New Music Friday: 9/13/24

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:

"Dancing in the Flames," The Weeknd
Here is where I admit that I've never really understood the fuss around the Weeknd — where others heard the second coming of Michael Jackson, I just heard decent if slightly dull pop. And now, just in time for the rest of the world to decide I might have been right about him all along, he finally drops a single I can kinda get behind. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "Dancing in the Flames" will change your life, but it's decently catchy in a way that plays to his strengths as a vocalist, and as it turns out, that's all I need from him today.

"It's ok I'm ok," Tate McRae
I saw a headline this morning about Tate McRae going nude for the "It's ok I'm ok" video, which strikes me as attention-getting overkill — some songs might need that type of extra assist, but I suspect this one would have done just fine for itself even if it didn't have a video at all. As with "Dancing in the Flames," I'm trying not to be too effusive here, because at bottom, this is really just another 21st-century electro-pop bauble about how one hot young thing is totally over another hot young thing; that said, I think the melody is twice as interesting as it had to be, and the sonic setting is pretty much perfect for McRae. I may not remember "It's ok I'm ok" next month; for now, I'm giving it a glittery thumbs up.

"Eusexua," FKA twigs
"Eusexua" is apparently a word made up by FKA twigs, who defines it as "a feeling of momentary transcendence." I do not feel any sort of transcendence while listening to this song, but I do kind of feel like I might be living in a parallel universe where one of Kate Bush's offspring decided to record a gauzy number that sounds in spots like a danced-up, slowed-down version of Blondie's "Dreaming." As it turns out, this is not a bad feeling.