The Britpop legends Blur’s first new song in eight years — off an upcoming album the group secretly recorded and suddenly announced this week, “The Ballad of Darren” — is a self-critical catalog of the disillusions of fame, awash in the band’s misty melancholy. Damon Albarn’s reflections are sullen and cleareyed, but buoyed by Dave Rowntree steady beat and Graham Coxon’s charmingly cheery backing vocals he finds a glimmer of hope and strength to carry on. “I won’t fall this time,” he sings. “With godspeed, I’ll heed the signs.” LINDSAY ZOLADZ
Sparks, ‘Nothing Is as Good as They Say It Is’
The meta-pop band Sparks lives for literary conceits, and here’s the latest: a song narrated by a 22-hour-old baby who wants to go back to “my former quarters” — that is, the womb. The baby would happily trade the ugliness and anxiety of the outside world for “a lousy view.” Really, who could blame the child? Wry, elegantly rhymed, and galloping along on a new wave beat, it’s like vintage Sparks, clever as ever. JON PARELES
Anohni and the Johnsons, ‘It Must Change’
The shape-shifting chanteuse Anohni has done brash electro-pop and poignant piano ballads, but this is an entirely new register for her: Sparse, slinky soul indebted to Marvin Gaye. (But, you know, not too indebted.) A cloud of elegy hangs over the song, though, as over the warming planet, while Anhoni — fiercely, tenderly — seems to sing in the voice of Mother Earth herself, mourning “the death inside of you that you pass into me.” ZOLADZ
Lido Pimienta, ‘Ein Sof, Infinito’
Otherworldly and childlike all at once, “Ein Sof, Infinito” is the latest transcultural song from the Colombian-Canadian songwriter Lido Pimienta, written for “Ein Sof,” a film by the Colombian-Israeli director Orly Anan; “Ein Sof” is Hebrew for “infinite.” Pimienta’s transparent soprano hovers amid pizzicato strings, tiny bells and distant high electronic swoops, to be joined by an unhurried dembow beat, tootling Andean flutes and gliding string phrases that hint at Bollywood. She sings about dreams and joy before the song disappears skyward. PARELES
Bad Bunny, ‘Where She Goes’
The title is in English but the lyrics, as always with Bad Bunny, are in Spanish; he’s not abandoning his Puerto Rican birthright. Bad Bunny sings about a one-night stand that he remembers but she might not, over a track that throbs with arena-scale reverberation: pulsing minor-key keyboard chords enveloping a reggaeton beat, with crowd shouts tucked into the mix. It’s Bad Bunny’s specialty: plaintive bragging, at once intimate and gigantic. PARELES
Summer Walker featuring Childish Gambino, ‘New Type’
Summer Walker savors loneliness and luxury in “New Type.” She’s alone on “silk sheets,” longing for a man, waiting for her phone to ring; she’s also thinking about messy situations with past connections — “arguing on the phone with your ugly baby mother” — and referencing Erykah Badu’s “Tyrone.” Donald Glover — a.k.a. Childish Gambino — raps in his lowest register that “I know I’m ugly but I’m interesting” and now he’s working, “doing nine to five.” She’s not necessarily convinced. PARELES
Miya Folick, ‘Cockroach’
“Crush me under the weight/bitterness, jealous, hate,” Miya Folick taunts, then promises that she has the survival skills of a cockroach. The track is a leisurely waltz, but it keeps getting busier as it goes, layering on drums, keyboards, guitars and noise while Folick nearly disappears, as elusive and persistent as the song’s namesake. PARELES
Lana Del Rey, ‘Say Yes to Heaven’
Lana Del Rey promises unswerving desire in “Say Yes to Heaven,” offering herself to someone over a pattern of three ascending chords. The song has been circulating unofficially online for a decade, and was sampled for TikTok; now she has released the official version. Her pursuit is self-abnegating and obsessive: “If you go I’ll stay/You come back, I’ll be right here,” she vows, as guitars and strings gather soothingly around her. Yet even as she coos “I’ve got my eye on you,” her devotion has an undercurrent of threat. PARELES
Ella Langley, ‘Could’ve Been Her’
The country singer Ella Langley refuses to settle in “Could’ve Been Her.” She didn’t and she’s proud. An edifice of march beats and pedal-steel harmonies arises around her as she sings about a potential husband who, she knew, would lie and cheat. The song celebrates her standards and her escape. — PARELES
Call Super and Julia Holter, ‘Illumina’
Call Super — the English D.J. and producer Joseph Richmond Seaton — created a thudding, sputtering, metronomic but ever-changing percussion track, with new sounds leaping out every few seconds, including some aggressively gnarled and tweaked clarinets. The composer and singer Julia Holter tops it with brief, cryptic phrases; her coolheadedness only magnifies the mayhem around her. PARELES
Jon Pareles and Lindsay Zoladz
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