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(Playlist)
Pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on notable new songs and videos.
Tom Petty, ‘For Real’
The Tom Petty archives keep yielding more, like this previously unreleased song about media posturing that rings true in 2019. Tersely and unhurriedly, he rejects posing for magazines or video — and by extension, if he were still alive, social media — to insist, “It was all that rang true/I did it for real and I did it for you.” The arrangement, even though it’s with a full band, is clearly preliminary. If Petty, who died in 2017, had finished it for an album, it would have had more gleam and filigree. But the emotion is irrevocable.
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— JON PARELES
Alicia Keys, ‘Raise a Man’
Alicia Keys has recorded indelible women’s empowerment songs like “Girl on Fire” and “Superwoman.” But she also understands that changes in gender roles are complicated and constantly in flux — particularly for the mother of two sons. “Raise a Man,” whose co-writers include Terius Nash (The-Dream), is deliberately blurred in every way. It shuns crisp hooks for rippling, improvisational vocal lines; it loops through unresolved chords played by a cloudy string section. It’s a confession of love as vulnerability and connection: “Is it OK that I’m not independent?” she sings, “Is it OK that I show weakness?” But it’s also clear that she expects equal openness and respect from her partner: “I want what’s coming to me: perfection, protection.”
— JON PARELES
Lizzo, ‘Cuz I Love You’
Pomp and camp, all rolled into one barnstormer. The title track from Lizzo’s forthcoming album is ecstatic, comedic, bawdy and tragic, toggling between powerful blues-soul singing and jubilant, swinging rapping to convey emotion that’s serious and also so unexpected it can’t help but be sort of a laugh, too.
— JON CARAMANICA
Cardi B featuring Bruno Mars, ‘Please Me’
“Please Me” begins with all the R&B from 1990 to 1993 compressed into a rock-hard diamond — signature Bruno Mars nostalgia. Then Cardi B arrives, fresh off her best rap album Grammy win, with her customary saucy salaciousness. Mars grooves and flirts, and Cardi barks demands; even though they had success last year with their first collaboration, the remix of Mars’ “Finesse,” they’re an unlikely pair. Mars is about precision, and Cardi expands to fill the space she’s given, and then some. On this song, the mood is a tug-of-war: breathe fast, then relax, then breathe fast again, then relax. And then it’s done.
— JON CARAMANICA
Foals, ‘On the Luna’
Post-punk thrust, math-rock patterns and splintered lyrics mirror the daily dystopian media barrage in “On the Luna,” from “Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost — Part 1,” due March 8, the first of two Foals albums promised this year. Guitar and synthesizer parts overlap in dizzying stereo counterpoint as the 9/4 meter keeps things off-balance; Yannis Philippakis casts himself as a baby boomer singing about childhood memories and present-day regrets. “We had it all and we didn’t stop to think about it,” he realizes.
— JON PARELES
The Claypool Lennon Delirium, ‘Blood and Rockets: Movement I, Saga of Jack Parsons — Movement II, Too the Moon’
Les Claypool, from Primus, and Sean Lennon reclaim Beatles (and Monty Python) psychedelia to set out the biography of Jack Parsons, a rocket-science luminary (at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory) who was also a devotee of Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis and its “sex magick” rituals. “Better be careful boys,” Lennon sings. “You just might set the world on fire.” The keyboard tones echo “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” while the extended vocal-harmony coda (singing Crowley’s precepts “Do what thou wilt” and “Love is the law”) hints at “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” And the video, paying homage to Terry Gilliam’s animations, makes clear just how phallic rockets are.
— JON PARELES
Nubiyan Twist featuring Mulatu Astatke, ‘Addis to London’
Nubiyan Twist, a 12-piece band of young Londoners, sources its inspiration widely, from the Caribbean to the Bronx to Central Africa. The group’s guest on “Addis to London” is Mulatu Astatke, the pioneering Ethiopian vibraphonist, another eclectic thinker, who has studied music around the world, and was never content to espouse the traditional sounds or popular music of his homeland. At the start of this track he’s heard explaining the West African roots of the rhythm the band’s about to play. But the sounds of his native country are in there, too, particularly in the tilted minor mode of the harmonies.
— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Rain Phoenix and Michael Stipe, ‘Time Is the Killer’
Mortality looms patiently over the folk-rock of “Time Is the Killer.” Rain Phoenix, the sister of actors Joaquin and River Phoenix, sounds artlessly natural as she sings “Everybody’s lying when we say we’re not afraid,” over a modestly strummed acoustic guitar and a brushed-drums, reverb-laden folk-rock band. Michael Stipe’s occasional backup vocals arrive with fatherly sympathy. The tranquility is stoic, far from oblivious.
— JON PARELES
Theon Cross, ‘CIYA’
Most likely, you’ll go into a Sons of Kemet show looking forward to Shabaka Hutchings’ tenor saxophone, and you’ll leave buzzing about Theon Cross’ tuba. More than Hutchings, more than its double drummers, it is Cross’ thick, molten playing that pumps life into the upstart British jazz group. Now he is releasing his own album, “Fyah,” full of slamming, dancehall-influenced club tracks, driven by the fireworks between Cross and the drummer Moses Boyd. One piece that sticks out is the chiller “Ciya” — with Cross creating a seductive loop underneath as alto saxophonist Nubya Garcia and trombonist Nathaniel Cross, the bandleader’s brother, whisper a gentle sough of a melody.
— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Ashe, ‘Moral of the Story’
Working toward self-forgiveness after a divorce, “Moral of the Story” seesaws between fragility and pomp: from Ashe’s quavery high voice and parlor-song piano tinkling to a hefty, lurching beat and a massed chorus. “People fall in love with the wrong people sometimes,” she tells her mother and her lawyer in the verses. Behind the brave face, there’s still some regret.
— JON PARELES
Avril Lavigne and Nicki Minaj, ‘Dumb Blonde’
The new Avril Lavigne song “Dumb Blonde” — full of blunt horns, hard-slap percussion and lyrics sung in a voice that sounds computer generated — is so chaotic, cluttered and unnatural that when Nicki Minaj arrives two minutes in, she’s a calming force. That said, Minaj’s verse is tepid and tossed-off — perhaps as a reaction to the mayhem that precedes it, or perhaps because she knows well enough when a song will fade into the ether, and no one will remember anyway.
— JON CARAMANICA
Elvis Presley featuring Post Malone, Shawn Mendes, Darius Rucker, Blake Shelton and Carrie Underwood, ‘If I Can Dream’
No. Just: no.
— JON PARELES
Wadada Leo Smith, ‘Rosa Parks: Mercy, Music for Double Quartet’
Wadada Leo Smith rarely plays the trumpet on “Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs,” a 72-minute suite he composed for an ensemble that’s really many groups in one: three vocalists, four stringed instruments, four trumpets (including Smith), and a duo featuring drums and electronics. On “Rosa Parks: Mercy, Music for Double Quartet,” the strings and brass come together, stretching paper-thin but steely melodies across a lot of open space. Smith states in the press materials that the oratorio is dedicated to a woman “of exceptional courage and wisdom, who made the right move of resistance at the right time.” In that sentence you can almost hear Smith’s music: His slow, deliberate horn playing often sounds like a practice of resistance, and he always knows the right time to act.
— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Matthew Shipp Trio, ‘Flying Saucer’
It’s easy for Matthew Shipp’s pelting, centrifugal piano improvisations — full of hard dashes, often in contradictory directions — to feel strident and strong. It’s a bigger feat when he plays toward an emotional middle-range, and on “Flying Saucer” (from a new album, “Signature”) he achieves it, staying around the center of the keyboard, sounding impatient but unruffled. It’s a joy to follow his ardent, two-handed flow, unfolding like a well-told surrealist narrative, and his joyful interactions with the bassist Michael Bisio and the drummer Newman Taylor Baker.
— GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.