Friday Music Guide: New Music From Olivia Rodrigo, Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion, Tyler Childers and More

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.

This week (July 28), Olivia Rodrigo shows listeners she’s got the Guts with her sophomore LP, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion team up again to recapture that old “WAP” magic, Tyler Childers and d4vd keep it brief and more.

Olivia Rodrigo, Guts

There might not be a more anticipated sophomore LP released in 2023 than Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts, follow-up to her game-changing Sour release two years earlier. While the album was preceded by a pair of top 10 hits in the bloody ballad “Vampire” and the winking new-waver “Bad Idea Right?” Guts shows those songs to be just two of many new career highlights, including the shuffling, double-meaning pop-rock singalong “Get Him Back!” and the heartbroken (but responsibility-splitting) “Logical.” Read our list of every track ranked here, and look forward to spending a lot of time with these songs in your life over the rest of the year.

Cardi B feat. Megan Thee Stallion, “Bongos”

They made magic once before with the Hot 100-topping “WAP,” and now rap titans Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion have reunited for another club-killing collab with the appropriately hard-hitting “Bongos.” It’s another fun, frisky teamup with another colorful, choreo-heavy video — hopefully with less ridiculous controversy surrounding it this time — that should extend the summer for at least another week or two past labor day on its own. Make sure you stick around for Cardi’s late-song callback to Pitbull and Lil Jon’s underrated 2005 hit “Toma.”

Tyler Childers, Rustin’ in the Rain EP

The timing could not be better for a full-length Tyler Childers release, coming off not only the good reception for his own Hot 100-debuting new single “In Your Love,” but the massive, chart-topping success of fellow Americana purveyors Zach Bryan and Oliver Anthony Music. You could maybe argue the true “full-length” qualifications of Rustin’ in the Rain — it’s seven tracks and 28 minutes, which is just barely out of EP territory — but what’s here should still be plenty to keep the singer-songwriter’s ever-growing fanbase satisfied, including “Love,” the rollicking title track, and a powerful cover of the Kris Kristofferson-penned country staple “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”

D4vd, The Lost Petals

Teenage singer-songwriter D4vd became both a viral phenomenon and a Hot 100-charting artist in late 2022 and early 2023 with his gauzy breakthrough hits “Romantic Homicide” and “Here With Me.” With his two EP releases this year — the previously released Petals to Thorns and this week’s bonus follow-up Lost Petals — he’s showing that those singles were really just the beginning, with both his songwriting and his sonics continuing to develop at a rapid rate. Try the fragile, Joji-like piano balladry of “Poetic Vulgarity” from this one, or the Mac DeMarco-worthy wooziness of closing groover “Once More.”

Marshmello & Dove Cameron, “Other Boys”

Shout out to Australian house duo Flight Facilities and singer-songwriter Giselle, whose sublimely longing 2010 collaboration “Crave You” was one of great understated pop gems of its era. Outside of the Land Down Under, the song was hardly a huge mainstream hit — but two artists evidently still familiar with its charms are DJ/producer Marshmello and breakout singer-songwriter Dove Cameron, who refashion the song’s chorus into the backbone of the hook to their new joint single “Other Boys.” There’s not a ton to the song once they get past the lift — at a scant 2:17, there’s not a whole lot of song here, period — but it’s a fun flashback for those of us still craving more floor-fillers like “Crave You.”

The Rolling Stones, “Angry”

One of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time — and probably the longest-enduring — is back. Hackney Diamonds, due in late October, will be the Rolling Stones’ first album since 2016’s covers set Blue and Lonesome, and their first since the death of longtime drummer Charlie Watts. The LP is led by the ripping new single “Angry,” showcasing the group still in fine form sixty years after their debut album — and still plenty vital for the younger generation(s). Of course, it never hurts to have one of the biggest young actresses in your music video, as the Stones show with their casting of Euphoria and White Lotus star Sydney Sweeney in the “Angry” visual.

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