7 New Songs You Should Hear Now

Dear listeners,

A few weeks ago, when the British pop musician Charli XCX released her raw, prismatic sixth album, “Brat,” I had some difficulty choosing just one of its tracks for our Friday Playlist. I ultimately went with “Girl, so confusing,” a dance floor confessional that aired mixed feelings about a certain musical peer. “People say we’re alike, they say we’ve got the same hair,” Charli sang, before admitting that the few times they had hung out felt stilted: “We talk about making music, but I don’t know if it’s honest.”

You don’t have to be an international pop star to know that particular feeling — the awkward disappointment when you just don’t click with someone that everyone around you thinks you’ll love. Still, the peanut gallery clamored to know exactly whom Charli was singing about. That line about the hair, plus the characterization that this unnamed girl was “all about writing poems,” had people convinced it was Lorde.

Those suspicions were confirmed last Friday, when Lorde told her side of the story on a surprise remix, which kicks off today’s playlist of notable singles from the past few weeks. In her first new lyrics since her 2021 retreat-from-fame album “Solar Power,” Lorde met Charli’s warts-and-all honesty with an outpouring of her own insecurities and body-image struggles: “You’d always say ‘let’s go out,’ but then I’d cancel last minute/I was so lost in my head and scared to be in your pictures.” Lorde’s verse is at once heartbreaking and cathartic, and when her voice and Charli’s join in the song’s final moments, it feels like something deeper and more poignant than pop music’s usual “girl power” sloganeering.

Also candidly airing her anxieties on this playlist is the British phenom Raye, whose sprawling, seven-minute “Genesis.” moves through the darkest parts of her psyche before finally reaching for the light. The New York art-rock trio Hello Mary finds release through pummeling noise, while the electronic artist Floating Points blisses out via hypnotic loops and kinetic beats. Plus, if you want to hear Cardi B rapping in Spanglish — perhaps a preview of the Spanish-language album she has promised to release one day — this playlist will scratch that itch, too.

Let’s work it out on the remix,

Lindsay

Listen along while you read.

1. Charli XCX & Lorde: “The girl, so confusing version with lorde”

One thing I love about “Brat” is the way many of its lyrics have a sort of group-chat intimacy: a run-on, unpolished quality like a message you’d send to a close friend. Lorde’s verse fits so well into this track because she is able to tap into that style, too — albeit in her own particular voice.