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.
This week: Rosalía releases one of the year’s (decade’s? century’s?) most ambitious pop albums, Kehlani keeps the classic R&B flowing, Katy Perry and Hilary Duff offer two very different new songs about their respective exes and more.
Rosalía, LUX
“It’s like an album she wrote to God — whatever each person feels God is to them,” Afo Verde, chairman/CEO of Sony Latin Iberia, said of Rosalía’s LUX in Billboard‘s cover story on the Spanish singer-songwriter this week. “This is an artist who said, ‘I want to walk down a path where few walk.’” Now that the album is out, it’s clear this wasn’t empty hype: LUX is staggering, drawing from countless different languages, genres, styles and eras for one of the most expansive and singular pop releases in recent memory. “Pop” doesn’t even necessarily feel big enough for the album — the songs here are more likely to resonate in your city’s opera house or symphony hall than on your local top 40 station — but it still feels accessible and personality-driven like the best pop music, Rosalía’s voice too mighty to ever crumble under the weight of her artistic ambitions.
Kehlani, “Out the Window”
It’s good times to be Kehlani: After a decade of cult stardom that saw her forever tapping on the door of the mainstream, the R&B singer-songwriter has enjoyed a long-overdue crossover breakthrough with her Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit “Folded,” an irresistible R&B kiss-off. This week she follows that surprise smash up with another classic-feeling ballad — though this time, she’s the one doing the begging, as she admits “I’m to blame, I played n your face,” but nonetheless pleads of her lover to keep the faith in their relationship: “Don’t throw it out the window.” It feels like the right song at the right time for her, and should just continue her winning streak.
Katy Perry, “Bandaids”
Katy Perry’s first new song since splitting with her longtime partner, actor Orlando Bloom, is sure to be viewed through the lens of that relationship. And though parts of the explosive pop-rock single, it does sound like she’s not overly pleased about the way things ended: “It’s not what you did, it’s what you didn’t/ You were there, but you weren’t.” But on the climactic bridge, she accepts it all and offers grace: “If I had to do it all over again I would still do it all over again/ The love that we made was worth it in the end.” Fans of Perry’s “Never Really Over” will find a whole lot to love about this new one.
Hilary Duff, “Mature”
“She looks like all of your girls but blonder/ A little like me, just younger,” Hilary Duff sings on “Mature” — not lamenting her man’s new younger girl so much as singing to herself from the past, when she got into a regrettable age-gap relationship. Duff’s first single since signing to Atlantic is a searing indictment of said ex, over an irresistible early-’10s turbo-pop groove reminiscent of the finest moments from Carly Rae Jepsen’s debut LP Kiss — perhaps unsurprisingly, since CRJ’s then-collaborator/paramour Matthew Koma writes and produces on the track. It’s a hell of a start to Duff’s much-awaited pop comeback.
Danny Brown, Stardust
The always fascinating and shape-shifting Danny Brown returns this week with new album Stardust, his delving into the world of hyperpop. Leadling lights of the scene like Jane Remover, Frost Children and underscores — the latter of whom has its own dope new release today — help Brown achieve liftoff here, as the rapper sounds perfectly at home within his glitchier (and at times house-ier) new sonic environs. Whether the start of a full new chapter for the rapper or a one-off detour, Stardust reinforces the idea that, even newly sober, Brown remains one of the most exciting and least predictable artists in hip-hop.
Gorillaz feat. Idles, “The God of Lying”
The latest from Gorillaz’ upcoming concept album The Mountain features English post-punks Idles, with frontman Joe Talbot posing a series of rhetorical questions, most likely in the mirror to himself: “Do you beg that truth will set you free?/ Are you shackled by the keys?/ Well if I was you, I’d stay strapped in/ Cause all you got is me.” The self-laceration is done on Damon Albarn Time, though, as Idles’ usual anxious guitar rave-ups are slowed and stripped here to a skipping, reggae-ish crawl, as synths squeak in the background and Albarn offers support via his forever-distant, disembodied backing vocals.
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