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, Cardi B brings an end (and/or a new beginning) to her long-awaited Drama, Miley Cyrus lets a couple of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers in on her “Secrets” RAYE searches for her not-yet-found “Husband” and much more.
Cardi B, Am I the Drama?
If you were wondering where the time went with Cardi B in the seven years since Invasion of Privacy, you can certainly hear a lot of it in her supersized second album Am I the Drama? Nearly double the length of Invasion at 23 tracks and 71 minutes, Drama contains a variety of new guests, subjects and sounds for the rap great, including the merengue exercise “Bodega Baddie,” the 4 Non Blondes-interpolating “What’s Going On” (with Lizzo) and the drill-influenced “Safe” (with Kehlani). It’s an overstuffed but thrilling listen, reminding us why we’d been waiting so breathlessly for the return of Full Cardi for so long in the first place.
Miley Cyrus, “Secrets”
Never a bad idea to get two members of one of the most beloved rock bands of all time on your new song — but Lindsay Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood are particularly good fits on “Secrets,” one of two new tracks from the deluxe reissue of Miley Cyrus‘ underappreciated Something Beautiful album. (The other, “Lockdown,” also features a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer in Talking Heads’ David Byrne.) The guitarist and drummer help lend a sweetly breezy ’80s Fleetwood Mac-style groove to Cyrus’ promises of “Anywhere you go/ I’ll follow” — making it a worthy follow-up to her Stevie Nicks-featuring “Edge of Midnight” remix of “Midnight Sky.”
Lola Young, I’m Only F–king Myself
U.K. singer-songwriter Lola Young‘s first new LP since scoring a global smash with “Messy” shows why she’s gotten fans on both sides of the Atlantic so excited far beyond the one hit. From the grungy bisexual anthem “F**k Everyone” to the fuzzy failing-relationship power ballad “Spiders” to the shuffling post-breakup waltz of “Sad Sob Story! :)” the album is bursting with hooks, personality and vivid songwriting, confirming Young as one of both pop and rock’s most impressive breakout talents of the mid-’20s.
RAYE, “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!”
With blaring horns and jazzy drums worthy of mid-’00s Rich Harrison, RAYE conducts her frantic search for her future husband, wondering with increasingly manic verses what could possibly be taking him so d–n long to get her. As the song winds up tighter and tighter — with her grandmother’s sampled promise of “Your husband is coming” detonating the song’s ultimate climax — it really earns the all-caps stylization of its title, as well as the exclamation mark where a question mark would normally be.
Nine Inch Nails, TRON: Ares (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
A year after releasing one of their most celebrated scores to date with the pulsing electro-house of the Challengers soundtrack, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are back — this time under the Nine Inch Nails moniker, and with recent DJ tourmate Boys Noize in tow — to take on the TRON: Ares soundtrack. Like Daft Punk’s TRON: Legacy OST before it, the set here is mostly divided into beatless atmospheric works and neon-hued dancefloor instrumentals, but Reznor does bring his trademark howl to a few songs, including the scorching top-five Rock & Alternative Airplay hit “As Alive as You Need Me to Be.”
Editor’s Pick: Wednesday, Bleeds
Prolific indie-rock heroes Wednesday are back with the band’s first album since breaking through to wider notice and acclaim on 2023’s Rat Saw God. The Karly Hartzman-led five-piece — which includes similarly critically beloved MJ Lenderman on guitar as a recording, but not touring member — delivers another spellbinding collection of scuzzy guitar crushers and twangy midtempo swayers, with some of Hartzman’s most piercing lyrics and alternately tender and pulverizing vocals.
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