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, Taylor Swift picks up her quill pen, Pearl Jam roar back, and Nicki Minaj calls up some famous pals. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department
One of the constants of Taylor Swift’s storied career has been the chances she’s taken at the precise moment when taking a chance wasn’t necessary. She was a country superstar who didn’t need to go pop; she was less than a year removed from a major pop album and didn’t need to take an indie-folk detour; she was in the middle of a blockbuster run of new albums and didn’t need to re-record her old ones. Time and again, Swift has identified artistic opportunities that other stars would have blanched at (or at the very least, set aside for a different time, so as to not muck up any professional momentum), and she has leapt into them fearlessly, always coming out on top.
So right now — in the middle of a mega-selling stadium tour, after a record-breaking fourth album of the year Grammy win, in a high-profile new romance and at the commercial zenith of an already all-time career — is, naturally, the time Swift has chosen to release a knowingly messy, wildly unguarded breakup album.
She didn’t have to do this! But then again, making an album like The Tortured Poets Department is exactly what separates Swift from her more careful peers. Challenging herself to shape-shift, to accomplish something new at the moment anyone else would rest on their laurels, is what makes her so fascinating.
Click here to read the full review of The Tortured Poets Department.
Pearl Jam, Dark Matter
Producer Andrew Watt has spent the past few years helping various rock legends get their groove back in the studio, and while Pearl Jam’s new album is not the result of some young studio whiz whipping a bunch of veterans into shape, the band does indeed carry a new sense of urgency on their first project since 2020’s Gigaton. Whereas their last album could feel as heavy as its title, Dark Matter is spry and energetic, with Eddie Vedder often spitting out his lines to keep up with the tempo; songs like “Scared of Fear” and “Running” want listeners to experience whiplash, but a song like the jangly yelp-along “Wreckage” is Pearl Jam at their best.
Nicki Minaj feat. Travis Scott, Chris Brown & Sexyy Red, “FTCU (Remix)”
“FTCU” was an audacious highlight of Pink Friday 2 upon its highlight, and now, Nicki Minaj has invited some famous friends to join the Wake Flocka Flame-sampling party (although Waka is, sadly, not one of them). Instead, Travis Scott spins tales of his world travels (“I had to fly to Nice, she nice,” he declares), and later, Sexyy Red nearly steals the show with her drawling trash talk. This “SLEEZEMIX” might only exist as momentary fan service, but Minaj and her famous friends sound like they’re having a great time providing for those listeners.
DJ Snake feat. Peso Pluma, “Teka”
Can “Teka” be classified as Coachella-pop? After all, DJ Snake and Peso Pluma unveiled their new studio collaboration in between weekends of the festival that they’re both performing at, but also, “Teka” sounds pristine for a Sahara tent dance-along, as EDM days of yore get recalled and thousands of attendees look ahead to the summer months. Peso Pluma wraps his arms around the elasto-funk production, turning the voice that has powered so many regional Mexican crossover hits into a disco ball with ease.
Editor’s Pick: Cloud Nothings, Final Summer
Cloud Nothings have spent the past decade as one of indie rock’s most consistent projects, and while Final Summer once again balances immediate melodies and hard-charging guitar work, the group sounds reinvigorated, from the sprinting opening title track to “Running Through the Campus,” which is actually about sprinting. Final Summer not only functions as a satisfying continuation of a proven formula for longtime fans, but as an invitation for new listeners to dive in to a rock-solid discography.
