Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.
Japanese Breakfast, ‘Here Is Someone’
Plucked string tones from all directions create a magical, shimmering cascade around Michelle Zauner’s voice in “Here Is Someone” from the new album by Japanese Breakfast, “For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women).” The lyrics hint at tensions and anxieties, but the track radiates anticipation: “Life is sad, but here is someone,” Zauner concludes.
Marianne Faithfull, ‘Burning Moonlight’
Marianne Faithfull, who died in January at 78, kept recording almost to the end. She brought every bit of her scratchy, ravaged, tenacious voice to “Burning Moonlight,” a song she co-wrote that holds one of her last manifestos: “Burning moonlight to survive / Walking in fire is my life.” Acoustic guitars and tambourine connect the music to the 1960s, when she got her start; her singing holds all the decades of experience that followed.
The Waterboys featuring Fiona Apple, ‘Letter From an Unknown Girlfriend’
“Letter From an Unknown Girlfriend” is from the Waterboys album due April 4, “Life, Death and Dennis Hopper,” and was written by Mike Scott. But it is sung and played by Fiona Apple, alone at the piano, delivering a remembrance of an abusive boyfriend: “I used to say no man would ever strike me,” it begins, “And no man ever did ’til I met you.” She admits to the charm of the “satyr running wild in you,” but her voice rises to a bitter, primal rasp as she recalls the worst. It’s a stark, harrowing performance.
… (and so on)
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