Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to New Music Friday’s most essential releases each week — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
Last week, we featured Gracie Abrams, Drake and Maluma.
This week: Olivia Rodrigo shares the second single from her forthcoming You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, Lola Young returns with the hearty “From Down Here” and Charli xcx continues to tease her new album with “SS26” … plus much more. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Olivia Rodrigo, “The Cure”
From the first strummed chord of “The Cure” one thing becomes clear: indie-rocker Liv has entered the chat. Across the near five-minute song, Rodrigo flexes her singer-songwriter muscles as the initial riff continues on, resulting in a song that would sound just as good at a stripped down, acoustic open mic session (though she’s already been there, done that already for this cycle) as it would blaring through a stadium sound system. And once that bridge hits — introducing a swiftly sped up tempo for the song’s final minute — her upcoming Unraveled Tour name makes a whole lot more sense.
Lola Young, “From Down Here”
Following a Grammy win for best pop solo performance (“Messy”) and ahead of a celebrated return to headline All Things Go, Lola Young is sharing the soulful and soaring “From Down Here.” Co-written and co-produced by James Blake, his fingerprints are all over the track’s enticing layers. Together, each one helps create a plush sonic playground for Young’s vocals to jump around on — and in fact, it takes a voice like hers to not get lost in the sound but rather act as its guide no matter the vantage point.
Charli xcx, “SS26”
The second single from Charli’s upcoming album, once again, takes a turn down a new path (or, as she sings, down a “runway that goes straight to hell”). The surprisingly mid-tempo track puts Charli’s vocals at the forefront and feels far removed from the divisive lead single “Rock Music” — save for a subtle, unrelenting riff that at times leans heavy on fuzzy feedback. But really, it’s the writing that provokes a second play as Charli sings of the inevitable end of the world through the lens of a new spring/summer collection, concluding: “Nothing’s gonna save us, not music, fashion, or film.”
Bleachers, everyone for ten minutes
Focus track “we should talk,” from Bleachers’ fifth album that arrives on Friday (May 22), wastes no time setting the agenda for what exactly should be talked about. “We had a band, we had a life, we had dreams/ In a van we wrote our own Bible supreme/ Then you got a house, a lawn, a wife and a kid/ And those dreams turned to memories and that’s where it ends.” The flittering pop-rock track paints a picture a familiar crossroads between the life you’ve already lived and the one that feels fast approaching — and what you want to do about it.
Blondshell, Heart Has To Work So Hard
Indie rocker Blondshell is preparing for a big season ahead, announcing her biggest headlining shows for the fall and now launching her next cycle with the aching and angry “Heart Has To Work So Hard.” And while her distinct dismal tone stamps the song as only her own, the unrelenting production and musicianship create a new point of intriguing tension that could — and should — be explored more on a future project. As Blondshell shared in a statement: “This song is really about friendship and betrayal, getting stuck in a dynamic and letting things fester…but it’s also about a love so enduring that you find compassion no matter what.”
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