{"id":2403302,"date":"2026-05-05T15:47:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T15:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2403302"},"modified":"2026-05-05T15:47:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T15:47:37","slug":"what-our-music-critic-is-listening-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/what-our-music-critic-is-listening-to\/","title":{"rendered":"What Our Music Critic Is Listening To"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The cover of Rodrigo\u2019s forthcoming album.<\/p>\n

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Today\u2019s a big day for the popheads:<\/strong> Olivia Rodrigo\u2019s new single, \u201cDrop Dead<\/a>,\u201d is out. It\u2019s her first release since 2024, and the first song off her forthcoming album, \u201cYou Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love.\u201d The music video features her prancing through Versailles wearing a nightie and wired over-ear headphones (the kids really do love the nineties), as she sings about feminine intuition and stalking her crush on the internet.<\/p>\n

Rodrigo\u2019s not the only one with new music out; the first quarter of 2026 has already seen album drops from Harry Styles, Robyn, A$AP Rocky, and others. We caught up with Amanda Petrusich, a critic for The New Yorker,<\/em> to help us discern the bops from the flops. She shared what she\u2019s liked, what she\u2019s found to be underwhelming, and what upcoming projects she\u2019s excited about (Lana Del Rey! The Strokes!).<\/p>\n

The following conversation has been edited and condensed.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with today\u2019s big music news. What do you make of Olivia Rodrigo\u2019s new single?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDrop Dead\u201d is precisely what I want and expect from her: a cinematic, super hooky, vaguely new wave-ish pop song about the absolute and eternal humiliation of having a big old crush. \u201cI know that the bar closes at eleven \/ But I hope you never finish that beer\u201d is such a great opening line\u2014she is always so vivid and funny when writing about the lunacy of love and attraction. It\u2019s not a major reinvention, musically (she\u2019s committed to those Blondie-esque spoken verses and a wide, swooping bridge; the song was co-written with Amy Allen and Dan Nigro, who also did most of \u201cSour\u201d and \u201cGuts\u201d), but it works for me.<\/p>\n

Also in Gen Z music news this week: Noah Kahan\u2019s new Netflix documentary is out, ahead of his album release later this month.<\/strong> You wrote about it!<\/strong><\/a> What do you make of Kahan at this juncture in his career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m really rooting for him. He strikes me as a person with an unusual amount of humility and grace. I like what I\u2019ve heard of the new record, too\u2014it\u2019s tender, propulsive, smart. It was co-produced by Aaron Dessner, who\u2019s a useful foil for someone like Kahan, who maybe leans sort of earnest and crowd-please-y. Dessner\u2019s production is moody, and it gives Kahan\u2019s songs some existential heft.<\/p>\n

Over all, how is this year in music shaping up?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lately, whenever I\u2019ve been asked this, I can\u2019t help but think of the closing lines of a poem by Charles Bukowski: \u201cEverything burning, \/ everything wet, \/ everything fine.\u201d There are always great records coming out, but in terms of cultural sea change, man, it feels really slow right now! Pop is in a transitional moment. With the exception of Kendrick Lamar (and occasionally Drake), hip-hop has largely ceded its purchase on the charts, and, instead, we\u2019re seeing a lot of easy-listening ballads sung by people far too young, in my opinion, to not be doing something weirder and more inventive.<\/p>\n

Do you have any favorite releases so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The past couple of years have felt so flashy and pop-forward and vulgar (in a great way, of course) that I am now retreating to my safe space (wayward losers with guitars). I understand that Zach Bryan is a contentious figure these days, but I really like his new album, \u201cWith Heaven on Top.\u201d He sings a lot about the vagaries of being a celebrity (\u201cFame and other corny shit\u201d is how he puts it), which can get tiresome, but he\u2019s got a kind of hothead-dirtbag swagger that, regrettably, I find interesting.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a great record coming out next month called \u201cBirds of Paradise,\u201d by a New Orleans-based singer named Thomas Dollbaum. It\u2019s just exceptionally deep and lovely\u2014dusky, melodic, just a little bit dangerous-sounding. Big watching-a-thunderstorm-from-the-front-porch energy.<\/p>\n

Have there been any disappointments?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I find Harry Styles wildly talented and generally very compelling, but I wish he\u2019d taken a bigger swing this year. I want his music to be as inscrutable and forward-thinking as his brand is. My (delusional) hope was that \u201cKiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally\u201d would somehow resemble the Blue Nile\u2019s \u201cThe Downtown Lights,\u201d or Dexys Midnight Runners\u2019 \u201cCome On Eileen,\u201d or late-aughts Grizzly Bear, or even \u201cSound of Silver\u201d-era LCD Soundsystem, whereas it\u2019s mostly just giving, \u201cHey, you are at the drugstore.\u201d (For whatever it\u2019s worth, the self-titled d\u00e9but by My New Band Believe\u2014a proggy, circuitous project from the former Black Midi bassist Cameron Picton\u2014perhaps scratches that itch more successfully.)<\/p>\n

Which projects have most interested you intellectually, as a critic? Have any stood out artistically, even if they maybe aren\u2019t in your daily rotation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Admittedly, \u201cURGH,\u201d by Mandy, Indiana (a noise-rock band that\u2019s split between Manchester and Berlin, with a vocalist who sings in French), is too violent, gnashing, and seductive for my everyday listening (these days, I\u2019m more likely to wind down by doing the \u201cla-da-da-dee\u201d from Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cWigwam\u201d), but I think it\u2019s cool as hell. Inexplicable, loud, kinetic, vicious. Great.<\/p>\n

In a post-\u201cBrat\u201d world, it feels like there\u2019s room for pop that\u2019s high-concept and a little IYKYK-coded, though aside from the Addison Rae record, which came out in 2025, I don\u2019t know that we\u2019ve fully seen that class of artists emerge from the ether (or, more realistically, TikTok) yet.<\/p>\n

We asked our readers to send us what questions they have for you. A couple of them wanted to know what you thought about the accusations that the hype around the band Geese was a PsyOp.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newyorker.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cover of Rodrigo\u2019s forthcoming album. Today\u2019s a big day for the popheads: Olivia Rodrigo\u2019s new single, \u201cDrop Dead,\u201d is out. It\u2019s her first release since 2024, and the first song off her forthcoming album, \u201cYou Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love.\u201d The music video features her prancing through Versailles wearing a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2403303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[369874,408930,320998,408931,408929,23105],"class_list":["post-2403302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-_sensitivecontent","tag-disable-inline-signup-unit","tag-onecolumnnarrow","tag-textabovecentersmallwithrule","tag-the-daily","tag-web"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/What-Our-Music-Critic-Is-Listening-To.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2403302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2403304,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403302\/revisions\/2403304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2403303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2403302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2403302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2403302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}