Blackpink’s Genre-Clashing Return, and 8 More New Songs
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at [email protected] and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.
Blackpink, ‘Pink Venom’
Over the four years leading to its 2020 debut album, Blackpink — Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, Rosé — became one of K-pop’s biggest global success stories: musically modern, engaged with pop from around the world, versatile. The first single from the group’s upcoming second album, “Born Pink” (due next month) has the comfort of anarchy. Every four bars, a new approach enters — familiar K-pop elasticity, loose Middle Eastern themes, gaudy rock, West Coast rap, and more. It exists out where maximalism moves past philosophy to aesthetic. JON CARAMANICA
Madonna, ‘Get Together’ (Jacques Lu Cont Vocal Edit)
The remixes on Madonna’s “Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones,” out Friday, throb, zigzag and shimmer, highlighting the pop superstar’s deep connection to the dance floor — starting with her 1983 single “Holiday” and wrapping with “I Don’t Search I Find,” the glorious house standout on her most recent studio album, “Madame X” (its lyrics give the collection its name). As a full body of work, Madonna’s 2005 LP “Confessions on a Dance Floor” represents her most potent love letter to the form, and the Jacques Lu Cont Vocal Edit remix of its “Get Together,” available digitally for the first time, is a refreshing break from the (still great!) 4 a.m.-at-the-club pound that marks most of the set. Replacing its oozing synths with a snaking guitar riff, the track rides nearly like an indie-rock song that eventually glitches out and finds a way home again. CARYN GANZ
⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ), ‘[] vȯ)) ̷̨ʅ (ʅ(Ɵʅ():::()̵̳̗̊(Ɵʅ()vȯ)) ̷̨ʅ)’
This garble of characters is an alias of the innovative electronic music producer Kieran Hebden (also known as Four Tet). His fleet and cheeky new song is indebted to sensual garage and boisterous house. CARAMANICA
Zedd, Maren Morris and Beauz ‘Made You Say’
Like Zedd and Maren Morris’s previous collaboration, the unavoidable pop smash “The Middle,” “Make You Say” is the expertly engineered product of a whole cadre of collaborators: This time around, that includes co-writing credits from the sibling D.J. duo Beauz and the thirst trap aficionado Charlie Puth. All throughout, Morris hopscotches nimbly across Zedd’s syncopated arrangement and sing-songy melody, but the song is at its best when it really lets her rip, contrasting the grainy texture of her voice with the sleek surfaces of Zedd’s production. “You got your arms around her when you sleep,” she belts with alluring sass, “but I’m the one you dream about.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ
Isabella Lovestory, ‘Sexo Amor Dinero’
An industrial post-reggaeton thumper about the sweat at the intersection of money and sex. CARAMANICA
Chloe Moriondo, ‘Fruity’
The ever-evolving Chloe Moriondo — a young musician who basically came of age on her YouTube channel — makes an exhilarating pivot to hyperpop on “Fruity,” the first single from her forthcoming album, “Suckerpunch.” The song begins with Moriondo singing in her signature, sweetly muttered register atop some bright, pulsating synths, but as it builds in intensity her vocals become increasingly urgent and start to warp like melting plastic. “So close I can almost taste,” she sings of a “fresh and fruity” crush who she compares to a whole litany of sugary treats, building toward a chorus that’s deliciously hysterical and relentlessly catchy. ZOLADZ
Pony, ‘Peach’
It turns out that Pony, the tuneful grunge-pop band from Toronto, is quite aptly named: Earlier this year, the vocalist and guitarist Sam Bielanski announced a new gig: voicing a character in a “My Little Pony” cartoon. The charismatic pull of Bielanski’s vocals are on full display on the group’s new, ’90s-alt-rock-nodding single “Peach,” a bittersweet tale of love bombing and, eventually, cold clarity. “Picturing the salt of the beach,” Bielanski sings on the chorus, as a kind of personal reminder, “’Cause I don’t wanna drown in the taste of this peach.” ZOLADZ
Blake Shelton, ‘No Body’
A sashaying splash of early ’90s power-country revivalism from Blake Shelton, a superstar who’s traversed many styles with ease in his career, but never quite owned one. Here he’s reviving a once-rowdy sound and nodding to Brooks & Dunn (“Don’t wanna scoot the boots with nobody”) — a convincing mimic, as ever. CARAMANICA
Nick Hakim, ‘Happen’
“Happen,” from the Brooklyn-based indie musician Nick Hakim, is a hypnotic, woozily romantic ballad that nonetheless contains flashes of melancholic darkness: The muted, sludgy acoustic guitar conjures Elliott Smith, while the close-miked, near-whispered vocals are faintly reminiscent of the softer side of the Deftones. That overcast sound, though, balances out the openhearted nature of Hakim’s lyrics, which are almost devotional in their description of a transformative love. “The sweetest angel fell into my world,” he sings. “She gives me reason, was lost for a damn long time.” ZOLADZ
