New Music Friday: 6/21/24

Here are the rules: I listen to all 100 tracks of Spotify's New Music Friday playlist, except for anything that rhymes the n-word with itself more than three times, any screamo or screamo-adjacent stuff, any CCM that reveals its true intentions in time for me to hit the skip button, and any egregiously corny modern country music, typically performed by a dude with two first names. Having sifted through this week's playlist, here's what I actively enjoyed:

"cut!," Maren Morris featuring Julia Michaels
I am, in general, an album guy, to the point that when I'm thinking about an artist's discography, I tend to forget or willfully ignore EPs, best-ofs, and anything else that contains stray dribbles of new music between full-length efforts. I must begrudgingly concede, however, that the 21st-century release model — chaotic as it may be — has its benefits where an artist like Maren Morris is concerned. She's got an EP, appropriately titled Intermission, scheduled for an early August release; this small assortment of songs is being positioned as a hint of things to come, and "cut!" is our first glimpse of its contents. Taken on its own terms, "cut!" does exactly what it's supposed to — this feels like a restatement of purpose, albeit one that's easy to sing along with and gets in and out in a little over two minutes.