first stream

Billboard’s First Stream 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. 

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This week, Taylor Swift turns the clock to Midnights, Arctic Monkeys continue to challenge themselves, and Shakira links up with Ozuna. Check out all of this week’s First Stream picks below:

Taylor Swift, Midnights 

Taylor Swift’s 10th studio album, Midnights, was introduced to us as an exercise in restlessness. “This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night,” Swift wrote in August while announcing the project, “a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. The floors we pace and the demons we face.”

This explanation for Midnights makes sense in the context of its arrival. Less than two years after the unexpected, two-pronged opus of Folklore and Evermore, and smack in the middle of her extended process of re-recording (and expanding) her first six studio albums, Swift certainly did not need to release an album of original material this year. Yet like any middle-of-the-night rumination, these songs gnawed at her, begging to be expanded upon instead of stored away for another day. Midnights brims with the bleary-eyed doubts, private triumphs, left-field questions and long-term musings that haunt us in the darkness; Swift felt compelled to hoist hers into the light.

Click here for a full review of Taylor Swift’s Midnights, and a track-by-track breakdown of its standard edition.

Arctic Monkeys, The Car 

Casual Arctic Monkeys fans might turn their nose up at The Car, the band’s seventh studio album; why, they might wonder, has the wildly successful UK rock band behind hits like “Do I Wanna Know?” and “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” pivoted to highly orchestrated lounge music? But Alex Turner and co. haven’t designed The Car for casuals — these are gorgeous, complicated songs, performed with the intimacy and confidence of a band willing to open themselves up to new ideas and having the panache to pull them off.

Shakira & Ozuna, “Monotonía” 

After linking up with Raw Alejandro for “Te Felicito,” Shakira has previewed her forthcoming album with another high-wattage Latin music collaboration, this time with Ozuna joining on the spacious bachata tracks “Monotonía.” With vocalists as skilled as Shakira and Ozuna, the production wisely clears out as the two superstars operate with nuance and passion, finding a charming balance between their two tones.

Roddy Ricch, “Aston Martin Truck” 

“I’m trying to make another hundred million / Figure out how I’m gone bring my brothers in,” Roddy Ricch raps on new single “Aston Martin Truck,” which possesses a level of urgency that the hip-hop star injects into all of his most accomplished work. A few years after exploding with “The Box,” Ricch is looking for another single to scale the charts, and “Aston Martin Truck” grabs the listener for the entirety of its running time, in a way that suggests this might be the one to make the leap.

Carly Rae Jepsen, The Loneliest Time 

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the “Call Me Maybe” phenomenon — the summer-dominating No. 1 smash that made Carly Rae Jepsen an unlikely pop star following years spent as a successful singer-songwriter in Canada — and while Jepsen is now removed from the hits-chasing discourse, she’s still releasing arresting pop gems that deserve to get stuck in your head as well. The Loneliest Time considers new directions for Jepsen after years of perfecting a shimmering retro-pop aesthetic, with slower tempos and more contemplation mixed in to winning sing-alongs like “Surrender My Heart” and the title track (featuring Rufus Wainwright).

Billboard’s First Stream 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. 

Explore

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

This week, Lil Baby takes his turn again, Blink-182 is back and edgier than ever, and The 1975 has a concise mission statement. Check out all of this week’s First Stream picks below:

Lil Baby, It’s Only Me 

On the one hand, Lil Baby is a natural star, with a singular voice and the type of charisma that can carry him through solo hits, guest verses and commercial opportunities; on the other hand, Lil Baby’s music, sometimes anxious and often insular, does not line up with the longstanding tenets of mainstream hip-hop. That tension between personality and product has been fascinating to witness as Lil Baby’s profile has exploded since 2020’s My Turn, and makes up the heart of It’s Only Me, which arrives as a blockbuster (with guest spots from Future, Young Thug, Jeremih and Pooh Shiesty, among others) but is defined by Baby’s attention to detail and searing approach to storytelling instead of any lunges toward catchiness. Complex and affecting, It’s Only Me finds Lil Baby embracing his own definition of stardom.

Blink-182, “Edging” 

“I’m a punk rock kid, I came from hell with a curse / She tried to pray it away, so I f–ked her in church,” Tom DeLonge sings in the opening minute of Blink-182’s comeback single “Edging,” cutting to the chase on his first Blink single since a years-long hiatus. The trio’s focus is on next year’s enormous reunion tour, but “Edging” proves that DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker still know how to get in a room and create tight, catchy, exceedingly sophomoric pop-punk; it’s great to have them back.

The 1975, Being Funny in a Foreign Language 

The 1975 are responsible for some of the most dazzling pop songs of the past decade, so the fact that Matty Healy and co. decided to team up with Jack Antonoff for Being Funny in a Foreign Language — with the seeming intent of making an album about love — should entice anyone who’s even a casual fan of the UK group. What Antonoff offers on the full-length is focus: the band’s typical studio sprawl is streamlined to 11 tracks here, bursting with hope for a better tomorrow in the digital age and adoration of pop song craft (“Oh Caroline,” for instance, is the sound of everyone involved synthesizing the ‘80s and firing on all cylinders).

Zach Bryan, “Starved” 

“Starved” serves as a pristine example of why Zach Bryan has become one of country music’s breakout stars of the year: the new single, which follows the prolific singer-songwriter’s American Heartbreak album and Summertime Blues EP, functions more as an apotheosis of his country-rock songwriting than as a stopgap single, drenched in memories and moving forward with a choked-up growl. “There’s no world in which I am good for you,” Bryan concludes in the bridge, as strings quietly soundtrack his hurt.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, Return of the Dream Canteen 

Red Hot Chili Peppers may have made fans wait six years for new music following 2016’s The Getaway, but they also made the payoff worth their while, with both Unlimited Love and now Return of the Dream Canteen coming out in 2022 (with a stadium tour across North American in between their releases). At 75 minutes, Return of the Dream Canteen (recorded during the Unlimited Love sessions) is both a deluge of what the Chilis do best — opening track “Tippa My Tongue” gives Anthony Kiedis free range to spit his game — and a project that’s more satisfying than a B-sides collection, especially when it comes to blissed-out cuts like the Eddie Van Halen tribute “Eddie.”

Nessa Barrett, Young Forever 

Pop, alternative, pop-punk, emo — however you want to describe Nessa Barrett’s music, the singer-songwriter has found a niche in telling stories that work on radio stations and in TikTok clips. Young Forever, Barrett’s debut album, continues down the emotionally unflinching path that she began with the stunning eating disorder account “Dying on the Inside,” as tracks like “Dear God” and “Tired of California” document feelings of emptiness and ennui above ethereal arrangements.