Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
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This week, Jonas Brothers go back home, Gunna keeps things efficient, and MGK finds his voice. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Jonas Brothers, Greetings From Your Hometown
Twenty years after their debut single together, Jonas Brothers are completely different people than the precocious Disney stars that were embraced by millions of young fans — and Greetings From Your Hometown, their third album since their 2019 reunion, presents adult-leaning pop-rock workouts while reflecting on the changes, as well as the unbreakable bond between Nick, Joe and Kevin.
Gunna, The Last Wun
Gunna’s work in popular hip-hop over the past half-decade has been tireless, but his prolific nature has never made his studio output feel overwhelming; similarly, new album The Last Wun stretches across 25 tracks and beyond the 1-hour mark, but the project flies by with machine-gun bars, complex beats that quickly evaporate and guest stars (Wizkid, Burna Boy, Offset, Asake) that never detract from Gunna’s steely focus.
MGK, Lost Americana
Throughout his shape-shifting career, MGK has showcased a natural gift for melody that has made each of his genre explorations instantly digestible; Lost Americana, a pop-rock foray that serves as a close cousin to his pop-punk projects, contains plenty of juicy hooks as expected, but also moments of stark honesty, such as his discussion of his sobriety on the opener “Outlaw Overture.”
Laufey, “Snow White”
“I don’t think I’m pretty, it’s not up for debate,” Laufey sings on her striking new song “Snow White,” “A woman’s best currency’s her body, not her brain.” While Laufey has subverted modern pop norms with her jazzy orchestration, she’s deploying her latest single from upcoming album A Matter of Time to upend the impossible standards of womanhood, telling a story at once both deeply personal and heartbreakingly universal.
Bailey Zimmerman, Different Night Same Rodeo
Bailey Zimmerman has proven adept at catering to both Nashville diehards, such as on the rustic deep cuts to 2023’s Religiously. The Album., and casual country fans, with smashes like “Rock and a Hard Place” and the BigXthaPlug team-up “All the Way”; the latter song doesn’t appear on new album Different Night Same Rodeo, but there’s still plenty of country-pop appeal to Zimmerman’s twangy storytelling. Read a full review of Different Night Same Rodeo here.
Ethel Cain, Willoughy Tucker, I’ll Always Love You
In a short time, Hayden Silas Anhedönia has turned her Ethel Cain persona into a truly original voice in modern indie music — and after her drone project Perverts detonated expectations earlier this year, Willoughy Tucker, I’ll Always Love You returns Cain to the world of her 2022 breakthrough Preacher’s Daughter as a literal prequel to that album, albeit with plenty of new ambitions (see: the 15-minute closer “Waco, Texas”).
Bryson Tiller, The Vices
With the release of the first half of a planned double-album titled Solace & The Vices, Bryson Tiller leans into his ferocious flow and exorcises some demons while placing his R&B-heartthrob approach in the backseat for now; the stylistic separation works in his favor, and whets our appetite for the project’s more soulful second half. Read a full review of The Vices here.
Editor’s Pick: Amaarae, Black Star
Ghanaian American singer Amaarae ostensibly makes rhythmic pop music, but classifying the songs on Black Star feels like a fool’s errand: the virtuosic new project gathers dance, hyperpop, R&B and Jersey club (among other disparate sounds) and smashes them together to create a dizzying party. Amaarae is a vocal dynamo, has impeccable taste, and is unquestionably a star in the making — get on board now, and shimmy through the end of the summer.
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