Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
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This week, Sabrina Carpenter keeps winning, Zach Top becomes a star and Hayley Williams continues evolving. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Sabrina Carpenter, Man’s Best Friend
Sabrina Carpenter was always the type of knowingly quirky pop star that was able to effortlessly use a word like “agoraphobia” in a chorus, but Man’s Best Friend is by far her most idiosyncratic album yet, full of self-possessed and unabashedly sexual lyricism, genre explorations via nifty instrumental hooks, and vocal takes ranging from sarcastic whispers to large-hearted cries. Read a full review of Man’s Best Friend here.
Zach Top, Ain’t In It For My Health
Zach Top has exploded into the modern country scene with a simplified version of Nashville standards, and for much for Ain’t In It For My Health, the singer-songwriter offers deceptively straightforward delights — this album may be his country coronation with singles like “Good Times & Tan Lines” and “South of Sanity,” but the tiny phrases that stick with the listener, and the way his voice can break on a final chorus, are the little things that make Top a star.
Hayley Williams, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party
Weeks after unceremoniously releasing 17 solo songs onto the Internet, Paramore leader Hayley Williams has gathered them into a proper album, titled the beguiling project Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, and added one new song, the wistful pop-rock track “Parachute,” which is one of the best of this unexpected bunch.
Skepta + Fred Again.., Skepta .. Fred
“Victory Lap” unlocked something for both Skepta and Fred Again.., with the rapper and producer’s respective creative processes melding for a white-hot dance banger in July; since then, the two have kept working together, and now offer the tape Skepta .. Fred, a five-song exploration of their musical aesthetics that will have your speakers knocking for 16 minutes.
DJ Khaled, “You Remind Me”/”Brother”
With his first new music in three years, DJ Khaled demonstrates his curiosity in a wide range of pop, as well as the continued power of his Rolodex: “You Remind Me” combines Vybz Kartel, Buju Banton, Mavado, Bounty Killer, Rorystonelove and Kaylan Arnold into a summertime dancehall cut, while “Brother” features Post Malone and YoungBoy Never Broke Again, with one providing the heartfelt hook and the other gliding through rap verses.
Blood Orange, Essex Honey
Dev Hynes has long been a steady presence in popular music, even when he goes years in between projects, due to his influence on modern indie-pop and R&B; Essex Honey, his first album in seven years under the Blood Orange moniker, acts as an ambitious return to form — songs like “Look At You,” “Vivid Light” and “Mind Loaded” are all stop-you-in-your-tracks beautiful — and a reminder why so many stars turn to Hynes for inspiration.
The Beths, Straight Line Was a Lie
One of the most consistent groups in indie-rock, New Zealand quartet The Beths return with another supremely likable collection of shout-along songs: Straight Line Was a Lie pushes the band’s juxtaposition of quiet introspection and anthemic hooks to its limit, with songs often segueing straight from sky-high choruses to hushed admissions.
Editor’s Pick: Baylee Lynn, “Cautiously Optimistic”
Seventeen-year-old singer-songwriter Baylee Lynn has recently moved across Tennessee to Nashville, signed with Capitol Records and, with debut single “Cautiously Optimistic,” made an incredibly charming opening statement that both hopes that a new attraction is the real deal and harkens back to the turn-of-the-century country-pop stylings of Faith Hill and the Chicks.