Pop

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, Zach Bryan returns with a lyrical farewell, Twenty One Pilots put a bow on a long-running story, and Sexyy Red gets an assist from Drake. Check out all of this week’s picks below:

Zach Bryan, “Pink Skies” 

As he has graduated from cult audiences to stadium crowds, Zach Bryan has never betrayed his storytelling intuition: on “Pink Skies,” a somber and striking new single, the singer-songwriter forgoes any crowd-pleasing impulse to tell a tale of a funeral preparation, addressing a deceased loved one as their grown children get ready to wish them farewell. With careful guitar strums and unabashed harmonica blasts, “Pink Skies” is a full-bodied entry in Bryan’s quickly growing discography — and while its subject matter does not scream “country radio,” he has long succeeded by shrugging off conventional wisdom, and will likely do so again here.

Twenty One Pilots, Clancy 

Nearly a decade ago, Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface introduced a multi-album narrative arc from the band, along with producing enormous crossover hits like “Stressed Out” and “Ride”; with Clancy, the best-selling rock duo concludes that particular story, while offering more alternative radio fodder like the contemplative “The Craving” and the quietly grooving “Backslide.” Regardless of how closely you’re monitoring the group’s world-building details, their seventh studio album continues to expand upon a proven formula.

Sexyy Red, In Sexyy We Trust 

Although the majority of the initial attention paid to Sexyy Red’s surprise new mixtape will center on Drake’s guest spot on “U My Everything,” which name-checks and flips Metro Boomin’s “BBL Drizzy” beat in a master troll move, the St. Louis rapper more than holds her own across In Sexyy We Trust, which uses the audacious single “Get It Sexyy” as a starting point for a full-blown swagger showcase. Sexyy sounds magnetic when talking trash over bruising beats, and In Sexyy We Trust will endure beyond its most eyebrow-raising guest verse.

RM, Right Place, Wrong Person 

By preceding his second solo album with the heartfelt, six-minute-plus sprawl of “Come Back To Me,” RM hinted at a project that was going to showcase his emotional intelligence and creative sensibilities rather than chasing hits; indeed, Right Place, Wrong Person finds the BTS member exploring his artistry unapologetically, offering an honest, sometimes explicit, multi-lingual check-in on a superstar growing into adulthood. Plus, he’s got some great guests: Little Simz, Moses Sumney and DOMi & JD Beck stop by the project, all of whom translate their outside-the-box talents into RM’s world.

PinkPantheress, “Turn It Up” 

Since breaking through last year alongside Ice Spice with “Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2,” PinkPantheress has continued to release pillowy, subtly beautiful rhythmic hyperpop, first with her Heaven Knows album and now with her first new single of 2024. “Turn It Up” examines shared music experiences, both in public and then through a more intimate exchange: “You just make me wanna say, ‘Hey, it’s me’ / We’ve been talking twice a week / I like this beat / It just makes me wanna sing,” she sings, right before clowning on her subject for singing the wrong words in the club.

Editor’s Pick: Clairo, “Sexy to Someone” 

After her sophomore album Sling leaned into Clairo’s quietest impulses, delightful new single “Sexy to Someone,” which precedes its follow-up Charm, return Claire Cottrill to the hook-friendly indie-pop that made Immunity one of the most engaging debut albums in recent memory. Waxing poetic about the lightning-bolt feeling of catching the eye of a stranger, Clairo bounces her voice off of a gorgeous collection of piano and bass, allowing the instrumentation to amplify her intimate thoughts and returning to a studio mode that suits her impeccably.