord vamp that hints at Marvin Gaye. Panchiko’s Owain Davies croons in falsetto about listening to a Walkman — remember those? — in the rain; Woods raps, over the tape-reversed vamp, about feeling like “Cyclops in its maze.” Nostalgia meets menace, calmly. PARELES
Morgan Wallen, ‘Smile’
In Morgan Wallen’s morosely understated “Smile,” a girlfriend’s brief grin for a cellphone snapshot at a bar only reminds the singer that she hasn’t been smiling at him “in forever.” She’s also barely speaking to him. Backed by steady guitar picking and vocal-harmony oohs, Wallen sings in the fragile high end of his range. Trying to find consolation in “a pretty little moment frozen in time,” but all too aware that it was “just for the picture,” he abandons his usual swagger. PARELES
girlpuppy, ‘Windows’
Becca Harvey, leading girlpuppy, sings about an unresolved breakup — verging on stalking — in “Windows.” Breathily, she explains, “We did everything together, me and you / So that’s why everything reminds me of you.” The track starts out seemingly placid, with quiet guitar picking and tapping drums, but instruments keep arriving and chiming in, amplifying an obsession that she clearly won’t give up. PARELES
Ethel Cain, ‘Amber Waves’
Most of the songs on Ethel Cain’s debut album, “Preacher’s Daughter,” moved at slow ballad tempos. But they were sprints compared to the tracks on her new album, “Perverts”; the shortest one runs six minutes. In the 11-minute “Amber Waves,” Cain sings about someone drugging themselves toward oblivion, wondering “Is it not fun in the catatonia?” The track is a nearly motionless waltz, with dark ambient stirrings of distorted guitar, wafting toward relief or death. PARELES
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