Friday Music Guide: New Music From Miley Cyrus, Lorde, Tate McRae 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, Miley Cyrus finds new pop beauty, Lorde upends expectations and Tate McRae revs up for F1. Check out all of this week's picks below:
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Miley Cyrus,
Drawing upon classic pop influences while also letting her freak flag fly, Miley Cyrus offers a singular accomplishment on Something Beautiful — moving on from 2023's Endless Summer Vacation, which included the biggest hit of her career in 'Flowers,' with her most satisfying front-to-back listen to date, unbothered with trying to recreate radio success but still finding revealing hooks along the way.
Lorde, 'Man of the Year'
In the past, Lorde has liked to preview a new album with an uptempo lead single and a ballad-leaning follow-up — think Melodrama with 'Green Light' and 'Liability,' or Solar Power with the title track and 'Stoned at the Nail Salon' — but 'Man of the Year,' which comes after the fleet-footed 'What Was That,' is actually a red herring, starting off as a sparse reflection over bass plucks but then widening its stance, and ending with a fuzzed-out boom.
Tate McRae, 'Just Keep Watching'
Continuing a year in which she's leveled up as a pop star — as well as a week where she earned her first career Hot 100 chart-topper, alongside Morgan Wallen on 'What I Want' — Tate McRae hops into the F1 soundtrack mobile with 'Just Keep Watching,' a fast-moving club track with the type of quick-twitch percussion that could inspire more kinetic choreography if McRae incorporates the song into her live show.
Leon Thomas,
'MUTT' may have marked Leon Thomas' arrival as a compelling new voice in popular R&B, its host album of the same name was just as sumptuous as its standout hit; now, MUTT contains even more acrobatic vocal takes by Thomas on its deluxe edition, which includes team-ups with Kehlani and Big Sean, as well as engrossing new solo cuts like 'HEEL' and 'NOT FAIR.'
Mt. Joy,
The 2020s have seen indie rock quintet Mt. Joy continuously graduate to bigger touring venues, culminating in a Madison Square Garden headlining gig on their last live trek — and instead of simply acting as another excuse for the group to hit the road, new album Hope We Have Fun translates the band's live energy to the studio, with songs like 'Highway Queen' and 'Pink Lady' jangling forward with blissed-out style.
Clipse, 'Ace Trumpets'
In the 2000s, Virginia hip-hop duo Clipse would regularly release Pharrell Williams-produced bangers that made their listeners scrunch up their noses in delight; then, Malice quit music to explore religion, and his brother Pusha T moved on to solo stardom. Now, Clipse (and Pharrell) are back, recapturing the magic on 'Ace Trumpets,' the head-knocking first track from long-awaited new album, Let God Sort Em Out.
Ava Max, 'Lovin Myself'
Across pop hits like 'Sweet But Psycho,' 'My Head & My Heart' and 'Kings & Queens,' Ava Max has prioritized electro-pop fun while offering a streak of self-empowerment; new single 'Lovin Myself' doubles down on the second half of that equation, with the singer declaring, 'I don't need nobody, I'm lovin' myself!' as warm synths rain down on her voice.
Editor's Pick: Yeule,
If Yeule's 2022 album Glitch Princess was their critical breakthrough, Evangelic Girl is a Gun is the first time we receive a full glimpse of the daring singer-songwriter: the hyperpop from years past has morphed into trip-hop, alt-rock and affecting balladry, but across the most vulnerable lyricism of Yeule's career, they still toss out mesmerizing pop ideas, as their song craft serves as a foundation for their roaming spirit.
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Let's Go Racing Napping In the mid-1970s, it's easy to argue that Pacino was at the height of his powers, coming off star turns in two blockbuster Godfather movies as well as critically acclaimed performances in both Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon. It was a run that seemingly suggested the Italian-American superstar could do no wrong when it came to picking projects, and all signs pointed toward continued success when it was announced that his next project would have him assuming the mantle of a winning Formula 1 driver. Racing pictures hadn't historically been a sure thing. Although John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix had done big business 10 years earlier, the Steve McQueen vehicle Le Mans flopped financially at the beginning of the 1970s. Still, this was superstar Pacino teaming up with future Oscar-winning director Sidney Pollack, which is as close to printing money as you could get in that cinematic decade. In the film, the titular Bobby Deerfield, played by Pacino with a startling level of reserve, is knocked off his game by the death of a teammate during a race in Europe. Ostensibly, the story centers around his investigation into what happened on the circuit, but this is a movie that takes significant sidetracks into his own emotional response to the situation, as well as his affair with a dying woman who cares more about hot air balloons than winning on Sunday. Herein lies the greatest problem with Deerfield: It's dull. Amazingly, a movie that that employed the services of legendary drivers including James Hunt and Mario Andretti in its action sequences (with Jose Carlos Pace doubling for Pacino) will lull you to sleep during the incredible gaps between those snippets of competition (which were filmed in conjunction with actual F1 events). Pollack shot the racing paddock with aggressive intimacy, taking us into the cockpit with racers as they prepare for the green flag, and the atmosphere surrounding each race is believably electric, but the sojourns there are all too brief. Instead, much of the movie consists of Pacino moping around Italy behind the wheel of his Alfa Romeo, itself not necessarily a bad time were he ever allowed to smile or perhaps speak above a whisper. Dude, Where's My Racing? Audiences felt hoodwinked by the movie's marketing, which was heavy on the fast and furious F1 fun and remarkably light on the deep exploration of 1970s angst. Most critics agreed, and theatergoers stayed away in droves once bad press and word of mouth linked up to sink Bobby Deerfield's box-office take below $10 million. The movie was quickly forgotten, and despite Pacino having spoken fondly of the experience of making it, it's been almost entirely memory-holed by his PR team whenever a career retrospective comes around. 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It also sank the idea that putting the racing at the forefront, rather than making it background dressing à la Deerfield, was the key to success. Can Pitt Out-Market the F1 Machine? Since Bobby Deerfield, there's been only one successful take on Formula 1 to make it into theaters. Unfortunately for Brad Pitt, there likely aren't any useful lessons to be learned from 2013's Rush, a low-budget (roughly 10 percent of the outlay of F1) flick that relied on pre-fame performances from actors like Chris Hemsworth and Olivia Wilde to tell the story of the rivalry and friendship between legendary racing alumnus James Hunt and Nikki Lauda. If anything, Rush's ability to connect with an audience feels like a signpost for the troubles Pitt's upcoming release is potentially facing. Rather than going head to head with the glitz and glamor of the modern F1 circuit (which the sport is extremely successful at marketing even to non-fans in the form of its Drive to Survive Netflix series), Rush took audiences back to a time when media penetration of the track and trailer crowd was nowhere near the level it is today. And it portrayed real-life historic F1 heroes and storylines, something F1 also doesn't do. It's a lot easier to inhabit an imaginary world for a couple of hours if you aren't intimately familiar with it. For Pitt's F1, on top of historic box-office apathy for open-cockpit adventures, the movie's main competition is the relentless, all-encompassing, 24/7 digital video blast of the $18 billion enterprise itself, and the personalities that inhabit it for more than just the summer blockbuster season. Seen from that perspective, the movie's $300 million budget suddenly starts to feel more than a little light.
