Billboard’s Friday Music Information serves as a useful information to this Friday’s most important releases — the important thing music that everybody might be speaking about as we speak, and that might be dominating playlists this weekend and past.
This week, Billy Joel makes his grand return, Don Toliver will get into psych-rock and TWICE hold the vitality excessive. Take a look at all of this week’s picks beneath:
The primary new Billy Joel single in a long time arrives with uneven mixture of anticipation and expectation — in any case, the truth that “Flip the Lights Again On” exists in any respect marks a breathlessly thrilling new growth for a legendary artist, no matter its high quality. What a beautiful discovery, then, that “Flip the Lights Again On” is each gorgeously rendered and a deeply felt private check-in from Joel, who feels like the identical soulful storyteller he’s at all times been: “I’m late, however I’m right here proper now,” he sings, “although I was romantic, I forgot in some way.” For each decades-long followers and a brand new era of listeners, “Flip the Lights Again On” stands tall as a significant new second.
Though Don Toliver’s 2023 album Love Sick included friends like Justin Bieber, Future, Lil Durk and his companion Kali Uchis, new single “Bandit” options Tame Impala in pattern type, because the 2020 monitor “One Extra Hour” turns into the spine of a widescreen chest-thumping to kick off the brand new yr. Toliver has by no means sounded extra assured as he does spitting rhymes and hitting his falsetto over the stadium-rock guitar squeals, and “Bandit” turns into the uncommon sample-heavy monitor to each stand by itself deserves and intensify the excessive factors of its supply materials.
As we enter February, New 12 months’s health resolutions could have began to fall by the wayside — however right here comes Okay-pop titans TWICE to inspire you anew with their propulsive, dizzyingly enjoyable new single. “I Received You,” the newest monitor from upcoming mini-album WITH YOU-th, builds upon the success of the group’s earlier English-language singles by highlighting the collective’s melodic strengths and doubling down on the snappiest elements of the synth-pop manufacturing, making a flash level that might cross over to U.S. platforms in a giant approach.
Subsequent week is showtime for Usher, with new album Coming Residence due out subsequent Friday (Feb. 9) and somewhat efficiency known as the Tremendous Bowl halftime present two days later, however earlier than his newest full-length and the most important efficiency of his profession are unveiled, the suave, luxurious new monitor “Destroy” serves as a remaining preview of what feels like a return to type. Rising Nigerian artist Pheelz lends a nifty help over the dimly lit, Afrobeat-adjacent rhythms, however “Destroy” demonstrates Ursh pushing himself as a veteran artist, all whereas his silky-smooth enchantment hasn’t dulled one bit.
“Straight Line” was “born of wanting to interrupt out of routine and feeling like someplace alongside the road, life misplaced some colour and pleasure,” Keith City explains in a press launch; certainly, the primary monitor launched from City’s subsequent studio album takes the nation veteran’s time-honored system and injects some adrenaline, with a driving tempo and a few selection wooooooo-hoo’s within the post-chorus. Whereas “Straight Line” will little question soundtrack some boisterous sing-alongs throughout City’s subsequent tour, the track additionally bodes properly for the follow-up to 2020’s The Velocity of Now Half 1.
New music from Burial — one of the vital influential and enigmatic producers of the twenty first century — is at all times a present, contemplating how sporadic his releases have been over the previous decade, however “Dreamfear/Boy Despatched From Above” feels notably particular, as a 25-minute double single that’s directly mysterious and intoxicating. Longtime Unfaithful followers will gravitate in the direction of the ghostly vocals and shuffling beats, however proponents of Burial’s extra summary current work ought to embrace the sprawl right here, too.