Billboard's Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday's most essential releases — the essential music everyone will be talking about today and that will dominate playlists this weekend and beyond.
This week, Zach Bryan returns with a lyrical farewell, Twenty One Pilots bows out in a long-running storyline, and Sexyy Red gets an assist from Drake. Check out all of this week's picks below:
Zach Bryan, “Pink Skies”
As he's graduated from cult audiences to stadium crowds, Zach Bryan has never betrayed his narrative intuition: on “Pink Skies,” a somber and brooding new single, the singer-songwriter forgoes any audience desire to tell a story of a funeral. preparation, addressing a loved one who has died as their grown children prepare to say goodbye. With meticulous guitar strums and irresistible harmonica blasts, “Pink Skies” is a full-bodied entry in Bryan's fast-growing discography – and while its subject matter doesn't scream “country radio”, he's long succeeded in rejecting conventional wisdom and will likely do it again here.
twenty one pilots, Clancy
Almost a decade ago, Twenty One Pilots' Blurry face ushered in a multi-album narrative arc from the band, along with producing massive crossover hits like “Stressed Out” and “Ride.” with Clancy, the best-selling rock duo completes that particular story while offering more alternative radio fodder like the brooding “The Craving” and the quietly grooving “Backslide.” No matter how closely you follow the details of the group's world-building, their seventh studio album continues to expand on a proven formula.
Sexy Red, At Sexyy We Trust
Although most of the initial attention given to Sexyy Red's surprise new mixtape will focus on Drake's guest spot on “U My Everything,” which name-checks and flips Metro Boomin's “BBL Drizzy” in a top-notch troll move , the St. rapper more than holds her own across At Sexyy We Trust, which uses the bold single “Get It Sexyy” as the springboard for a full-on showcase. Sexy sounds magnetic when trash talking over bruising beats and At Sexyy We Trust will last beyond his most impressive guest verse.
RM, Right place, wrong person
Preceding his second solo album with the heartfelt, six-minute spread of “Come Back To Me,” RM hinted at a project that was going to showcase his emotional intelligence and creative sensibilities rather than chasing hits. actually, Right place, wrong person finds the BTS member unapologetically exploring his craft, offering an honest, sometimes telling, multilingual check-in on a superstar growing into adulthood. Plus, it has some great guests: Little Simz, Moses Sumney, and DOMi & JD Beck stop by the project, all of them translating their outside-the-box talents into the world of RM.
Pink Pantheress, “Turn It Up”
Since last year, along with Ice Spice with 'Boy's a Liar Pt. 2,” PinkPantheress continued to churn out pillowy, subtly beautiful rhythmic superpop, first with her Heaven Knows album and now with her first new single of 2024. “Turn It Up” examines shared musical experiences, both in the audience and afterward through a more intimate exchange: “You just make me want to say, 'Hey, it's me ” / We've been talking twice a week / I like this beat / It just makes me want to sing,” she sings, immediately before clowning her subject for singing the wrong words in the club.
Editor's Pick: Clairo, “Sexy to Someone”
After her second album Sling leaned into Clairo's quieter urges, gorgeous new single 'Sexy to Someone', which precedes the follow-up Charmreturn Claire Cottrill to the hook-friendly indie-pop she became Immunity, immunity one of the most exciting debut albums in recent memory. Waxing poetic about the lightning-quick feeling of catching a stranger's eye, Clairo bounces her voice off a gorgeous collection of piano and bass, allowing the orchestration to amplify her personal musings and return to a studio mode that suits her perfectly.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/friday-music-guide-zach-bryan-twenty-one-pilots-sexyy-red-rm-1235692502/